The Providence of Fire (21 page)

It wasn't like Tan to linger over stories, but as long as the monk was talking, he wasn't killing Triste, which meant Kaden could pause, could try to order his thoughts.

“The Ghannans,” Tan continued, “a man and woman, went from city to city, town to town, sometimes arriving even as the dust kicked up by the encroaching armies darkened the sky behind them. From their own fortune, they were able to supply wagons and food. They were able to promise ships waiting in Sarai Pol, ships that would take the children to Basc, where the fighting had not yet reached. Parents thrust infants into their arms, lifted sobbing toddlers into the beds of wagons, instructed the older children to care for the younger, then watched as the caravan departed, pushing east just ahead of the coming violence.

“As promised, the ships were waiting. And as promised, the children were whisked away before Roshin's armies swept across eastern Ghan. As promised, they arrived in Ganaboa. They were saved. Then they disappeared.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Triste asked, eyes wide. “With anything?”

Kaden glanced at her, then turned back to the older monk. “Where did they go?”

“For a long time,” Tan replied, “no one knew. The wars of the Atmani threw the world into chaos for decades. Uncounted thousands died, first in battle, then of famine, of disease. People weren't able to protect their own homes, to harvest their crops. Basc might have been on the far side of the world. Parents prayed for their children, a few scraped together the coin to go looking, but none found them.

“That took the Ishien. More than thirty years after the two strangers led the children away, fifteen Ishien finally managed to follow the trail to the southern coast of Basc. It is all jungle. Almost no one lives there, but tucked away in the hills they found a small cabin, and beneath the cabin, a warren of limestone caves, and in the caves, a prison, a vast prison.”

“The children?” Kaden asked.

Tan shrugged. “Were adults. Or dead. Or crippled. The Ghannans, on the other hand, the man and woman who had saved them all—those two had not aged a day.”

“Csestriim.”

Tan nodded.

Triste stared, aghast. “What did they want with the children?”

“To experiment,” the monk replied grimly. “To prod and to test. They want to know how we work, how we are put together, why we differ from them. They nearly destroyed us thousands of years ago, and while we have almost forgotten, those Csestriim that survive have never given up the fight, not for a single day.” He turned from Triste to Kaden, stare hard as a hammer. “Consider the patience, to wait decades, centuries for the upheaval necessary to lead away so many children. Consider the planning, to have the coin stockpiled, the ships waiting at anchor, the caves and the cells prepared. The Csestriim do not think in days and weeks. They work in centuries, eons. Those who survived did so because they are brilliant, and hard, and patient, and yet they look like you or me.” He nodded toward Triste. “Or her.”

“No,” Triste said, shaking her head once more. “I would never do something like that. I'm
not one of them
.”

The monk ignored her, fixing his attention on Kaden.

“This is not something separate, some idle vendetta of my own that will distract you from the answers you hunt. If she is Csestriim, she is a part of the plot against your family and your empire. Erase Adiv and Ut from your mind. This creature is the one carrying the truth.”

Kaden stared, first at the monk, then at Triste, trying to make sense of it. She didn't look like an immortal, inhuman monster, but then, according to Tan, neither had the Ghannans who stole the children. Parents had entrusted their families to the Csestriim.…
Destroy what you believe.
It all came back to that.

“You can't kill her,” he said finally.

“Of course not,” the monk replied. “We need to know more. But this changes things.”

“What things?”

“The Ishien,” Tan replied. “I was wary of this course of action to begin. I am doubly so now.”

Kaden considered the response. In all the time he had known the older monk, Tan had never seemed really wary of anything: not Scial Nin, not Micijah Ut or Tarik Adiv, not even the
ak'hanath
.

“You're concerned,” he said slowly, “about what the Ishien will think of Triste. About the fact that she passed through the
kenta
.”

“We don't need to go,” she protested. “We can walk back through the gate.”

“When I want you to talk,” Tan said, pressing the blade against her neck firmly, “I will tell you.”

