Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

The Ishien went through first, backward, somehow keeping his balance as Kaden strove to bring him down. Even as they moved, Kaden could feel the other man shifting, adjusting, dropping his weapon and bringing his hands to bear, starting a pivot that would end with a throw. Kaden had no doubt he would be on the ground in moments, his face pressed into the dirt, but the man didn’t have moments. The hot sun winked out as they slipped through the invisible surface of the kenta into a stone chamber lit on all sides by torches, a stone chamber guarded by a dozen men, half of them with crossbows.

Silence reigned for a heartbeat. Then the first bolts leapt from the bows, outpacing the shouts of alarm that followed, the quick responses of reflex and fight moving so much faster than understanding. Several must have flown wide, but Kaden could feel at least two of the bolts punch into his adversary’s flesh, jolting them both. The man didn’t cry out, didn’t so much as groan, but Kaden could feel him hesitate, sagging as the steel lodged tight. Emotion should have come over Kaden then-relief or fear or savage joy-but there was no emotion inside the emptiness. He had accomplished one goal. Many remained. Quickly, he pulled himself free of the corpse, considered the rounded kenta chamber, then stepped back through the gate into the blinding sun.

He’d been gone just a few heartbeats, but everything had changed. The man he’d dragged through the kenta, who was now lying dead on the other side in some secret chamber beneath the Dawn Palace, had been the one guarding Kiel. Which meant that, at least for the moment, the Csestriim was free. His wrists remained bound behind him, but that hadn’t stopped him from moving to the kenta leading to the Shin chapterhouse, hadn’t prevented him from kicking Matol’s legs out from under him as he emerged.

It was a feeble attack, and the Ishien commander was already rising to his feet, teeth bared, but he had dropped Tan’s naczal, and Kaden took it up, the shaft cool and smooth in his hands. The violence seemed to have jolted Triste fully awake, and she writhed in the arms of her captor like a caught wolf, screaming and scratching, biting and clawing. The Ishien was larger, but the same brutal strength with which the girl had broken Matol’s hand back in the Dead Heart seemed to have surfaced once more.

Kaden circled them, cool and distant inside the vaniate, considering his options. The naczal was deadly in Tan’s hands, but he wasn’t even sure which end to strike with. Any effort to attack Triste’s captor was just as likely to hurt her as it was to reach the Ishien. He watched, searching for an opening, seeing nothing but a flurry of arms and struggling flesh. It was no good. He wasn’t Valyn or Pyrre. The monks hadn’t possessed so much as a single sword. He’d stayed alive in Annur this long only by deflecting and dodging attacks, pitting the strength of one foe against another: Adiv’s men against the Ishien, the aristocrats against the imperial guards, the soldiers on the other side of the kenta against whoever he had shoved through. The strategy had worked, until now. On the green circle of grass, cliffs dropping into the wide blue sea on every side, there was no more dodging to be had, no more deflecting. It was time to fight, and Kaden knew nothing of fighting.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Matol said. “I’m not taking you back to rot with your teacher. I’m going to gut you right here.”

He stooped, never taking his eyes from Kaden’s face, to pick up the sword dropped by his lost companion. The other Ishien shifted, blades at the ready, faces closed. The vaniate, Kaden realized. He wasn’t the only one acting from inside the trance. They were all inside the vaniate, all except Triste, who had redoubled her thrashing.

As Matol talked, Kiel slipped to Kaden’s side.

“Cut me free,” he said, glancing over his shoulder to the rope knotting his hands.

Matol pointed his sword at Kaden. “You murdered my man to help this inhuman scum, and you’re still helping him, dancing when he says dance, like a demented puppet. I’m going to put this steel in your flesh, and I’m going to watch you squirm. You should thank me. I’m going to cut the strings.”

Kaden ignored him, turning instead to slit the rope binding Kiel’s wrists. The rough fiber parted effortlessly beneath the naczal blade. That made two of them free. Kaden hesitated, then handed the spear to Kiel.

“Can you use this?”

The Csestriim took it, sighted down the shaft. “It has been many centuries,” he said, spinning the blade in a smooth, practiced motion, “but the memory is strong.”

Kiel slid in front of Kaden, blocking Matol’s advance, and suddenly the odds didn’t look so long. Matol’s jaw tightened. Evidently his reading of the scene mirrored Kaden’s own.

“Billick,” he said, turning to one of the remaining soldiers. “Get the others. They’re just beyond the Cavaltin gate. You can be back in twenty breaths.”

Kaden had no idea where Cavaltin was, or which kenta led to it, but it hardly mattered. Somewhere, somewhere close, more Ishien waited, maybe dozens more, heavily armed and ready. When they came, there would be no escape. It was just a fact, true as the sky above them was true. Billick charged across the green sward, passed through the kenta, then vanished. Triste chose that moment to twist in her captor’s grasp, sink her teeth into his collar, and then, as he roared and jerked back, to wrench free.

Matol cursed, shook his head, then spat into the grass. Triste’s panicked escape had thrown her almost directly into the man’s path, and he stepped forward, raised his sword, then hacked down in a vicious arc. Kaden could only watch as the sword fell toward her head, but Kiel was quicker, sliding the naczal into the gap, deflecting Matol’s blow into the dull earth. The Csestriim withdrew the spear, preparing another thrust, but before he could move, Triste staggered to her feet. Kaden expected her to flee, to hurl herself away from the blades, but instead she lunged forward into Matol, her face drawn with fear and fury, eyes wide as suns, hands clutching around his back, pulling him close even as she drove them both back.

“Get off me, you soulless whore,” Matol spat. He twisted, but couldn’t wrench free. With his sword arm trapped against his side, he couldn’t bring the blade to bear.

“It is you,” Triste murmured, “who abandoned your soul.”

No, Kaden realized . That isn’t Triste . The frightened child who had sobbed in his pavilion back in Ashk’lan was gone, replaced by the woman who had shattered Matol’s wrist weeks earlier. The Ishien was older than her, taller and stronger, but Triste was bearing him up and back somehow, forcing him to give ground, her muscles bent to the task, tendons straining in her legs, the backs of her knees, her neck. Strangely, she was smiling, full lips parted with the effort of breath.

“I warned you,” she said, voice lapidary as polished stone, “that this day would come.”

Matol struggled and cursed and lost ground. She was forcing him toward the kenta, and for a moment Kaden thought he understood her plan, thought she intended to force him through into the hail of crossbow bolts as he had the other Ishien. The plan had worked once; it could work again. Only she was moving toward the wrong kenta, toward the gate that led back into the basement of the Shin chapterhouse.

“No, Triste,” he shouted, gesturing to the palace gate, “the other one. The other one!”

She ignored him.

“You gave up your soul,” she said. “You thought you had burned it out with your vicious rituals, your petty faith in the power of pain.” She laughed, a full, throaty laugh. “Pain is so limited.”