The Providence of Fire (78 page)

“Doesn't look like it,” Talal replied after a moment.

Valyn nodded slowly. Bonfires raged on the far bank, but the town itself looked unscathed, no burning buildings lighting the sky, no furious ringing of alarms, no smoke, no screaming. He raised the long lens to his eye, focused it. The horsemen on the far bank snapped into view, hundreds of them, thousands, and more in the trees.

“What are the bastards waiting for?” Laith demanded.

Valyn shook his head. “Can't see. If the people in town aren't idiots, they'll have burned the far bridge, but I don't have the angle to be sure.” He shifted the long lens back to the town. The eastern sky had already purpled to black, but Valyn could make out the details clearly enough: rough log buildings similar to those in Aats-Kyl, all piled onto two islands nestled in the forking arms of the Black River. Docks stretched out into the lake from the eastern island, and on the southernmost tip of the western one, built directly out of a rocky cliff, stood a tall, stone tower—probably for signaling boats coming up from the south. When the wind dropped, he could hear hammers or axes echoing from the wall of dark firs fronting the eastern shore of the lake.

The villagers were busy running back and forth, some with weapons, others lugging logs, still others carting what must have been food and valuables west over the central bridge, onto the nearer of the two islands, trying to get them as far from the horsemen as possible. Valyn tracked a few figures—mostly loggers in rough leather and wool—then paused, grinding his teeth.

“Il Tornja's scouts are here.”

Talal nodded. “Not unexpected.”

“But a pain in the ass nonetheless,” Laith said.

Valyn frowned. “Means we'll have to take care in setting up shop. If they're sticking to protocol, they'll be sending men back two, three times a day. We can't let the
kenarang
know we're here.”

“All right,” Talal said. “What's the play?”

“We wait until full dark,” he replied, “then move in. We'll take up a position on top of the tower. Should give us a good view of what's going on and, with any luck, a line of sight to il Tornja when he arrives. The bastard may be a brilliant tactician, but tactics never blocked an arrow.”

“And you still want to do this?” Laith asked. “Kill him? Even after what you learned from your sister? If Long Fist is coming, that means he lied, means he played us.…”

Valyn's jaw tightened. Laith had distrusted the Urghul shaman from the start, but the encounter with il Tornja's army, the realization that the horsemen were actually planning to push across the river, made the flier furious. He was right, of course—the shaman's army, his so-called shield, was starting to look a lot like a fucking spear—and yet Laith couldn't see
beyond
that point. It would do them little good to defeat the Urghul only to hand the empire to il Tornja when the fighting was done.

“Long Fist
lied
to us,” Laith continued, as though the revelation were a shock.

“It was a smart play,” Talal said. “He risks nothing by using us to get at il Tornja. If we succeed, he wins. If we fail,” he shrugged, “he was planning to fight the battle anyway.”

Laith spat. “And we're just cheerfully going to keep doing what this horsefucker wants?” He stared at Valyn, the challenge hard in his voice. “We've already killed a couple Annurian soldiers for the great and mighty Long Fist—what's a little more Annurian blood? Is that it?”

“There is more than one fight here,” Valyn ground out. “The fact that one is evil doesn't make the other good. Long Fist lied to us, but il Tornja murdered the Emperor.”

“According to Balendin,” Laith said, voice rising in disbelief.

“According to my
sister,
” Valyn replied, trying to keep his voice calm. “Adare confirmed it. The
kenarang
killed my father and seized control of the empire.”

“It is your sister,” Talal pointed out quietly, “who has taken on the imperial mantle.”

“She's il Tornja's puppet,” Valyn snapped. “She thinks she's doing the right thing, but she doesn't understand the larger forces at play.”

“Seems to me,” Laith said archly, “that she
is
one of the larger fucking forces. She's the Malkeenian in charge now, she's declared herself Emperor, she has the
kenarang
jumping to her tune, the Army of the North, and, in case you didn't notice it, the 'Kent-kissing Sons of Flame into the bargain.”

“The Army of the North is the
kenarang
's army,” Valyn growled. “When we kill the
kenarang
we can bring it back under control. Kaden can appoint a new commander.”

