Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades

by Brian Staveley

  “Demolitions,” Valyn replied, nodding.

  “One of them ought to be able to tell you if Manker’s was rigged.”

  Valyn considered the idea. “It would mean tipping my hand. I’d have to let on I was suspicious.”

  “Is that so bad? Might make whoever’s trying to kill you think twice.”

  “I don’t want them to think twice,” Valyn said, rolling his eyes. “I want them to think once and, if at all possible, drunkenly.”

  “Point is, it’s not likely to make anything worse.”

  That seemed like the truth. Valyn stared down at the neat grid of buildings below—storehouses and mess hall, bunkrooms and command center. Which one of them would come down on him next? Which was harboring the traitor or traitors? He could wait, looking over his shoulder every other heartbeat, for the next attack, or he could do something. “Does seem like I’m at a pretty low ebb,” he admitted. “Who did you have in mind?”

  “I’ll give you two guesses,” Lin replied with a smirk, “but you’re only going to need one.”

  “Gwenna.” He sighed heavily. “Hull help us.”

  Lin didn’t seem pleased by the prospect either, but before she could respond, a dark shadow passed overhead, silent and swift. Valyn looked up to find a kettral, wings spread wide, swooping in for a drop on the field below.

  “Bird in,” Lin said, tracing the backflight over the island, toward the low bluffs to the northwest. “Looks like it’s coming from…”

  “Annur,” Valyn concluded. “Fane’s back.”

  * * *

  The Kettral mess hall, a low, one-story building packed with benches and long wooden tables, was a far cry from Manker’s, or any of the Hook alehouses. For one thing, it didn’t serve ale—if you wanted a drink stiffer than black tea, you had to cross the sound. For another, there were no whores, no civilians of any kind, just Kettral, same as everywhere else on Qarsh—men and women loading up on hard tack and dried fruit before flying out on a mission, or shoveling down a bowl of hot stew after they returned. The slaves in the kitchen worked all day and all night as well—soldiers needed food at odd hours. Usually everyone was so intent on their meals that any conversation was low and intermittent. When Valyn and Lin burst through the door, however, the place might as well have been a tavern, and doing good business at that.

  It seemed as though half of Qarsh was shoved into the hall, packed in so tight around the tables, Valyn wondered if he’d been the last one to notice the bird winging in from the north. People clustered in small knots—a couple of Wings here, a few cadets there—but everyone was talking all at the same time.

  Somewhere in the press he lost Lin, but Valyn had eyes only for the man in the far corner of the room. Adaman Fane sat near the door to the kitchens. He looked more intent on tearing apart a side of beef than he did on talking, but Valyn could see that, in between bites, he was responding to the questions of the veterans seated around him. It was a hard group—Gird the Axe, Plenchen Zee, Werren of Raalte—and Valyn hesitated before shoving into the inner circle, impatient though he was.

  “Hold on, Val,” someone said, catching his sleeve. “I wouldn’t break into that little chat unless you want a busted head.”

  Valyn turned to find Laith, an easy smile on his face, gesturing back the way he had just come. The flier was a hand shorter than Valyn, and lean to go with it, but he had a loose, casual swagger and quick tongue that earned him a role in any conversation and made him seem larger than he really was. Most of the cadets on the Islands were a little cocky—you had to have a high opinion of yourself to think you could make a place for yourself among the most deadly women and men in the empire. Laith, despite the fact that he was a cadet just like Valyn, took self-confidence to a new level. He pushed his bird faster than some of the veteran fliers, executed maneuvers that made Valyn’s stomach twist just watching from the ground, and never failed to brag about it all when he was finished. He infuriated half the trainers and amused the other half, who insisted he’d be dead before he even reached the Trial. For all his bravado, however, he was cheerful and easygoing—more than could be said for some of the other cadets—and he and Valyn were on pleasant terms.

  “Come on,” he said, catching Valyn around the shoulders to steer him away from the press. “We’ve got a table over in the corner.”

  “Fane’s got news of my father.”

  “And you’ve got a strong grip on the obvious,” Laith replied, “along with eight dozen other people here. The man’s been flying all night and the better part of a day. He’s not going to want to talk to you.”