Triste opened her mouth to protest, then thought better of it, sagging back onto the grass, exhausted and defeated. Kaden wanted to comfort her somehow, to assure her that everything would be all right, but, when he searched for the words, found he had no comfort to offer. If she was what Tan claimed, his comfort would mean less than nothing.

“What will the Ishien do if they decide she is Csestriim?” Kaden asked.

The monk frowned. “The Ishien are unpredictable. In their long fight against the Csestriim, they have carved away much that made them human, not least of which is their own ability to trust. The Ishien believe the Ishien. Everyone else is a fool or a threat.”

“But you were one of them,” Kaden said. “Will they listen to
you
?”

“It will depend almost entirely on who leads them.”

“Who does lead them?”

Tan frowned. “A northerner named Bloody Horm, but he has been gone from the Heart for decades.”

“Gone?” Kaden asked, shaking his head.

“Hunting Csestriim,” Tan replied, “among the Urghul or the Eddish. What matters is who leads the Ishien now, in his stead.”

He paused, considering Triste. She watched him with frightened eyes, the way a hare watches the hunter when he comes to pluck it from the trap. “Regardless, bringing her may purchase a measure of respect. Fewer Csestriim walk the world than in the past. The Ishien find them very rarely.”

“She's not some sort of token for us to barter,” Kaden said.

“No. She is far more dangerous than that.”

“I'm not what you think,” Triste said quietly, hopelessly. “I don't know how I walked through that gate, but I'm not what you think.”

Tan watched her for a while. “Perhaps,” he said finally, then turned to Kaden. “You should remain here. It will be safer. I will bring the girl and speak with the Ishien.”

Kaden stared at the windswept island. “Safer?” he asked, raising his brows. “Any one of your Ishien could walk through these gates at any time. If they will distrust me arriving with you, they might
murder
me if they find me here unexpectedly.” He shook his head. “No. I started this. I will see it through. Besides, I need the Ishien. You might learn what I need to know, but
I
need to talk to them, to forge some sort of relationship.”

He had no idea how Triste had passed the
kenta,
no idea how Tan's former brothers would respond to her sudden arrival or his own, no idea what he would do if it turned out Triste was lying, but the old fact remained: the Csestriim were involved in the plot against his family, they had killed his father, which made Kaden Emperor. He didn't rule Annur—not yet—but he could do this.

“I'm going,” he said quietly.

Tan studied him for half a dozen heartbeats, then nodded. “There is no safe path.”

“Please,” Triste begged quietly. “Before I came through the gate, you were trying to convince Kaden
not
to go.”

“It is because you passed the
kenta
that I changed my mind.”

“Why?” she whispered.

“There is no other place where I am more likely to learn the truth about you.”

Triste turned to Kaden, eyes wide and frightened.

“Kaden…”

He shook his head. “I need to know, Triste. If it's not true, I'll see you free, I'll take you away myself. I swear. But for my father, for my family, I need to know.”

The girl turned away, body sagging in defeat.

Tan gestured to Kaden. “Take the belt from your robe. Bind her. Use the slaughter knot.”

“And her feet?”

“A short hobble. We are not going far.”

Kaden glanced around himself once again. The
kenta
through which he had entered was not the only one on the island. Dozens of the slender, delicate gates ringed the periphery, as though the entire block of land had once supported an enormous tower. He imagined some awful storm toppling the structure—buttresses and corbels, ramparts and flutings, all of it—into the sea, leaving only the doors, dozens of stone arches open as silent mouths.

“These are the gates,” he said, shaking his head even as he slipped the belt from his robe. “This is what Nin described: the gates kept by the Malkeenian kings.” For the first time, he started to understand the power such gates could bring. To move from one end of the empire to the other in a few strides … it was little wonder Annur had remained stable over the centuries while other kingdoms fragmented and fell. An emperor who could cross from northern Vash to western Eridroa in a handful of steps would be almost a god. He half expected to see his father emerge from one of the
kenta,
chin bent toward his chest in that way he had when he was thinking. But no … Sanlitun was dead. The gates were Kaden's responsibility now.

