The Providence of Fire (25 page)

He glanced over to where Triste shivered against the wall. Guilt stabbed at him, sharp and jagged as a stone caught in a sandal. He set the pain aside. It was already clear the Ishien cared nothing for pain, Triste's or his own.

“The girl is at the center of it,” Tan said. “At the center of your fight, and Kaden's. You may find you have more in common with the Emperor than you think.”

Hellelen watched her awhile, then spat onto the stone. “I knew the Shin were weak, but you, Rampuri? I didn't realize you were so eager to scrape before a throne.”

Tan ignored the gibe, and after a few heartbeats Hellelen turned back to Triste, staring at her awhile, then blowing out a long, slow breath between his teeth. “A female, is it?” He prodded her cheek with the tip of the crossbow bolt. “We could learn much from a female.” His voice had gone tight with something that sounded like anger or hunger. “You're certain she is Csestriim?”

“You listen poorly,” Tan replied. “Nothing is certain, but the signs are there. We can discuss them in more detail once she is secure. Take her to a cell.”

Hellelen narrowed his eyes. “You're not in charge here, monk.” He spat the last word. “You were never in charge.”

Kaden recognized the disgust in Tan's gaze from moments in his own training. “I will tend to her myself, then, while the rest of you bicker. Stand well back. She is faster and stronger than she appears.”

“What about your beloved sovereign?” Hellelen demanded. “He is to simply wander free through the Heart?”

Kaden wanted to object. He never expected to command the Ishien, but as the Emperor of Annur, he shared with them a common task: the guarding of the gates. He had hoped for civility at least, for mutual respect. He had hoped that he would have some say in Triste's treatment. But, as the Shin were fond of saying,
You cannot drink hope. You cannot breathe it or eat it
.
It can only choke you.

Coming to the Ishien was starting to look like a mistake, and a grave one at that, but there was little he could do to correct his decision while standing unarmed and heavily guarded beside the frigid pool. Maybe Triste was Csestriim, and maybe she was not. Either way, she deserved to be treated decently, gently, until she proved herself a threat. He wanted to say that one more time, but it was pointless. He had no traction in the situation, no leverage. With an effort, he stifled his fear and anger, slid all expression from his face, then stepped back.

Tan fixed Hellelen with a stare. “Kaden is my pupil,” he said, “not my sovereign. I would tell you to leave him free, but, like a child, you dislike being told.”

*   *   *

The Ishien didn't shut Kaden in a cell, but they didn't trust him, either. Trant's presence was evidence enough of that. Hellelen had ordered the other man to “escort and guide” Kaden while the rest of them, Tan included, bustled off down a different corridor, dragging Triste roughly behind.

“Escort and guide” sounded welcoming enough, but when Kaden asked to follow the others, Trant refused. When he asked where Triste had been taken, Trant said he didn't know. When he asked to see the commander of the fortress, Trant muttered that the commander was busy. Kaden chafed to know what was going on, to begin unraveling even a part of the tangled conspiracy that had killed his father, but Trant didn't know the answers, and he wouldn't let Kaden near anyone who did. There was little to do aside from follow, and so Kaden followed, misgivings mounting.

The Dead Heart was unlike any fortress Kaden had ever encountered: no curtain walls or gates, no crenellations or arrow loops. The twisting passages and low ceilings, the utter lack of windows, suggested that the whole thing was underground, hacked out of the stone itself, lit by smoky lanterns and smokier torches, the air cold and damp, freighted with salt and sea. At junctures in the passageway, Kaden could sometimes make out the dull susurrus and slosh of the waves. When that faded, there was nothing but the scrape of boots, the irregular drip of water into cold pools, and everywhere the sensation of weight, of thousands of tons of rock pressing down from above, silent and invisible.

Only when they finally reached a narrow hall filled with long tables and reeking of salt and stale smoke did Trant finally stop, gesturing Kaden to a bench while he filled two battered trenchers with steaming white fish, then seated himself across the table. For a while Kaden thought the man intended to eat in silence, sucking soft flesh from the bones, prodding at his meal with filthy fingers as though it displeased him.

