He fumbled with the simple knot for what seemed like minutes, uncomfortably aware of his knuckles pressing into the girl’s firm flesh and the eyes of the small dinner party on his back. He didn’t dare look at her face again, fixing his gaze instead on the tiny, intricate tattoo of a necklace that circled her neck.
“Go on,” Adiv urged. Even the man with that infernal blindfold could sense his awkwardness! Ae only knew what Tan and Nin were thinking. “She won’t thank you for keeping her standing much longer.”
Kaden’s face burned, and all the exercises he had studied over the past eight years to still the mind and slow the pulse fled. Pain was one thing, but this … this was something else altogether. He thought he might never be able to look Tan in the eye again. Finally the silk fell away.
He went to pull out her seat and found that one of the slaves had already done so. Awkwardly, he gestured for her to sit down. Adiv clapped his hands together again in good humor.
“I understand from his silence that the Emperor is not used to such … luscious gifts. You will soon become accustomed to the trifles that befit your exalted station, Your Radiance.”
Kaden risked a glance at the other guests. Micijah Ut sat ramrod straight in his chair, arms folded across his chest. The two monks watched Kaden with blank expressions. He looked away, turning to Triste in desperation, casting about in his mind for something to say. The normal monastic subjects of conversation, the things he had talked about day after day, night after night for years, seemed suddenly drab and pointless. This woman didn’t care about the level of snowmelt from the Triuri glacier or the sighting of a crag cat on the Circuit of Ravens. He tried to imagine his father or mother entertaining guests in the comfortable opulence of the Pearl Hall, their easy manner as the servants poured the wine and arranged the plates.
“Triste, where are you from?” he asked at last. The words had sounded all right in his head, but as soon as they were out of his mouth, he felt ridiculous. The question was at once pedestrian and awkward, the kind of thing you might ask a merchant or a sailor, not something you put to a beautiful woman moments after she had joined you at the table. Triste’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth to respond, but before she could speak, Adiv interceded.
“Where is she from?” The councillor seemed to find the question amusing. “Maybe she’ll tell you tonight, over the pillow. Now, however, it is time to eat.”
Triste closed her perfect lips and for a sliver of a moment Kaden saw something flash through her eyes. Terror, he thought at first, but it was not terror. Whatever it was felt harder, older. He wanted to look closer, but the girl had dropped her eyes, while at Adiv’s command the servants, who had left the table after everyone was seated, glided in through the side door, carrying delicate plates of artfully arranged food.
After setting up the refectory, the Mizran’s men had taken over the kitchen, going to work with a stock of ingredients carried all the way from the markets of Annur. Kaden couldn’t begin to recognize all the flavors and smells. There were battered locusts and duck with plum sauce, some kind of delicate cream soup that reminded him of summer in the south, and noodles mixed with sausage so hot, it made him sweat. Each course came with a different kind of bread or cracker, and between plates the servants produced tiny silver bowls filled with mint or lemon ice or essence of pine drizzled over rice to cleanse the palate.
Each plate arrived with an accompanying wine, delicate whites from the Freeport hinterland, and rich, heady reds from the plains just north of the Neck. Kaden tried to take only a sip or two of each, but he had spent years drinking only tea and water from the mountain streams, and he quickly found the alcohol dizzying. Triste, on the other hand, drained every glass the slaves set in front of her until Kaden worried she might be sick. After a while, Adiv directed the man to stop pouring for her with a curt motion of his hand.
When the whirlwind of the first few courses had finished, a silence settled over the table and Kaden took a deep breath, steadying himself to ask the question that had been tugging at his mind since the men first fell to their knees before him and recited the ancient formula, the question he had somehow forgotten to ask.
“Councillor,” he began slowly, then threw himself into it, “how did my father die?”
Adiv put his fork down, lifted his head, but did not speak. As the silence stretched, Kaden felt himself growing dizzy with a sort of vertigo, as though he stood at the lip of a great cliff and stared down countless fathoms at the surf pounding the rocks below. He dropped his eyes from Adiv’s face, focusing on the plate in front of him, and only then did the minister answer.
