Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

“C’mon,” the youth pressed. “Skinny thing like you can’t weigh but a few pounds.”

He gestured to the basket again.

Adare took a deep breath and nodded. Maybe they wanted to help her out of simple kindness, but more likely they were hoping for a few copper suns when they reached the square, something to mitigate their failure at the canals. Palanquins were ubiquitous in the city, and what was the basket but a poor-man’s palanquin? She felt surreptitiously for the purse secreted inside the dress. If they expected coin, she had enough to pay them a thousand times over. Besides, her legs were trembling after the effort of fleeing her guard, swimming the river, then crouching cold beneath the bridge. It would feel good to be carried again, if only a short distance.

“All right,” she said. “Just as far as the square. I appreciate your kindness.”

The youth with the hook winked, gesturing toward the basket once more.

Adare took two steps toward it when a new voice brought her up short.

“Unless I’ve forgotten my geography, this isn’t your turf, Willet. Last time I checked, you worked the streets south of Fink’s Crossing.”

She looked up to find the speaker watching her from the intersection a few paces distant. She couldn’t be sure through the blindfold, but he looked older than the canal rats, maybe ten years older than Adare herself, tall, rangy, and handsome in a rough sort of way. She squinted, eyes adjusting to the shadow. The man’s deep-set eyes, the lines stamped into his forehead beneath his short-cropped hair, made him look worried, even severe. He had a large soldier’s pack on his back, though he wore no obvious uniform, just leather and wool. It was the sword hanging from his hip that drew Adare’s eye.

The youth with the hook paused, then spread his hands. “Lehav. Been a while. We was just doin’ the lady a good turn, carryin’ her to Dellen’s Square.…”

“A good turn,” Lehav replied. “Is that what you call it now?”

Adare hesitated, then backed away from the basket and the soldier both. She had no idea where Fink’s Crossing was, but she understood the talk of geography and turf well enough. She was somewhere she didn’t belong, and the arrival of the soldier, this coded exchange, the way that he looked at her with those hooded eyes, put her even more on edge.

“Just helping,” Willet said, nodding. “Nothing to do with you, Lehav.”

The soldier eyed her for a long moment, looked her up and down as though she were a slave for sale on the blocks, then shrugged again.

“I suppose it’s not,” he said, then turned to the rats. “But remember: if Old Jake finds you working his streets, someone will be using that hook to fish your corpses out of the canal.”

He started to turn, but Adare flung out a hand.

“Wait!”

The soldier paused, glanced back over his shoulder.

She scrambled to think of something to say. “They’re going to rob me.”

He nodded. “That’s correct.”

His indifference took her aback. “You have to help me.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head evenly, “I don’t. You’ll be all right-these two will take your coin, but they’ll leave everything else intact.” He glanced over at the rats. “You haven’t turned rapists in the last few years, have you?”

Orren spat into the mud, then spoke for the first time. “No business of yours if we did.”

“No,” Willet said, cutting off his companion, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “’Course not, Lehav. We got sisters. Just gonna take the nice lady’s purse and see ’er on ’er way.”

Lehav nodded, turned back to Adare. “You’re lucky. If it were Old Jake’s men found you…” He raised an eyebrow. “Safe to say the result wouldn’t be pretty.”

Adare was shaking now, her breath hot and ragged in her lungs. She felt suddenly trapped, vulnerable, her feet sunk in the mud, dress hitched up around her thighs. Annur had thousands of guardsmen responsible for keeping the peace, for stopping just this sort of thing. The Dawn Palace spent tens of thousands of suns on them each year. You couldn’t stroll fifty paces through the Graves or the High Bluffs without seeing them walking in pairs, armor shining, keeping the Emperor’s peace. But then, this wasn’t the Graves.

“Wait,” she said, glancing desperately at Lehav’s sword. “You’re a soldier. You’re a soldier . From the legions. You swore an oath to protect the citizens of Annur.”

Lehav’s expression hardened. “I’d advise you not to instruct me in the matter of my own oaths. I left the legions years ago. Found a purer cause.”

Adare glanced over her shoulder. Willet had his eyes fixed on Lehav, but Orren was looking straight at her, the gash of his mouth twisted in a cruel smile. The soldier and his callous indifference frightened her, but he, at least, had shown no desire to do her harm. There were no guardsmen on the narrow street, no saviors. If she couldn’t convince Lehav to help her, there would be no help. The man knew the canal rats, but he wasn’t friends with them, that much was clear. If she could only figure out where to drive the wedge. Her mind scrambled, her thoughts numb and clumsy with fear.

“That’s right, Lehav,” Willet was saying. “You don’t wanna be wastin’ your time down here jawin’ with the likes of us. You got outta this shit trap, remember?”

The soldier shook his head. “Sometimes I’m not sure.” He pursed his lips, glanced at the muddy road, the rotting boards facing the buildings, the thin strip of sky. “This whole city is rotten,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “This whole empire.” After a long pause he shook his head again and turned away. “So long, Willet. Orren.”

Adare’s heart seized. Her tongue felt like leather in her mouth.

Willet smiled a wide grin, obviously relieved. “See ya someday, Lehav.”

“No, you won’t,” the soldier replied.

And then, as when a scattering of individual stones on the ko board resolved themselves into a pattern, Adare understood: a soldier, a “purer cause,” someone who got out, who wasn’t coming back, a man with a sword on his hip but a large pack on his back.

“Please,” she blurted desperately, “in Intarra’s name, I’m begging you.”

Once again Lehav stopped, turned, fixed her with an unreadable stare.

“What is the goddess to you?”

Yes, Adare thought inwardly, relief and triumph flooding her. It wasn’t done yet, but she could see the path.

“She is the light that guides me,” she began, intoning an old prayer, “the fire that warms my face, a spark in the darkness.”

“Is she.” The soldier’s voice was flat.

“I’m a pilgrim,” Adare insisted. “I’m going now, to the Temple of Light, to join the pilgrimage. I’m leaving Annur for Olon.”

Willet shifted uncomfortably at her side. “Don’t worry about it, Lehav.”

The soldier frowned. “I think I might worry about it, in fact.” He turned to Adare once more. “You don’t wear a pilgrim’s robes.”

“Neither do you,” she pointed out. “I’m going to buy them. Today. On the Godsway.”

“She’s lyin’,” Orren snarled. “The bitch is lyin’. She’s got nuthin’. No pack. Nuthin’.”

Now that Adare was into the lie the words tumbled from her lips.

“I couldn’t bring anything, not without my family knowing. I had to sneak out in the night.”

“What are you doing here?” Lehav asked. “In this part of town?”

“I got lost, ” Adare sobbed. She didn’t need to simulate the tears. “I was trying to get to the Godsway by dawn, but got lost in the night.”

“Just let ’er go,” Orren growled. “Just keep walkin’.”