The Providence of Fire (49 page)

It was a simple thing. One cut across the throat and it was done: brutal, but simple. As Kaden stood in the darkness, however, parsing the guard's breaths, trying to measure the empty space between knife and neck, the most basic elements of the action suddenly seemed implausible, impossible. How would he cross the corridor? How would he pivot to bring that knife to bear? Should he move slowly, to avoid suspicion, or lash out all at once, murdering the man in one quick slice?

No,
he reminded himself.
Not murdering
. “Murder” was a sloppy term, imprecise, laden with judgment and emotion.
Killing.
Killing described the action, nothing more.
I've killed goats,
Kaden reminded himself.
I thought I'd killed that leach back at the saddle
. Still, it was one thing to discharge a flatbow at Balendin from the still depths of the
vaniate
: a twitch of the finger, the reverberation of the spent bow, the brief whistle of the bolt in the air, and the man was gone, vanished off the side of the cliff. It hadn't felt like killing. It hadn't felt like anything. Cutting the guard's throat would be harder, messier.

He considered the exposed flesh below the jaw.
Here is the knife
.
Here is the neck.

In the end, it was a simple matter of three steps followed by an extension of the arm. The blade bit immediately, snagged for a moment on the tough cartilage of the trachea, then pulled through, slick and hot and wet. The guard managed to half turn, reaching a hand toward Kaden's shoulder as if in friendship. Then the life fled his limbs and his head caved forward into the wreckage of his neck. Blood drenched Kaden's face and chest, slicking the hand that held the knife, pumping in stubborn dark sheets down the front of the dead man's sealskin cloak to puddle in the pits of the floor. The body slumped forward, then fell.

For a moment, Kaden didn't move. He stood, gory knife at his side, blood soaking his fetid clothes. Some feeling, delicate-pawed and silent as a mouse, prowled the edges of his brain, slipping away each time he tried to look at it directly. Guilt? Kaden glanced at the slumped form, the mound of bone and flesh that had, until moments before, been a man, then closed his eyes, trying to corner the elusive sensation. Regret? Doubt? It glared at him a moment, tiny, feral, then darted farther into darkness.

He'd lost track of his pulse in the attack, but it didn't matter now. Kiel's route out didn't involve the corridors above. The schedule of the Ishien no longer mattered.

Kaden picked up the storm lantern, slid open the shutters, allowed his eyes a few moments to adjust to the light, then rifled through the guard's tunic for the keys. At first he thought he'd gambled wrong, that the man wasn't carrying what he needed, but then, when he pulled aside the blood-soaked neck of the tunic, he found them, hanging on a chain around the neck.

Freeing Kiel was simple, a matter of lifting aside the heavy steel bars, fitting the key into the lock, then hauling the door open. Kaden winced as the hinges screamed in protest, his pulse rising for a moment, then settling.

“The guard is dead?” Kiel asked, stepping from the shadows.

Kaden nodded.

“Then there should be no one to hear us.” He glanced past Kaden, as though searching for someone else. “Where is the girl?”

“This way,” Kaden said, gesturing.

Kaden had found Triste's cell nearly a day earlier. Their captors had separated their three prisoners in widely spaced cells, making sure they couldn't communicate, and Kaden had spent almost a thousand heartbeats finding a locked door that showed signs of recent use. He'd considered freeing Triste then, explaining the whole plan to her, even enlisting her to help in the killing of the guard. It was tempting to have a companion, another conspirator, but he decided against it at the last minute. There was no telling what Matol and the Ishien intended, no telling when they might arrive to drag her back up to the chambers above. It seemed safer to leave her ignorant and in darkness until the time for escape had come. As he shoved open her door, however, he wondered if he'd misjudged the situation.

All he could see, by the meager light of his own eyes, was a slumped form crouched against the rear wall of the cell. Even in the cramped space, Triste looked small, huddled in the farthest corner, a clenched ball of fear and pain. She cried out at the sudden light, shielded her eyes with a hand, and turned toward the stone as though she could burrow into it. There were cuts on that hand, Kaden realized, burns and lacerations.
This is why I killed the guard,
he reminded himself.
This is why I defied Tan.
He took a few steps forward, approaching the shivering girl as though she were a frightened, wounded beast slipped from the fold and lost in the mountains.

