Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

“Thank you,” he said. “For helping us break free.”

Kiel frowned. “We are free, but not secure. We still have not decided our next step.”

“The chapterhouse,” Kaden said. “The Shin branch where we agreed to meet Valyn. We’ve missed the meeting by weeks, but he could be waiting there. He could have left a message, instructions, a warning.”

The Csestriim nodded. “I know the place. It’s near here, but the Ishien know it, too.”

“The Ishien don’t know where we are,” Kaden said.

“By now they know we’ve escaped.”

Triste shook her head. “There were at least twenty gates back on that island. We could have gone through any of them.”

Kaden blew out a long breath. “But we did nothing to cover our tracks. Matol will be able to follow us.”

“And Tan knows where we planned to meet Valyn,” Triste said reluctantly, picking at a nasty crescent scab on the back of her wrist. “If he told Matol, the bastard doesn’t need to track us.”

Kaden hesitated, staring out the end of the alley, watching the wagons and water buffalo, the men and women flowing by like a current.

“We have to go,” he said, “now. The Ishien, if they even know where we’re going, will take time to follow us here, time to get to the chapterhouse. I just need a few minutes to find out if Valyn’s been there.”

“It’s a risk,” Kiel observed.

“Everything’s a risk,” Kaden said. “Waiting will only make it worse.”

* * *

The Shin chapterhouse didn’t look like much: a narrow brick face-maybe ten paces wide and three stories high-crammed between two larger buildings at the border of a small cobbled square in one of Annur’s quieter quarters. Nothing marked it as a chapterhouse, which wasn’t surprising; the monks Kaden knew had never been much for crests or sigils. There was just the blank brick, the blank wooden door, and several windows on the upper floor, all firmly shuttered.

The rest of the elm-fringed square hummed with quiet activity-people hanging laundry out of windows, men and women bartering in the rough wooden stalls of a market, two water buffalo with noses buried in a stone trough-but around the chapterhouse there was nothing, no one, no ornament, not even flowers in the bare gravel fronting the structure. The place might have been abandoned, save for the tenuous line of smoke rising silently into the sky. There was no sign of Valyn, but then, Kaden’s brother would hardly be lounging in the shade in front of the temple with his kettral leashed to a tree. A score of other buildings fronted the square-houses and shops, a wine store with bottles racked high in front of it, a stately old mansion that had seen better days, windowpanes broken, front yard unkempt, utterly uninhabited by the look of it. There was no way to search them all hoping to find Valyn. The only way to know if he had visited the Shin was to knock.

“Stay here,” Kaden said. “I’ll be fast.”

“What should we do if the Ishien come?” Triste asked. She looked as though she were trying to watch every direction at once, trying to study every stranger.

Kaden shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“There is a way out,” Kiel said, “from inside.”

“A back door?”

“A kenta, ” the Csestriim replied.

Triste blanched. “Matol and Tan could be in there already! They could be waiting for him!”

“No,” Kiel said. “It’s a different network. My people built more than one, in case the first were destroyed or compromised.”

“And the island we just came from…” Kaden asked, absorbing the new information, trying to work through the implications.

“That is one hub, a hub controlled by the Ishien. The gates lead various places-Assare, the Dead Heart, the catacombs from which we just emerged.…”

“And what about this?” Kaden asked, nodding toward the chapterhouse.

“This is your network,” Kiel replied. “The imperial network. The one entrusted to your family. The Ishien know of it, but they do not patrol it. It does not connect directly to the Dead Heart. If you hear any struggle or violence, you can escape through the kenta . It’s in the deepest basement.”

Kaden frowned. “Where does it lead?”

“To another hub, an island much like the one we just left.”

“And once I’m on the island?”

“Take the second gate to your right. It will bring you to a flooded area beneath the docks of Olon. Once in the city, you should be able to lose yourself in the crowd.”

Kaden stared, trying to imagine the escape. He could point to Olon on a map, but that was about it. He had no sense of the climate or culture, the manners of the local people.

“If I flee to Olon,” he said, “I’ll be hundreds of miles from Annur, with no way to get back.”

“Which, I assume, is preferable to the Dead Heart,” Kiel said. “It is only a precaution.”

Kaden took a deep breath, then nodded.

“Remember, the second gate to your right. Not the first one.”

“Where does that lead?”

“The Dawn Palace,” Kiel replied. “If you burst through there, you’ll be filled with arrows before you hit the ground.”

* * *

The monk who greeted Kaden at the door, a dark-skinned man with dark eyes, graying hair, and a slight limp, glanced once at his eyes, once at his clothes, then nodded as though in response to some interior question, gesturing him inside with a slight motion of his hand. Kaden was ready with a bushel of explanations-who he was, where he had come from, what he wanted-but the monk said nothing, escorting him to a small chamber with a wooden stool, an earthenware ewer, and a single cup on a low table. He filled the cup with clear water, passed it to Kaden, then straightened.

“Wait here, brother, while I bring Iaapa.”

Without another word, the monk slipped out the door on bare, silent feet, leaving Kaden alone holding the rough cup. Urgency pressed down on him like the air before a storm, heavy and pregnant. It was possible Matol and his men were outside even as he waited, watching the chapterhouse, preparing to enter, possible they had already captured Kiel and Triste.…

Calm, Kaden told himself, lifting the cup to his lips, taking a small sip, holding the water on his tongue, moving it around the inside of the mouth, then feeling it snake down his throat, cool against the heat that burned inside him. He waited three heartbeats, took another sip, and the anxiety retreated. A moment later Iaapa stepped into the room.

“A visitor from Ashk’lan,” he said, round face creasing into a smile. “It is more than a year since we have welcomed a brother from the Bone Mountains.”

Aside from Phirum Prumm, Iaapa was the only fat monk Kaden had ever seen, a short man with skin pale as milk and ears that stuck out as though tacked to the sides of his spherical head. He shared no physical resemblance with Scial Nin, the abbot of Ashk’lan, but there was a similar distance in the gaze, a stillness of the body, that suggested many years spent in the discipline of the Blank God.

“What is the word from the other end of the world?”

Kaden hesitated, the pushed ahead. “The word is bleak. Ashk’lan is destroyed and the monks are dead.”

Another man might have reeled at the account, raged against it, demanded evidence or explanation. Iaapa simply pursed his lips, waiting silently for Kaden to continue.

“I can’t tell you the whole thing,” Kaden said. “There’s no time. Soldiers came for me, Aedolian guardsmen commanded by Tarik Adiv, my father’s Mizran Councillor. It seems to have been part of a plot to destroy my entire family.”

“And the monks?” Iaapa asked finally. “We take no part in the politics of the empire.”