Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades

by Brian Staveley

  A slight flicker in the draft brought him up short. There was something toppled across the tunnel, he realized, something impeding the natural flow of air. He knelt carefully and reached out. So close to the end, so close to victory, he didn’t want to break his arm crashing over a pile of rubble. He imagined Lin grinning at him, and Laith, and Gent. Shit, after what he’d been through, he’d even be happy to see Gwenna. Surely they’d made it through as well. Surely they’d found a way to survive.

  His fingers came up against something soft, something giving. Cloth, he realized, running his hand along it. Then, with growing unease: A body.

  In a few moments he’d found the neck and fitted his fingers to the artery. The skin was cold and clammy. No pulse. Fear mounting inside him, Valyn found the mouth, put his cheek right to the lips and waited, his heart thudding. He could feel the main draft from the sea on his skin, could feel the faint crosscurrent from a fork in the passage a dozen paces ahead, but from the lips, nothing.

  “Shit,” he swore, scrambling over the body, trying to get into a position where he could press an ear to the heart. “’Shael take it!”

  But Ananshael had been there already, he realized with a wash of cold sorrow. While he’d been struggling for his life in the catacombs below, the Lord of Bones had come and carried off the soul of one of the other cadets, here, so close to the surface. It seemed cruel beyond cruel, but then, neither Ananshael nor Hull promised kindness, not even to their adherents.

  With tender, trembling hands, he felt along the body, trying to coax a name from the sprawl of limbs, from the texture of the skin. The blacks were the same, of course, everyone wore blacks, but the body beneath the fabric was a woman’s. Annick? Gwenna? The cloth was rent in dozens of places and sodden with blood. She had died fighting, whoever she was. She had died fighting hard. He felt for the head. Gwenna’s hair was curly, but the hair of the corpse was straight, fine. Black hair, he realized, though the darkness was absolute as ever. He had seen it a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, had seen it wet with salt water, had seen it tossed by the wind as they flew along strapped to a bird’s talons.

  He was crying, sobbing in great, silent gulps. He moved his fingers to her face, traced the soft curve of her cheek.

  “Hull have mercy,” he choked, pulling her to him, but Hull had no mercy. The gods of mercy would have offered meager trials.

  “I’m sorry,” he moaned, gathering her up in his arms. “I’m sorry, Lin. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  They told him later that when he emerged from the Hole, the first thing people noticed was Ha Lin’s body, limp and lifeless, sliced and bleeding, draped in his trembling arms. He was crying, they said, sobbing uncontrollably, his entire body shuddering with the tears. But the Kettral had seen death before; they had seen sorrow. It was his eyes that everyone remembered, eyes that had always been the dark brown of charred wood, but that somehow—fathoms beneath the earth and the ocean, buried in the Owl King’s own temple—had burned past char, past ash, past the blackest hue of pitch or tar until they were simple holes into darkness, perfect circles bored into the night itself.

  25

  “So, it didn’t go quite as we’d hoped,” il Tornja said, leaning back in the chair to prop his gleaming boots on the desk before him.

  Weeks had passed since Uinian’s trial, but the kenarang’s new duties had not afforded a chance to meet until now. Adare sat across the desk in what had been her father’s personal library, a high-ceilinged room ten floors up inside Intarra’s Spear. The space was as strange as it was spectacular—the transparent exterior wall, the very crystal of the Spear itself, giving an overview of the rest of the Dawn Palace—the Floating Hall; the twin towers, Yvonne’s and the Crane; the massive central courtyard leading to the Gods’ Gate, and beyond the gate, the Godsway, plunging like a great river into the chaos of the city beyond. It was a space in which a man might feel himself master of the world, aloof from the trials of mortals toiling in the shops and shipyards, alehouses and temples below.

  Adare felt anything but aloof.

