Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades

by Brian Staveley

  Talal eyed the larger cadet, his eyes hooded and inscrutable. Then he turned back to Valyn. “People have been speculating about Balendin’s hawk and his hounds since the day he arrived. Maybe they’re on to something. And maybe he’s playing us. It’s almost impossible to know.”

  “Besides,” Laith said wryly, “it’s not like it should matter in the arena anyway.”

  According to the rules, while in the ring, Balendin was restricted to the use of his body and blades, just like anyone else; the Eyrie believed in developing “the whole soldier,” and had no interest in training a group of men and women who would be useless on the battlefield the moment their wells ran dry. The reality, however, was slightly different. As long as a leach could work subtly, could twist the world around him without anyone noticing, his intervention was permitted. Kettral commanders could ferret out this kind of meddling if they tried, but they never tried—cadets needed to learn to fight in all circumstances, needed to grow comfortable fighting any foe.

  “That’s one pair,” Arbert mused. “Any thoughts about who I ought to pit against them?”

  The cadets erupted in a chorus of suggestions. Between the rigors of training and the exhaustive study, there wasn’t much leisure for entertainment on the Islands, and most of the assembled soldiers waited each day for Blood Time the way men and women back in Annur looked forward to a well-laid table at dinner.

  Arbert held up a hand for silence, but before he could speak, Lin stepped into the ring.

  “’Shael on a stick,” Valyn muttered beneath his breath.

  “I’ll fight them,” she said flatly, not taking her eyes from the two.

  Sami Yurl smirked.

  Arbert chuckled. “All by yourself? Hardly seems fair.” He turned to the crowd. “Anyone want to join her?”

  The group shifted uncomfortably, some gazing off toward the barracks, others out toward the open ocean. Sami Yurl was a self-involved bastard, but he was also quick with his blades, and brutal in the ring. And then there was the leach to consider.

  “Unnatural,” Gent grumbled, eyeing Balendin warily. The huge cadet wasn’t afraid of much, but he held a fear of leaches matched only by his loathing of them.

  “I’d step up,” Laith said, grinning at Valyn, “but I don’t want to deprive you of an opportunity for gallantry.”

  Valyn sighed. It looked as though his return to the ring was going to be a little more exciting than he’d expected. He couldn’t leave Lin on her own, and he’d been aching to put a fist in Sami Yurl’s face since the scene over in Manker’s. One-on-one he’d have little chance, but Balendin’s bladework was mediocre. If they were able to take the leach out of the arrangement quickly, they could both concentrate on Yurl. And besides, he thought ruefully, no one else is volunteering.

  “I’ll do it,” he said, stepping over the low rope.

  The fight began poorly. Valyn would have preferred to square off against Yurl while Lin faced Balendin, but the leach managed to engage him first, leaving Lin to defend herself. She was a full head shorter than her opponent, and certainly weaker as well, but she was savvy. As Yurl’s blades snaked in and out, slicing, probing, she fought elbow to elbow with Valyn, refusing to be drawn off her guard by a series of clever gambits.

  When Valyn first arrived on the Islands, he had thought bladework was all about strength, technique, and courage. The reality was far more pedestrian. Although those qualities all mattered, they paled before the necessity of discipline, the ability to wait, to watch, and to avoid mistakes. The first step in winning, Hendran wrote, is to avoid losing. While Valyn battered back the leach’s attacks, Lin held her own at his side, playing a tight, cautious game, her breathing heavy but steady. Valyn felt himself smile. If Lin could just hold Yurl off for a while longer, he would find an opening, and then they could both press Yurl.

  Then the leach started talking.

  “I never understood,” he began in a laconic voice that belied the sweat dripping from his forehead, “why the Kettral let women fight.”

  Valyn swatted aside a thrust and forced him back a couple of paces, but the youth kept up his taunts.

  “I know all the stated justifications, of course: women can pass unnoticed where a man would draw attention, they’re often underestimated by a foe, but it just doesn’t add up. For one thing,” he observed, “they’re small and weak. For another, they’re a distraction. Here I am in the ring. I should be focusing on my bladework, and all I can think about is ripping the pants off this bitch.”

