The Providence of Fire (46 page)

“You see?” Long Fist said, looking past Gwenna to Huutsuu. “This is what most Annurians believe.”

“What?” Valyn demanded. “What do we believe?”

The shaman spread his hands. “That my people are trying to invade your empire.”

Valyn frowned, then nodded to the sprawling camp. “What's all this then? We've got to be all the way into the Blood Steppe, probably just a few days from the White, and you've put together a 'Kent-kissing army.”

“A defensive army,” Long Fist replied. “Protection against your predatory war chief.”

Valyn shook his head. “War chief?”

“Ran il Tornja,” Talal said quietly. They were the first words the leach had spoken, and the Urghul chief turned an appraising eye on him, then nodded.

“This is his name. My army, as you call it, is no more than a shield against his depredations.”

“There's a guy back on the Islands,” Laith observed, “Great Gray Balt. He loves his shield—beaten twenty men to death with it.”

Long Fist nodded. “More than twenty will die if Ran il Tornja comes across the White. But I have no longing for this fight.” He pointed at Valyn with the stem of his pipe. “Your father understood this. I wonder … do you?”

“What do you know of my father?” Valyn demanded, the chieftain's earlier words coming back to him.

“More than you. We met yearly to reestablish our common border, to discuss our common goals. I sparred with him just ten moons past.”

Valyn felt the ground shift beneath him. Sanlitun hui'Malkeenian had less than nothing in common with this savage. The ideals of the empire were diametrically opposed to those of the Urghul. And yet … Valyn's father
had
tried to exercise restraint regarding the steppe nomads. Until the last few years, imperial policy had called for a hard border at the White River, no intervention to the north.

“Met him? Where?”

“East of here. A place sacred to the Urghul.”

Valyn shook his head. “A lie. It would have taken him months to make the trip and months to return. The whole court would have noted his absence.”

Long Fist smiled. “Such certainty.”

Even as he spoke Valyn realized his error: the
kenta
. He had never heard of the gates before fleeing the Islands, but according to Kaden, the whole point of the Shin training was to allow the Emperor access to the
kenta,
to provide him with the keys necessary to oversee all Annur. If there was a gate buried in the Bone Mountains, there could be a gate stuck in the middle of the steppe, a lone arch somewhere on a wind-beaten hill, an indestructible span of something that was neither stone nor steel. A primitive people like the Urghul would likely hold such a place sacred.

For the hundredth time, Valyn wished he had known his own father better. Would Sanlitun have traveled alone across half the length of a continent to parley with some blood-soaked barbarian chief? He tried to dredge up his childhood memories, but could snag only fragments and shards: Sanlitun sitting the Unhewn Throne, a finger extended in judgment; Sanlitun teaching him to hold a blade, rapping Valyn on the knuckles again and again, insisting on a looser grip; Sanlitun seated cross-legged on the roof of Intarra's Spear, gazing out over the ocean, indifferent to the wind tearing at his hair or the vast city sprawled below him, focused on something Valyn could neither see nor comprehend, something terribly distant. All of Valyn's memories were like this: he could make out the lines of his father's face, the burning eyes, the set of his shoulders, while the thought and emotion beneath remained opaque, unknowable.

“Your father had no desire for war with the Urghul. We are different peoples with different ways. He was content to leave it so. But there are factions within your empire who think differently.” He nodded toward Balendin. “Obviously.”

The leach shifted uncomfortably, opened his mouth to respond, but Valyn spoke into the pause.

“So, if you and my father were such great friends, if you've got such respect for the empire, why am I tied up? Why have your people been beating my Wing for the better part of a month?”

Long Fist tilted his head to the side.

“Huutsuu has given me to understand that it is you who surprised her, that
you
have killed many of my warriors during the long ride west.”

“We killed them,” Valyn spat, “because—”

The chieftain waved his objection aside with a languid hand.

“I understand. You are warriors. It is forgiven.”

He gestured, and Huutsuu stepped forward, knife in hand.

Despite the word
forgiven,
Valyn half expected the woman to plunge the steel into his stomach, and he shifted to put space between them, raising his hands in defense. She snorted in disgust.