  “It was a disaster,” she said flatly. “Worse than a disaster. Not only does Uinian go unpunished for my father’s murder, but the rumors of his miracle are probably halfway to the Bend by now.” The memory of the serried ranks of the Sons of Flame marching in Sanlitun’s funeral procession suddenly seemed more dangerous than ever. “Intarra has always been a popular goddess, Uinian has his own private army, and now, in a single day, he’s managed to command the awe and imagination of every citizen in Annur. Anlatun the Pious come again, people are calling him, never mind the fact that Anlatun was a Malkeenian.”

  “It was a pretty good trick,” the kenarang replied, pursing his lips.

  “That trick may have spelled the end of the Malkeenian line,” Adare snapped, amazed and irritated at the man’s nonchalance.

  Il Tornja made a casual flicking motion with his hand. “I wouldn’t go that far. There have been birds in and out from the Eyrie every week since Sanlitun’s murder, and they assure me that Valyn’s hale and whole.”

  “Valyn isn’t the heir.”

  “There’s no reason to suppose anything has befallen Kaden, either.”

  “There’s no reason to suppose it hasn’t. Ashk’lan is at the far end of the empire, practically in Anthera. Uinian might have sent someone to murder Kaden. Kaden could have fallen off a ’Kent-kissing cliff and we wouldn’t know about it. We haven’t heard a thing from the delegation sent to collect him.”

  “Travel takes time. Meanwhile, you’re here.”

  “I’m a woman, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Il Tornja glanced down at her chest, then raised his eyebrows provocatively. “So you are.”

  Adare colored, though whether the flush came from anger or embarrassment she couldn’t be sure.

  “The point is, I can’t sit the Unhewn Throne. You’re regent, but you’re not a Malkeenian. Uinian has an opening now, a gap in which he can assert himself as the inheritor to my family’s tradition.”

  “So kill him.”

  Adare opened her mouth, then shut it, unsure how to respond. Il Tornja said the words the way another man might suggest purchasing more plums. Life, of course, was cheaper on the frontiers, and he’d spent a career watching men die, his own and those of the enemy. Unfortunately, they were not on the frontier.

  “There are laws,” she replied, “legal codes to be followed.”

  “The same legal codes that worked so well for us during the trial?” he asked. “Legal codes are all well and good, but there’s a certain clarity to just lopping off a head. I don’t know about you, but I take that trial as a personal affront. That weasel of a priest won, which means I lost. And I don’t like losing.”

  “I can’t just go around killing people!”

  “You can’t?”

  “I’m the Minister of Finance, not the headsman.”

  “You’re the Emperor’s daughter. There’s five hundred Aedolians whose only job is to fight for you.”

  “Their job is to protect me.”

  “Tell them they can protect you by sticking Uinian full of steel.”

  She shook her head. He was missing the whole point. “The Malkeenians are not despots.”

  He laughed at that, a long merry laugh. “Of course you are. You’re just particularly good despots. You’re enlightened. You try to do what’s good for the people. All that sort of thing.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you’re still despots. Or tyrants. Do you prefer tyrants? The point is, no one chose you to rule over Annur.”

  “I don’t rule over Annur,” she protested, but the man waved her objection aside.

  “You’re the princess and a minister, your father’s daughter and your brother’s sister, and right now the only Malkeenian on the continent, let alone in the city.”

  “And yet the Council of Ministers chose you to be regent,” she replied, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.
<
br />   “And I’m deferring to you. That should tell you just how much power you have.” He dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward in his chair, nailing her to the spot with his eyes, fully engaged for the first time in the conversation. “You’re a remarkable woman, Adare. I’ve had the displeasure, as kenarang, to spend time with some of the men who like to think they hold Annur together, and I can tell you you’re smarter than the lot of them combined. You see situations clearly and quickly and you’re not afraid to speak your mind.” She colored at the unexpected praise, but he wasn’t finished. “The question is, are you able to act?

