Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades Page 9

  Kaden had been at Ashk’lan for only a few months when Blerim Panno—the Footsore Monk, they called him—trudged into the main yard, brown robe ripped around the hem but otherwise looking no worse for the long walk from the Bend. The three boys who trailed behind him, however, the three boys who would soon be novices, appeared battered and uncertain. All limped on badly blistered feet, all slumped beneath the weight of the canvas sacks they carried on their backs, and of the three, only Akiil bothered to look around him, those brown eyes of his assessing the cold stone buildings of Ashk’lan with a shrewd gaze that had reminded Kaden of Edur Uriarte, his father’s Minister of Finance. When that gaze landed on him, however, the new boy stiffened, as though pricked by the point of an invisible dagger.

  “Who’s he?” Akiil had asked Panno suspiciously, his vowels long and broad, almost incomprehensible to Kaden, who had grown up around the mellifluous, aristocratic accent of the imperial court.

  “His name is Kaden,” Panno replied. “He is also a novice.”

  Akiil had shaken his head. “I know them eyes. He’s some kind of prince or lord or something. Nobody told me there’d be no princes or lords here.” He spat the titles venomously, as though they were curses.

  Panno had laid a calm hand on his shoulder. “That’s because there are no princes or lords here. Only Shin. Kaden may have come from the Malkeenian line and one day he may return to it, but now, here, he is a novice, just like you.”

  Akiil measured Panno with his eyes, as though testing the truth of his words. “Meaning he don’t get to boss me around none?”

  Kaden had bristled at the suggestion. He wanted to object that he didn’t boss people around even when he wasn’t in a monastery, but Panno replied before he could fashion a retort.

  “Here he is learning to obey, not to command.” He turned to Kaden, as if by way of illustration. “Kaden, please run down to the White Pool and fetch some cold fresh water for our brothers. They have walked a good distance since dawn, and must be thirsty.” Kaden had scowled at the injustice of the command, and Akiil, seeing the scowl, smiled his wide, dirty smile. It was not an auspicious start to their friendship.

  After eight years, however, an unlikely camaraderie had grown up between the son of the Emperor and the thief from the Perfumed Quarter. As Blerim Panno had promised, the Shin ignored all differences in rank and rearing, and over time it became possible to forget that the parents Akiil had never known were hanged by the law of Kaden’s father, that someday, if they went back to their former lives, Akiil might be put to death at the order of a scroll carrying Kaden’s own sigil.

  “Anyway,” Akiil continued, stretching his neck and rubbing a sore forearm, “your sob stories are a heap of pickled pig shit. I don’t see Tan hounding you now.”

  “The benefits of group labor,” Kaden replied, passing the next crate of tiles to his friend. “As long as I’m stuck doing monastery work, Tan lets me off from my training.”

  “Well,” Akiil said, shoving the load toward Pater and sitting down on the roof with a contented sigh. “I guess we want to stretch this job out as long as we can.”

  Kaden looked down into the courtyard. Late afternoon sun illuminated the stone buildings and stunted trees, warm in spite of the patches of dirty snow squirreled away in the corners. A few monks trod the gravel paths, their heads bowed in contemplation, and a pair of stray goats cropped the meager spring shoots in the shadow of the meditation hall, but Scial Nin, who had assigned them to the roofing project, was nowhere to be seen.

  “That’s the last of them,” Phirum shouted up from below. “You want me to come up?”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Akiil shouted back. “We’re almost done.”

  “We are?” Kaden asked, eyeing the remaining crates skeptically, then glancing back down into the courtyard. The Shin provided severe penance for shirkers, although Akiil never seemed to learn that lesson, and Pater was picking up on the older youth’s bad habits.

  “Quit looking over your shoulder,” Akiil said, settling back against the dark tiles. “No one’s going to come hunting for us up here.”

  “You confident enough about that to risk a whipping?”

  “Of course!” the youth replied, lacing his fingers behind his head and closing his eyes. “It was one of the first things I learned back in the Quarter—people never look up.”

  Pater scampered down from the crest of the roof, the bundle of tiles forgotten. “Is that Thieves’ Wisdom?” he demanded. “Is it, Akiil?”

