The Providence of Fire Read Online Free PDF

poison.
    He was still struggling to understand what it had done to him. Like the others, he’d found his sight and hearing suddenly, if subtly, enhanced. He could hear small rocks clattering down the cliffside a hundred paces distant, could make out the pinions on the hawks that wheeled overhead … but there was more. Sometimes an animal fury clamped down on his heart, a savage desire, not just to fight and kill, not just to see the mission done, but to rend, to hack, to hurt . For the hundredth time, he remembered the slarn circling around and around him, eager claws scraping the stone. If they were now a part of his eyes and ears, were they also a part of his mind?
    He set the question aside, focusing on the assassin. Smell wasn’t quite the right word. He could smell more acutely, to be sure—the woman’s sweat, her hair, even from two paces distant—but this vague sensation hovering at the edge of thought wasn’t that. Or it was that, but more . Sometimes he thought he was losing his mind, imagining new senses for himself, but the sensation remained: he could smell emotion now: anger, and hunger, and fear in all its infinite variation. There was the raw musk of terror and pinched hint of frayed nerves. Everyone in their battered group shared the fear, at least to some extent. Everyone but Rampuri Tan and the Skullsworn.
    According to Kaden, Pyrre had come to Ashk’lan because she was paid to make the trip, to save his life, and she had rescued Kaden several times over. Despite an inclination to provoke Tan and the Kettral, she made a formidable ally. Still, how far could you trust a woman whose sole allegiance was to the Lord of the Grave? How far could you trust a woman who seemed, from both her smell and demeanor, utterly indifferent to death?
    â€œI have a plan,” Kaden replied, glancing from Pyrre to Tan to Valyn.
    Valyn stifled a groan.
    *   *   *
    The night before, after tethering the bird, walking the perimeter three times, and double-checking, to Gwenna’s great irritation, the flickwicks and moles she had hidden to guard both approaches to the pass, Valyn had climbed to the top of a large boulder, a jagged shard of rock set apart from the rest of the group. Partly he wanted the high ground, a spot with a clear view of everything below, and partly he wanted to be alone, to try to make sense of the events of the last few days, of his own role in the brutal fighting that had taken place. Kaden found him there just as night’s bleak stain leaked over the eastern peaks.
    â€œDon’t get up,” Kaden said as he climbed the side of the rock. “If you start bowing now, I’ll throw you off the mountain.” His voice was quiet, ragged.
    Valyn glanced over, hesitated, then nodded, returning his attention to the naked sword across his knees. His fight with Sami Yurl had left a tiny nick in the smoke steel halfway down the blade. He’d been at it with his stone for the better part of an hour, smoothing it out stroke by careful stroke.
    â€œHave a seat,” he said, gesturing with the stone, “Your Rad—”
    â€œNot that either,” Kaden groaned, perching cross-legged at the very lip of the boulder. “Save it for when someone else is listening.”
    â€œYou are the Emperor,” Valyn pointed out.
    Kaden didn’t say anything. After a few licks of the stone, Valyn looked up to find his brother staring with those fiery eyes out over the valley below. The depths of the ravine were already sunk in shadow, but the setting sun had caught the far rim, drenching it in bloody light.
    â€œI am,” Kaden said after what seemed like a long time. “Intarra help us all, I am the Emperor.”
    Valyn hesitated, uncertain how to respond. During the fight two days earlier, Kaden had been cold as midwinter ice, calm and ready as any Kettral. That certainty, however, seemed to have vanished. Valyn had witnessed