  Lin growled at Valyn’s side as she parried a sweeping overhand slice.

  “Ignore him,” Valyn said. “He’s just trying to get in your head.”

  “Actually,” Balendin countered with a leer, “I’d be more interested in getting inside something else. What do you say, bitch?” he demanded. “I’ll go easy on you here, as long as I can make you moan later.…”

  Sami Yurl chuckled—a low, nasty sound—and took a step back, flamboyantly dropping his guard.

  “Leave it…,” Valyn started to say, but Lin wasn’t going after Yurl. Instead, she used the opening to drive at Balendin, cutting across Valyn’s line of attack and breaking formation to drive the leach back.

  For a second Valyn thought she was going to batter him straight into the ground, so great was the fury of her blows, but as she forced her way forward, her foot twisted on the packed sand beneath her, and she went down with a scream of rage and frustration.

  Balendin grinned and, with a feline grace, leapt over her crumpled body to engage Valyn once again. The leach wasn’t the strongest blade, but he knew how to tie up an opponent, and Valyn found himself pushing forward but unable to drive his enemy back.

  Behind the screen, Sami Yurl took a step toward Lin. She swung at him with one of her swords, but he parried the blow easily. Then, in a rush, he was on top of her, driving her face into the dirt while she screamed. Valyn tried to keep his mind on his own fight—he couldn’t help Lin if he, too, ended up sprawled out on the ground, but it was hard not to hear her shrieks of rage, and he felt his own anger rising, hot and bloody. Yurl had straddled her, and instead of ending the struggle with a blow to the back of the neck, he was reaching down between her legs, trying to force her thighs apart as she thrashed and writhed.

  It’s a trap, Valyn realized grimly. Yurl wants you to rush. The knowledge was as clear as it was irrelevant. He couldn’t just trade ineffectual blows with Balendin while Lin was screaming. ’Shael take it, he spat. Then, with a roar, he launched himself forward, hammering the leach back with a flurry of savage attacks. For a moment he thought it was going to work. Balendin gave ground, falling back with a look of alarm on his face, opening a path to Sami Yurl. Valyn stepped into the gap, but somehow, in his haste, he tripped, stumbled over what had seemed flat ground, and then he was falling. He had time to twist, to try to raise his guard, but the leach was too fast. The blunted blade came down on his forehead like midnight.

  * * *

  “That son of a whore,” Lin cursed as she savagely scrubbed the blood from her cheek. Instead of reporting to the infirmary as protocol dictated, she and Valyn had made the walk down to the harbor, away from the chatter and stares of the central compound, in order to clean their wounds. “That ’Shael-spawned, ’Kent-kissing bastard.”

  “It was Balendin,” Valyn said, probing the gash on his forehead. It would leave a scar, but then, he had plenty of those already.

  “I know it was Balendin,” Lin snapped. “When I went for him, my ankle twisted as though I’d stepped in mud. Mud. We haven’t had rain in days.”

  Valyn nodded. “Same for me. Something tangled my feet. I went down before I even realized what was happening.”

  “Gent’s right,” Lin muttered. “Somebody ought to string them up. Every ’Kent-kissing leach on the two continents.”

  Valyn eyed her carefully. “Even Talal?”

  “’Shael can have Talal,” she spat back. “Oh, he’s nice enough,” she rushed on before he
could interrupt, “but how can you trust him? How can you trust any of them? I don’t care if the Eyrie wants another edge.”

  Valyn wasn’t quite sure he agreed with her, but after the afternoon’s ordeal, he wasn’t about to argue further.

  “The bitch of it is,” Lin went on, “to anyone watching that fight, it looked like they actually won.”

  “They did win,” Valyn observed.

  “They cheated.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We’re the ones who ended up facedown in the dirt. I want to smash out a few of Yurl’s teeth as badly as you do, but we’ve got to look at the thing straight on. There aren’t going to be any rules to hide behind when we start flying missions.”

  “Spare me the ’Kent-kissing lecture,” she said, spitting a bolus of blood into the waves, then checking a tooth with her tongue. “It’s bad enough to lose to Yurl and Ainhoa without you scouring the wound with sanctimony.”

