Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades

by Brian Staveley

  Only when the crowd had settled did Uinian IV make his entrance from a gilded door halfway down the southern aisle. If you stripped off that overwrought amice and alb, Adare thought, you might mistake him for a carpetmonger or a wheelwright. The priest’s entourage ensured that there was no danger of that. Before and behind him walked two columns of novices, boys and girls both, each dressed in the gold and white of Intarra, each swinging a crystal from a golden chain. The stones caught the light and scattered it dizzyingly across the walls and floor, but Adare kept her eyes on Uinian.

  The man’s defiance and ambition had only grown in the weeks since the Trial. In addition to augmenting the Sons of Flame, he was preaching openly on the distinction between human and divine rule, turning what had been an abstract theological issue into a contention that could overturn an empire. According to il Tornja, people were arguing about the difference between Divine Mandate and Divine Right in the Graymarket and the dockyards, arguing, that was, about the very legitimacy of Malkeenian rule. Worse, Uinian had taken to repeating his “miracle” every day in the noon service. To the men and women gathered in the pews, he was not simply the Chief Priest; he was the anointed of the goddess herself.

  Which is why I have to be here, Adare reminded herself. To do this.

  For a long time it appeared that Uinian had not noticed her, but as he drew abreast of the imperial booth, he halted the procession with a gesture, and turned to face her. When he spoke, he kept his eyes on hers, but his voice was meant for the congregation.

  “How unusual. The princess graces us with her presence.” A hiss and murmur rippled through the crowd, but Uinian raised his hand for silence, a sly smile on his face. “We have not seen you in this place of worship for a very long time, my lady.”

  Adare took a deep breath. She had broken the dam; it was time to see if the flood would carry her on its current or drown her. “My family worships the goddess who gave us life in the old place, atop Intarra’s Spear each solstice.”

  “Of course,” Uinian nodded, steepling his fingers before his lips. “Of course. An ancient place, and holy. And yet, the solstice services come but twice a year.”

  “It would be strange,” Adare shot back, “if we had more solstice services than solstices.”

  As soon as the words left her lips, she knew she had made an error, conceded territory in the dangerous game they were playing. The parishioners who came to the daily noon service were pious folk, devoted to the goddess. Some, no doubt, made the visit every day from as far away as the dockyards, the Graymarket, or south of the Godsway. Her flippant tone grated against their faith.

  Uinian’s smile widened.

  “Each of us serves the goddess in our own way,” he acknowledged. “I’m sure there are more … bureaucratic tasks that demand your attention. But tell me, why have you joined us today? Might I be so bold as to inquire if you come in penitence for your recent … errors?”

  The man was bold indeed, to insult her to her face before the assembled citizens of Annur. Ran’s words came back to her: There is a time in every battle when you must act. There could be no half measures now.

  “I come to illuminate my people, to bring them the truth.”

  Uinian narrowed his eyes. He was on his own ground here, surrounded by his own people, hard on the heels of his recent triumph. He had nothing to fear from her, and yet, clearly he had not expected this line of attack.

  “Illumination? Those eyes of yours may smolder, but they fail to cast much light.”

  Adare ignored the gibe, turning instead to the congregation and raising her voice. “Your priest claims to be half divine himself.”

  “No,” Uinian said firmly. “Just a faithful servant of the goddess.”

  “He claims,” Adare continued, pressing on as though the man had not spoken, “that Intarra guards him from the flames. He lies.”

  An angry chorus exploded at her charge. Those who came for the noon service were the heart of the faith, the most devoted. She was treading on very dangerous ground here. Uinian himself, however, held up a hand to still the congregation.

  “Those who have seen, know the truth,” he said, “while those who have come now, questioning, will have it revealed.” He turned to gesture to the lens above him. “The goddess has graced us with her light this noon, and I will undertake the Trial once more, as a gesture of my faith.”

  “Your faith is barren falsity.”