If Trant had a family name, it had not surfaced. Like the rest of the Ishien, he wore a heavy sealskin cloak over oiled leather over wool, and like the rest of the Ishien, a short blade hung at his hip. Matted, tangled hair hung halfway to his shoulders, and he had a habit of sweeping it from his eyes when he spoke. If he had bathed in the past week, the water had had little effect on the grime caked beneath his fingernails and into the wrinkles of his knuckles and wrists.

Back at Ashk'lan, Kaden would have been whipped for such slovenliness. Another reminder, if one were needed, that the Ishien were not the Shin. Where the monks were cold as winter granite, solid as a hard frost, these soldiers, Trant very much included, struck him as less … hale. Not that they were weak or enfeebled, but the reek of smoke and sea on their clothing, the hooded shadow in each gaze, the feral intensity to all speech and movement struck him as wrong, somehow. Unnatural.

Finally Trant looked up, found Kaden's gaze upon him, and frowned.

“It's an island,” he said, gesturing vaguely around by way of illustration. “The whole thing.”

Kaden blinked. “An island? Where?”

“No,” Trant replied, eyes sly above a mirthless smile. “No, no, no.
Secrecy is survival
. Do you know Kangeswarin? Of course you don't. That's something he said. Wrote.
Secrecy is survival
.” He intoned the words as though they were scripture. “The Order hasn't kept its freedom this long just to come under the thumb of some upstart emperor now.”

“I have no interest in bringing you ‘under my thumb,'” Kaden responded, careful to keep his voice level. He had hoped for deference and prepared for defiance. Trant's casual dismissal, however, the apparent indifference of everyone in the Heart, was not a response he had reckoned on. His whole purpose in visiting the Ishien was to learn what they knew, perhaps to forge an alliance, and here he was defending himself to a filthy, low-ranking soldier in the mess hall. “I am hardly an upstart,” he continued. “My father was Sanlitun hui'Malkeenian. I trained with the Shin, as have all those of my line. I have the eyes.”

Trant narrowed his own eyes, sucked at a morsel of fish stuck between crooked teeth. “The eyes,” he mused, as though he had not considered that. “You do. That's true. You do have some eyes. Long time ago there were men could tell the Enemy by the eyes.”

“The Enemy?”

“Childkillers. Builders. Graveless. Call them what you want. The fucking Csestriim. Long time ago, there were some could tell the Csestriim by the eyes.”

Trant stared at a blank space of wall, as though expecting the Csestriim to materialize from it. Like a goat in the early stages of brainworm, his eyes twitched erratically. He seemed unable to still his hands. Kaden shifted uneasily in his seat.

“The Csestriim didn't have burning eyes—” he began, but Trant cut him off, waving a hand.

“Yes, yes. I know. The Malkeenians. Intarra. The Emperor. I know.” He squinted. “Or it could be a trick. A kenning.”

“A trick?” Kaden asked, trying to find his balance in the conversation. “I'm not a leach. And why would I play a trick?”

Trant raised his eyebrows in surprise. “A thousand reasons. Ten thousand. Man might fake the burning eyes to milk coin out of fools. To seduce a noble lady. To seduce just about any silly-minded slut, at that. To stir up war. To avoid war. Just to lie. To
lie
. For the unbridled joy of
deceit
.” He paused, shaking his head, then bulled ahead. “A man might lie about his eyes,” he continued, voice rising, “to unseat an entire dynasty. To drive an empire to wreck and ruin.”

Kaden shook his head. “It is my empire. I have no desire to see it ruined. That is why I am
here
.”

“So you say,” Trant muttered, turning back to his fish. “So you
say
.”

“Are you so distrustful of everyone?”

Trant leaned back in his chair abruptly, dark eyes glittering in the lantern light. He seemed unable to hold a position for more than a few heartbeats. “
More
. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt because you came in with Tan.” He paused, waggled a finger across the table. “But you also brought the Childkilling whore.”

Kaden leaned back, caught off guard by the sudden hatred in the man's voice, the sheer red boiling fury of it.

“Triste hasn't killed any children,” Kaden replied, shaking his head.

“That you
know
of. That
you
know of. Tan said she was Csestriim.”

Kaden started to argue the point, then checked himself, remembering Tan's tale of the Ghannans and their ships filled with orphans. Trant didn't seem the type to be convinced through rational argument, and Kaden was no longer quite sure that the rational argument was on his side anyway. “Are you going to hurt her?” he asked instead.