  Kaden groaned. “Pater, I’ve told you before that ‘Thieves’ Wisdom’ is just a fancy name Akiil gives to his pronouncements. Which are usually wrong, by the way.”

  Akiil fixed Kaden with a glare through one half-open eye. “It is Thieves’ Wisdom, Pater. Kaden has just never heard of it because he spent his young life being pampered in a palace. Be thankful you have someone here who is willing to look after your education. Besides,” he added, rushing on before Kaden could protest, “Tan’s been keeping Kaden so busy, we haven’t had a chance to talk to him about the goat he lost.”

  Akiil’s words brought the saama’an of the slaughtered goat unbidden to Kaden’s mind, and with it the chill, creeping fear pricking the skin between his shoulder blades. It was sloppy thinking, letting someone else’s words dictate the contents of his thought, and he dismissed both the image and the emotion. Still, the afternoon sun was warm, the breeze carried the sharp scent of the junipers, and it wouldn’t hurt to rest for just a few minutes before searching out his umial once more. After a final glance out over the monastery, he settled down onto the tiles beside his friends.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  “You tell me,” Akiil responded, rolling onto one elbow. “I know the goat was slaughtered. I know you didn’t find any tracks—”

  “And the brain,” Pater burst in. “Something ate the brain.”

  Kaden nodded. He’d been over the events more times than he cared to admit, but couldn’t add much more to the scene. “That’s about it.”

  “A leach,” Pater said, shoving between the two youths to gesture with a small but insistent hand. “A leach could have done it!”

  Akiil dismissed the absurd suggestion with a lazy wave. “Pater, what would a leach be doing wandering around the Bone Mountains at the ass end of winter?”

  “Maybe he’s in hiding. Maybe his neighbors discovered what he was and he had to run away in the night. Maybe he put a kenning on someone,” the boy went on, his expression rapt. “Something really evil, and—”

  Akiil chuckled. “And then he came up here to kill a few goats?”

  “They do things like that,” the boy insisted. “Eat brains and drink blood and stuff.”

  Kaden shook his head. “They do not, Pater. They’re men and women, just the way we are, only … twisted somehow.”

  “They’re evil!” the small boy exclaimed. “That’s why they have to get hanged or beheaded.”

  “They are evil,” Kaden agreed. “And we do have to hang them. But not because they drink blood.”

  “They might drink blood,” Akiil suggested unhelpfully, knuckling Pater in the ribs to goad him on.

  Again, Kaden shook his head. “We have to hang leaches because they have too much power. No one should be able to twist the fabric of reality to their own ends.” Hundreds of years earlier, the Atmani leach-lords had gone insane and nearly destroyed the world. Whenever Kaden wondered if leaches deserved the loathing and opprobrium heaped upon them, he had only to remember his history. “Only the gods should have that kind of power.”

  “Too much power!” Akiil crowed. “Too much power! And this from the person who’s going to be the ’Kent-kissing Annurian Emperor someday.”

  Kaden snorted. “According to Tan, I don’t have enough wit in my head to make it as a simple monk.”

  “You don’t have to make it as a monk. You’re going to rule half the known world.”

  “Maybe,” Kaden responded, doubtfully. Th
e Dawn Palace and the Unhewn Throne felt impossibly far away, a hazily remembered dream from his childhood. For all he knew, his father would rule another thirty years, years Kaden would spend at Ashk’lan hauling water, retiling roofs, and, oh yes, getting beaten by his umial. “I don’t mind the work and the whippings when I feel like it’s all part of some bigger plan. Tan, though … I might as well be some sort of insect, for all he cares.”

  “You should be happy,” Akiil responded, rolling onto his back and staring up at the scudding clouds. “I’ve worked my ass off my whole life precisely in order to keep the expectations for me low. Low expectations are the key to success.” He started to turn to Pater, but Kaden cut him off.

  “That is not more Thieves’ Wisdom,” he said to the boy. Then, turning back to Akiil, “You know what Tan’s had me doing for the past week? Counting. Counting all the stones in all the buildings at Ashk’lan.”

