The Providence of Fire (38 page)

“These people have come a long way. They are tired and hungry. It seems you want to make a show, but they have not come here for a show. They have come here because of their devotion to the goddess, not for some sordid spectacle of a lying bureaucrat brought low.”

Adare rounded on the man, anger stiffening her trembling legs. “I am neither lying, nor a bureaucrat.”

Lehav studied her a moment, seemed about to say something, then shook his head, turning instead to the assembled crowd.

“My mother named me Lehav, but the goddess gave me a new name: Ameredad. I thank my brothers and sisters of the road for their companionship and piety, their quiet devotion and sacrifice to Intarra. You have given up much to come here—work and family, security—and I will see to it that this new city, this holy city, welcomes you as you deserve.

“As for this…” he said, jerking his head toward Adare without bothering to look at her. “You witness here Malkeenian treachery firsthand. Do not forget it.”

Most men would have said more, would have waited for the applause and the stamping of feet, but when Lehav had finished speaking he turned, passing Adare to Kamger without a glance over his shoulder.

“See that she's brought to the Geven Cellars. Double guard. I will be along after I have cleaned myself, prayed, and made my offering to the goddess.”

Kamger saluted, but Lehav was already striding through his troops and into Olon as though Adare had ceased to exist. That was when the Aedolians struck.

At first she thought the pilgrims behind her were just voicing their confusion and outrage. There were shouts, cries that could have been accusation or anger, the clatter of hooves. Then she saw the faces of the soldiers gathered around her, the sudden surprise and fear in the eyes of the Sons of Flame, followed by the desperate scramble to draw weapons. A scramble ending in failure.

At first, all Adare knew was that two men, both mounted, both swinging swords as long as her arm, were riding straight into the mass of Intarran soldiers, cutting furiously into the men on foot. She saw a head split open and an arm severed at the elbow, watched one man raise his sword only to see the weapon smashed straight into his face. Kamger seemed as confused as the rest, struggling to pull his blade free while keeping his grip on her arm. Adare turned just in time to see Fulton lean over the pommel of his saddle, swinging his broadblade in a great arc that opened the huge soldier from his neck to his chest. Blood, hotter than monsoon rain, splattered Adare's face, and then she was free.

“Quickly, my lady,” Fulton said, wheeling his horse to a stop, reaching down with his free hand. “Into the saddle before they regroup.”

Adare's mind reeled, but her body took over. She seized the Aedolian's hand, dragging herself up onto the horse even as the Sons of Flame closed around them again. A part of her, the part that wasn't drenched in blood and terror, noted that Fulton looked thinner, older, his eyes and cheeks sunken and haggard. How long had the two men been following her?
Why?
The questions were irrelevant in the midst of the chaos, inane, but her mind had retreated from the blood soaking her robes, from the screaming of the injured, from the shapes of the shattered men splayed on the flagstones. For a moment she thought she might start singing, whether from euphoria or madness, she couldn't be sure.

It looked like they would make it. Birch was holding back the Sons while Fulton spurred his horse to a gallop, charging straight back through the ranks of the pilgrims.
We're going to break free,
Adare thought. The realization tasted like clean air, fresh and cold in her lungs.
We're getting out.

Then, with no warning, the horse was screaming, tumbling forward, and she was off, flying through the air, flying. Flying, then not.

*   *   *

Ameredad's minions knew their work, bustling her through the ancient city's bafflement of alleyways and side streets with businesslike efficiency. Adare could barely walk, the gash on her head throbbed, and her vision was hazy, blurry. She wanted to ask about Fulton and Birch, to know whether they were still alive, but someone had stuffed a foul-tasting gag in her mouth, and between the stench and the dizziness, it was all she could do not to vomit.

The small party turned and backtracked so often that Adare quickly lost all sense of direction, and after a short while she quit trying to keep track of where she was and paid attention to the city itself, hoping to learn something that might save her life. The reek of whitefish, turmeric, and smoke filled the twisting alleys, and the streets and windows were alive with barter and banter. Still, something about the place seemed moribund, as though it had died years earlier.

