Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades

by Brian Staveley

  “The first step,” Nin went on, “is finding the thing. It took us the better part of two weeks to come across a track—evidently the creature prefers to stick to the rocks—but Rampuri found one finally. He has painted several copies.”

  “So there weren’t any tracks to memorize,” Kaden said under his breath, thinking back to that first, brutal session with his umial, feeling resentful and vindicated at the same time.

  “You’re not a complete failure after all,” Akiil replied with a smirk.

  “Shhh,” Pater hissed from atop Kaden’s shoulders, batting him on the head with a small, imperious hand.

  Nin was passing a few scrolls to the monks sitting in the front row. “I’d like to know, first, if anyone has seen these tracks before.”

  He waited patiently for the scrolls to circulate slowly toward the back of the room. Kaden watched as each monk took the paper, memorized it, then passed it on to his neighbor. The novices required more time, careful to make sure they etched the correct details on their memories, and a few minutes passed before the paintings reached the back. Someone handed a parchment to Akiil, who held it out where those around him could consider it.

  Kaden wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting: a variant on a crag cat print maybe, or something with the broad paws and deep claws of a bear. What he found himself staring at, however, was unlike any animal track he’d encountered. It wasn’t made by a paw or pad—that much was clear. He couldn’t even tell how many feet the thing had.

  “What in ’Shael’s name is that?” Akiil asked, turning the parchment in an effort to make sense of it.

  The painting showed a dozen indentations, the kind of marks a medium-sized stick might make if driven repeatedly into the ground—a sharp stick. None of them measured more than two inches across, but the spacing suggested a creature the size of a large dog. Kaden looked closer. Half those marks appeared to be divided in two by a thin line, as though the foot, or whatever it was, was split.

  “Cloven,” Akiil observed. “Maybe some sort of hoof.”

  Kaden shook his head. A cleft would be wider, separating the two toes—the whole point of a cloven hoof was to offer the animal stability; it was what allowed the goats to keep their footing on the uneven terrain. Besides, the shape of the prints was wrong. They didn’t look so much like hooves as they did like claws with the pincers squeezed shut. Reluctantly, he called to mind the saama’an of the goat’s mutilated carcass, studying the severed neck, the shattered skull. Claws could inflict those sorts of wounds—big claws, at least. An uneasy chill tickled his spine. What kind of creature the size of a goat had twelve pincered legs?

  “Now that you’ve had a chance to see the paintings,” Nin said, “has anyone come across tracks like these before?”

  “I’m not convinced that they are tracks,” Serkhan Kundashi said, stepping forward from the wall. “Looks like the scratching of a stick on the ground.”

  “There was no stick,” the abbot replied.

  “I’ve lived in these mountains for thirty years,” said Rebbin, the overseer of the refectory. “I’ve cooked everything there is to cook, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  The abbot nodded grimly, as though he had been expecting as much. He opened his mouth to continue when someone near the front spoke up.

  Kaden couldn’t see over the crowd, but from the slow, gentle voice, it had to be Yerrin, the hermit. Although Yerrin wore Shin robes and followed the Shin discipline, he kept himself apart from the rest, sleeping in a cave halfway to the Circuit of Ravens, appearing unexpectedly two or three times a month to scrounge food from the refectory or a scrap of thread from the storeroom. The man was dirty but kind. He had named every tree and half the animals in the high mountains, and sometimes Kaden would run into him on a ledge or in a narrow defile checking on “his friends” as he called them, splinting branches broken in a hailstorm, or gathering fallen leaves for his bedding. Kaden hadn’t expected to see him here.

  “I know these tracks,” Yerrin said. The hall fell to absolute silence as everyone strained to hear the quiet voice. “Or tracks much like them.” He paused, as though gathering his thoughts, then went on. “My friends leave these tracks around my cave.”

  “Who are your friends?” Nin asked, voice patient but firm.

  “Why, the frost spiders, of course,” Yerrin replied. “They come for the ants, who live in their great dirt mound.”

  Kaden tried to make sense of this. He had studied spiders, of course, all kinds of spiders, including the frost spider. He hadn’t been aware that they left tracks.

  “These aren’t quite like the footprints my friends leave,” Yerrin added genially. “There are more legs.”

  “And the thing is the size of a large dog,” Serkhan interjected, pointing out what Kaden thought was the obvious objection. “Spiders don’t grow to that size.”

  “True,” the hermit agreed. “True. Still, the world is wide. I have many friends, but there are many more to make.”

  Kaden glanced over at Rampuri Tan. The man was standing in the shadows at the far end of the hall. It was hard to see the look on his face, but his eyes shone bright in the dimness.