“No,” she moaned. “Please…”

“Triste,” he said, the word brittle in the chilly air. He tried again, forcing more warmth into the syllables. “
Triste
. It's Kaden. We're leaving. We're
leaving
.”

She half raised her head, blinking at him from between tangled threads of hair, still blind from the light. Blood and grime ran in streaks down her arms and face. Someone had hacked off most of her hair. The Aedolian uniform she had been wearing since the Bone Mountains was nearly shredded. She ran her fingers over the wet stone, caressing it as though it were the cheek of a sleeping child. Her fingernails, Kaden realized, were ragged, bloody.

“Leaving?” she asked quietly.

“Fleeing. We have to move fast, before the next guard comes. Before Matol sends someone else.”

She shivered at the name, then pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. “What do we do?”

“Go with Kiel.”

“Who's Kiel?”

“Someone who can get us out.”

*   *   *

The still, black pool seemed to drink the lamplight, as though it were pitch or oil rather than salt water, as though anything dipped into it would slide instantly into utter darkness. It was barely more than a pace across, the diameter of a small well, but Kaden could imagine it plunging down endlessly to the very center of the earth.

“This is it,” Kiel said.

Kaden glanced over at Triste. She was trembling, staring at the pool as though into the maw of some great stone beast.

“There's no other way?” she asked, her voice tiny, terrified. “What about the ship that Kaden mentioned? The one Tan suggested?”

Kaden hesitated. Staring into the dark water, it was tempting to double back, to break out through the main door of the prison, to hope they could hide Triste during the long walk to the underground harbor. It was tempting, and foolish. Triste's tattered Aedolian uniform did nothing to conceal her identity, less than nothing. Even in shadows, even at a glance, it was obvious that she was a woman, and there were no other women in the Dark Heart. They could sneak into the corridors above hoping for the best, but Kaden was through hoping.

“Too much risk if we go the other way. This will take us straight to the
kenta
chamber.”

“But the men,” Triste said. “The ones with the bows…”

“Will never see us,” Kiel said. “They're outside the pool, waiting on the ledge above it. We'll never break the surface.”

“And they don't guard this?” Kaden asked, gesturing to the pool.

Kiel raised an eyebrow. “Would you?”

“What's down there?” Triste asked.

“Tunnels. Rooms. Old halls. When the Ishien flooded the
kenta,
they flooded dozens of the lower passages, too. It was a reasonable decision. No one's likely to navigate that maze after stepping through the gate, not underwater, not before their air runs out.”

Kaden stared bleakly at the still surface of the pool. “No one except us,” he said.

“Well.” Kiel spread his hands. “We're going to try.”

“How far?” Triste asked.

The Csestriim paused, eyes going distant and unfocused for a moment, then nodded. “One hundred and eighty-seven paces. Give or take.”

Kaden stared. “Did you measure it?”

“In my mind. It's been thousands of years. I could be off.”

“Two hundred paces,” Triste groaned, shaking her head. “I'm not sure I could swim that far
above
water.”

“You don't have to swim,” Kiel replied. “Not much. I'll guide you, pull you.”

“And what about you?” Kaden asked, shaking his head. “It seems almost impossible, even without the extra effort.”

“There are techniques,” the Csestriim replied, “to slow the heart, to use the muscles more judiciously.…”

Kaden paused, realizing all over again that the man beside him was not a man at all. The Shin, with their training and their discipline, could manage amazing feats, could sit nearly naked in the winter snow or stay awake for a week, but compared to Kiel, the Shin were children, fools, tiny creatures exploring the first rooms of a vast city, the scope of which they could barely apprehend.

“And me?” Kaden asked.

“You will enter the
vaniate
here,” Kiel replied. “That will do something to slow your pulse and keep you from panic. If you are judicious with your breath, it will be enough.”

