Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

He stared out over the dark water toward the small town. Maybe this was a mistake, too. He could still turn back, try to find that invisible fork, try to take a better path, but the other paths all looked even worse than the one he was on. Leave il Tornja to his triumph? With a crucial military victory tucked tight in his belt, the man would be even more difficult to unseat. Continue north in hope of freeing Gwenna and Annick from the Urghul? The odds of success looked worse than pathetic, and if he died in the rescue attempt, he couldn’t kill il Tornja or help Kaden. Return to the Islands and lay the information about the plot before Daveen Shaleel and the rest of Eyrie Command? They reported to il Tornja; for all Valyn knew, they were complicit in the plot.

There were dozens of variables, none of which he could control-Long Fist, the Ishien, Rampuri Tan-but about Ran il Tornja, at least, he could do something. He could try to do something.

“Kaden is going to have to look after himself for now,” he said. “But we can do our vicious bloody best to make sure that if he’s alive, when he does return to Annur, that a backstabbing traitor isn’t sitting on his seat.” He wasn’t sure if he was talking about il Tornja or Adare. Possibly both.

Laith raised his hands in surrender, let out a snort half weariness, half disgust. “The whole thing is above my pay grade. I trained to fly birds, and now we don’t even have a ’Kent-kissing bird.”

“Speaking of which,” Talal said, raising the long lens toward the town once more, “how do you plan to get to that tower? Without ’Ra, it looks a little tricky.”

The sun had set, but Valyn could see well enough in the gray-green darkness. Dozens of lanterns and fires blazed on the two islands-the extravagance of wood and oil speaking eloquently to the fear in the streets. The loggers’ preparations, though, would face east, toward the approaching Urghul. No one would be looking south over the water, and if they were, well, the Kettral wore blacks and worshipped Hull for a reason.

“We swim,” he said. “Exit at the cliff. Climb straight up to the top of the tower.”

“A half-mile swim in glacial runoff followed by a seventy-foot climb,” Laith grumbled. “Just what I was hoping for.”

Valyn fought down a sudden and powerful urge to seize the flier by the neck. There was a time, not so long ago, when Valyn had trusted Laith more than any other member of his Wing, but combat had changed both of them, changed them for the worse. Laith’s jocularity had crumbled into a series of snipes and complaints, and Valyn could feel his own tolerance fraying like a worn rope. No one wanted to swim the fucking lake. No one wanted to climb a tall stone tower in the middle of the night with cold hands and wet blacks, but they were Kettral .

“This is what we do,” Valyn said, leashing his voice, keeping it low, holding back the shouting that snarled and prowled inside. “This is what we are for.”

“Come on,” Talal said, sensing the tension and stepping between them. “Let’s just get it over with.”

Over. Valyn almost laughed at the word. Once they swam the lake, they’d have to climb the cliff. Once up the cliff, they’d face the tower. Once on the tower, he’d need to kill il Tornja, and if he managed that, he needed to find a way to free Gwenna and Annick. One fight just led to the next, on and on and on. It wasn’t really over, none of it. Not until you were dead.

* * *

The swim was mercifully shorter than Valyn had expected, but the climb above proved brutal-seventy feet of narrow ledges made even more treacherous by the darkness, their sodden boots, and the crumbling mortar of the old tower itself. Three times Valyn trusted his weight to seemingly solid stone only to have it give when he tried to move up on it, ripping clear of the wall to plummet into the lapping waves below, leaving him to cling desperately with one hand while the other scrabbled for purchase.

It was painstaking, difficult work, but Valyn found it strangely calming. There were few decisions to make-this stone or that, this ledge or that-and the consequences of each choice were immediate: the rock crumbled, or it did not. No lies. No deception. No one to kill. His body warmed with the exertion, and his focus narrowed to the vertical swath of stone immediately above and below him. He was almost disappointed when he reached the roof, pulling up and over onto the rough boards, though his forearms ached and the tips of his fingers bled.

For a moment he just laid on his back, staring at the stars, each one a hole stabbed in the darkness. Then Talal’s voice pulled him back to the present.

“Someone’s been working hard,” he murmured, nodding toward the eastern bank of the Black. “They’ve got the place locked up tight.”

Valyn rolled onto his stomach, then pulled the long lens from his oilskin.

“What’ve we got?”

Talal nodded into the darkness. “Looks like the bridge is out, destroyed, like you said. Hard to say in the darkness.”

Between the fires and the stars, the night was plenty bright to Valyn, and when he raised the lens to his eye, the chopped pilings leapt immediately into view, jagged teeth stabbing up from the mud flats on either side of the central channel, a few stray planks strewn about.

“I wonder who warned them?” he said, scanning the town below.

The place was a hive of activity, men and women pushing and pulling all manner of carts, some filled with tools, others loaded high with tables or logs, while children scurried through the streets, shouting messages to the adults. It was chaotic, but after watching for a few minutes, Valyn could start to see a kind of order imposed on the madness: laden carts headed east, toward what appeared to be some sort of barricade on the far bank of the East Island, then returned filled with food and jugs of water, all manner of provisions. Valyn followed the activity to a knot of figures in the small town square, brought the leader into focus, then almost dropped the lens.

“Holy Hull,” he breathed, then found himself laughing, joy and relief washing over him like a cool wave back on the Islands, scrubbing away for just a moment all the doubt and the anger. “Meshkent, Ananshael, and holy black Hull.”

“Is there a joke I’m not getting about the fact that this whole miserable town’s about to be burned to the dirt?” Laith asked.

For once, even the flier’s cynicism couldn’t dampen Valyn’s spirits. He just smiled and passed the long lens. It took Laith a moment to find Gwenna in the shadows, and then he, too, was laughing.

“That tough, stubborn bitch,” he marveled. “Leave it to Gwenna Sharpe to decide she’s fed up playing prisoner to an entire army of Urghul.” Shaking his head, he handed the lens to Talal.

“Annick’s there, too,” the leach said after a moment. “And Pyrre.”

Valyn’s face hurt from smiling. It seemed like forever since he’d had a reason. “I wonder how they got free.…”

“Those three?” Laith asked. “Probably just kept clawing eyes and biting throats until there weren’t any Urghul left. Here we are wandering all over Raalte killing our own men, and they’ve busted themselves free, humped it back ahead of an entire mounted army, and started preparing the defense.” The bitterness had crept back into his voice. “Starts to make you wonder why we even bothered.”

The smile slid from Valyn’s face like a shadow. “We bothered,” he said, “because it seemed like the right choice at the time.”

“Well, we’re here now,” Laith said, rising to his feet on the crumbling roof. “Let’s get down there while there’s still work to do.”

Valyn hesitated, then shook his head. “No.”