  Valyn had been about to put a hand on her shoulder, but he leaned back now, stung by Lin’s bitterness.

  “Don’t bark at me. I’m not the one who broke formation.”

  She glared at him, then groaned in frustration. “I’m sorry, Val. I’m just burned because I’m sure that from the side of the ring, it looked like I slipped, like I just collapsed. People are probably still laughing about it back there.”

  Something about the words bothered Valyn, and he looked out to sea, running them over again. His head still ached from the blow, and it took him a while to collect his thoughts. “What did you just say?” he asked.

  “It looked like I just collapsed!” Lin said. “Nobody realized what really happened.”

  Collapsed.

  “Like Manker’s,” he said quietly.

  “I like to think I’m a little more graceful than a termite-ridden alehouse.”

  “I’m not talking about you or the alehouse. I’m talking about what brought you both down.”

  Lin’s head shot up, and she stared at him, eyes bright and angry. “Holy Hull,” she breathed. “A fucking leach.”

  12

  “Come on, Kaden!” Pater said, tugging at Kaden’s belt in an effort to hurry him along the trail. “They’re going to be starting already. Hurry up!”

  “Starting what?” Kaden asked for the third time.

  Sometimes it seemed like the boy was all bright blue eyes and bony elbows. Normally Pater’s enthusiasm made Kaden smile, but today he was hot and frustrated and in no mood for the small child tugging and pawing at his robe.

  He had spent half the morning taking apart a small stone hut, and his Shin composure was beginning to fray. Under the best of circumstances, the work would be laborious and time consuming; the rough blocks of granite had a way of shredding his palms and pinching his fingers until they turned black and blue. And these were not the best of circumstances. After all, he had just finished building the ’Shael-spawned thing only a day earlier. It was all part of Tan’s “instruction,” of course. For almost two weeks, ever since the incident at the pool, the monk had had Kaden lugging stones from all over the mountain, laying them into place, checking to see that the walls were true and plumb, then hauling more rocks. Tan never told him what the building was for, but Kaden had assumed it was for something. No sooner had he finished it, however, straightening from the placement of the final piece, than Tan nodded impassively.

  “Good,” the monk had said. “Now, take it down.” He turned away as if to depart, then looked back over his shoulder. “And I don’t want to see a pile of rubble here. Each of these stones is to go back exactly where you found it.”

  Kaden had just about reconciled himself to spending the next week and a half lugging the stones back up the steep paths and replacing them in their earthen divots when Pater arrived, breathing hard and waving him away from the work with a small hand. Tan had sent him, evidently—something about a meeting in the refectory, a meeting of all the monks. The abbot rarely called such an assembly, and Kaden felt his curiosity quicken.

  “Why does Nin want the meeting?” he asked patiently.

  Pater rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. They don’t tell me anything. Something about that goat you found.”

  Kaden’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. It was almost a month since he’d come across the mangled carcass, and he’d done his best to put it out of his mind. After notifying Nin and the others, there wasn’t much else to do, and Tan had kept him busy. Sometimes, however, as he was lugging a rock down from high in the mountain passes, he would feel the skin on his neck prickle and look back. There was never anything to be seen. Now, however, if Nin was calling a meeting …

  “Has something happened?” he asked.

  Pater just pulled harder. “I don’t know. Come on!”

  Clearly he wasn’t going to get anything else out of the small boy, and so Kaden slowed his breathing and stilled his impatience. It wasn’t far back to the main buildings of the monastery.

  On a normal morning, the rough square would be quietly busy with monks going about their labors: novices hauling water in heavy iron pots for the afternoon meal, acolytes hurrying on errands for their umials, older monks strolling the paths or seated beneath the junipers, shaved heads bent beneath their cowls as they followed their own private devotions to the Blank God. On a normal morning, the low drone of chanting from the meditation hall would hang on the breeze, a bass rumble beneath the percussive striking of axe against block as acolytes split wood for the fires. While the monastery was rarely lively, it always felt alive. Today, however, Ashk’lan lay empty and silent beneath the harsh glare of the spring sun.