  “That’s what you’re complaining about?” Akiil demanded, stabbing a finger at him. “I was getting harder tasks when I was ten.”

  Kaden rolled his eyes. “You always were precocious.”

  “No need to show off the big words. Not all of us grew up with a Manjari tutor.”

  “Aren’t you the one who claims the only schooling a man needs he can get from a butcher, a sailor, and a whore?”

  Akiil shrugged. “The butcher and the sailor are optional.”

  Pater had been trying to follow the exchange, head swiveling back and forth with the conversation.

  “What’s a whore?” he asked. Then, distracted by his earlier reasoning, “If a leach didn’t kill the goat, what did?”

  Kaden saw it all again, the shattered skull, scooped clean.

  “I told you, I don’t know.” He looked out across the courtyard, past the stone buildings and the granite ledges to where the sun was sinking toward the endless grasslands of the steppe. “But it’s going to be dark soon, and if I don’t get cleaned up and find Tan before dinner, I’m going to find myself envying that goat.”

  * * *

  Umber’s Pool wasn’t a proper pool so much as a pocket of rocks half a mile from the monastery where the White River paused, gathering itself in deep, still silence before spilling over a shelf in a dizzying waterfall, tumbling hundreds of feet into a deep ravine before snaking lazily into the steppe far below. After a childhood spent bathing in copper tubs filled with steaming water by the palace servants, Kaden had been shocked to realize that any washing at Ashk’lan would take place outside, in Umber’s. Over the years, however, he had grown accustomed to it. The water was viciously cold, even in summer; anyone stoic enough to brave it in the winter had to hack a hole in the ice with the rusty, long-handled axe that was left between the rocks for just that purpose. Still, after a long day lugging tile beneath the glare of the mountain sun, the water would feel good.

  He lingered before entering the pool. It was nice to have a few moments to himself, away from Tan’s discipline, away from Pater’s questions and Akiil’s goading. He stooped to scoop up a clear handful of water, then straightened, allowing the icy drink to trickle down the back of his throat while he peered down the vertiginous trail that descended to the foothills and steppe below.

  He had last walked that trail eight years ago, craning his skinny neck for a glimpse of his new home, a home that seemed to be perched in mountains so high that their peaks etched the clouds. He had been frightened; frightened of this cold, stone place, and frightened to show his fear.

  “Why?” he had pleaded with his father before leaving Annur. “Why can’t you teach me about ruling the empire?” Sanlitun’s stern face softened as he replied. “Someday I will, Kaden. I will teach you, as my father taught me, to tell justice from cruelty, boldness from folly, friends from fawning sycophants. When you return, I will teach you to make the hard decisions through which a boy becomes a man. But there are other lessons you must learn first, lessons of the greatest importance, and these I cannot teach you. These, you must learn from the Shin.”

  “But why?” Kaden had begged. “They don’t rule an empire. They don’t even rule a kingdom. They rule nothing!”

  His father smiled cryptically, as though the boy had made some kind of clever joke. Then the smile was gone and he was taking his son’s wrist in the strong handshake men called the soldier’s clasp. Kaden did his best to return the gesture, although his fingers were too small to gain any real purchase around his father’s muscled forearm.

  “Ten years,” the man said, exchanging the face of a parent for that of the Emperor. “It is not long, in the life of a man.”

  Eight years gone, Kaden thought as he leaned back against the sloping boulder. Eight years gone, and the things he’d learned were as few as they were useless. He could craft pots, cups, urns, vases, and mugs from the clay of the river shallows, and he could sit still as a stone or run uphill for hours on end. He could mind goats. He could draw any plant, animal, or bird perfectly from memory—at least as long as someone wasn’t beating him bloody, he amended wryly. Although he had grown fond of Ashk’lan, he couldn’t stay there forever, and his accomplishments seemed a sad showing for eight years, nothing that would help him to run an empire. And now Tan had him counting rocks. I hope Valyn’s making better use of his time, he thought. I’ll bet he’s passing his tests, at the very least.