  “I don’t care what he wants…,” Valyn began, but then he saw Lin gesturing from across the room. She was at the table Laith had indicated, along with a few other cadets.

  “Come on,” Laith said again, not unkindly. “We’ve been here over an hour. We’ll fill you in.”

  The five of them crunched into the low benches, Laith and Ha Lin, Gent, Talal, and a quiet youth named Ferron, whom no one thought would pass the Trial. The unexpected arrival of Fane had scrubbed the weariness from Valyn’s mind, and he shouldered in among the group impatiently.

  “So?” he asked, scanning the faces for some clue.

  “Clergy,” Gent replied abruptly. “Some ’Kent-kissing priest scraping for a little more power.”

  “Uinian the Fourth,” Laith added, making room for Valyn on the bench. “I doubt that any future priests, if there are any future priests, will be too eager to style themselves Uinian the Fifth.”

  “Priest of what?” Valyn asked, shaking his head in disbelief. Killed in battle, he could have believed, or slain at the hand of a foreign assassin, but for Sanlitun to be murdered by some pasty prelate?

  “Intarra,” Laith replied.

  Valyn nodded dumbly. Not even one of the Skullsworn. “How?”

  “The old-fashioned way,” Gent said. Then, miming the action, “Quick knife to the back.”

  “Gent,” Talal interjected quietly, nodding over at Valyn.

  “What?” Gent demanded. Then the realization set in. “Oh, I’m sorry, Val. As usual, I’m about as graceful as a bull’s swollen cock.”

  “Considerably less so,” Laith said, clapping a hand on Valyn’s shoulder in sympathy. “The point is, looks like the whole thing was pretty simple. Overweening pride. Greed for power. The usual horrible day-to-day bullshit.”

  Valyn exchanged a quick glance with Lin. One disgruntled priest with a knife didn’t sound much like a grand conspiracy, but then, the Church of Intarra was one of the largest in the empire. If Uinian was part of a larger plot, who knew where it might lead?

  “How’d he get close enough?” Valyn asked. “My father had half a dozen Aedolians around him anytime he was outside his personal chambers.”

  “Sounds like he picked the wrong half dozen,” Laith replied, spreading his hands.

  “Mistakes do happen,” Lin added. “We heard something about your father maybe leaving his guard behind.”

  Valyn tried to square the suggestion with what he remembered of his childhood, but the idea of his father abandoning his guard made less than no sense.

  “Command still seems pretty stirred up,” Talal said, absently fingering one of the iron bracelets on his arm. “There’ve been Wings coming and going day and night since we learned about the murder. Maybe someone thinks there’s more to it.” It was just like the leach to be thoughtful, deliberate, reserved in his judgment. Leaches learned early to keep their own secrets close; they learned or they ended up dangling by the neck from a rope. Talal was no exception, and approached the world more warily than Laith or Gent.

  “What more do you need?” Gent asked with a shrug. “Uinian will face trial and then he’ll die.”

  “It’s like Hendran says,” Laith agreed, “‘Death is a great clarifier.’”

  “And my sister?” Valyn asked. “She’s all right? Who’s running the empire now?”

  “Slow down,” Laith replied. “Slow down. Adare�
��s fine. She’s been raised to the head of the Finance Ministry. Ran il Tornja was appointed regent.”

  “And a good thing, too,” Gent added. “Can you imagine some bureaucrat trying to keep the military in order?”

  Valyn shook his head. His father’s death had clarified nothing, and this further information about Uinian and his priesthood, a kenarang appointed to the regency, about impending trials, only muddied the matter.

  All of a sudden the room seemed too small. The press of people, the noise, the stench of grilling meat and lard turned Valyn’s stomach and made his mind spin. The other cadets were just trying to help, just giving him the information he’d asked for, but there was something about the casual way they discussed his father’s death that made him want to hit someone.

  “Thanks,” Valyn said, struggling up from his seat. “Thanks for the news. I’ve only got an hour to crash before second bell—I’d better make use of it.”

  “You trying to starve yourself?” Gent demanded, shoving a bowl of clotted curds across the table.