  He turned to the crowd once more. “You hear now the sad and desperate recriminations of a house that will lie, even kill, to retain its grip on power. You hear the empty mewling of a tyrant so far fallen in her faith that she would utter bald untruths here in this holiest sanctum.”

  Uinian leaned close then, pitching his voice for her ears alone. “Your father was a thorn in my side,” he murmured. “I was delighted by his death. But it is you, yourself, who have sealed the fate of your family.”

  She almost vaulted over the wooden partition to claw out that smug smile. It was the memory of her father’s voice that restrained her: To rule over others, Adare, you must first learn to rule yourself. She could almost hear him, as though he stood at her shoulder, his words staying and steadying her.

  “You will fail,” she replied simply.

  The Chief Priest shook his head and turned to the altar.

  “Behold,” he said, raising his hands to the great lens as though inviting the heat, “the grace of the goddess.”

  Then, as the congregation drew in a great gasp, he stepped into the beam of molten light.

  The stone beneath him smoldered as it had during the Trial, and, as during the Trial, he turned, triumphant, to the assembled multitude.

  “Now,” Adare murmured.

  In that moment, the assassin il Tornja had found for her stepped forward, a man dressed like the other Aedolians but carrying a thin wooden tube, a blowgun he called it. He raised the weapon to his lips and a dart flicked out, quicker than sight, catching Uinian in the neck.

  “I have paralyzed your priest,” Adare announced, turning to the congregation, “to show you the truth.” There was no going back. She had moments only before the crowd realized what had happened, before it fell on her and destroyed her, and yet she had to speak clearly, calmly, to make them understand. “To show you that he is not a priest at all, not the favorite of Intarra, but a charlatan, worse, an abomination. The man you know as Uinian is a filthy leach, who would have you take his kennings for divine grace.”

  Dozens of people were on their feet now, a few were shouting, and yet the crowd was confused, uncertain. I have time, she told herself. I have time.

  “But how to tell a leach’s kenning from the love of Intarra, a miracle from a monstrosity? For a long time I pondered this question in my heart. How to know which is true, and which is treacherous?”

  She turned to consider Uinian. He stood in the blaze, his arms stretched out as before, as though accepting the impossible light and heat, but there was something different, a bead of sweat on his forehead, a glint of fear in his eyes.

  “Yesterday,” she pressed on, “I climbed to the top of Intarra’s Spear, to the old sacrificial altar of my family, to sit as close to the sun as I could, to meditate on this question, and Intarra spoke in my heart. The goddess reminded me that there is a way.”

  She had stepped over the wooden balustrade and approached as closely as she dared to Uinian in his pillar of liquid light. Even at half a dozen paces, she felt the cloth of her cloak burning against her flesh, smelled the singeing silk. She turned her gaze to the Chief Priest. His face was twitching, his lips squirming with the effort of speech, but he would speak no more today—the paralytic had seen to that. Sheets of sweat poured off his brow. Adare favored him with a grim smile of her own.

  “This is for my father,” she murmured before turning back to the congregation.

  “The difference between the miracle of the holy man and the kenning of the leach, is that the holy man relies on his goddess, while the lea
ch trusts only himself. The leach, through his own foul machinations, twists the world around him, he himself does the work. The holy man need not raise a finger.” Adare shifted to meet the eyes of those closest to her one by one, willing them to see the distinction, to understand. “This is what the goddess reminded me. She can rain down her favor, weave her protective shroud over one who is distracted. Even one who is asleep.

  “At the moment he is simply immobilized, and so his kenning still holds.”

  A man in the foremost pew lurched to his feet, murder in his eyes, but one of the Aedolians brought him down with a quick blow to the head.

  Quickly now. They’re ready to break.

  “Now,” she pressed on, “I will prick him with a different dart, one that brings on a gentle, dreamless sleep. If Intarra loves this man, she will watch over him and you may do what you will with me for forsaking the sanctity of this place and the holiness of your priest. If, however, if he is a leach…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “If he is a leach, he cannot weave his kenning while asleep. The fire of the goddess will wash over him. It will consume him.”

