The Providence of Fire Read Free Page A

it takes them to notice the fucker’s not breathing?” He looked from Valyn to Kaden, eyebrows raised. “No? That’s not why we came back here?”
    The group of them had returned to Ashk’lan that morning, flying west from their meager camp in the heart of the Bone Mountains, the same camp where they had fought and killed the men chasing them down, Aedolians and traitorous Kettral both. The trip had occasioned a heated debate: there was broad agreement that someone needed to go, both to check for survivors and to see if there was anything to be learned from the Annurian soldiers who had remained behind when Ut and Tarik Adiv chased Kaden into the peaks. The disagreement centered on just who ought to make the trip.
    Valyn didn’t want to risk bringing anyone outside his own Wing, but Kaden pointed out that if the Kettral wanted to make use of the snaking network of goat tracks surrounding the monastery, they needed a monk familiar with the land. Rampuri Tan, of course, was the obvious choice—he knew Ashk’lan better than Kaden, not to mention the fact that, unlike Kaden, he could actually fight —and the older monk, despite Valyn’s misgivings, seemed to consider his participation a foregone conclusion. Pyrre, meanwhile, argued that it was stupid to return in the first place.
    â€œThe monks are dead,” she observed, “may Ananshael unknit their celibate souls. You can’t help them by poking at the bodies.”
    Kaden wondered what it felt like to be the assassin, to worship the Lord of the Grave, to have lived so close to death for so long that it held no terror, no wonder. Still, it was not the bodies he wanted to go back for. There was a chance, however small, that the soldiers had captured some of the monks rather than killing them. It wasn’t clear what Kaden could do if they had, but with the Kettral at his back it might be possible to rescue one or two. At the very least, he could look.
    Tan had dismissed the notion as sentimental folly. The reason to go back was to observe the remaining Aedolians, to ferret out their intentions; Kaden’s guilt was just further evidence of his failure to achieve true detachment. Maybe the older monk was right. A true Shin would have rooted out the coiling tightness that snaked about his heart, would have cut away, one by one, the barbs of emotion. But then, aside from Tan and Kaden himself, the Shin were dead: two hundred monks murdered in the night because of him, men and boys whose only goal was the empty calm of the vaniate burned and butchered where they slept to cover up an Annurian coup. Whatever waited at Ashk’lan, it had happened because of Kaden. He had to go back.
    The rest was simple. Valyn commanded the Wing, Valyn obeyed the Emperor, and so, in spite of Tan’s objections and Pyrre’s, in spite of his own concerns, Valyn had bowed his head and obeyed, flying Kaden along with the rest of the Wing to discover what was left of his mountain home. They landed a little to the east, out of sight of the monastery, then covered the final miles on foot. The track was easy, mostly downhill, but the tension built in Kaden’s chest as they drew closer.
    The Aedolians hadn’t bothered to hide their slaughter. There was no need. Ashk’lan lay well beyond the border of the empire, too high in the mountains for the Urghul, too far south for the Edish, too far from anywhere for merchants and traders, and so the brown-robed bodies had been left to litter the central courtyard, some burned, others cut down as they fled, dried blood staining the stones.
    â€œLots of monks,” Laith pointed out, nodding toward the monastery. “All pretty dead.”
    â€œWhat about them?” Valyn asked, pointing toward a row of figures seated cross-legged on the far side of the ledge, staring out over the steppe. “Are they alive?”
    Laith raised the long lens. “Nope. Stabbed. Right in the