“If,” Kaden said, shaking his head. “
If
you remember the distance correctly,
if
I can follow you down there,
if
I can hold on to the
vaniate
 … It's all
ifs
. I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn't risk the ship.”

Kiel cocked his head to the side. “Nothing is certain. If we travel the tunnels above, you trust to luck. If we take this route, you have only yourself to rely on.”

“And you,” Triste said, rounding on him, her voice high, close to hysteria. “You're
Csestriim
. Now that Kaden's broken you out, you could take us down there and leave us. We don't even know the tunnel leads to the
kenta
!”

Kiel nodded. “I could. And you don't. What you do know, however,” he went on, indicating the lacerations around Triste's wrists, the blistered fingers of her right hand, “is what will happen to you if they capture you again. The water may kill you, but not like this.”

Triste blanched, glanced down the corridor the way they had come. Kaden followed her gaze.

“I don't like leaving Tan,” he said, shaking his head. “The Ishien don't trust him any more than they do me. When we disappear, they will put the pieces together. They'll know what happened.”

“So will he,” Kiel said. “Rampuri Tan is more dangerous and resourceful than you know. He will find his own way.”

“And if he does not?”

The Csestriim met his eyes. “Then he does not. There is no easy path, Kaden. You can save Triste, or you can save Tan, not both.”

Kaden looked over at the girl. She was hugging herself, shivering in the chill dark.

“All right,” he said slowly. “The
vaniate
.”

“I don't know the
vaniate,
” Triste said, voice crumbling. “I don't know how to slow my breath.”

Kiel nodded. “I'm not sure you'll survive to the
kenta,
but the choice is yours.”

She turned to Kaden, eyes wide, pleading. “What do we do?”

He hesitated. He didn't want the decision, didn't want the responsibility that came with it, but wanting, as the Shin had told him hundreds of times, was just another way to suffer.

He set aside the fear and emotion both, tried to see the situation clearly, coldly. If they escaped, if he retook his throne, he could come back for Tan. More, if Triste
was
Csestriim, he needed her, needed what she knew, to understand the plot against his family. It was a hard choice, but Rampuri Tan had taught him something about hardness.

“There is a strength inside you, Triste,” he said. “Something even you don't understand. It's why they imprisoned you in the first place. You ran through the mountains. You passed the
kenta
twice already—”

Furious shouts split straight through his words, cleaving the calm he had so carefully guarded. He tried to count the voices. There were three, no … five, and loudest among them, Matol, bellowing his fury.

“… want them found, and I want them found
now
. Two men in each cell, take this fucking place
apart
. And someone find Rampuri Tan, that treacherous bastard.”

Boots clattered on the stone. Steel hinges screamed. Men barked commands back and forth.

“It's too soon,” Kaden said, staring down the corridor. “They shouldn't be here.”

“There is no
should,
” Kiel said quietly. “Only
is
. Prepare yourself.”

Kaden measured a long breath, holding it in his lungs, but before he could exhale, the first Ishien rounded the corner, blades bright with the light of their lanterns. For a moment, no one moved. Then the leader—Hellelen, Kaden realized, the same man who had first challenged them at the
kenta
—smiled.

“Here!” he shouted over his shoulder. “They're here, cowering in a corner.”

“Quickly,” Kiel murmured.

Kaden reached for the
vaniate,
but it was like clawing at cloud. His mind passed through the emptiness, but failed to enter it. The gong of his heart tolled in his ears.

“I can't,” he said, shaking his head.

Triste had turned to face the men, teeth bared, hands twisted into claws as though she intended to rend the skin from their faces.

“They cannot follow us,” Kiel said. There was no fear in his voice, no urgency. “Find the trance.”

“I'm
trying,
” Kaden replied, but the Ishien were already advancing, moving slowly down the hallway, obviously enjoying the sight of their trapped quarry. And there were more behind, more than enough to kill them all a dozen times over. Even as Kaden stared, another figure rounded the corner at a full run, sword spinning in his hands.