Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

Each time the slot in the door opened, he spoke to the person beyond, always to no avail. Somewhere beyond the Dead Heart the great wheels of the world turned, seas sloshed in their basins, green shoots pushed up through the earth, men and women struggled, laughed, and died, and yet Kaden’s cell might have been the throne room of the Blank God, a shrine to emptiness, blackness, and silence.

Then Tan came.

A rattle in the lock preceded the monk, then a lamp, the dim light so bright to Kaden’s atrophied sight that it seemed someone had bored a hole in the nothingness. Bored a hole, or set it ablaze. When he could see, finally, he found his umial standing before him, Shin robe gone, exchanged for the boiled leather and sealskin of the Ishien.

“How long?” Kaden asked, voice rusted.

“Long enough,” Tan replied. “I could not come sooner.”

“What is happening?”

The monk shook his head. “Idiocy. Idiocy and fanaticism.”

Kaden glanced at the closed door. “Are you here alone?”

“There are three guards in the corridor beyond. I persuaded them to stay behind. I said you would be more tractable if I came in alone.”

“Tractable,” Kaden said, the word bitter in his mouth.

“Matol wants to use you against Triste,” he said. “He wants you to go to her alone. To see what she will reveal to you.”

“Where is she now? Is she all right?”

“She is alive,” Tan replied, as though that were the same thing. “After the last interrogation, the Ishien moved her here, to give her time to recuperate before they start again. That was five days ago.”

Kaden shook his head helplessly. “She won’t tell me anything more than she’s told them.”

The monk nodded tersely. “I agree. I am not here to do Matol’s work.”

“So,” Kaden replied, studying the monk carefully, “why are you here?”

Tan glanced over his shoulder, then beckoned Kaden farther into the small cell. When his spoke, his voice was low as the scuff of leather over stone.

“It was a mistake to come to the Heart. The Ishien know nothing about the plot against your family. They have learned nothing from Triste. They follow a pointless path while the empire reels.”

Kaden stared. “You’ve had word of the empire? Of my brother?”

“Nothing of Valyn, but Ishien returning through the kenta say that your sister has disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Kaden asked, suddenly sick.

“She may be dead. She may be imprisoned. The Ishien do not know, nor do they appear to care.”

“And you do?” Kaden asked. After so long locked in the seamless darkness, the sudden wash of light and words threatened to overwhelm him. “I thought you were indifferent to politics.”

“I am,” Tan replied. “This goes beyond politics. The Csestriim have struck at the heart of Annur. I cannot fathom their reasons, but one thing is clear: they will use the chaos, they will exploit the disorder, and I will not give them that advantage. You need to return to Annur. You need to take your place on the Unhewn Throne.”

Hope bloomed inside Kaden, flowered a moment before he crushed it out. He gestured to the slick stone walls, the weight of rock above their heads, to the massive iron door. “The Ishien seem to have other ideas.”

“I am finished,” Tan said, “with the ideas of the Ishien. They are not the order I left more than a decade ago.”

“So … what? We just walk out?”

Tan shook his head. “You listen poorly. Three men wait beyond this door. They trust me little more than they do you. You will leave when they aren’t watching you.”

“How?”

The monk reached inside his jerkin, sliding free first an old, rusted key, then a short knife, the blade no longer than Kaden’s finger. It wasn’t a weapon-he could imagine someone using it to cut the heads off fish-but it looked sharp.

“Where did you get the key?”

“Perhaps you forget,” Tan replied, “that I lived here a long time before I left for the mountains.”

“All right,” Kaden said, measuring his breathing, stilling the sudden excitement moving inside. “You leave, then I take the key-”

“Listen,” Tan said, cutting him off, “before you talk.” He waited, silent and unmoving, until Kaden nodded. Then he extended his arm. “Find my pulse.”

Confused, Kaden reached out, taking the older monk’s wrist in his hand. After a few moments he found the vein, then the steady beat of the blood pent up inside. The pulse was slower than his own, regular as the drip in the back of his cell, as though it had beaten out the same silent rhythm for months, for years.

“Match it,” Tan said.

Kaden nodded once more, closed his eyes, then slowed his own heart, parsing each beat until it mapped perfectly onto the low, slow tidal thrum of his umial ’s heart.

“Done,” he said finally.

“You can hold it there?” Tan asked, pinning him with a stare.

Kaden hesitated. Shin training was filled with exercises of pulse and breathing. Once, when he had barely turned eleven, he counted every heartbeat for two days. Still, there were limits. “Not if I have to run.”

“There will be no running, not if all goes as I plan.”

“And what, exactly, is the plan?”

“At eighty-six thousand beats, use the key to leave your cell.”

“Eighty-six thousand?”

“A day. You will leave the cell and walk to a small alcove just outside. Wait there until the guard comes, then step from the alcove and kill him.”

Kaden’s heart jumped for two beats, and with an effort he slowed it to the same steady pulse.

“How?” he asked.

“Just as you would kill a goat,” Tan replied. “A single cut across the neck.”

Kaden shook his head, fear and confusion clawing at his calm.

“The Ishien are warriors,” he protested.

“The Ishien will expect you to be in your cell, unarmed and helpless. They know that I am dangerous, and so they have sent extra guards. You…” He shook his head, a single curt gesture. “They do not fear you.”

“Then what?” Kaden asked, putting from his mind for the moment the vision of the knife clasped tight in his grip, of warm flesh folding back beneath the blade.

“The guard who brings your food is also the one who watches the door to this branch of the prison. When he is dead, the way will be clear. You will wait for another four thousand heartbeats, then go.”

“Go where ?”

Tan slid the knife along the inside of his own arm, raising a slender trail of blood. It was black in the lamplight, like pitch or shadow. He dipped a finger into the blood, then turned to the wall, sketching a map over the rough stone. As Kaden watched, the monk inked a tree of corridors and stairwells, the branches ramifying across the wall.

“Here,” he said finally, pointing to a small room off a long, straight hall, “is your cell. And here”-another, much larger room-“the harbor.”

“The harbor?” Kaden asked, shaking his head.

“The Ishien need supplies, and not everything can be transported through the kenta . There is an underground harbor carved by the sea. You will go there.”

“Won’t it be guarded?”

“At the mouth, yes,” Tan replied. “But they will not expect anyone to be leaving. You will climb aboard the vessel tied up to the stone wharf, hide among the barrels, and wait. I will join you. When the tide turns, the ship will sail, and we will be gone.”

“What about the body?” Kaden asked, sweat dampening his palms. “The guard I’m supposed to kill?”

“The guards’ shifts do not match the tides,” Tan replied. “By the time his relief arrives, we will have sailed. At the moment, there are no other boats moored in which they might follow.”