All at once, Kaden was back at Ashk’lan, a novice whose bowl had been replaced by a block of rock, licking soup off the unforgiving stone, listening to the laughter of Huy Heng, his first umial, as he learned the value of emptiness.
It’s not the stones that matter, Kaden thought, staring at his private vision of that massive pile. It’s the space between them.
And slowly, carefully, tracing the invisible lines of force and support, he shifted a single block, filling one empty hole, but leaving another in its place. The work was purely mental. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t even opened his eyes, but he found himself sweating with the effort, trying to hold that whole structure in his head, to see the entire thing at once, to find those hidden places that had been spared the weight, to parse the layers of emptiness, to find a way to move the stones that could be moved without disturbing the looming mass.
“Kaden?” Triste asked, her voice wary.
He shook his head, worked faster, shifting the rocks inside his mind, moving them back, stacking them, sliding them, searching for a way past, a way through, searching for the emptiness buried in all that unfathomable weight.
“There,” he said finally, exhaling as he opened his eyes. He pointed. “We need to start with that block. Then move that…”
“Fascinated as I am by the mechanics of stonemasonry,” Pyrre said, “I’m not sure this is the perfect venue.”
“We can get through,” Kaden said. “I can see it.”
The assassin raised her brows, then gestured back up the canyon with her knife. The clatter of boots over stone was closer now, closing, undeniable.
“You’re just in time to explain it to our friends.”
“I just need time. Maybe a thousand heartbeats.”
“We don’t have time,” Triste exploded, hauling him by the arm. “We need to get out of here, now.”
Pyrre, however, was looking at Gerra, her eyes raised in a silent question. The priest ran a thumb along the point of his spear, as though testing the edge, then nodded.
“We’ll give you your heartbeats,” Pyrre said, turning away. “There is a place just around the bend, a narrowing of the canyon where the water drops off a small shelf. It is a good place.”
Triste stared at her. “They’ll kill you.”
Pyrre smiled. “Why do you think we came?”
“No,” Triste said, shaking her head. “No. There’s another way. Around them or past them. A better way.”
Pyrre’s grin just widened. “Perhaps you are confusing us with another order of priests. I’m sure you would have preferred to go somewhere else, but you came to Rassambur, and this, you sweet, blood-shy children, the fighting and the dying-it is our way.”
56
“We could kill him,” Adare said quietly.
Kegellen took a long sip of wine, set the goblet on the table before her, leaned back in her chair, and pursed her lips. “I assume,” she said finally, “that when you say we, you are not, in fact, imagining the three of us taking turns plunging knives into the poor man’s heart.”
“The poor man?” Adare demanded. “The son of a bitch has as good as seized the city. He’s got men on the wall, men in the Dawn Palace, men in the Spear itself, and that’s not all-there are patrols on all the major streets, barricades and checkpoints between neighborhoods.…”
Kegellen waved the objection away. “I am aware, of course, of General Van’s … zeal when it comes to the defense of our city.”
“He’s so fucking zealous that I’m afraid to hold this meeting in my own ’Kent-kissing palace,” Adare said. “It is because of his zeal that we are here.”
They were back in Kegellen’s wine cellar. The same priceless, dusty bottles lay silently in their racks. The same marble gods fixed them with empty eyes. It wasn’t lost upon Adare that the last time she’d been in the room had been with Triste, just before the leach escaped. It hardly seemed like an auspicious meeting place, but then, all the auspices had been pretty ’Kent-kissing bleak of late. At least Kegellen’s manse wasn’t overrun with the general’s soldiers. At least inside the wine cellar the only person spying on them would be the Queen of the Streets herself, not that she had any need to spy, sitting as she was half a pace away, blandly sipping her wine.
Unlike Kegellen, Nira hadn’t stopped moving since they closed the heavy wooden door. The narrow cellar didn’t offer much room to prowl, but the old woman did her best, cane tapping against the stone floor as she stalked back and forth, muttering sometimes-mostly curses against il Tornja-sometimes silent. At first, Adare thought the constant motion might drive her insane, but she’d quickly come to find in it a strange sort of relief. At least one of the people in the room was as furious as she felt.
“I’m surprised that you’re not angrier,” Adare said, turning back to Kegellen, trying a different tack. “The soldiers are even more a threat to your power here than they are to mine.”
“Anger,” Kegellen said, closing her eyes, tipping her head back until it rested against the back of her chair. “It’s so exhausting. Who has the energy for it?”
“Spare me the act,” Adare spat. “I know your history. You’ve got more blood on your hands than I do. How many people did you kill to end up where you are? A hundred? More?”
“You can kill a man without being angry,” Kegellen replied mildly. “You can kill a great many men without being angry.” She took another sip of her wine, held it in her mouth a moment, swallowed, smiled. “I find it’s better that way. Easier on the heart.”
“Then kill Van. I don’t give a pickled shit if you’re angry when you do it, just make him dead.”
“The one-footed general,” Nira snapped, turning from the ranks of bottles, “is not the problem.”
Adare raised her brows. “He’s commanding the soldiers occupying the palace.”
Nira snorted. “He’s il Tornja’s dog. You could kill the son of a bitch, and another son of a bitch would just take his place. That’s the way an army works-chain a’ command, and all.”
“So we kill the next one,” Adare said. “I’m sure Kegellen can manage more than one murder per month.”
The Queen of the Streets opened her eyes. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Now it is just me doing this hypothetical killing? What happened to our happy triumvirate of high-minded murderers?”
“What do ya keep between those ears?” Nira demanded, raising her cane as though preparing to rap Adare on the skull. “A pair a’ very small, very stupid worms? An army doesn’t run outta commanders until ya kill the last man, and I don’t think I need ta point out that you might need some a’ those bastards on your walls when the Urghul arrive.”
Adare blew out an angry breath. “They’re not all part of il Tornja’s plan.…”
“I wager shit against silver even Wobbly Van himself isn’t part of il Tornja’s plan. He has orders ta hold the palace, and so he’s holdin’ it. It’s not him you have ta go after.”
Kegellen nodded slowly. “Though your councillor and I don’t always see eye to eye on matters, in this case, I have to agree.” She tapped a finger against her generous chin. “Is there any word from that spirited young woman you sent north with all those birds?”
“Do you think,” Adare asked, staring at the other woman, “that if the Kettral had returned, if they had word of il Tornja, that I would have forgotten to mention it?”
Kegellen heaved her shoulders into a shrug. “There is so much going on, and I find I grow more forgetful with each passing year.”