“If Kaden is alive,” Talal said, meeting Valyn's eye as he spoke. “Adare didn't mention him.”

Valyn drew a deep, ragged breath. Worry for his brother had gnawed at him since the two groups were separated back in the Bone Mountains. Their whole scheme seemed like madness now, a plan with a hundred possible holes. The gate itself could have killed Kaden, or the Ishien on the other side of it. He could have returned to Annur and run afoul of il Tornja's men, could have avoided the conspiracy altogether only to end up dead in a canal with some footpad's blade in his back. The old monk, Rampuri Tan, had seemed capable with that strange spear of his, but there wasn't any telling how far even
he
could be trusted. Looking back on it, Valyn wished he'd done more to stay at Kaden's side. At the time, there hadn't seemed to be any choice.

It had been a long time since he'd felt as though he had a true choice. Abandoning the Islands, losing Kaden, fighting the Flea, landing on the steppe, leaving half his Wing in Long Fist's clutches—each decision looked like the wrong one now, but at the time they hadn't seemed like decisions at all. Instead of contemplating a series of forking paths, Valyn felt as though he'd been racing down a single treacherous track, just a half step ahead of his foes, no time to look either back or forward.

He stared out over the dark water toward the small town. Maybe this was a mistake, too. He could still turn back, try to find that invisible fork, try to take a better path, but the other paths all looked even worse than the one he was on. Leave il Tornja to his triumph? With a crucial military victory tucked tight in his belt, the man would be even more difficult to unseat. Continue north in hope of freeing Gwenna and Annick from the Urghul? The odds of success looked worse than pathetic, and if he died in the rescue attempt, he couldn't kill il Tornja or help Kaden. Return to the Islands and lay the information about the plot before Daveen Shaleel and the rest of Eyrie Command? They reported to il Tornja; for all Valyn knew, they were complicit in the plot.

There were dozens of variables, none of which he could control—Long Fist, the Ishien, Rampuri Tan—but about Ran il Tornja, at least, he could do something. He could
try
to do something.

“Kaden is going to have to look after himself for now,” he said. “But we can do our vicious bloody best to make sure that if he's alive, when he does return to Annur, that a backstabbing traitor isn't sitting on his seat.” He wasn't sure if he was talking about il Tornja or Adare. Possibly both.

Laith raised his hands in surrender, let out a snort half weariness, half disgust. “The whole thing is above my pay grade. I trained to fly birds, and now we don't even have a 'Kent-kissing bird.”

“Speaking of which,” Talal said, raising the long lens toward the town once more, “how do you plan to get to that tower? Without 'Ra, it looks a little tricky.”

The sun had set, but Valyn could see well enough in the gray-green darkness. Dozens of lanterns and fires blazed on the two islands—the extravagance of wood and oil speaking eloquently to the fear in the streets. The loggers' preparations, though, would face east, toward the approaching Urghul. No one would be looking south over the water, and if they were, well, the Kettral wore blacks and worshipped Hull for a reason.

“We swim,” he said. “Exit at the cliff. Climb straight up to the top of the tower.”

“A half-mile swim in glacial runoff followed by a seventy-foot climb,” Laith grumbled. “Just what I was hoping for.”

Valyn fought down a sudden and powerful urge to seize the flier by the neck. There was a time, not so long ago, when Valyn had trusted Laith more than any other member of his Wing, but combat had changed both of them, changed them for the worse. Laith's jocularity had crumbled into a series of snipes and complaints, and Valyn could feel his own tolerance fraying like a worn rope. No one wanted to swim the fucking lake. No one wanted to climb a tall stone tower in the middle of the night with cold hands and wet blacks, but they were
Kettral
.

“This is what we do,” Valyn said, leashing his voice, keeping it low, holding back the shouting that snarled and prowled inside. “This is what we are for.”

“Come on,” Talal said, sensing the tension and stepping between them. “Let's just get it over with.”