“Treachery,” he said at last, his voice edged with anger.
Kaden nodded, his eyes still fixed on the table in front of him, suddenly fascinated by the grain of the wood, its intricate twistings and unravelings. It had been possible, of course, that Sanlitun had choked on his food, or fallen from his horse, or simply died in his bed, but somehow Kaden had known—maybe it was Ut’s grim transformation, or the alacrity with which Adiv wanted the retinue to depart for Annur—he had known that his father did not die a natural death.
“A priest,” Adiv continued, “Intarra’s High Priest, in fact. Uinian the Fourth, he styles himself. We departed before his trial, but no doubt his head has been taken from his shoulders by now.”
Kaden picked up the pigeon wing before him then set it down again, untouched. He had a vague memory of Intarra’s splendid temple, but knew nothing of this priest.
“Why?” he managed after a long pause.
Adiv shrugged. “Who can know the heart of a murderer? Most likely he resented your family’s ancient connection to the goddess. The man was an upjumped peasant with delusions of his own importance. He preached openly that Annur should be guided, if not ruled outright, by priests rather than Emperors. Your father agreed to meet with him in secret, leaving the scum an opening for his treachery.”
Kaden’s head ached with the thought; he wanted to hide his face behind his hands. This was not a time, however, for boyish weakness. It occurred to him, in a bleak flash, that there might never again be a time for either boyishness or weakness.
“How did the empire take his death?”
“Uneasily,” Adiv replied. “As long as you remain away from the Unhewn Throne, there will be worry over the succession. Meanwhile, the Urghul take this opportunity to press our northeastern frontier.”
That last comment brought Ut into the conversation for the first time. “Nomadic waste,” he grated. “We will sweep them aside like chaff.”
“Annur is at war with the Urghul, then?” Nin asked, his brow furrowing.
“It comes,” Adiv replied. He spread his hands. “It is regrettable, but it comes. Something has stirred them up. Some chieftain or shaman who has begun to unify the tribes. There are tales of his power. He may be a leach.”
“Leaches die just like other men,” Ut interjected, his jaw set. “We will put the Urghul down as quickly as they rose.”
“You speak as though they will be easy to defeat,” Tan said. They were the first words Kaden’s umial had offered all night, and as he turned to face the Aedolian, Kaden was struck by the similarity between the two men, the similarity and the difference. Both were hard, but Ut’s was the hardness of worked metal, hammered and annealed to its purpose. Tan, on the other hand, reminded him of stone, of the emotionless, unyielding firmness of the cliffs and the peaks themselves.
“The Army of the North will deal with them quickly enough,” Ut replied.
Tan’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at the soldier thoughtfully. If he was intimidated by Ut’s bulk or manner, he didn’t show it. “I have met the Urghul,” the monk began. “The children are taught to ride before they can walk, and the most inept among them can hit a man in the heart with an arrow at fifty paces from the back of a galloping horse.”
Ut dismissed the objection with a snort and a wave of his hand. “Individually they are strong, but they have no discipli
ne. The Annurian soldier, on the other hand, is trained from the day he enlists to fight as part of a unit. He drills with the other men, eats with them, sleeps with them. If he takes a shit, his brother holds his spear. If he wants a woman, the others guard the door. You have not seen Annurian infantry take the field. They move, thousands of them, tens of thousands, as though controlled by a single hand. The Urghul,” he shrugged, “they are dogs. Vicious dogs, bloody dogs, but dogs.”
Adiv nodded regretfully. “Sanlitun, bright were the days of his life, never wanted to engage them. In fact, he planned to sign a treaty. There is nothing on the steppe to justify the expense of a major military expedition. The Urghul have no cities, no wealth, no arable land to tax. They are a nomadic, horse-herding rabble.”