  “Well,” Scial Nin concluded, once it was clear that Yerrin had nothing more to say. “We cannot let the creature destroy our flocks. We have little chance of following it. That means we will have to lure it to us. Rampuri has suggested that we stake out goats a half mile from the monastery. Several monks will wait in the rocks to watch for some sign of this creature. As for the rest of you, no one is to leave the central square alone. Novices and acolytes are forbidden to leave the monastery at all without an accompanying umial.”

  That got a response. Chalmer Oleki, Kaden’s old teacher, rose from his bench in the first row. He was the oldest of the Shin, half again as old as the abbot, and his voice was reed-thin when he spoke. “This thing has killed goats, yes. It is a problem for us, yes. But do you believe it would come against grown men?”

  Scial Nin opened his mouth, but it was Tan who answered, stepping forward from the shadows. Kaden had always found his umial menacing, even before being forced to study under the man. In the past, however, something had held that menace in check. Tan had reminded him of a vast, silent slope of snow high on a peak, poised to break loose in avalanche at the first peal of thunder, or like a sword, still and suspended at the height of its arc, held indefinitely by some myserious power. There was nothing strange in Tan’s movement now, nothing more than a simple step forward, and yet Kaden shivered, as though the small movement marked a change, a tip in a balance long held.

  “When you know nothing about a creature,” the monk ground out, his voice hard as a rock slide, “expect it has come to kill you.”

  13

  Once he was actually standing in front of the ruined tavern again, Valyn wasn’t sure what he had hoped to see. Most of the place had disappeared beneath the murky water in a tumble of broken beams and waterlogged walls, and even if there had been something to look at, the sun was already dipping toward the horizon—a sullen, red orb—and the light was too poor to see much beyond the skeletal outlines.

  The certainty he had felt immediately following his fight in the ring had faded like the afternoon light. It was possible that a leach had been behind the destruction of Manker’s—there were probably more leaches on the Islands than anywhere else in the empire. It was possible that the whole thing had been part of a plot directed at him, at his family, part of an ongoing coup. The shit part of it was that just about anything was possible. He needed something concrete, something solid to explore, and a leach’s kenning would leave even less trace than Kettral explosives. That meant turning to people, people who might have noticed something unusual, seen something they didn’t expect.

  “Only four made it out,” he said, frowning. Juren, of course, and three others who had clawed their way clear of the wreckage.

  “Four out of twelve,” Lin replied with a shrug. “Not bad, considering the
whole thing dropped straight into the bay. Better odds than you’d get on the losing side of most battles.” The gash on her cheek had scabbed over, but the indignity of their defeat in the ring still seemed raw and ragged. The Kettral devoted countless hours to tourniquets, splints, medicinal herbs, and bandages. No one said much, however, about the humiliation of having your face ground in the dirt while a fellow soldier thrust a rough hand up between your legs and a few dozen others looked on.

  “It wasn’t a battle,” he said, his mind jumping back to the image of Salia, hot, bright blood leaking from the wound in her neck. “The people in there were just drinking. They didn’t sign on.”

  “No one ever signs on to get killed.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Lin fixed him with a hard stare. “You mean you feel guilty.”

  Valyn shrugged. “Sure. Someone comes after me and these poor bastards get crushed? I thought we were supposed to be protecting the citizens of Annur.”

  Lin spread her hands. “I’d hardly call the scum from Manker’s ‘citizens.’ Most of them would be strung up or cut down within a day if they showed their faces back on the mainland.”

  “It doesn’t mean they deserved to die.”

  “Spare me the guilt, Valyn. It’s self-indulgent. It’s a waste of time. You didn’t kill them. You tried to save them. You’re noble. Is that what you want to hear? You’re a fucking prince.”

  Lin’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes ablaze. Valyn swallowed a sharp retort and began to put a hand on her shoulder instead. She jerked back.

  “Let’s find the bastards who did this,” she said curtly, refusing to meet his eyes. “Let’s just find them.”

  Valyn started to respond, then, trying to cool his own anger, turned away. Dilapidated buildings hung over the muddy street, paint peeling, roofs sagging, thresholds rotting into the dirt beneath uneven doors. Despite the bright colors, they all looked about ready to give up and tumble into the harbor alongside Manker’s. Maybe he and Lin were imagining the whole thing. Everything falls apart eventually, he thought, glancing over once more at his friend. Maybe the tavern just gave up.

  On the other hand, his father had been killed. It was possible the plot went no further than a single disgruntled priest, but Valyn wasn’t ready to believe that just yet. If there were people on the Islands responsible, he wanted them found. He wanted them dead.

  “Juren was one of the ones who made it,” he said, breaking the silence. “Laith says he’s holed up at the Black Boat, drinking himself straight to ’Shael while he waits for his leg to heal.”