  “I’ve known a dozen men with good enough military minds to rise to my rank. They understood strategy. They could see their way out of impossible tactical positions. They knew the importance of the boring stuff: logistics, transport, and all the rest. Their weakness was their inability to act. There comes a time in every battle when the necessary course of action is clear, at least to someone who understands battle in the first place. What thwarts most men is the nagging doubts. What if I’m seeing it wrong? What if there’s something I haven’t considered? Maybe I should wait another minute, another hour.”

  He smiled, a hard predatory smile. “I fight against men like this all the time, and I kill them.”

  “Kill Uinian?” she said, trying to feel the full implications of the idea. The whole situation was overwhelming, not just the problem of Uinian, but il Tornja’s praise and criticism as well. No one had ever spoken to her like this, not even her father, who trusted enough in her judgment to raise her to the rank of Finance Minister. That post was more than she had expected from her life, and yet il Tornja, for all his criticism, spoke to her as though she had the potential for something more, something great.

  “Why not? He murdered your father, he flaunted your family, and he looks ready to make a major play for imperial power.”

  Adare considered this man who sat across from her. When they first met, she had thought him ostentatious and vain, a pompous fool who cared more for his wardrobe than for important affairs of state. She had been wrong; she could admit that to herself now. What was harder to admit was the fact that she wanted to impress him. It was a ridiculous thought, a girlish thought. But why not? she demanded of herself angrily. Here was a man who had risen to the highest military office, upon whose command hung the lives of hundreds of thousands, and who spoke to her not as a simpering girl or a sheltered princess, but as an equal. As she looked at him, she caught a glimpse of a pairing that might be—the princess who was a minister, the kenarang who became a regent—but she forced it down. The man eyed her calmly from across the table, his eyes deep as wells.

  “Why are you helping me?” she asked.

  “I’m helping the empire.”

  “That, too,” she acknowledged, “but you’re also helping me.”

  Il Tornja smiled, and this time the smile was warm, human. “Is it so wrong for a man to want to ally himself with a brilliant, beautiful woman? There is a thrill in campaigning, sure, but the bombast and endless posturing of military men grow old after a year or ten.”

  Adare dropped her eyes, tried unsuccessfully to slow her pulse. Uinian, she snapped at herself. You’re here to figure out how to deal with Uinian.

  “Killing the Chief Priest won’t be as easy as you make it out,” she said, forcing her mind to the matter at hand.

  Il Tornja watched her for a moment longer with that same intensity, then leaned back in his chair. Adare felt relief and longing at the same time as he moved away.

  “Men tend to die when you slide steel beneath their skin and wiggle it around. Even priests.”

  Adare shook her head. “He needs to die, you’ve convinced me of that, but you’re still thinking like a soldier. Soldiers may not blink when their comrades fall on the Urghul frontier, but Annur is not a battlefield. The empire has outlawed blood sacrifice. The entire city will sit up and take notice if someone murders Uinian, especially after the trial. The man was popular before.… Now, if anyone knows, if anyone suspects that I ordered the killing, there will be riots in the street.” She considered the matter for the first time from the perspective of the Chief Priest. “If I were Uinian, I’d be hoping we would try for something like this.”

  “So we’re back to caution and waiting for Kaden?” he asked.

  “No,” Adare replied firmly. “We’re thinking of a third path. Let’s go back to the trial. How did Uinian avoid burning?”

  “I hope you’re not going to tell me that he really is the consort of some mythical goddess.”

  Adare frowned. “You don’t believe in Intarra?”

  “Do you?” Il Tornja spread his hands. “I believe what I can see with my eyes and hear with my ears. Men have won and lost battles for a thousand reasons, but never because a god came down to take part in the fray.”

  “That’s not what the histories say. During the Csestriim wars—”

  “The Csestriim are a child’s tale, as are the gods. Think about the look on Uinian’s face going into the trial.”

  Adare nodded slowly. “He knew he was going to survive. He didn’t have a moment of doubt.”