  “I’m not hungry,” he replied, shouldering his way toward the door.

  He didn’t notice until he was outside and halfway to his barracks that Ha Lin had followed him. He wasn’t sure whether he was frustrated or glad.

  “That must have been tough in there,” she said quietly, catching up in a few quick steps and falling in next to him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault. Not anyone’s fault. Death is normal. Isn’t that what they’ve spent the last eight years teaching us? Ananshael comes for us all.”

  “Death is normal,” she agreed. “Murder is not.”

  Valyn forced himself to shrug. “Lots of ways to die—gangrene, old age, a knife in the back—it all lands you in the same place.”

  10

  The demolitions shed was just that: a shed tacked up from scrap lumber with a roof that looked like it wouldn’t keep out a decent rain. There wasn’t much point in building something more substantial, considering the place was blown up or burned down about every other year. Valyn approached with some trepidation. He’d spent a training rotation here, learning to craft and deploy the powerful munitions—starshatters, flickwicks, moles, lances—to which only the Kettral had access, but the place made most people a little uneasy. The low basin in which it was set looked like some sort of shattered desert, or the floor of a parched lake: a few charred remnants of plants stuck up from the broken soil, limestone chunks blasted from their bed bleached silently in the baking sun, while the sharp smell of nitre hung over everything. Aside from those cadets and Kettral whose training focused on demolitions, most people tended to avoid the entire area.

  Valyn glanced over at Ha Lin, shrugged, then pushed open the rickety door. It groaned on its hinges as he stepped inside. The interior was dim but not dark. Daylight poured through cracks in the walls in a dozen places, and the thin sailcloth covering the windows admitted even more illumination. A row of battered workbenches ran down the center of the room, cleared off in some places, piled high with tools and instruments in others: alembics, retorts, vials, and tightly stoppered jars. As usual with the Kettral, nothing was standardized; the demolitions master for each Wing crafted his or her own munitions to fit his or her own needs and desires. There were basic recipes, of course, but most of them preferred to improvise, innovate, tinker. Valyn had seen starshatters that exploded in violet flame and moles that could rip a hole the size of a barn foundation out of the rock. Of course, such experimentation was not without risk.

  During his own rotation in the shed, Valyn had watched a younger cadet, Halter Fremmen, light what looked like an innocuous candle. An errant gust of wind tugged at the flame until it caught the boy’s blacks, burning quickly through the fabric and then biting into his skin. Several of Halter’s friends had dragged him to one of the massive wooden tubs standing close by and forced him down into the water, but even beneath the surface, the flame continued to eat at the boy’s flesh with a bright, savage glow. Valyn had stood transfixed. He was trained to respond quickly and decisively to emergencies, but this … No one had spoken a word to him about how to handle a flame that could not be quenched. In the end, Newt, the demolitions master everyone called the Aphorist, had dragged the screaming boy outside and buried him in the sand. The sand extinguished the unnatural blaze, but not before it had taken the skin off half Halter’s body and melted one of his eyes in his face. He died three days later.

  At first Valyn thought the shed was empty, but then he noticed Gwenna down at the far end, red hair obscuring her face, leaning over stock-still as she inserted something into a long tube with what looked like a pair of very narrow tongs. She didn’t greet them or look up. Not that he had expected her to, really. He hadn’t spoken to her since the day he learned of his father’s death, since the day she had practically bitten his head off about his unbuckled harness, and he had no idea if she still harbored the grudge. Knowing Gwenna, she probably did.

  It wasn’t that Gwenna Sharpe was a bad soldier. In fact, she probably knew more about demolitions than any other cadet on the Islands. The problem was her temper. From time to time, one of the swaggering gallants over on Hook would find himself tempted by the bright green eyes and flaming red hair, by the supple, curvaceous body that she did her best to hide under her Kettral blacks. It never turned out well for him; Gwenna had tied her last would-be suitor to a dock piling and left him there for the tide. When his friends finally found him, he was sobbing like a baby as the waves washed over his face. Even Gwenna’s trainers joked that with a temper like that, she didn’t need any ’Kent-kissing munitions.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Valyn began as he reached the end of the table opposite Gwenna.

