Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

Kaden frowned. It seemed a tenuous plan-sneaking through the halls of the Dead Heart, finding the hidden harbor, climbing aboard a ship and staying out of sight until they were well beyond reach of the fortress.

“What about the kenta ?” Kaden asked. “Why don’t we use that?”

“Do not be a fool. The Ishien guard the kenta chamber more carefully than any other place in the Heart.” He gestured to the bloody map. “Do you have it?”

Kaden considered the lines and curves for a moment, the boxes and branches, then nodded. Tan scrubbed at the lines with the heel of his hand until nothing remained on the stone but a ruddy stain. When he was finished, he handed the knife and key to Kaden.

“What about the pause?” Kaden asked. “Why do I have to wait between killing the guard and moving to the harbor?”

“To allow the men changing shifts above to reach their posts. The Ishien follow predictable patterns. Waiting four thousand heartbeats will give you the best chance of finding the halls above empty.”

Kaden digested this. “Doesn’t sound like a sure thing.”

“It is not. If you encounter anyone, keep your head down and your eyes hidden.”

“What about Triste? Where is she? How do we get her out?”

“We do not.”

Kaden took a long, slow breath. “They will kill her.”

“Most likely.”

“We can bring her with us. If the ship can hold two, it can hold three.”

Tan shook his head. “No. The risk is too great. The girl is not what she seems, you witnessed enough to understand that, and you have not witnessed the tenth part of it. She is dangerous and she is unpredictable.”

“What about trying to learn something from her?” Kaden demanded. “Something about the Csestriim? About the conspiracy?”

“Slow your heart,” Tan growled. “The timing is crucial.”

Kaden checked his pulse, slowed it a fraction, then continued, his voice little more than a hiss. “She has answers.”

“She does,” Tan replied, “but none she will reveal to us. Matol has pushed her hard, even harder than I would have.” He shook his head. “She cannot help us.”

Kaden started to protest, but Tan raised a hand.

“The corridors above should be empty if you keep to the timing, but as you have observed, should be is not will be . Alone, dressed in the Ishien garb, you have every chance of passing unremarked. With Triste in tow, you would be noticed instantly. The risk is too great and it offers scant reward.”

He turned before Kaden could object further, opened the door and stepped through.

“You have the count?” he asked, without looking back over his shoulder.

Kaden listened to the slow tattoo inside his chest. “I have it,” he replied.

“Do not make a mistake. There will not be another chance.”

* * *

It wasn’t a mistake. Mistakes were errors of ignorance or neglect, ineptitude or poor planning. Mistakes were miscalculations or errors in judgment. This was something else altogether, something worse.

More like a fully flowered act of madness, Kaden thought as he felt his way down the long corridor, knife held before him as though it could keep back the limitless dark.

He had counted off ten thousand heartbeats, forcing himself to silence and stillness in the center of his cell, before moving. As Tan had promised, the key turned in the lock, though the steel protested with a scream that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. By the vague light in his eyes, he could make out the outlines of the wall, the shallow standing pools. He moved slowly, carefully, but the quieter he forced himself to be, the more the halls around him seemed to stir. Air lisped uneasily through the passages, drafts rasping over the uneven stone. The plinking of water seemed to come from everywhere at once. Behind it, or below it, a sound that might have been the wash of waves and tides thrummed through the rock, so low it was impossible to be sure if the sound was real or only in his mind.

The doors lining the hall were heavy wood banded with iron, some locked, some hanging open, all of them identical-wood and iron, wood and iron.

Take him below, Matol had snarled. Lock him up with the Csestriim.

Which meant Kiel was locked up somewhere along the endless corridor. Kiel, who knew a way out. Perhaps it was folly, stupidity, to insist on trying to see Triste freed, but of all Annur’s uncounted millions, she was the only one in the Dead Heart, the only one he could help. As Tan claimed, she was dangerous-that much was clear-but she had helped Kaden, and he would be ill-fit to govern an empire if his first act was to abandon her to the unending torture of the Ishien. If Kiel was here, if he knew another way out, maybe he could free Triste, too.

After a hundred paces or so, Kaden came to a different sort of door. The original framing had been chiseled away, the banded wood replaced with a great slab of steel hung on hinges as thick as Kaden’s wrists. Five wide steel bars set into metal brackets held the thing shut-enough weight to pen an enraged bull. Dripping salt water had left long, weeping stains on the metal, gnawing the surface to pits and long flakes of rust, and though the door itself looked ready to crumble, when Kaden pushed a tentative hand against it, he might have pressed on the stone wall itself. There was no telling how thick the metal was, but clearly the rust had done nothing to compromise its strength.

He took a long, slow breath, turning his focus from the hallway to his own mind. Fear clung there, spiked and recalcitrant as a mountain burr lodged in the cloth of a new robe, though whether that fear was for Matol and Ishien, who could come looking for him at any moment, or for the man beyond the door, Kaden couldn’t say. He worked at the emotion, prying it looser and looser with each breath. He needed clarity when he heard what the prisoner had to say. He needed calm.

Here is the floor, he told himself, feeling the rough stone, cold and slick beneath his bare soles.

Here is the light from my eyes.

The future held perils, but he did not live in the future.

Here is the latch, he said, moving the metal catch to open the small, barred window set into the steel door. Here is the window into the darkness.

Through the narrow open slot, he heard the rustle of cloth against cloth, then a wet, unhealthy cough, the noise growing closer as the prisoner approached.

“Another visit?”

Kaden heard the voice first, the same spare articulation he remembered from his encounter with Kiel days earlier. Then the man’s begrimed face appeared in the narrow slot, squinting as his eyes moved from utter darkness to the meager light of Kaden’s own eyes. Kiel glanced at him, then past, into the hallway beyond.

“Where are Rampuri and Ekhard?”

Kaden shook his head. “I am alone.”

“Good,” Kiel murmured after a moment. “You understood. You trusted me.”

“No,” Kaden cut in. “I do not trust you.”

Kiel paused. “And yet you are here.…”

“Because I was taught to look before judging. To listen.”

The prisoner made a sound that Kaden recognized, after a moment, as a chuckle. “I’m glad to learn that the Shin are still so rigorous. And Scial Nin? Is he still the abbot?”

“Scial Nin…” Kaden began, then paused. The fact that Kaden needed him, that they shared the same foe, didn’t make the Csestriim any less dangerous. Kaden needed answers to his questions, not to spend time spinning yarns about a life long left behind.

“You know a way out?” Kaden asked.

Kiel nodded.

“How? Where?”

The Csestriim shook his head slowly. “Opening this door would be a generous gesture.”