  “And if you were counting on the favor of a goddess no one has seen or heard from in a thousand years, even if you thought she was going to bail you out, don’t you think you’d be at least a little nervous?”

  Adare stood up, her agitation demanding some form of physical expression. She paced to the far wall of the library, trying to sort and sift the facts and suspicions. Beyond the clear stone, the sun was setting over the city, and she could feel its rays warm on her cheeks and lips. When she turned, Ran was standing by her side, though she had not heard him approach.

  “He’s a leach,” she said. It was the only explanation.

  The kenarang considered the suggestion with pursed lips.

  “I’ve read all the histories,” Adare pressed on. “Linnae and Varren, even that endless commentary by Hengel. This is the sort of thing a leach can do, if his well is strong and close.”

  “It makes sense,” Ran agreed finally, nodding slowly at the idea. “If you could get the people to believe that, they would tear him apart themselves.”

  “But how?” Adare said, fingernails biting into her palms. “The people believe that Intarra loves him. How do you distinguish between divine favor and some leach’s kenning?”

  “It’s all kenning. There is no divine favor.”

  “You believe that, but they don’t. The man has become practically a hero overnight. We can’t kill him without disgracing him first, without revealing his secret in a way that no one can doubt or deny. When we’ve shown him for a liar and a leach, then it won’t even matter what we do. He’ll be finished.”

  “As you’ve already pointed out,” Ran replied, putting a hand on her shoulder as though to slow down the flood of her words, “Intarra’s rewards are irritatingly difficult to distinguish from a leach’s kenning.”

  “I know,” Adare said, biting her lip. “I know.”

  The sun had dipped under the horizon, bloodying the sky, but her cheeks still burned with the last rays or their own inner heat. There had to be a way. Her father would have seen it. If she could just come at the matter from the right angle, attack it from the proper direction. Every problem had a solution, if she could just …

  “Leave it,” Ran said, trying to guide her back toward the room. “Sleep on it. Sometimes the ideas come only when the mind is gone. You have to give them space.”

  Adare turned to stare at him, at that fine chiseled face, those deep eyes. There was something in what he’d said, something—

  “Yes,” she said, a thrill running through her, the shape of plan suggesting itself. “Yes! That’s exactly how we’ll do it.” She smiled wide. “But I’ll need someone good with poisons.”

  Ran frowned. “You just got done telling me that we can’t just kill him.”

  “Oh,” she said, hopeful for the first time since her father’s death, “I�
�m going to do so much more than just kill him.”

  And then, to the kenrang’s evident surprise, she leaned close to kiss him full and thoroughly on the mouth, the fire inside burning hotter still, and spreading.

  26

  Valyn rose early, bathed in the cold water from the sluice outside his barracks, shaved with his belt knife, then donned his best Kettral blacks. A stiffness had settled into his joints overnight, the rigid ache of muscles used past the limit of endurance, then left to tighten, and his legs protested as he limped between the buildings, past the mess hall, past command, across the great empty muster ground at the center of the compound, and up the trail toward the small rise overlooking the harbor. On a knoll a few hundred paces to the east, the spreading tenebral oak clawed at the sky with its gnarled limbs, but today the Kettral would pass by the shrine of their patron and pay homage to a different god. The soldiers referred to the stone ledge at the top of this small rise as Ananshael’s Table, and it was here that they commemorated their dead.

  Others joined Valyn as he went, all Kettral now, a small stream of black flowing uphill. Gent walked a few paces ahead, favoring his left leg heavily. Gwenna followed half a dozen yards behind, her right arm in a sling. No one spoke. After the strain of the Trial, the weight of words was too great, their purpose too feeble.

  For eight years, when Valyn had imagined this day, he had imagined celebration, laughter, backslapping, and, capping it all off, tankards upon tankards of beer over on Hook. This was the day they were finally Kettral; after eight years, this was the day they had proved themselves worthy successors to the line of iron men and women.