Kaden took a slow breath, tried to steady his thoughts. “What chance?”
“The Shin!” il Tornja exclaimed. “You studied with the Shin. You weren’t there long enough, obviously, but you must have at least glimpsed the truth. You must have seen at least a piece of the beauty of a life lived free, unenslaved by all those brutish passions.”
Kaden hesitated. Whatever twisted game the Csestriim was playing, his words hit close to the truth. Kaden had, in those long years at Ashk’lan, come to cherish the freedom from his own human weakness, from all the relentless need. It was an imperfect freedom, of course. Even the Shin still looked out at the world through the dirty window of the self, but the absolute emptiness of the vaniate suggested something greater. A life more pure, more clear.
“Let’s be frank with each other,” il Tornja said, settling back against the wall. “You know there’s a goddess locked inside the girl, and so do I.”
Kaden blinked, tried to keep his thoughts from showing in his eyes.
“You’ve been brainwashed and blinded like the rest of your kind, twisted all around by the shape of your own brain,” il Tornja went on, “but you’re not an idiot, Kaden. You know I wouldn’t have left the northern front, wouldn’t have come all the way down here just to chase a leach.” He raised his brows, waiting for Kaden’s response.
“What do you want from her?” Kaden asked finally.
“I want to kill her!” il Tornja said brightly. “I’m going to kill her.”
Deep inside Kaden’s mind, Meshkent twisted, writhed, hurled himself against walls that were not walls. In the early iconography, the Lord of Pain had been depicted as a tiger, or giant cat, and it felt as though a tiger were slavering, pacing, growling inside Kaden’s brain. Just keeping company with Meshkent had been enough to unsettle whatever equilibrium Kaden had won among the Shin; having the divine inside of him was worse. He felt infected by the god’s presence, disturbed, as though Meshkent were a huge stone thrown into the still lake of his thought. Fighting back the god, keeping him caged, was battle enough. Doing that while guarding his face before il Tornja proved nearly impossible.
“What are you waiting for?” Kaden asked, voice tight.
Il Tornja sighed. “I need her.”
“For what?”
“For bait.”
So, Kaden realized. I was right. There was no satisfaction in the thought.
“You think you can lure Meshkent to her,” he said, shaking his own head this time, forcing a measure of scorn into his voice. “You really think a god would be that stupid?”
Il Tornja just smiled. “Of course I do. You’re forgetting that I’ve fought them before.”
“You lost,” Kaden pointed out.
The kenarang shrugged. “The battle is not the war. I have Ciena now. Meshkent will come. Then I’ll kill them both.”
Kaden gritted his teeth. “Are you trying to frighten me?”
“What could be frightening,” il Tornja replied, “about a world without suffering? What’s frightening about a world without pain or hate? Without people being dragged around by the clanking chains of their lust? What’s frightening about a world in which no one needs to weep over a child’s grave?”
“We would not be what we are,” Kaden said. Even to his own ears, the answer rang hollow.
“Surely the Shin taught you something. Surely you learned you can be better than your self.”
“Why do you care?” Kaden asked, desperate for the conversation’s end.
Submit, Meshkent whispered. Submit, and I will rip out his lying throat.
The pressure inside Kaden’s mind was almost unbearable, but he could still hear his own baffled reply: He’s not lying. However tortured il Tornja’s version of the truth, it was truth. Meshkent’s province was pain. That was his only gift. What kind of man would submit to such a master? In this much, at the very least, the Csestriim was correct-the young gods came, and they made men and women into slaves.
“Why do I care?” il Tornja asked, cocking his head to the side. “Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to help me.”
“Help you? How?”
“You could start by telling me the truth. How did you know that Triste would be here? How did you find her? You have no ak’hanath.…”
“She told me,” Kaden said simply. “When she was still in prison. She told me where she’d go if she escaped.”
Il Tornja stared at him, that gaze measuring, weighing. Then he burst out laughing. “I’ll tell you, Kaden-it’s amazing. You’d think, after all these centuries, that I’d get used to just how stupid people can be, but I just … I’m still surprised.” He composed his features. “I’ll admit it. It’s a weakness. Now. Tell me how Meshkent escaped.”
The question landed like a slap. Kaden’s stomach seized inside him.
“I don’t know who-”
“Of course you do. You didn’t arrive here with some lone Ishien soldier, as you claimed. You came with Long Fist, the Urghul chief, and you know as well as I do that that name, that flesh, is just a mask. He came with you to find his consort. You arrived through one kenta and you attempted to flee through another.”
Kaden realized he was shaking his head. “You’re wrong,” he whispered.
“No,” il Tornja replied patiently. “I am not.”
“You’re guessing because you’re desperate.”
Even as Kaden spoke, however, he was remembering the stones board, remembering Kiel playing out the kenarang’s games. Even the most basic moves had been utterly opaque, following a logic beyond anything Kaden understood.
“I’m neither guessing,” il Tornja said, “nor am I desperate. I am, however, vexed.”
“You can’t be. You don’t have the capacity for anger.”
The general waved away the objection. “A figure of speech. The point remains-you came here with Long Fist. He is not dead, as you claimed. If the river had killed him, we would know, the world would know. He is alive. He survived. You spent time with him. You can tell me what he wants, how he thinks.”
“You think you can turn me to your side the way you turned my sister.”
“Of course not. You and Adare are nothing alike. She conspired with me because she genuinely thought I’d help her save Annur, save the people of Annur. You don’t care about the people of Annur.”
“I do…”
“Of course you don’t. Not really. You are free to help me in a way she never was. You can help me willingly.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because,” il Tornja said, smiling wide, his teeth moon-bright in the lamplight, “you know that I am right.”
Kaden took a long, shuddering breath. Meshkent raged inside him. His own mind was a maelstrom. The vaniate beckoned, the only calm in the chaos. He turned his face away. “Kiel told me that you’d lie.”
“Kiel,” il Tornja said, shaking his head. “Of course he did.”
“This face, this argument, all these human gestures … none of it is true. You’re doing it so I won’t see what you really are. What you really want.”
It was barely convincing, but it was all he had, the only resistance he could summon. For the first time, however, il Tornja’s face went serious, still. He studied Kaden for a long time, then stood abruptly, turned away, and approached the river, walking to the very edge of the low cliff fronting the current.
The water was black in the lamplight. It looked cold, bottomless. For a long time, the Csestriim just stared into the moving depths. When he finally turned back, Kaden found himself looking into the face of a creature he did not know. The jocular, indifferent Annurian general was gone, scrubbed utterly away. This creature wore his face, the flesh hadn’t changed, but the eyes were impossibly cold, hard. They were formed like a man’s eyes, but the thought that moved behind them was unknowable as the river at night.