  The thought of tests conjured up the pain in his back where the willow switch had broken open his flesh. Better to wash them out now, he thought, eyeing the cold water. Won’t do any good to let them fester. He pulled his robe over his head, wincing as the rough fabric scraped over the bloody gashes, and tossed it in a rough heap. The pool wasn’t deep or wide enough to accommodate a dive, but at the upstream end one could step off a narrow ledge and drop in to the chest all at once. It was easier that way—like ripping off a scab. Kaden took three breaths, stilling his heartbeat and calming himself for the shock, then plunged.

  As usual, the icy chill stabbed into him like a knife. He’d been bathing in the pool since he was ten, however, and had long ago learned to shepherd his body’s heat. He forced himself to take a deep, calm breath; hold it; then drive the meager warmth out through his trembling limbs. It was a trick the monks had. Scial Nin, the abbot, could spend whole hours sitting quietly in the winter snow, his shoulders bare to the elements, flakes dissolving in little puffs of steam when they struck his skin. Kaden couldn’t manage that yet, but he could keep himself from biting his tongue in two as he reached over his shoulders to wash the dried blood out of the gashes. After a minute of vigorous scrubbing, he turned to the bank. Before he could hoist himself out, however, a voice broke the stillness.

  “Stay in the water.”

  Kaden froze and sucked in his breath. Rampuri Tan. He turned, searching for his umial, only to find the man seated in the shadow of an overhanging flake of granite just a few paces away, legs crossed, back erect. Tan looked like a statue hewn from the mountain itself rather than a figure of flesh and blood. He must have been sitting there the whole time, observing, judging.

  “No wonder you can’t paint,” Tan said. “You’re blind.”

  Kaden clamped his teeth together grimly, forced down the creeping cold, and kept silent.

  Tan didn’t move. He looked, in fact, as though he might never move, but he scrutinized Kaden with the attention one might bring to a vexing problem on the stones board.

  “Why didn’t you see me?” he asked finally.

  “You blended with the rocks.”

  “Blended,” Tan chuckled. The sound held none of Heng’s mirth. “I blended with the rocks. I wonder what that might mean.” He glanced up toward the darkening sky, as though the answer were scrawled in the flight of the peregrines wheeling far above. “A man blends water with tea. A baker blends flour with egg. But blending flesh with stone?” He shook his head as though the concept were beyond him.

  Kaden had started to tremble beneath the icy water. The heat he had built up hauling tiles all afternoon was little more than a
memory now, swept over the ledge with the chill current.

  “Do you know why you are here?” the monk asked after an interminable pause.

  “To learn discipline,” Kaden replied, trying not to catch his tongue between his chattering teeth. “Obedience.”

  Tan shrugged. “Important, both of them, but you could learn discipline and obedience from a farmer, a bricklayer. The Shin can teach you more.”

  “Concentration,” Kaden managed.

  “Concentration? What does the Blank God want with your concentration? What does it matter to him if an acolyte in a dim stone building is able to recall the shape of a leaf?” Tan spread his hands as though waiting for Kaden’s response, then continued. “Your concentration is an affront to your god. Your presence, your self, is an affront to your god.”

  “But the training—”

  “—is a tool. A hammer is not a house. A knife is not death. You muddle the method with the goal.”

  “The vaniate,” Kaden said, trying desperately to control his shivering.

  “The vaniate,” Tan agreed, repeating the strange syllables as though he were tasting them. “Do you know what it means?”

  “Emptiness,” Kaden stammered. “Nothingness.”

  Everything the monks studied, all the exercises the umials set their pupils, the endless hours painting, and running, and digging, and fasting, were aimed at that one constant goal: the emptiness of the vaniate. Two years earlier, in a frustrated moment, Kaden had been foolish enough to question the value of that emptiness. Heng had laughed out loud at the challenge, and then, smiling genially, replaced his pupil’s bowl and mug with two stones. Each day Kaden stood in the refectory line only to have the monk serving the food ladle his soup over the shapeless lump of granite. Sometimes a chunk of lamb or carrot balanced miraculously on top. More often, he was forced to watch in famished agony as the thick broth ran off the stone and back into the serving pot. When the monks filled their own mugs with deep drafts of cold water, Kaden could only splash the stone and then lick it off, the quartz rough against his tongue.