Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

“Good enough?” Valyn demanded, trying to keep up the ruse even as he struggled to make sense of what he’d heard. “I’d let you bastards dig till the sun came up, I had my way, but then fucking Donavic would have me in the stocks all night, which is even worse than pushing a shovel so her royal majesty can shit her royal little shits in her own royal little hole.”

The young soldier shrugged, then tossed his shovel onto the earth beside the hole. “You coulda come earlier,” he grumbled, then pushed past Valyn and out the tent flap.

“What spiny rodent crawled up his asshole and died?” Valyn asked the remaining legionary as the canvas fell back into place.

“Don’t mind him,” the man replied, handing Valyn his own shovel. “Hellem just joined up. Thought the legions were all about big swords and doe-eyed girls in every town.…” He trailed off as he got a good look at Valyn’s eyes for the first time.

Valyn shifted his grip on the shovel. He didn’t want to hurt the old soldier, but one shout and the entire camp would be on him. Worse, if he failed here, it would mean all the earlier deaths-Blackfeather Finn, the messengers he’d killed-would be pointless, useless. It was a perverse sort of logic that argued for hurting the living in the name of the dead, but unless he was willing to give himself up, there was no way around it. With the flat of the shovel he could knock the man unconscious without killing him. Valyn planted his feet.

“Something happen to your eyes?” the man asked finally. There was curiosity in the words, but no nervousness. Valyn inhaled slowly; the air inside the tent was close, still, rich with freshly turned earth, but there was no stink of fear.

He relaxed slightly.

“Just the way Bedisa made ’em,” he replied, forcing a shrug. “By day they’re just brown, but they look darker at night.”

The soldier considered him a moment longer, then clapped him on the shoulder. “None of my business. I thank you for the relief in here.” He gestured toward the hole. “Truth is, there’s not much left to dig-maybe another few feet. After that, it’s just a matter of making it pretty.”

“Never heard of a pretty latrine,” Valyn said, turning toward the hole.

“I never heard of a princess coming along on a forced march,” the soldier replied. “Thanks again, friend.”

“Don’t thank me,” Valyn said. “Just save my ass if you see some Urghul trying to stick me with a spear.”

The soldier was still chuckling as the canvas flap fell shut behind him.

Emperor, Valyn thought grimly. He’d expected to travel all the way to Annur, to find il Tornja on the Unhewn Throne and Adare shoved to the side, baffled and grief-stricken, provided she was still alive. Clearly he had underestimated his sister. Here she was in the middle of an army on the march, evidently leading that army, not to mention an entirely separate contingent of the Sons of Flame. That was one mystery solved, at least, though how Adare had come to command the loyalty of the religious order, he had no idea. According to Long Fist, she had murdered their Chief Priest.

He blew out a long, slow breath. He had hoped to find a willing if frightened ally in Adare. Instead, she had the full support of the Intarrans and Ran il Tornja both. She wasn’t weeping for their father; she had replaced him. There was no way to be sure what it all meant, but he’d be shipped to ’Shael if it looked good.

With an effort, Valyn turned his attention to the task before him. The latrine had to look right, or Adare would refuse it, and so for the next hour he dug furiously, tamping down the earth around the hole, piling the stones neatly to the side, then arranging the elaborate wooden seat over the hole. The seat weighed half as much as Valyn himself. It was a ludicrous thing to bring on a campaign, and yet there it was, a concession to the tenderness of Adare’s royal behind.

As he settled it in place, it occurred to him just how different their two experiences of the world must have been. While Valyn and Kaden had followed divergent paths, both of them had been trained, tested, and tempered by people and institutions utterly indifferent to their birth. Adare, on the other hand, quite obviously lived the pampered life of Annurian nobility. The thought kindled an unexpected anger inside him-he had seen his friends murdered, been forced, himself, to murder and treachery, all in service of the empire, all to avenge his father and protect his brother. Meanwhile, what had Adare been doing? Lounging in a private pavilion while footsore soldiers dug her privy.

He’d expected her to help change the newly imposed order, and suddenly it turned out that she was the newly imposed fucking order. It was even possible, he realized, a chill prickling his skin, that she’d been a part of the original plot. The sister he remembered from growing up hadn’t seemed the scheming, murderous sort, but then, change had come for them all.

He shoved aside his suspicions and misgivings. There was no point speculating when he’d have the information that he needed within a few hours. He stowed the shovel at the base of one of the tent walls, then checked over the space a final time. He couldn’t be sure exactly how it was supposed to look, but there weren’t too many moving pieces to arrange. If he’d missed a detail, the blame would land on the soldiers he had relieved.

He nodded to himself, then stood on the wooden seat, reached up with his belt knife, and cut a slit in the canvas overhead. Careful not to tear the cloth further, he reached through, took hold of the tent’s center pole, and slipped out through the roof into the night. The canvas sagged a bit, but it was guyed out tightly, and as long as he distributed his weight it seemed willing to hold him up. He checked over his shoulder. The roof of the tent obscured him from the paths immediately to the sides. He could see soldiers going about their business farther out, but the night was dark, he wore his blacks, and, as he looked over the camp, it began to rain, light at first, then heavy. It would make for cold, miserable waiting, but it knocked visibility down to a few paces at best-a good trade. He tucked his chin in his blacks and waited.

The Aedolians came first, lanterns held before them, the light shining off their wet, gleaming armor. It was the type of error the Kettral were trained to exploit: holding the lantern high meant that the flame would blot any night vision the guardsmen had managed to preserve. In an attempt to illuminate the shadows, they were destroying any ability they had to see what those shadows held. Valyn lay still, watching them approach, then looking down into the tent as they stepped inside, covering the rest of the hole with his body to avoid any leakage.

One guard glanced in the privy while the other prodded the shovel where it lay beneath the canvas walls.

“Left their tools,” he observed.

The other shrugged. “Makes no difference to me.”

Neither noticed Valyn. Typical Aedolians, Valyn thought. They could spend all night standing at attention in the driving rain outside Adare’s tent, but when checking the privy neither of them thought to look up. After surveying the tiny space one last time, both men exited, presumably to take up their guard. Valyn was left alone with the drumming of the cold rain on the canvas.

It must have been near midnight when Adare finally stepped into the tent, cursing under her breath as she pushed back the sodden canvas, then wringing the rain from her hair. Valyn himself was soaked to the skin and shivering, but he forced the discomfort out of his mind, focusing instead on his sister.

She was both taller and thinner than she had appeared through the long lens, and up close Valyn could see the exhaustion scrawled across her face. She tried ineffectually to brush off her golden robe, then gave up with an exasperated sigh, letting the rain puddle on the floor as she stripped it off. To Valyn’s surprise, she was wearing legion wool and leather beneath-higher quality, to be sure, than what was issued to the soldiers, but far more practical than the dress and jewels he had expected.