  The inside of the refectory was another matter. Nearly two hundred bodies were crammed into the space, the oldest and most respected monks seated on benches near the front of the hall, novices standing on tiptoe in the back. The scent of wool, smoke, and sweat hung heavy in the air. Shin discipline obviated any real commotion—monks who had trained to sit silent and cross-legged in the snow for hours weren’t likely to get rowdy—but the group was as animated as Kaden could remember. Dozens of quiet conversations buzzed at the same time, and everyone seemed curious and alert. He and Pater squeezed in at the rear of the hall and nudged the wooden doors shut behind them.

  Akiil stood a few paces away, and Kaden caught his friend’s eye as he sidled through the crowd with Pater in tow.

  “How’s that palace you’re building coming along?” Akiil asked.

  “Glorious,” Kaden replied. “I might move my capital here when I finally ascend the throne.”

  “And give up that glitzy tower back in Annur that your family is so fond of?”

  “Nothing wrong with a little honest stonework,” Kaden replied, then gestured toward the front of the hall. “What’s going on?”

  Akiil shrugged. “Not sure. Altaf found something.”

  “Something?”

  “Spare me a lecture on the importance of specificity. No one tells me anything. All I know is Altaf, Tan, and Nin have been locked up in the abbot’s study for most of the morning.”

  “Tan?” Kaden raised an eyebrow. That explained why his umial hadn’t been around to berate him. “What’s he doing with them?”

  Akiil fixed him with a long-suffering glare. “As I just explained, no one tells me shit.”

  Kaden was about to press harder when Scial Nin had stepped out in front of the assembled monks.

  “I can’t see,” Pater whispered.

  Kaden hefted the boy up onto his shoulders.

  “Three weeks ago,” the abbot began without preamble, “Kaden came across something … unusual.”

  He paused, allowing a silence to settle over the refectory. Scial Nin was around sixty, thin as a post, brown as a juniper trunk, and lean as old mutton. He no longer had to shave his head, which had gone naturally bald, and the corners of his eyes were deeply creased from squinting at objects in the distance. When Kaden first arrived at the monastery, he had thought the abbot elderly, even frail. Hours of laboring up steep trails in the
man’s wake, however, had disabused him of that notion. Nin’s age and slight frame belied a vigor that appeared in his step when he ran, and resonated in his voice when he spoke, carrying clear and strong to the back of the hall.

  “He found a goat slaughtered by an unknown creature. Two brothers and I investigated, but we were able to come to no conclusions. Since then, three more of our goats have gone missing. Rampuri and Altaf have found two of these, each far from its normal grazing range, each beheaded. Each with the skull split open and the brain missing. Recently, they found a crag cat in the same condition.”

  No one spoke, but the air hissed with a collective intake of breath. This was news to Kaden, and from the looks on the faces of the rest of the monks, it was the first they were hearing about it as well. Kaden glanced over at his friend. Akiil grimaced and shook his head. It was one thing to take down a goat, even brutally, but crag cats were natural predators. Even a brindled bear would have trouble bringing one to ground.

  “The first animal was killed eight miles from here, but each successive carcass has been found closer. We had hoped, initially, that whatever found the goats was a migratory predator, killing then moving on. It seems, however, that this thing has come to stay.”

  Nin let that thought sink in, then continued. “It’s not hard to see why. The Bone Mountains don’t offer much in the way of game, especially in the winter. Our flock makes comparatively easy prey. Unfortunately, we need those goats to survive. The best solution open to us seems to be to hunt down this predator and kill it.”

  Akiil raised an eyebrow at that. Hunting might be something the monks could manage, but killing wasn’t part of the Shin discipline. They knocked down a few dozen goats each year for the refectory pots, of course, but that was hardly preparation for whatever was tearing apart the monastery’s livestock. Kaden wasn’t even sure what Nin expected them to kill the creature with. Each of the monks carried a simple knife hanging from the belt of his robe—a short-bladed, all-purpose tool that one could use to trim back bruiseberries or skewer a chunk of mutton in the evening stew—but it wasn’t likely to be much good against any kind of predator. Kaden tried to imagine attacking a crag cat with the pathetic blade and shuddered.