  Uinian’s hands, outstretched in benign acceptance, had stiffened into claws. The tendons of his neck strained beneath the skin, and his eyes bulged in their sockets. He’s terrified, Adare realized, the satisfaction running through her veins like strong wine. The man who murdered my father is terrified, and soon he will be dead.

  She raised a finger and the assassin’s second dart hummed through the air, burying itself in the priest’s neck.

  With what must have been a desperate effort, Uinian forced his mouth open a crack, but instead of words, his tongue lolled out, frothing and red between his lips. A shudder ran through his chest, convulsing up through his neck, and his eyes rolled back in his head. As he dropped, slowly, to his knees, his garments, so white and pristine, began to smoke, then char. Then his entire body burst into flame as he toppled from the beam of light.

  With a howl, the crowd closed around them like the sea.

  47

  For the rest of the day they had pressed east, past the Tower, past Buri’s Leap and the Harpies, past the Black and Gold Knives, dropping into valleys and scrambling through passes no wider than their shoulders until they were in a region of peaks Kaden had never seen before. In the early morning, Pyrre pushed them hard, but as the day wore on, the assassin began to flag and the monks’ long years in the mountains started to show their value. Tan kept the pace, never slowing, even when the others stumbled or paused for breath. How Triste managed to keep up, Kaden had no idea. On the steeper sections, he put a hand on her lower back, helping her up the scree and talus, but for the most part, she climbed and ran on her own, face drawn with the exertion, chest heaving as she gasped the thin air, but she ran. No one had forgotten what happened to Phirum when he began to fall behind.

  They didn’t stop until the sun hung just above the western peaks, a bleary red smudge on the darkening sky. They had just crested the steepest ridge yet, a great wall of granite running north and south as far as the eye could see, when Tan finally called the halt. Triste collapsed into a heap on the rocks, shuddering with exhaustion and falling asleep almost instantly. She had lost the second of her light shoes crossing a river, and her feet were an excruciating mess of slices, blisters, blood, and bruises that made Kaden wince just looking at them. It seemed a miracle that she could continue to stand, let alone run.

  Wearily, he peered over the ridgeline to the east. The terrain made his heart sink: rank on rank of mountains and ridges stretching away toward the horizon. He started to say something, to point out that they couldn’t possibly cross all of them, but Pyrre and Tan were looking west, studying a saddle they had passed through maybe an hour earlier. It had been a brutal climb and an even more brutal descent, interrupted by a few paces of level ground where Kaden had wanted nothing more than to sprawl out on the earth and surrender himself to slumber. He had suggested they stop there for the night, but Tan was having none of it.

  “You were right, monk,” Pyrre said, gesturing.

  Kaden stared. There were men in that saddle, he realized, squinting until his eyes hurt. Aedolians.

  “I have to admit, I’m impressed,” the assassin continued, hunched forward to catch her breath, palms on her knees. “Dismayed, but impressed. I didn’t think they’d be able to track us.”

  “How did they track us?” Kaden asked, incredulous. He was a fair hand at tracking himself, as were all the monks. It was possible to follow their path through the mountains—Pyrre’s leather boots would scuff the stone and Triste had been bleeding since they fled Ashk’lan—but it would be laborious, time-consuming work, work that should have slowed their pursuers to a crawl. “They should not be able to move so fast.”

  It was a fatuous comment, an inane denial of empirical fact, but for once Tan let it go. The older monk’s mouth was set in a grim line as he stared west. “The ak’hanath,” he said finally.

  The assassin raised an eyebrow. “Is that some kind of secret monk word?”

  “It’s what’s been tracking us,” Tan replied, then shifted his eyes to Kaden. “More than likely, it’s been tracking him.”

  In the mad terror of the slaughter of the monastery and the exhaustion of their flight through the mountains, Kaden had forgotten all about the terrible creature Tan had shown him on the parchment nights before.

