Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

The chances were slim. Kaden hadn’t seen a quarter of the faces of the imperial soldiers, but it seemed unlikely that Adiv had involved himself in the attack. In fact, Kaden had insisted on waiting until dusk in case the councillor were secreted somewhere else in the square, watching the smoldering chapterhouse from his own hidden vantage. Certainly, as they explored the rooms, he saw no sign of Adiv. No sign, either, of Ekhard Matol.

The absence of both men worried Kaden, and as they pressed deeper into the chapterhouse, he felt the muscles of his chest grow tighter.

“Matol is a shrewd, dangerous fighter,” Kiel said, as though hearing his thoughts. “It’s possible he escaped.”

“If Matol is still alive,” Kaden replied, “then this whole thing failed.”

“It brought the nobles over to your side,” the Csestriim pointed out.

“That was only one part of the plan. I had hoped that Adiv and the Ishien would destroy each other. If they have not, if Matol is still alive, I have a problem. They will make a bid for control of the kenta, denying me the gates.”

“It’s possible he used the kenta here to escape,” Kiel said. “It is part of the imperial rather than the Ishien network, but he knows of it.”

Kaden nodded grimly. He’d already considered the possibility that the Ishien might escape through the gate-it was a flaw with the plan-but he’d hoped that their desire to capture him combined with the shock of Adiv’s arrival would have stunned them long enough to break off any possibility of an orderly retreat. He had hoped that Matol himself would have been leading the ambush. More evidence of an old Shin truth: Hope is a straight road to suffering .

“Where is the kenta ?” he asked.

Kiel crooked a finger at the floor. “Down.”

Kaden hesitated. “Someone could be waiting there. They could have doubled back.”

Triste, however, shoved past him. “I’m going,” she said. “I need to see.” And before he could reach her, she was running down the stairs.

* * *

They’d barely reached the basement when the attackers hit them. Kaden had tried to study each hollow as they passed, holding his lantern high, listening for the scuff of boot on stone. He’d heard nothing, seen nothing, and then a bright shattering pain erupted across the back of his head and he was falling forward, head striking against the stone wall, then the stone floor.

Blood flooded his mouth. He realized vaguely that he’d bitten into his tongue, but there was no time to worry about that. As his mind swayed, thought coalescing then scattering like a school of skittish fish, the fighting continued around him. Triste was screaming, and then suddenly silent. Kaden tried to rise to his feet, but something slammed him back down. A weight settled across the small of his back, grinding him into the floor. He opened his eyes to see Kiel struggling with an armed figure, and then, quick as thought, the Csestriim, too, was down.

It happened too fast for Kaden to have any idea what was going on, but there was no mistaking Ekhard Matol’s face when the man crouched down beside him, his skin spattered with blood, eyes wide.

“You remember some of the things we did to your little whore here?” he asked, voice soft but savage. “The fire? The slivers of glass?”

Kaden kept his mouth shut, focused all his effort on shoving aside the red welter of pain, on seeing the dimensions of the trap that they had sprung. There were four figures in addition to Matol, one driving a boot into his back, the other leaning over Kiel a few steps away. Matol himself was holding the Csestriim naczal in his hands.

“Tan’s spear,” Kaden managed.

The Ishien shook his head. “Not anymore.”

“Where is he? Is he all right?”

“You can ask him yourself when we’re back in the Heart.” The man chuckled. “’Course, he might have trouble answering you.”

“Matol,” one of the other men cut in, “we need to move.” It had taken them only a few moments to bind Kiel’s hands behind his back. The Csestriim swayed slightly, but he was doing better than Triste, who lay slumped in a heap where the wall met the floor. Matol scowled, then nodded. “Get the girl,” he said, gesturing with the spear. “We’ll be secure once we’re through the kenta .”

A moment later, Kaden felt himself hauled upward by the back of his shirt. The Ishien had made no effort to tie his hands-another measure of the contempt they felt for him-but a short knife appeared at his throat.

“Walk,” Matol hissed.

Kaden walked.

They followed the corridor for a few dozen paces, turned into a smaller passageway, then descended another stairwell. When they reached a small room, stone walls rough cut and dripping, Matol pulled him up short.

“The kenta is just ahead. You might want to prepare yourself.”

Kaden stared. The shock of the attack had so disordered his mind that any thought of reaching for the vaniate had been jarred free. Without the warning, he would have stepped through the gate and into his own obliteration.

“I don’t know if I can,” he said quietly.

At his side, Matol just snorted, then pressed the knife deep enough into his skin to draw blood.

“Ah, the vaniate, ” he mused. “The Shin methods are so much more … humane than ours, but they do have their limitations. You have to court the emptiness, woo it.” He pursed his lips, shook his head in disgust. “Our way has fallen out of favor with the monks, but,” he shrugged, “you can’t argue with the result.”

A few paces off, the kenta loomed out of the darkness, the slender arch of stone tossing back the lamplight at strange angles. The man hauling Triste-Kaden didn’t recognize him-carried her through over his shoulder without a moment of hesitation. Kiel was shoved through a few heartbeats after. Kaden scrambled to find the wide empty space of the trance, reached for the bird that had guided him through before. As though frightened off by the chaos in his mind, the bird refused to alight. He called it, and it fled. He strained for the vaniate, and he failed.

Matol watched him with a hungry smile.

“Having a little bit of difficulty letting go? The calm not coming as easily as you’d hoped?”

As he spoke, he pressed the tip of the knife deeper. Kaden could feel his own blood trickling over the clavicle and down his chest.

“Don’t let the pain distract you,” Matol chuckled. “It would be a shame to lose your focus now.”

The pain . Kaden dove into the sensation, leaning into the knife, pressing it farther into his neck until the bright ache lanced down his collar and shoulder, up into his jaw. Matol was shoving him toward the kenta, but Kaden closed his eyes, concentrating on that pain, watching it spread like a growing plant, green tendrils driving into the cracks of his mind, breaking apart the edifice of thought. Matol was saying something, but Kaden ignored it, letting the bright green pain lace through him until there was no emotion left, nothing but the wide blank of the vaniate .

Now, he realized. It has to be now, right on the other side.

He opened his eyes in time to see the kenta looming before him, then stepped through.

The Ishien were waiting on the other side, just a pace from the gate, but they were watching Kiel and Triste. Kaden gave them no time to respond.

He hurled himself forward, launching himself squarely into the nearest man’s chest. He had just a heartbeat to hear Triste shouting, Matol cursing, both sounds devoid of meaning inside the emptiness of the vaniate, both voices almost lost in the gulls screaming overhead, the waves crashing against the cliffs below. He had half a heartbeat to feel the sun, hot as a slap to the skin, a quarter heartbeat in which his foe tried to shove him off while Kaden wrapped his arms tight and drove forward with his legs, pushing, pushing, until they were both falling through the next kenta, the one that Kiel had warned him led into the Dawn Palace.