“Work,” Tan said, gesturing toward Triste.

Kaden knelt beside her, knees pressing into the damp earth. She met his gaze, even as he rolled her onto her stomach, his hands rougher than he had intended. He was used to trussing up sheep and goats, not men or women, and his belt dug deep into her soft flesh as he pulled it tight.

“Leave a loop,” the older monk said. “To guide her.”

“You're enjoying this,” she said, disgust thick in her voice.

“No,” Kaden said quietly. “I'm not.”

She clenched her jaw as he pulled the rope tight, but refused to look away. “I didn't spend my whole life in Ciena's temple without learning something about men. Ministers or monks—you're all the same. Makes you feel good, doesn't it? Strong.” Kaden couldn't tell if she was about to sob or snarl.

He started to respond, to insist that the whole thing was just a precaution, but Tan cut him off.

“Do not attempt to argue with her. Finish the work and have done.”

Kaden hesitated. Triste glared at him, tears standing in her eyes, then looked away. Not, however, before he had carved a
saama'an
of the rage and fear, the betrayal etched in her expression. He took a deep breath, then twisted the cloth once more before finishing the knot. A goat could slip free of such a loose knot, but Triste was not a goat, and he refused to cinch the rope any tighter. Still, the whole thing felt wrong.
I'm not hurting her,
he reminded himself.
And if Tan's right, all this is crucial.
The thinking was sound, but he could feel what the Shin called the “beast brain” prowling, agitated, inside the steel cage of reason.

He straightened from his task, then, at the monk's direction, pulled her to her feet. She swayed unsteadily. Tan's
naczal
never left her neck.

“That way,” he said, gesturing with his head toward a gate on the far side of the island. “The girl first.”

“You don't need to do this,” Triste began. She ignored Kaden, spoke through him to the older monk as though he didn't exist.
And for all the good I'm doing her, I suppose I don't
. He was surprised to realize the thought stung, and he went to work on the emotion, grinding it out as one would grind a stray ember from the hearth beneath a heel. Tan did not respond, just pressed slightly with that spear of his until Triste stumbled forward.

“Which one leads to the Dawn Palace?” Kaden asked carefully.

Maybe the older monk was right, maybe Triste was Csestriim, and evil, and bent on some nefarious purpose; in that case, Kaden would do what was necessary. Could he bring himself to kill her? He tried to imagine it, like butchering a goat, a quick pull on the knife, blood urgent as breath, a final spasm, and it would be done. If it turned out that Triste was in some way responsible for the slaughter at the monastery, for the deaths of Akiil and Nin, for Pater, for his father, he thought he could do it. But if she was
not,
if it were Tan whose vision was clouded, well then, the time might come when acquiring his own knowledge of the network of gates would prove crucial. “Are they marked in some way?”

“None leads to the Dawn Palace,” Tan replied. “Nin spoke the truth about the Malkeenians and the
kenta,
but the Csestriim built more than one network. Your lineage knows nothing of this island, these gates. Nor do the Shin.”

Kaden frowned. “Then how do you…”

“The knowledge of the Ishien is older than that of the Shin, more complete.”

The monk stopped them in front of one arch identical to the rest. Up close, Kaden could see the script carved into the keystone, a word or words; it was hard to be certain how many. Evidently there were scholars back in Annur who could read those sharp angles as though they'd been raised on the language, but Kaden, of course, had been afforded no opportunity to study with the scholars of Annur.

He eyed the arch, curiosity and caution warring within him, but it was Triste who spoke.

“Where does it lead?”

“You cannot read it?” Tan asked.

The girl bit her lip but refused to respond.

“You choose a strange time to begin your deception,” the monk observed. “You read a similar language in Assare.”

“I'm not Csestriim,” Triste insisted. “Even if I
can
read it.”

“What does it say?” Tan pressed.