  “Why?” he asked wearily. “What does the ak’hanath have to do with any of this?”

  The monk shook his head. “Impossible to be sure, but it seems the Aedolians found it … or bred it. They used it to keep an eye on you while they were setting up their attack.”

  “I don’t want to seem like the dunce,” Pyrre said, “but what is it?”

  “All these months,” Kaden said slowly, “and it was there just to watch me?”

  “Hard to be certain. If the annals are correct, the creatures are fearsome fighters, but they were not made to fight. The Csestriim created them to track, to hunt.”

  “It killed all those goats. It ripped out Serkhan’s throat easily enough. Why didn’t it come for me?”

  “I don’t know,” Tan replied. “Perhaps it did, but failed to find an opening. Perhaps Ut and Adiv did not want to take a chance with your assassination, did not want to risk assigning the task to a creature of which they remained uncertain. This is all speculation, worthless as wind.”

  “I don’t like to make frivolous offerings to my god,” Pyrre said, raising a hand to slow the conversation, “but it is growing very tempting to stab one of you repeatedly in the neck until the other explains to me what you’re talking about.”

  “A Csestriim creation,” Tan replied, ignoring the assassin’s skeptical look. “A creature built to hunt.”

  Pyrre laughed. “I’m no historian, but I think the last of the Csestriim died a few thousand years ago.”

  “The ak’hanath is not Csestriim,” Tan responded, rounding on her. “It is a creation of the Csestriim.”

  “I’ve traveled two continents, from the Waist to Freeport and west beyond the Ancaz Mountains, and I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Now you have.”

  The assassin pursed her lips and nodded. “All right. We’ll use the assumption, for now. Why does the thing hate Kaden so much?” She turned to Kaden. “You piss in its nest or something?”

  “The ak’hanath follows commands,” Tan replied. “A dog set on a hare doesn’t hate the hare, but it will harry it and tear it apart just the same.”

  “Then we’ll have to make sure the hound doesn’t find our rabbit,” Pyrre said, clapping Kaden on the shoulder jocularly. “There are a dozen ways to cover his scent. The next time we cross one of those rushing streams—”

  “It doesn’t track by scent.”

  “Then what,” Kaden asked, trying to make sense of that, “does it use?”

  The monk shook his head. “There’s not a word for it—not a modern one, anyway. The histories call it atma. �
��Self’ might be the best translation. The ak’hanath is tracking your sense of self.”

  Kaden stared.

  “That,” Pyrre said, raising an eyebrow, “is by turns fascinating, implausible, and horribly inconvenient.”

  “Take your pick,” Tan replied grimly. “It’s out there—one of the monks saw it back at Ashk’lan—and it has Kaden’s atma. You put the thing on a boat to the Manjari Empire, and given enough time, it will find its way back to him.”

  Kaden shuddered at the thought of those awful, unnatural eyes, those skittering claws, bent to one single purpose—hunting him.

  “I’m waiting for the good news,” Pyrre said.

  “There is no— Get down,” Tan growled, hauling Kaden beneath an overhanging shelf of rock. “Get the girl and get under cover.”

  Pyrre, for once, didn’t waste time bandying words, turning instead to gather Triste up and duck beneath the same shelf. Only when they were hidden away did the assassin turn to the monk.

  “What are we doing under this rock?” she asked, her voice curious rather than annoyed.

  Tan gestured toward the sky above the Aedolians. “We’ve got more than the ak’hanath to worry about. Now they’ve got a bird, as well.”

  Aside from once, as a child, Kaden had never seen a kettral, and he marveled at the sight of the majestic creature. So that’s what Valyn’s been flying around on all these years, he thought, envy, for the moment, threatening to overwhelm dismay as he studied the massive wingspan and huge, raking talons, each big enough to support two tiny figures in black. He watched as the bird circled once, then landed gracefully among the Aedolians. The assassin was not so excited.