“And yet, it is said the Emperor planned to move in force across the White River,” Scial Nin responded in his quiet voice.
The Aedolian looked at the abbot, a hard, searching look. “You are well informed here, on top of your mountain at the end of the world.”
Nin shrugged. “The Urghul are the closest group to us. When they are in their winter pasturage, they come to trade from time to time.”
Adiv’s voice was smooth as the silk he wore. “As I said, the empire would have preferred to leave these people alone. And yet, for the last ten years, they have persisted in attacking our border forts.”
“Forts you built on their side of the river,” Tan countered.
Adiv spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “More than Annurian forts are at issue. Their people are taken with some strange prophecy, the usual inanity about saviors rising and yokes being thrown off. Every conquered people has such stories and legends—the Annurians themselves did, during the tyranny of the Kreshkan kings. Normally such tales are harmless, but this new chief has galvanized the Urghul, breathed fresh life onto old tired coals, and suddenly they are mad for war.
“Unfortunately, they must be put down. This is rebellion—even if they are not a part of the empire—and rebellion encourages rebellion. Sporadic raids on the frontier a thousand leagues from Annur, we could tolerate. But what if Freeport is reminded of its ancient history and the Vested get it into their heads to look south of the Romsdal Mountains, to Aergad or Erensa? What if Basc decides the Iron Sea can protect it from Annurian navies once again? That would not do, not when we fight an ongoing war with the ever elusive Tsa’vein Karamalan and the jungle tribes of the Waist. No,” the councillor said, shaking his head, “resistance must be put down, even if we would prefer otherwise.” He turned to Kaden. “It is partly for this reason that we must make such haste to return you to Annur to take your father’s place on the Unhewn Throne.”
Kaden’s mind swam, partly with wine, partly with the staggering scope of the responsibility so recently laid in his lap. Tsa’vein Karamalan? The Vested? Half the things Adiv talked about he knew only from vague childhood stories, and the other half he didn’t know at all. It would take him months, years, to catch up, to learn the barest fraction of what he needed to govern the empire effectively.
“And now?” he asked. “Who has governed Annur since my father’s death? Who is taking care of my sister and of the needs of the empire?”
Adiv nodded as though he had been anticipating the questions. “Your sister needs no taking care of. She is a shrewd young woman, and your father’s last testament elevated her to the head of the Ministry of Finance. As for the governance of Annur, it falls to Ran il Tornja,” the councillor replied. Kaden shook his head. Another name he had never heard.
“Il Tornja had only just become the provincial commander of the garrison in Raalte when you left. That’s why his name is unfamiliar,” Adiv said. “I first met him when he was raised to Commander of the Army of the North, and then worked closely with him when your father raised him to kenarang and recalled him to Annur.”
Kenarang. It was an ancient title, dating all the way back to the golden age, when the Atmani ruled Eridroa from their capital far to the south, before they went mad and destroyed it all. The Annurians had borrowed some of the old Atmani terminology, hoping the hoary names and titles might lend their rule an air of antiquity that it had lacked when Terial hui’Malkeenian first cobbled together the empire out of the shambles of the republic using only his sword and the strength of his will. The kenarang was the highest military rank in the empire, overseeing the four field generals. It was strange, Kaden thought, that two men he had never known, Tarik Adiv and this Ran il Tornja, occupied the two highest posts below the Emperor himself.
“How did the provincial commander of Raalte come to be kenarang in less than eight years?” he asked. His mind was still aching, trying to make sense of it all, and he stared at his palms as though he might find some answer there.
“Micijah can answer that question better than I,” Adiv responded. “I have no more than a bureaucrat’s understanding of the military.”
At first Kaden thought Ut might not say anything at all. Then he shifted in his seat, the steel plates of his armor grinding against one another in a way that made Kaden wince.