The buildings were as graceful as they were venerable, but most had begun to crumble, mortar and stone falling away, marring the sweeping curves with ugly, ragged holes. Those that had not yet submitted to the ultimate indignity of collapse were rough and battered, paint and plaster stripped by decades of storm and neglect. Half the walls in the city looked badly in need of repair. It wasn't quite a ruin—perhaps it never would be, considering the lucrative trade that passed through it—and yet, Olon was a city with a dagger in her heart.

A dagger we put there,
Adare realized grimly.
A wound dealt by the Malkeenians
.

Perhaps Terial hui'Malkeenian hadn't intended to gut the capital of the ancient kingdom of Kresh when he founded his nascent empire, but neither had he chosen it as his ruling seat. Money followed power, and after the government shifted to Annur, Olon began to crumble. Canal and lake trade kept her alive, along with the voracious appetite of the capital, but the once-palatial residences along the water had been converted into taverns, brothels, and flophouses for wagon-drivers and sailors weary from the rough passage across Lake Baku. A few stubborn descendants of the old aristocratic houses squatted inside familial manses they could no longer maintain, while thieves and orphans, rats and wind reclaimed the rest.

It looked like a miserable place to live, but a perfect city to defend. As she was dragged through the streets, Adare glimpsed no fewer than ten pairs of Ameredad's guards, hard men with blades and bows lounging in the shadows or blocking the heads of narrow lanes. They wore no insignia or livery, certainly nothing to connect them to the Sons of Flame, and she might have mistaken them for common street toughs had it not been for the silent nods and curt gestures they exchanged with her captors as she passed.

The whole 'Kent-kissing city is this bastard's fortress,
Adare thought bleakly as she stumbled over the uneven cobbles, trying to keep her feet. She tried to imagine an Annurian legion taking the place, and failed. Olon's maze of collapsing buildings and piled rubble would render legionary tactics and formations pointless. The Sons of Flame could blend with the local population, hiding in attics and cellars, sniping from open windows before disappearing into their ancient warren.

For the first time Adare realized that Ameredad's choice in coming to this particular city might have been influenced by more than simple religious devotion. Il Tornja might be a brilliant general, but this was no city for generals. A thousand men could die in Olon's alleyways without anyone noticing. A thousand men, or one very stupid princess.

*   *   *

Despite the low ceiling and stone, the ponderous walls and lack of windows, the small room—a basement below a basement beneath a basement, judging by the number of stairs they had descended—looked more like a study than an abattoir. Rolled maps and piles of parchment, letters and supply lists, waited in tidy piles on the wide table. Someone had stacked a few crates neatly in the corner, the topmost of which was stamped
INK
. A tattered, moldy map of Olon was tacked up on the far wall, although Adare couldn't make out much but the bridges and the dark outline of the island itself. The place spoke of caution, deliberation, and resolve. Lehav, Ameredad—whatever his name was—the man seated across from her was clearly more than just some power-hungry, up-jumped soldier.

“You understand,” he said, considering Adare bluntly over the rough wooden table, “that many of the faithful, probably most, will want to see you burned.”

“I am a Malkeenian princess,” Adare replied, trying to keep her voice steady. “Hundreds saw me on the bridge. If you kill me, you will have a brief civil war followed by the annihilation of your faith.”

Lehav shrugged. “The faithful would call your death justice, justice for Uinian. As for the rest, we are all in Intarra's hands.”

“Intarra didn't take such good care of Uinian.”

Lehav frowned, but he didn't respond, his silence leaving Adare to wonder if she had scored a point or sealed her own doom. If the man decided to kill her, the cramped, windowless room was as good a place as any. Aside from the two soldiers who had dragged her in moments before, no one knew that she was there. The heavy stone walls would blot out her screams. Her blood would drain out readily enough through the rough iron grate set into the floor.

