Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

The soldier looked up at the narrow strip of sky between the dilapidated buildings as though weary with the whole scene, the rats, the mud, the stench.

Please, Adare begged silently. Her legs shook beneath her as though palsied. She wanted to run, but knew she wouldn’t make it a dozen paces in the mud. Please .

“No,” he replied finally. “I don’t think I will keep walking.” His thumbs remained casually tucked into the straps of his pack. He didn’t so much as look at his sword.

“Might be we’ll kill you, too, then,” Orren said. “Might be we’ll kill you both.”

“It is certainly your right to try.”

Willet’s face had gone white and frightened. He tightened his grip on the hook, shifted back and forth uneasily in the mud while his companion sidled forward, a knife held before him, tongue flicking anxiously between his lips. Lehav unclasped his hands and set one palm silently on the pommel of his sword.

Later, when Adare had a chance to think back on the moment, it would occur to her that it was the simplicity of the gesture, the utter lack of bombast, that decided things. Had he taunted the other two, had he threatened them or warned them away, the scene might have ended differently. The absolute stillness of that hand on the well-worn pommel, however, the total economy of movement, suggested an unwillingness to do anything but fight, kill.

A long moment passed, heartbeat after hammering heartbeat. Then Orren spat into the mud, his thick face twisted with anger and fear.

“Ah, fuck this,” he muttered, shaking his head, turning back toward the bridge.

Willet hesitated a moment, then wheeled to face Adare, shoving her viciously back into the mud.

“Ya miserable cunt,” he snarled. Then, with a glance over his shoulder, he fled in the wake of his companion.

Lehav considered her where she lay sprawled in the mud. He made no move to help her up.

“Thank you,” Adare said, forcing herself to her knees, then hauling herself out of the filth, wiping her hands ineffectually on her dress. “In the name of the goddess, thank you.”

“If you are lying,” the soldier replied, “if you are not a pilgrim, if you have used Intarra’s sacred name for your own advantage, I will take your coin myself and make a special trip on my way out of the city, a trip right back to this very spot, to leave you for Willet and Orren.”

The bones spoke clearly enough. Skeletons littered the wide hallways and narrow rooms of the orphanage, skeletons of children, hundreds and hundreds, some on the cusp of adulthood, others no more than infants, their ribs narrower than Kaden’s fingers. The grinding passage of years had dismembered most, but enough of the tiny forms remained intact-huddled in corners, collapsed in hallways, clutching one another beneath the stairs-to speak of some horror sweeping down upon them, sudden and unimagined.

Kaden had tried to ask Tan about the city, but Valyn was pushing hard for them to get upstairs, and the older monk, after the strange diversion at the entrance, seemed just as determined to reach the topmost floor and the kenta that waited there. When Kaden posed a question as they climbed, Tan had turned that implacable glare upon him.

“Focus on the present,” he’d said, “or join the past.”

Kaden tried to follow the advice as they mounted the stairs, tried to watch for hidden dangers and unexpected threats, to float on the moment like a leaf on a stream, but his eyes kept drifting back to the skeletons.

Half-remembered stories of the Atmani bubbled up in his mind, of the bright empire founded by the leach-lords, then shattered by their insanity and greed. According to the tales, they had razed entire cities as they descended into madness, but if Kaden’s childhood memories served, their empire had been almost entirely confined to Eridroa. It hadn’t come within a thousand miles of the Bone Mountains, and besides, the Atmani had ruled millennia after the Csestriim. He stepped over another sprawled skeleton, staring at the tiny, grasping hands.

It could have been a sickness, he told himself, some sort of plague .

Only, victims of plague did not retreat into closets or try to barricade doors. Victims of plague did not have their small skulls hacked in two. The bones were ancient, but as Kaden stepped over skeleton after skeleton, he could read the story. There had been no attempt to move the bodies, no effort to lay them out for burning and burial as one would expect if anyone had survived the slaughter. Even across the still chasm of time, he could read the shock and panic of the dead.

The memory of Pater filled his mind, of the small boy held aloft in Ut’s armored fist, calling out for Kaden to flee even as the Aedolian’s broadblade cut the life from him. Kaden’s jaw ached, and he realized he was clenching it. He drained the tension into his lungs, breathed it out with his next breath, and replaced the awful image of Pater’s death with memories of the boy as he had been in life-darting through the rocks around Ashk’lan’s refectory, diving into Umber’s Pool and coming up sputtering. He allowed the scenes to play across his memory for a while, then extinguished them, returning his attention to the flickering light of the lantern where it slid across the crumbling walls and brittle bones.

Fortunately, Valyn and Tan agreed on their ultimate destination-the top floor of the orphanage-though they had different reasons for their urgency. Valyn seemed to think it would make for the best defensive position, but it was also, according to the monk, where they would find the kenta . Kaden didn’t much care why they agreed just so long as he didn’t have to pull on his imperial mantle to adjudicate another dispute. He was exhausted-exhausted from running, from fighting, from flying, and something about this dead city weighed on him. He was curious about the kenta, curious about whatever history Tan finally decided to provide for the place, but at the moment he was content to stump along behind as they wound their way up the wide staircase.

The four members of Valyn’s Wing caught up with them in the central corridor of the topmost story. All had weapons drawn.

“Threats?” Valyn asked, glancing over his shoulder. There was something tight and urgent in his voice.

“Depends what you mean by ‘threat,’” the flier replied. Laith reminded Kaden of Akiil-the irreverence, even the grin. “I saw a rat the size of Annick. Not that Annick’s very big, but still…”

“The whole place is about to fall over,” Gwenna said, cutting through Laith’s words.

“Tonight?” Valyn asked.

She scowled, though whether at Valyn or the building itself, Kaden couldn’t say. “Probably not tonight,” she conceded finally.

“Provided no one jumps up and down,” Laith added.

“Or descends the stairs,” the Wing’s leach added.

“What’s wrong with the stairs?” Kaden asked.

“I rigged the last flight on the way up,” Gwenna replied, smiling grimly. “Two flickwicks and a modified starshatter. Anything tries to come up, we’re going to need a broom to sweep up what’s left of the bodies.”

“Was that wise?” Kaden asked, glancing around at the gaping cracks in the masonry.

“Look…” Gwenna began, raising a finger.

“Gwenna,” Valyn growled. “You are speaking to the Emperor.”

For a moment it seemed as though the girl was going to bull ahead despite the warning, but finally she pulled back the accusatory finger, twisting the gesture into a half salute. “Well, tell the Emperor, ” she said, turning to Valyn, “that if he’ll manage the emperoring, I’ll take care of the demolitions.”