Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

And yet, standing aside, refusing to take part, was nothing but a coward’s course, and so Valyn dug down until he came to something like bedrock: Ran il Tornja had murdered his father and suborned the empire. The agreement Valyn had hammered out with Adare seemed like the best available: he would let the kenarang stop the Urghul, but then he would see him dead. All of which meant, of course, that il Tornja couldn’t know Valyn was near, was waiting for him. It would be tough enough to kill him unsuspecting, and Valyn had no intention of giving the man an advance warning.

And so, over Laith’s strenuous objections, they detoured around every town, wading through frigid, chest-deep bogs, swatting away biting flies that seemed to grow large as birds, holding their blades above their heads in a futile effort to keep them dry, slogging forward straight through the night and all the next day at a pace so slow they’d barely reached the northern end of the lake by dusk. It was a pretty weak showing for three soldiers trained to cover distance quickly and quietly-fifty miles in a full day-but it was enough. No one had seen them pass, which meant, when il Tornja did arrive, he’d have no idea they were waiting.

“Well,” Laith said, holding the branches aside with one hand so that he could get a view out over the northern arm of the lake to the small village straddling the Black River, “looks like the Urghul move almost as fast through the forest as they do on the steppe.”

Valyn’s stomach slipped. “Have they taken the town?” he demanded, peering through the gathering gloom as he slipped the long lens from his pack.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Talal replied after a moment.

Valyn nodded slowly. Bonfires raged on the far bank, but the town itself looked unscathed, no burning buildings lighting the sky, no furious ringing of alarms, no smoke, no screaming. He raised the long lens to his eye, focused it. The horsemen on the far bank snapped into view, hundreds of them, thousands, and more in the trees.

“What are the bastards waiting for?” Laith demanded.

Valyn shook his head. “Can’t see. If the people in town aren’t idiots, they’ll have burned the far bridge, but I don’t have the angle to be sure.” He shifted the long lens back to the town. The eastern sky had already purpled to black, but Valyn could make out the details clearly enough: rough log buildings similar to those in Aats-Kyl, all piled onto two islands nestled in the forking arms of the Black River. Docks stretched out into the lake from the eastern island, and on the southernmost tip of the western one, built directly out of a rocky cliff, stood a tall, stone tower-probably for signaling boats coming up from the south. When the wind dropped, he could hear hammers or axes echoing from the wall of dark firs fronting the eastern shore of the lake.

The villagers were busy running back and forth, some with weapons, others lugging logs, still others carting what must have been food and valuables west over the central bridge, onto the nearer of the two islands, trying to get them as far from the horsemen as possible. Valyn tracked a few figures-mostly loggers in rough leather and wool-then paused, grinding his teeth.

“Il Tornja’s scouts are here.”

Talal nodded. “Not unexpected.”

“But a pain in the ass nonetheless,” Laith said.

Valyn frowned. “Means we’ll have to take care in setting up shop. If they’re sticking to protocol, they’ll be sending men back two, three times a day. We can’t let the kenarang know we’re here.”

“All right,” Talal said. “What’s the play?”

“We wait until full dark,” he replied, “then move in. We’ll take up a position on top of the tower. Should give us a good view of what’s going on and, with any luck, a line of sight to il Tornja when he arrives. The bastard may be a brilliant tactician, but tactics never blocked an arrow.”

“And you still want to do this?” Laith asked. “Kill him? Even after what you learned from your sister? If Long Fist is coming, that means he lied, means he played us.…”

Valyn’s jaw tightened. Laith had distrusted the Urghul shaman from the start, but the encounter with il Tornja’s army, the realization that the horsemen were actually planning to push across the river, made the flier furious. He was right, of course-the shaman’s army, his so-called shield, was starting to look a lot like a fucking spear-and yet Laith couldn’t see beyond that point. It would do them little good to defeat the Urghul only to hand the empire to il Tornja when the fighting was done.

“Long Fist lied to us,” Laith continued, as though the revelation were a shock.

“It was a smart play,” Talal said. “He risks nothing by using us to get at il Tornja. If we succeed, he wins. If we fail,” he shrugged, “he was planning to fight the battle anyway.”

Laith spat. “And we’re just cheerfully going to keep doing what this horsefucker wants?” He stared at Valyn, the challenge hard in his voice. “We’ve already killed a couple Annurian soldiers for the great and mighty Long Fist-what’s a little more Annurian blood? Is that it?”

“There is more than one fight here,” Valyn ground out. “The fact that one is evil doesn’t make the other good. Long Fist lied to us, but il Tornja murdered the Emperor.”

“According to Balendin,” Laith said, voice rising in disbelief.

“According to my sister, ” Valyn replied, trying to keep his voice calm. “Adare confirmed it. The kenarang killed my father and seized control of the empire.”

“It is your sister,” Talal pointed out quietly, “who has taken on the imperial mantle.”

“She’s il Tornja’s puppet,” Valyn snapped. “She thinks she’s doing the right thing, but she doesn’t understand the larger forces at play.”

“Seems to me,” Laith said archly, “that she is one of the larger fucking forces. She’s the Malkeenian in charge now, she’s declared herself Emperor, she has the kenarang jumping to her tune, the Army of the North, and, in case you didn’t notice it, the ’Kent-kissing Sons of Flame into the bargain.”

“The Army of the North is the kenarang ’s army,” Valyn growled. “When we kill the kenarang we can bring it back under control. Kaden can appoint a new commander.”

“If Kaden is alive,” Talal said, meeting Valyn’s eye as he spoke. “Adare didn’t mention him.”

Valyn drew a deep, ragged breath. Worry for his brother had gnawed at him since the two groups were separated back in the Bone Mountains. Their whole scheme seemed like madness now, a plan with a hundred possible holes. The gate itself could have killed Kaden, or the Ishien on the other side of it. He could have returned to Annur and run afoul of il Tornja’s men, could have avoided the conspiracy altogether only to end up dead in a canal with some footpad’s blade in his back. The old monk, Rampuri Tan, had seemed capable with that strange spear of his, but there wasn’t any telling how far even he could be trusted. Looking back on it, Valyn wished he’d done more to stay at Kaden’s side. At the time, there hadn’t seemed to be any choice.

It had been a long time since he’d felt as though he had a true choice. Abandoning the Islands, losing Kaden, fighting the Flea, landing on the steppe, leaving half his Wing in Long Fist’s clutches-each decision looked like the wrong one now, but at the time they hadn’t seemed like decisions at all. Instead of contemplating a series of forking paths, Valyn felt as though he’d been racing down a single treacherous track, just a half step ahead of his foes, no time to look either back or forward.