“Stop moving. I am freeing you.”

Valyn stared as she sliced the rawhide cord binding his wrists, his elbows, trying to make sense of his sudden liberty. Before he could rub the blood back into his hands, the rest of his Wing was likewise free. Even Pyrre seemed subject to Long Fist's sudden, shocking amnesty. The assassin smiled at Huutsuu as the Urghul woman cut her free, then sketched a curtsy, as though they were nobles at a ball.

“I can't help but notice,” Balendin said, when all the cords but his had been cut, “that I'm still tied up. I hope it is an oversight.”

Long Fist turned those cat-calm eyes on the leach.

“By all means, feel hope if it gives you strength. I will remind you, however, that you have already admitted to your part in this plot to kill your Emperor.”

Balendin licked his lips, a quick, furtive motion. He glanced over at Valyn, as if for support, but Valyn just smiled. He had no idea what was going on, no idea what game Long Fist was playing, but he was free for the first time in weeks, free when he'd expected to be tortured or killed, while Balendin remained bound, stinking of fear and desperation. Valyn allowed himself a moment to bask in the feeling.

“Why don't you say a little more,” he suggested, “about how you tried to kill my brother?”

Long Fist nodded. “Yes. Say more.”

Balendin shook his head warily. “What do you want to know?”

The chieftain spread his hands, almost an invitation. “Who sent you to kill the Emperor?”

The leach shook his head again. “That would be telling.”

“You can tell now,” Long Fist replied casually, “or when I hold your still-beating heart in my fist.”

“Go on,” Valyn said. “You already turned on your empire and your order. One more betrayal shouldn't be a huge weight on your conscience.”

“It's not a matter of conscience,” Balendin said, responding to Valyn, but keeping his eyes warily on Long Fist. “It's a matter of practicality. While I've got secrets, I stay alive.”

“You may not find living such a blessing,” Long Fist mused, “when the life lived is one of pain. You know something of my people, yes? Have you learned that we can cut out the heart without slicing the veins that feed it? Twice yearly, we hold a march in Kwihna's honor; the tributes carry their own hearts in their hands. I can offer you pain without death's escape.” He gestured to Huutsuu with a single finger. “Show him.”

The woman stepped forward, smiling, the knife she had used to free Valyn still ready in her hand.

“Begin with his small finger,” the shaman said.

Balendin backed up a step, but the
taabe
and
ksaabe
behind seized him by the shoulders and elbows, holding him in place as Huutsuu took his hand firmly in her fist, then set the blade to the knuckle. Valyn had slaughtered chickens and pigs on the Eyrie—all part of the training in anatomy—and he remembered how easily the tendons parted when he found the gap between the bone. Huutsuu didn't bother hunting for that gap. It took the Urghul woman a few moments to pry Balendin's little finger loose from his desperately clenched fist, and then she went to work, hacking through the flesh as the leach cursed and writhed, then sawing away at the bone itself for what seemed like an age before the blade, as if of its own accord, finally sliced through the tendon.

Balendin slumped against his captors while she held up the finger, inspecting it in the sunlight as though it were some sort of dubious vegetable.

“I'll kill you,” he panted. “I'll fucking kill you.”

Huutsuu frowned, then turned to Long Fist.

“Another finger?”

The shaman shook his head.

“Not yet, I think.” He turned to Balendin. “I am quite willing to take your body apart joint by joint. It would be a great sacrifice to Kwihna. If I leave you whole, it will be because there are things you can tell me whole that you cannot tell me in pieces. And so I will ask again, in the hope that this time you will tell me: Who sent you to kill the Emperor?”

Balendin hesitated, glanced down at the blood spurting from his severed finger, then spat.

“Ran il Tornja,” he said.

Valyn stared, uncertain that he'd heard the words correctly. “Il Tornja is the
kenarang,
” he said finally. “He was
appointed
by my father. It was the Chief Priest of Intarra, Uinian, who assassinated the Emperor.”

Balendin shot him a scornful glance. “Il Tornja pinned Sanlitun's murder on the priest, you fool. Or did you really think a 'Kent-kissing
cleric
could get past the Aedolian Guard?”