  “Then don’t,” she replied, her eyes fixed on her work as she slid the slender tongs down the inside of the hollow cylinder. He stifled a sharp retort, clasped his hands behind his back, and schooled himself to patience. He wasn’t sure Gwenna would agree to help in the first place, and he didn’t want to make it any more difficult by irritating her right off the mark. Instead, he focused on the object of her attention, something that looked like a modified starshatter.

  The tube was hollowed-out steel, twice the width of his thumb. Coated around the inside was some pitchlike substance he didn’t recognize. Gwenna withdrew the tongs, picked up a small shard of stone, and started to insert it. Ha Lin gasped.

  “Don’t. Do. That,” Gwenna said, pausing, then sliding the tongs deeper.

  “That’s claranth, isn’t it?” Lin asked, her voice tight. “Claranth and nitre?”

  “Sure is,” Gwenna replied curtly.

  Valyn stared. One of the first things that the Aphorist had taught his class of cadets was to always, always, always keep the two separate. “We like explosions here,” the man had joked, “but we like to control those explosions.” Unless Valyn had badly misunderstood something, if Gwenna so much as touched the content of the tongs to the side of the tube, someone would be sorting body parts out of the rubble. He started to reply, then thought better of it and held his breath instead.

  “This is why,” Gwenna grated, sliding the tongs deeper, releasing the stone, then withdrawing them with a smooth, measured motion, “you shouldn’t interrupt.”

  “Is it done?” Lin asked.

  Gwenna snorted. “No, it’s not done. If I move it by half an inch, it’ll take the roof off this shed. Now, stop talking.”

  Lin stopped talking, and the two of them watched in tense fascination as Gwenna reached for a vial of bubbling wax, grasped it with two gloved fingers, and upended it into the tube. There was a faint hissing, a whiff of acrid steam, and then a long pause.

  “There,” Gwenna said finally, laying the tube down on the workbench and straightening up. “Now it’s done.”

  “What is it?” Valyn asked, eyeing the thing warily.

  “Starshatter,” she replied with a shrug.

  “Doesn’t look like a normal starshatter.”

  “I didn’t
realize you’d become a demolitions master when I wasn’t around.”

  Valyn bit his tongue. He was here to ask Gwenna for a favor, after all. Lin, remarkably, had kept her mouth shut, and if she could be civil, so could Valyn. “Isn’t it a little bit longer and thinner than the normal tube?” he asked, trying to sound interested.

  “Marginally,” Gwenna said, scrutinizing the weapon, then scratching away an errant drop of wax with her fingernail.

  “Why?”

  “Bigger. Louder. Hotter.” She was trying to sound casual, but there was something in her voice, something Valyn had not expected to hear. It took him a moment to place it: pride. Gwenna was often so venomous, so closed off, that it was hard for him to imagine her feeling anything but rage or bile. The sudden revelation that she might actually take joy in some aspect of the world disarmed him, but just as he was starting to reassess his opinion of her, she rounded on him with a scowl. “You going to tell me what you want, or what?”

  Now that it had come down to it, Valyn felt strangely hesitant. His fears, which Lin had done her best to fan, seemed bizarre and paranoid when he had to state them aloud.

  Gwenna spread her hands impatiently.

  “I assume you heard about Manker’s,” Valyn began tentatively. “The tavern over on Hook?”

  “I know what Manker’s is,” Gwenna snapped. “I’ve given that bastard about half my pay for the watered-down swill he calls ale.”

  “Well, then I assume you know it collapsed,” Valyn replied, trying to keep his own temper in check. “I was there, drinking, and it collapsed just after I stepped out the door.”

  “How lucky for you.”

  “Most of the people inside were killed. Crushed.”

  “How sad for them.”

  Lin pushed past Valyn, her own patience evidently nearing its end. “It might not have been an accident.”

  That gave Gwenna pause. Her eyes flicked from Valyn to Lin, then back. He waited for her to laugh, to make some crack about the self-involved son of the Emperor thinking the whole world turned around him. Everyone else on the Islands needled him about his birth, even his friends, and Gwenna had never been one of his friends. She didn’t laugh.