“While soldiers from Nish to Channary played politics, il Tornja won battles, and important ones,” he said finally. “The Urghul dogs were getting restless, and it didn’t take long for Sanlitun, bright were the days of his life, to realize what he had in his provincial commander. He raised il Tornja to command the Army of the North, and only barely soon enough. A month after the appointment, the rabble came at us in waves, crossing the White River in force for the first time. The cohorts from Breata and Nish were still a thousand miles to the west, whimpering about defending us from an emboldened Freeport.” Ut’s mouth twisted in a snarl. “If your father had let me have my way, I would have put every captain’s head on a spike.” For a moment the large soldier was speechless, trapped inside his rage. After years with the monks, Kaden had almost forgotten just how disfiguring anger could be; Ut’s emotion was even uglier than he remembered. Finally the Aedolian spoke again, his voice tight and clipped.
“Raalte can’t field more than five thousand foot and no horse. Il Tornja’s company was tired and undermanned when the rabble came. Most generals would have crumbled, but the kenarang isn’t most generals. He split his force in four, four, and slaughtered them, nailed the head of every tenth Urghul—man or woman—to a post along the west bank of the river.” Ut chuckled grimly, as though satisfied with the memory. “The eastern tribes won’t trouble us again for some time.
“After the victory, your father named il Tornja kenarang. Even Ewart Falk couldn’t object. He had the good sense to kill himself, at least.”
It was by far the longest speech Kaden had heard from Ut since the Aedolian arrived in Ashk’lan.
“Ran il Tornja is a good man,” Adiv appended after a moment. “Your father trusted him and so should you. He is serving as regent presently and will look after your sister and your empire both until you arrive.”
Suddenly Kaden felt extremely weary, as though he had raced the Circuit of Ravens a dozen times with Pater on his back. Men he didn’t know were running his father’s empire—his empire now, he reminded himself—making decisions and giving orders he could only barely begin to understand. He had eight years of history and politics to catch up on in what would be a trip of little more than two months, and hundreds, maybe thousands of new names to learn: atreps and ministers, envoys and captains on the frontier. If Ut and Adiv were to be believed, the empire had come to a dire pass and, Intarra help him, it would be his hands on the reins as soon as he sat down on that cold stone throne.
He reached for the empty calm that the Shin had spent eight years trying to teach him, reached for the tranquillity that would allow him to see the world with clear eyes, to judge it truly. It eluded him. He could feel his heart thudding dully in his chest, could trace the thoughts chasing one another like feral cats in his mind, and for the moment, he could control none of it. Scial Nin had said he was close to reaching the vaniate, and yet, as he sat there, trying
to make sense of the past, trying to comprehend the future, he felt almost like that small lost boy who had left Annur for some unknown monastery in the mountains all those years ago.
40
“What,” Gwenna demanded, squaring up across the table from Annick, one hand on her belt knife, the other thrusting out an accusatory finger, “the fuck?”
The fact that she’d waited until the entire Wing was back in their bunkhouse with the door firmly closed was something of a minor miracle, and Valyn had little hope of controlling the outburst now. In fact, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. After weeks of lurking, pondering, guessing, and second-guessing, he just wanted the ’Kent-kissing truth. If Annick really had murdered Amie, then she was almost certainly implicated in Lin’s death as well. If she hadn’t—well, then, maybe she could at least tell him what she was doing over on Hook the day the girl died. He was enraged over Yurl’s maneuvering—there was no telling how long they might be confined to the Islands—and yet, there was a strange sort of relief in the fact that everything was coming to a head.
“Slow down,” he growled. “Everyone just slow down.” He gestured to the chairs around the low table. “Take a seat. Yurl’s out to screw with us somehow—we all know him well enough to realize that. There are some hard questions we need to ask ourselves, questions I want answered, but we’re not going to start ripping each other apart with our bare teeth like dogs.”
“Teeth’s about all they left us,” Laith observed sourly, jerking his head to the empty scabbards on his back.
“Teeth is all I’ll need if I find out he’s lying,” Gwenna said, her mouth twisting into a snarl as though she were preparing to make good on her threat.
Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades Page 42
