Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

“That’s not the only reason,” Valyn said finally. “You want us in Annur, but that’s not all. There’s something else.”

Kaden shook his head ruefully. “I’m supposed to be the one who’s good at noticing things.”

“What is it?” Valyn pressed.

Kaden hesitated, then shrugged. “There are gates,” he said finally. “ Kenta . I should be able to use them. It’s why I was sent here in the first place, but I need to test them. I need to know.”

“Gates?”

“A network of them, made by the Csestriim thousands of years ago and scattered across both continents.” He hesitated. “Maybe beyond both continents for all I know. You step through one kenta and emerge from a different one hundreds of miles distant. Thousands of miles. They were a Csestriim weapon, and now they are entrusted to us, to the Malkeenians, to keep and to guard.”

Valyn stared for a moment. “Slow down,” he said finally, trying to make sense of the claim, to comprehend the full scope of the implications. Ancient Csestriim gates, portals spanning continents-it sounded like insanity, but then, pretty much everything since leaving the Islands had seemed insane. “Go back and tell it from the start.”

Kaden remained silent a moment, gathering his thoughts, and then, as Valyn listened in disbelief, explained it all: the Blank God and the Csestriim leaches, the war against the humans and the founding of the empire, the vaniate -some strange trance that the Shin had somehow learned from the Csestriim, that Kaden himself had learned from the Shin-and the annihilation that threatened anyone who attempted to use the gates without achieving it. According to Kaden, Annur itself hinged on the network of kenta, hinged on the ability of the emperors to use them. The concept made tactical and strategic sense. The Kettral enjoyed a crushing advantage over their foes because the birds allowed them to move faster, to know more, to turn up suddenly where no one expected them to be. The gates, if they were real, would prove even more powerful. If they were real. If they actually worked.

“Have you seen one?” Valyn asked. “Have you seen anyone use one?”

Kaden shook his head. “But there’s a kenta near here in the mountains, one that leads to the Ishien. I asked Tan about it earlier.”

Valyn spread his hands. “Even if it’s real, even if it does what the monk claims, it could kill you.”

“Obliterate is more like it, but yes.”

Valyn slid his sword back into its sheath, tucked the small stone into a pouch at his belt. The wind was cold, sharp, the stars like shards of ice scattered across the clear night.

“I can’t let you do it,” he said quietly.

Kaden nodded, as though he had expected the answer. “You can’t stop me.”

“Yes, I can. The whole thing is worse than foolish, and I know something about foolish.” He ticked off the problems on his fingers. “Your monk is, at best, a mystery; these gates have the power to destroy entire armies; and the Ishien, given what little we know about them, sound like obsessive maniacs. It is a bad decision, Kaden.”

“Sometimes there are no good decisions. If I’m going to thwart the Csestriim and rule Annur, I need the Ishien, and I need the gates.”

“You can wait.”

“While our foes consolidate their power?” Kaden turned to watch him. Valyn could hear his brother’s breathing, could smell the dried blood on his skin, the damp wool of his robe, and beneath it, something else, something hard and unbending. “I appreciate you trying to keep me safe,” he said quietly, laying a hand on Valyn’s shoulder, “but you can’t, not unless we live here in the mountains forever. Whatever path I take, there is risk. It comes with ruling. What I need from you most is not safety, but support. Tan doubts me. Pyrre challenges me. Your Wing thinks I’m an untrained, guileless recluse. I need you to back me.”

They locked eyes. The plan was madness, but Kaden didn’t sound mad. He sounded ready.

Valyn blew out a long, frustrated breath. “What happened to sitting on this rock while the Csestriim rule Annur?”

Kaden smiled. “You convinced me not to.”

* * *

“The plan,” Kaden said, facing down the group with more poise than Valyn would have expected, “is that Tan and I are going to the nearest kenta -he says there is one in the mountains northeast of here. We will all fly there, Tan and I will use the gate to reach the Ishien, and the rest of you will fly on to Annur. Once you’re in the city, you can contact my sister, Adare, and learn what she knows. Tan and I will meet you in the capital, at the Shin chapterhouse.”

“In my experience,” Pyrre drawled, “plans tend to be a little heavier on the ‘hows’ and the ‘if, thens.’”

“Why don’t we all just take this fucking kenta thing?” Gwenna demanded. Valyn’s Wing had greeted Kaden’s explanation of the gates first with amusement, then skepticism, then wariness, and though Valyn himself understood the response, shared it, in fact, he had promised Kaden his support.

“Gwenna…” he began.

“No, really!” she said, rounding on him. “If these things are real, we could save a whole lot of Hull’s sweet time using them. They eat less than birds and I can’t imagine they shit at all.…”

“The kenta would destroy you,” Tan said, cutting through her words.

Pyrre raised an eyebrow. “How frightening. They sound like fascinating artifacts, but this is all beside the point. My contract stipulates I keep Kaden safe. Playing nursemaid for his brother might be entertaining, but it’s not what I crossed half of Vash to accomplish.”

Valyn ignored the jibe. “The Emperor has decided,” he said. “It is ours to obey.”

The words were true enough, but they did little to allay his misgivings. Orders, he reminded himself. You’re following orders.

Orders hadn’t been too much trouble for him back on the Islands-he had been a cadet then, and the men and women telling him what to do had earned their scars dozens of times over. Kaden, on the other hand, might be the rightful Emperor, but he was no soldier; he had none of the training, none of the instincts. Letting him get involved with the reconnaissance of Ashk’lan at an immediate, tactical level had been a mistake. Valyn’s mistake. Not only had Kaden interfered with a crucial decision, he had put himself in harm’s way to do so. And Adiv was alive. Valyn forced down the thought along with his mounting anger.

Kaden was the Emperor, and Valyn hadn’t flown two thousand miles just to undermine his brother’s nascent authority.

“I have told you before,” Tan said, shaking his head slowly, “the Ishien are not like the Shin.”

“As I recall,” Kaden replied, “no one is like the Shin.”

“You thought your training hard?” the older monk asked. “It was a pleasant diversion compared with what the Ishien endure. They have a different path and different methods, methods that lead to unpredictable results. It is impossible to know how they would respond to our arrival.”

“You were one of them once,” Kaden pointed out. “They know you.”

“They knew me,” Tan corrected. “I left.”

“If you don’t want the imperious young Emperor to go through the mysterious gate,” Pyrre opined, flipping a knife in the air and catching it without opening her eyes, “then don’t show him where the gate is.”

Kaden turned to the Skullsworn. “Why does it matter to you what course I follow?”

She flipped the knife again. “As I’ve explained, I was paid to keep you safe. No one’s stuck a blade in you yet, but I wouldn’t call this”-she waved her knife at the surrounding peaks-“safe.”