The Providence of Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

something like it on the Islands, had seen men and women, twenty-year veterans returning from successful missions, fall to pieces the moment they set foot back on Qarsh. There was something about being safe again, about being finally and undeniably alive after living so close to death, that made soldiers, good soldiers, soldiers who held it together for days or weeks under the most brutal circumstances, dance like madmen, collapse sobbing, or drink themselves nearly to oblivion over on Hook.
    There’s no shame, the Kettral said, in crying in your own rack. The rest of the equation remained unspoken, axiomatic: you could cry all you wanted in your rack, provided you got up again in a day or two, provided that when you got up, you went back out, and that when you went back out, you were the baddest, fastest, most brutal motherfucker on the four continents. It wasn’t at all clear whether or not Kaden had that kind of resilience, that kind of resolve.
    â€œHow are you?” Valyn asked. It was a stupid question, but every conversation had to start somewhere, and Kaden looked like he might sit cross-legged the whole night without saying another word. “After what we ran into down there?”
    Valyn had seen scores of dead bodies in the course of his training, had learned to look at the hacked-up limbs and crusted blood the way another man, someone not raised by the Kettral, might consider a side of beef or a plucked rooster. There was even a certain satisfaction to be had in studying the aftermath of violence and seeing answers in the wreckage. As Hendran wrote in his Tactics : The deader a man gets, the more honest he becomes. Lies are a vice of the living. That was true enough, but Kaden hadn’t been trained to pick over bodies, especially not the bodies of his friends and fellow monks. It must have been hard to encounter them—even from a distance—burned and cut to pieces.
    Kaden took a long, slow breath, shuddered for a moment, then fell still. “It’s not the older monks that bother me,” he said finally. “They had all achieved the vaniate, had found a way to snuff out their fear.”
    Valyn shook his head. “No one escapes fear. Not really.”
    â€œThese men would have surprised you,” Kaden said, turning to look at him, face sober, composed. “The children, though, the novices especially…” He trailed off.
    The wind had picked up as the sun set. It whipped around them, scrabbling at hair and clothes, tugging Kaden’s robe, threatening to rip him off the rock. Kaden didn’t seem to notice. Valyn searched for something to say, some comfort he might offer, but found nothing. The Shin novices were dead, and, if they were anything like everyone else, they had died in pain and terror, baffled, confused, and suddenly, utterly alone.
    â€œI wonder,” Kaden said quietly, “if I shouldn’t let them have it.”
    It took Valyn a moment to find his bearings in the shifting conversation, but when he did, he shook his head curtly.
    â€œThe Unhewn Throne is yours,” he said firmly, “as it was our father’s. You can’t surrender it because of a handful of murders.”
    â€œHundreds,” Kaden replied, voice harder than Valyn expected. “The Aedolians killed hundreds, not a handful. And the throne? If I’m so desperate to sit on top of a chunk of rock, there are plenty.” He gestured into the night. “I could stay right here. The view is better and no one else would be killed.”
    Valyn glanced over his blade, ran a finger along the edge, feeling for the nick.
    â€œAre you sure about that?”
    Kaden laughed helplessly. “Of course I’m not sure, Valyn. Let me list for you the things I know for sure: the print of a brindled bear, the color of bruiseberries, the weight of a bucket of water…”
    â€œAll right,” Valyn said. “I get it. We’re not sure about