“The Aedolian Guard isn't living up to its reputation these days,” Valyn replied, trying to make sense of the leach's claim. “Or maybe you don't remember our meeting with Micijah Ut out in the Bone Mountains.”

“They were
in
the Bone Mountains because they were the ones il Tornja could
trust
. He couldn't send anyone loyal to your brother because they wouldn't
kill
your fucking brother. That's another clue for you, if you needed more clues. Uinian didn't control the Aedolian Guard. He couldn't have sent Ut anywhere.”

“And you,” Valyn said slowly, the magnitude of the betrayal sinking in. “Il Tornja commands the Kettral.”

“It still doesn't make sense,” Talal said, frowning. “Why send Yurl and Balendin when he could send Fane or Shaleel? Why not send the Flea?”

The leach shook his head, as though incredulous that they could be so stupid. His rictus of pain did nothing to hide the scorn. “Because the Flea and Shaleel serve the Emperor. Il Tornja needed new blood, a young Wing, loyal to him and only him.”

“Loyal,” Valyn spat, “is a sick word to hear on your lips.”

“You're the one asking the questions,” Balendin snarled. “You and your newfound Urghul ally.”

Long Fist raised a finger and they all fell still.

“Why did your war chief kill your emperor? What does he want?”

“The usual,” Balendin said, voice tight. “To rule. Rule everything. The Emperor is dead. Everyone thinks the priest murdered him.…”

“And now the priest, too, is dead,” Long Fist concluded.

Valyn frowned. “The trial is finished?” The last he'd heard, Uinian was still in captivity. Of course, that news was more than a month out of date now.

Long Fist nodded. “The princess,” he said. “Your sister. She burned him.”

“No,” Valyn replied, shaking his head. The shaman clearly had a tenuous grasp of imperial justice. “Adare didn't burn anyone. Even traitors live under the rule of law in Annur. If Uinian was executed, he was convicted by a jury of the Seven.”

The shaman shrugged. “The priest is dead. Burned alive.”

“And you know this how?”

“I have watchers in your city.”

Valyn paused. It was unlike the Urghul to use spies. As far as the Kettral knew, the nomads were too disorganized, too indifferent to strategy and politics to manage much more than the occasional raiding party. Long Fist, however, was unexpected. He had managed to unify the Urghul, which meant he saw further or deeper than his fellow chiefs. Perhaps here, too, he was pressing the boundaries of tradition and custom. In any case, Valyn hadn't heard a word regarding the situation in Annur, not since quitting the Islands. Even the shaman's garbled intelligence was better than nothing.

“Where is Adare now?”

“Gone,” Long Fist said. “Disappeared.”

“Starting to see the pattern?” Balendin growled. “You don't have to take my word for it. Il Tornja killed your father, then your sister. He ordered me to kill you, and he sent Ut and Adiv to take care of Kaden.”

“If il Tornja's behind all this,” Valyn asked, trying to work it through, “why hasn't he claimed the throne for himself yet? Why hasn't he named himself Emperor?”

“Because he's not fucking stupid.” The leach was cradling his maimed hand in his good one, but blood dripped from between his fingers. Valyn could smell it the same way that he could smell the leach's mounting fear.

“Emperor,”
Long Fist said quietly, exhaling the syllables in a slow wash of smoke. “It is, as you say, a name. A word. Nothing more. On the steppe we do not worship names, but your people are different. Perhaps il Tornja hides behind another word—
regent
—until his foes forget their opposition. On the steppe”—he made a curt, slashing motion with his hand—“it would not work, but among a soft folk obsessed with words, choosing the right word is nearly as important as doing the right thing.”

The shaman turned his attention back to Balendin, sucking slowly through the stem of his pipe as he watched the leach, then breathing out a slow cloud of smoke.

“And what,” he asked finally, “does Ran il Tornja want with my people? Why does he order these attacks against us?”

“I'm not his 'Kent-kissing confidant,” Balendin hissed, “but it seems pretty obvious.”

“Make it clear to me.”