“Me?” Trant asked, raising his eyebrows and poking himself in the chest as though to be sure of the question. “Am
I
going to hurt her? Oh no. No, no, no. I don't hurt the prisoners. I'm not
allowed
to hurt the prisoners. That's for the Hunters.”

“The Hunters?” Kaden asked, worry prickling the back of his neck.

Trant rapped a fist against the side of his head. “Trouble hearing? The Hunters, I said. The ones in charge. When there's hurting to do, they do it. Been that way since before your empire. Since before the Atmani, even.” He nodded sagely, as though pleased with the order of things.

Kaden shook his head, trying to follow the baffling account. “What are you? What's your role?”

“I'm a Soldier,” Trant said, pounding his chest with a fist. “Soldier, seventh rank.”

“How many ranks are there?”

Trant grinned, revealing a row of brown teeth. “Seven.”

“Will you ever be promoted?” Kaden asked. “To Hunter?”

The Ishien stared at him as though he'd gone mad. “It's not a rank,” he said, shaking his head. “Hunter's not a fucking
rank
.”

“What is it?” Kaden asked, taken aback.

“I'll tell you what it is,” Trant said, leaning far over the table, eyes wide. He waved Kaden closer with his knife, close enough that Kaden could smell the reek of his rotting teeth. “It's a blessing, is what it is. A
blessing
.”

Kaden hesitated. All the talk of Hunters and Soldiers seemed to be making Trant more and more agitated. He rocked front and back, as though seated atop a lame horse, and watched Kaden with febrile intensity. Suddenly, the wisest course seemed to be finishing the meal in silence, saying and doing as little as possible to disturb Trant further. But then, if Kaden was going to forge any kind of trust with the Ishien, if he was going to convince them to work with him, to share what they knew, he needed to understand them, and at the moment, the only person who could explain the workings of the Dead Heart was Trant.

“What makes the Hunters Hunters?” Kaden asked finally, carefully. “How do you decide?”

“Decide?” Trant laughed bleakly, scratching suddenly at a vicious scar on his forearm. “We don't
decide
any more than you decided to have those eyes. Some men have it inside them.
It
. The blessing. Some don't. Just … don't.” He paused, eyes darting off toward the roof, as though reliving something. “Learned that clearly enough in the purging.” He seemed, abruptly, to be talking about himself.

“The purging?”

Trant sucked in a great breath, then bared his teeth. “The purging. The passage, we call it, sometimes. Sometimes just the
pain
.” He shivered, his whole body trembling. “The 'Kent-kissing
pain
. It's how they sort the Hunters from the Soldiers, how they see who has the gift.”

“What is it? The purging or passage?”

“What?
What?
It's what it fucking
sounds
like, is what. Pain on top of pain piled on pain. Weeks of cutting and burning,” he continued, almost shouting as he pulled open his jerkin. A web of scars stretched across his chest, old, brutal wounds that had healed poorly. Kaden jerked back, but Trant was too absorbed in his account to notice. “Cutting,” he said again, drawing the word out as though tasting it, “and burning, and breaking. The fucking
breaking
. Drowning. And cold. Again and again, over and over until you shatter,” he said, stabbing at his own skull with a finger. “Until you break
up here
.” He shivered himself still, then turned his eyes on Kaden. “The pain,” he said again, more quietly, as though that explained anything.

Kaden stared for a moment, corralling the horror stampeding through his chest, taming it. “Why?” he asked finally.

Trant shrugged, abruptly and utterly indifferent to the torture he had just relived so vividly. “Sometimes what breaks off,” he said, “is the feelings.” He snapped a bone off the fish carcass, sucked at it. “You know—love, fear, fucking
hope
. Sometimes the pain chips them right off. At least, it does for the ones with the gift. The ones who can use the gates. Those are the ones in charge, the Hunters.”

For a while Kaden just watched the man eat. When Tan warned him, when he explained that the Ishien were nothing like the Shin, Kaden had thought he was talking about differences in culture and outlook, changes in the methods and modes of training. Even after arriving in the Dead Heart, after seeing Loral Hellelen and the others, after having a loaded crossbow pointed at his chest, the gap had seemed wide, but bridgeable. Now …