Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

It looked like they would make it. Birch was holding back the Sons while Fulton spurred his horse to a gallop, charging straight back through the ranks of the pilgrims. We’re going to break free, Adare thought. The realization tasted like clean air, fresh and cold in her lungs. We’re getting out.

Then, with no warning, the horse was screaming, tumbling forward, and she was off, flying through the air, flying. Flying, then not.

* * *

Ameredad’s minions knew their work, bustling her through the ancient city’s bafflement of alleyways and side streets with businesslike efficiency. Adare could barely walk, the gash on her head throbbed, and her vision was hazy, blurry. She wanted to ask about Fulton and Birch, to know whether they were still alive, but someone had stuffed a foul-tasting gag in her mouth, and between the stench and the dizziness, it was all she could do not to vomit.

The small party turned and backtracked so often that Adare quickly lost all sense of direction, and after a short while she quit trying to keep track of where she was and paid attention to the city itself, hoping to learn something that might save her life. The reek of whitefish, turmeric, and smoke filled the twisting alleys, and the streets and windows were alive with barter and banter. Still, something about the place seemed moribund, as though it had died years earlier.

The buildings were as graceful as they were venerable, but most had begun to crumble, mortar and stone falling away, marring the sweeping curves with ugly, ragged holes. Those that had not yet submitted to the ultimate indignity of collapse were rough and battered, paint and plaster stripped by decades of storm and neglect. Half the walls in the city looked badly in need of repair. It wasn’t quite a ruin-perhaps it never would be, considering the lucrative trade that passed through it-and yet, Olon was a city with a dagger in her heart.

A dagger we put there, Adare realized grimly. A wound dealt by the Malkeenians .

Perhaps Terial hui’Malkeenian hadn’t intended to gut the capital of the ancient kingdom of Kresh when he founded his nascent empire, but neither had he chosen it as his ruling seat. Money followed power, and after the government shifted to Annur, Olon began to crumble. Canal and lake trade kept her alive, along with the voracious appetite of the capital, but the once-palatial residences along the water had been converted into taverns, brothels, and flophouses for wagon-drivers and sailors weary from the rough passage across Lake Baku. A few stubborn descendants of the old aristocratic houses squatted inside familial manses they could no longer maintain, while thieves and orphans, rats and wind reclaimed the rest.

It looked like a miserable place to live, but a perfect city to defend. As she was dragged through the streets, Adare glimpsed no fewer than ten pairs of Ameredad’s guards, hard men with blades and bows lounging in the shadows or blocking the heads of narrow lanes. They wore no insignia or livery, certainly nothing to connect them to the Sons of Flame, and she might have mistaken them for common street toughs had it not been for the silent nods and curt gestures they exchanged with her captors as she passed.

The whole ’Kent-kissing city is this bastard’s fortress, Adare thought bleakly as she stumbled over the uneven cobbles, trying to keep her feet. She tried to imagine an Annurian legion taking the place, and failed. Olon’s maze of collapsing buildings and piled rubble would render legionary tactics and formations pointless. The Sons of Flame could blend with the local population, hiding in attics and cellars, sniping from open windows before disappearing into their ancient warren.

For the first time Adare realized that Ameredad’s choice in coming to this particular city might have been influenced by more than simple religious devotion. Il Tornja might be a brilliant general, but this was no city for generals. A thousand men could die in Olon’s alleyways without anyone noticing. A thousand men, or one very stupid princess.

* * *

Despite the low ceiling and stone, the ponderous walls and lack of windows, the small room-a basement below a basement beneath a basement, judging by the number of stairs they had descended-looked more like a study than an abattoir. Rolled maps and piles of parchment, letters and supply lists, waited in tidy piles on the wide table. Someone had stacked a few crates neatly in the corner, the topmost of which was stamped INK . A tattered, moldy map of Olon was tacked up on the far wall, although Adare couldn’t make out much but the bridges and the dark outline of the island itself. The place spoke of caution, deliberation, and resolve. Lehav, Ameredad-whatever his name was-the man seated across from her was clearly more than just some power-hungry, up-jumped soldier.

“You understand,” he said, considering Adare bluntly over the rough wooden table, “that many of the faithful, probably most, will want to see you burned.”

“I am a Malkeenian princess,” Adare replied, trying to keep her voice steady. “Hundreds saw me on the bridge. If you kill me, you will have a brief civil war followed by the annihilation of your faith.”

Lehav shrugged. “The faithful would call your death justice, justice for Uinian. As for the rest, we are all in Intarra’s hands.”

“Intarra didn’t take such good care of Uinian.”

Lehav frowned, but he didn’t respond, his silence leaving Adare to wonder if she had scored a point or sealed her own doom. If the man decided to kill her, the cramped, windowless room was as good a place as any. Aside from the two soldiers who had dragged her in moments before, no one knew that she was there. The heavy stone walls would blot out her screams. Her blood would drain out readily enough through the rough iron grate set into the floor.

He’s not going to kill you, she told herself firmly, suppressing a shudder. Not here, at least .

“What were you doing in Annur?” Adare asked, trying to seize back some scrap of initiative. “Why did you disguise yourself? Join the pilgrimage?”

Lehav raised an eyebrow. “It would seem that I should be asking the questions, and you should be answering them.”

“And yet, so far all you’ve done is threaten me.”

“No. It is you who threaten us,” the soldier said, voice quiet, but hard. “You struck at Uinian, at our priest in the heart of our temple-”

“Uinian was a ’Kent-kissing leach, ” Adare cut in, suddenly furious in spite of her fear. “He lied to you, to his entire congregation, and you all believed him. You should thank me for unveiling him, for seeing him killed.”

Lehav studied her. “That much, perhaps, is true. Unfortunately for both of us, you didn’t stop there, did you?”

“The Accords,” Adare said, watching him warily.

“Accords.” He shook his head. “What a sweet little word. Like calling a knife to the gut a tickle .”

“The Accords were intended to find a new balance between Intarra’s Church and the Unhewn Throne, one that-”

Lehav cut her off without raising his voice. “The Accords were laws, laws you made, to humiliate the Church, cut off her revenue, and destroy the force that defended her. The new Chief Priest is your puppet, and this balance you describe is the balance of a tyrant with her boot on the throat of a conquered foe.” His raised his brows. “Do I have it more or less right?”

Adare hesitated, trying to see past both her anger and her fear. When she planned for this moment, she had imagined Ameredad to be either a religious zealot, ignorant of the serpentine twists of imperial politics, or a shrewd opportunist like Uinian, a man more interested in his own glory and advancement than the fate of the thousands who followed him. Apparently, her imagination had failed her. She could stick with her rehearsed speech, but that speech looked likely to see her burned before a vengeful mob. She took a deep breath, marshaled her thoughts, then nodded.