Over.
Valyn almost laughed at the word. Once they swam the lake, they'd have to climb the cliff. Once up the cliff, they'd face the tower. Once on the tower, he'd need to kill il Tornja, and if he managed that, he needed to find a way to free Gwenna and Annick. One fight just led to the next, on and on and on. It wasn't really over, none of it. Not until you were dead.

*   *   *

The swim was mercifully shorter than Valyn had expected, but the climb above proved brutal—seventy feet of narrow ledges made even more treacherous by the darkness, their sodden boots, and the crumbling mortar of the old tower itself. Three times Valyn trusted his weight to seemingly solid stone only to have it give when he tried to move up on it, ripping clear of the wall to plummet into the lapping waves below, leaving him to cling desperately with one hand while the other scrabbled for purchase.

It was painstaking, difficult work, but Valyn found it strangely calming. There were few decisions to make—this stone or that, this ledge or that—and the consequences of each choice were immediate: the rock crumbled, or it did not. No lies. No deception. No one to kill. His body warmed with the exertion, and his focus narrowed to the vertical swath of stone immediately above and below him. He was almost disappointed when he reached the roof, pulling up and over onto the rough boards, though his forearms ached and the tips of his fingers bled.

For a moment he just laid on his back, staring at the stars, each one a hole stabbed in the darkness. Then Talal's voice pulled him back to the present.

“Someone's been working hard,” he murmured, nodding toward the eastern bank of the Black. “They've got the place locked up tight.”

Valyn rolled onto his stomach, then pulled the long lens from his oilskin.

“What've we got?”

Talal nodded into the darkness. “Looks like the bridge is out, destroyed, like you said. Hard to say in the darkness.”

Between the fires and the stars, the night was plenty bright to Valyn, and when he raised the lens to his eye, the chopped pilings leapt immediately into view, jagged teeth stabbing up from the mud flats on either side of the central channel, a few stray planks strewn about.

“I wonder who warned them?” he said, scanning the town below.

The place was a hive of activity, men and women pushing and pulling all manner of carts, some filled with tools, others loaded high with tables or logs, while children scurried through the streets, shouting messages to the adults. It was chaotic, but after watching for a few minutes, Valyn could start to see a kind of order imposed on the madness: laden carts headed east, toward what appeared to be some sort of barricade on the far bank of the East Island, then returned filled with food and jugs of water, all manner of provisions. Valyn followed the activity to a knot of figures in the small town square, brought the leader into focus, then almost dropped the lens.

“Holy Hull,” he breathed, then found himself laughing, joy and relief washing over him like a cool wave back on the Islands, scrubbing away for just a moment all the doubt and the anger. “Meshkent, Ananshael, and holy black Hull.”

“Is there a joke I'm not getting about the fact that this whole miserable town's about to be burned to the dirt?” Laith asked.

For once, even the flier's cynicism couldn't dampen Valyn's spirits. He just smiled and passed the long lens. It took Laith a moment to find Gwenna in the shadows, and then he, too, was laughing.

“That tough, stubborn bitch,” he marveled. “Leave it to Gwenna Sharpe to decide she's fed up playing prisoner to an entire army of Urghul.” Shaking his head, he handed the lens to Talal.

“Annick's there, too,” the leach said after a moment. “And Pyrre.”

Valyn's face hurt from smiling. It seemed like forever since he'd had a reason. “I wonder how they got free.…”

“Those three?” Laith asked. “Probably just kept clawing eyes and biting throats until there weren't any Urghul left. Here we are wandering all over Raalte killing our own men, and they've busted themselves free, humped it back ahead of an entire mounted army, and started preparing the defense.” The bitterness had crept back into his voice. “Starts to make you wonder why we even bothered.”

The smile slid from Valyn's face like a shadow. “We bothered,” he said, “because it seemed like the right choice at the time.”

“Well, we're here now,” Laith said, rising to his feet on the crumbling roof. “Let's get down there while there's still work to do.”

Valyn hesitated, then shook his head. “No.”

For a moment no one moved. No one spoke. The wind whipped spray from the waves, tossing it against the rock. It riffled through the boughs of the pines, scratched at the clouds, whipped the fires below into sparks and ruddy blaze.