He's not going to kill you,
she told herself firmly, suppressing a shudder.
Not here, at least
.

“What were you doing in Annur?” Adare asked, trying to seize back some scrap of initiative. “Why did you disguise yourself? Join the pilgrimage?”

Lehav raised an eyebrow. “It would seem that I should be asking the questions, and you should be answering them.”

“And yet, so far all you've done is threaten me.”

“No. It is you who threaten us,” the soldier said, voice quiet, but hard. “You struck at Uinian, at our priest in the heart of our temple—”

“Uinian was a 'Kent-kissing
leach,
” Adare cut in, suddenly furious in spite of her fear. “He lied to you, to his entire congregation, and you all
believed
him. You should thank me for unveiling him, for seeing him killed.”

Lehav studied her. “That much, perhaps, is true. Unfortunately for both of us, you didn't stop there, did you?”

“The Accords,” Adare said, watching him warily.

“Accords.” He shook his head. “What a sweet little word. Like calling a knife to the gut a
tickle
.”

“The Accords were intended to find a new balance between Intarra's Church and the Unhewn Throne, one that—”

Lehav cut her off without raising his voice. “The Accords were laws, laws
you
made, to humiliate the Church, cut off her revenue, and destroy the force that defended her. The new Chief Priest is your puppet, and this
balance
you describe is the balance of a tyrant with her boot on the throat of a conquered foe.” His raised his brows. “Do I have it more or less right?”

Adare hesitated, trying to see past both her anger and her fear. When she planned for this moment, she had imagined Ameredad to be either a religious zealot, ignorant of the serpentine twists of imperial politics, or a shrewd opportunist like Uinian, a man more interested in his own glory and advancement than the fate of the thousands who followed him. Apparently, her imagination had failed her. She could stick with her rehearsed speech, but that speech looked likely to see her burned before a vengeful mob. She took a deep breath, marshaled her thoughts, then nodded.

“You have it right,” she said. “The Accords were a play to cut your Church off at the knees.”

The man leaned back in his chair, clearly surprised.

“And you've come here now, why?” he asked slowly. “To finish what you started?”

Adare shook her head. “To fix it. To make it right.”

“To make it right,” Lehav said, looking past Adare to the map on the wall. He frowned, as though the layout of the streets and alleyways displeased him. “It doesn't make sense. You could retract the Accords from the Dawn Palace. Retract or amend them. You didn't need to come here to meet with me. You certainly didn't need to
walk
all this way with a blindfold over your eyes.” He turned back to her, fixing her with a hard stare. “You are still lying, and each lie brings you closer to your death.”

The words were mild, but then, Adare had never heard the soldier raise his voice. She was reminded of his warning to the canal rats back in the muddy ruts of the Perfumed Quarter, the way he didn't threaten so much as offer alternatives. He'd been willing to leave her then, willing, before learning she shared his faith, to let her be raped and killed without even knowing who she was. How much more readily would he let her go to the fires now?

“I am not lying,” she said slowly, “but there is more.”

He watched her for a moment, then, in a fluid motion, drew his belt knife. The blade gleamed in the fickle lights of candle and lantern, and for a moment he considered the steel, turning it back and forth, watching the flame and shadow play over it.

Adare stared, still as a cobra in the grip of the wooden flute's soft song.
He's not going to burn me,
she realized.
He's not going to wait that long
. She imagined the wide map with her blood splattered across it.

Lehav, however, just gestured with the point of his knife toward a thick candle on the edge of the table, then flicked his wrist, scoring a line in the wax a finger's width from the top.

“You have until that line to talk,” he said, “and then we are finished.”

Adare tried to collect her thoughts. There wasn't much wax remaining above the notch, and the case she had to put before the soldier was a complex one. There would be no second chances and there could be no missteps.

“Ran il Tornja murdered my father.”

Lehav's eyes narrowed, but he didn't speak. Adare glanced at the candle, then plunged ahead.

“The
kenarang
is at the center of a conspiracy to remove the Malkeenian line from power.”