  “Who’s Juren?”

  “That thug Manker used to pay to watch over the place.”

  Lin’s face hardened. “The first one to jump clear. The one who refused to help.”

  Valyn nodded. “He’s not much good to anyone else now, not with a busted leg.”

  “Then he should have plenty of time to talk.”

  The common room of the Black Boat was poorly lit and cavernous, far too large for the number of chairs and tables scattered haphazardly around the floor. When Valyn had first arrived on the Islands, the Boat was the most prosperous alehouse on Hook, with wine all the way from Sia, blowsy whores hanging from the balconies, and music every night. In the intervening years, however, the owner had died, one of his sons had stabbed the other in a dispute over the property, and the place had fallen into gradual decline. Only half a dozen or so people were at the tables now, and after looking up, eyes heavy with drink and boredom, they returned to their muttered conversations and games of dice.

  Juren sat by the bar, his splinted leg propped on a chair, a half-empty glass of wine beside him, and a half-full jug beside that.

  “Mind if we join you?” Valyn asked, pulling up a chair.

  The man darted them a bloodshot glare. He opened his mouth as though to suggest that he did mind, then took another look at their blacks and the Kettral-issue blades at their belts and thought better of it. He scowled. “Suit yourself.”

  “Juren, right?” Lin asked brightly, settling herself on the chair with a grim smile.

  The man grunted.

  “You used to work for Manker, didn’t you?” she went on. “You were there the day the place collapsed.”

  “S’how I got this busted leg,” he replied, waving a hand at the limb. “Manker bit it along with his shithole. Bastard owed me two weeks of pay.”

  Valyn shook his head in commiseration. “Bad luck, friend. Bad luck. Listen, we just got paid—why don’t you let us top off that jug for you?”

  Juren brightened momentarily, then narrowed his eyes. “What d’you want to drink with me for? I seen you often enough. I even seen you over at Manker’s the day it dropped. You Kettral are usually too good to rub elbows with the likes of me.”

  Valyn suppressed a grimace. “Not our decision, friend. Command’s got regulations. Security and all that.”

  Juren snorted. “Right. Security ’n’ all that.” Despite having served as Manker’s hired muscle, he didn’t look like he thought all that much of security.

  Lin took the newly filled wine jug and topped off the man’s glass before filling two more.

  “I remember you now,” she said, nodding as though at the memory. “You made it to the doorway first.”

  The man edged back on his stool, putting a little more space between them.

  “You made it to the doorway,” she continued, voice deceptively level, “and then, instead of helping get anyone else out … you jumped.”

  “What are you, the town constables?” he asked, licking his lips furtively. “I came to Hook t’get away from this shit.”

  “By ‘this shit,’” Valyn said, leaning in until he could smell the sour wine on the man’s breath, “I can only assume you mean things like courage and human decency.”

  “Don’t lecture me,” Juren snarled, pushing him back with a meaty hand. “I don’t get paid no tall stacks of gold to risk my life. I did what I had to do. That’s why I’m alive.”

  “Oh no,” Lin said, airily. “We’re not going to lecture you. We’re just going to ask you a few questions.”

  “Fuck your questions.”

  She pursed her lips and looked over at Valyn.

  Valyn was rapidly tiring of the man’s attitude. There were faster ways to get answers out of a drunken brawler than plying him with wine, and he and Lin had spent years mastering just about all of them.

  “Look, friend,” he began, tapping conspicuously at his belt knife. “The questions are going to be easy. Don’t make them complicated.”

  “Actually,” Lin went on with a vicious smile, “I don’t mind if you make them complicated.”

  Juren scowled, then spat over his shoulder onto the floor. “What questions?”

  “Did you see any other Kettral in the tavern that day?” Valyn asked. “Maybe in the morning, or just before we got there?”

  “It was just you two,” Juren grumbled. “You two and that slick, gold-haired bastard. The one that broke the wineglass.”

  Valyn considered the claim. Sami Yurl was perfectly capable of plotting, of murder, and he had been in the alehouse. On the other hand, Yurl was no leach. Maybe he was wrapped up in the thing somehow, but it didn’t seem possible that he’d brought down Manker’s all on his own.

  “No one in the morning?” Lin pressed. “No other Kettral?”

  The thug wrinkled his brow as though fighting through a haze of wine. “Yeah. Yeah, there was someone else—short, crop-haired girl. Wore the same blacks as the rest of you lot. Eyes like nails. She didn’t stay long.”

  “Looked about fifteen years old?”

  “How’n Hull’s name should I know?” the man snapped. “She barely talked.”

  “Annick,” Valyn said, glancing over at Lin.

  She grimaced and nodded. Annick Frencha was the best sniper among the cadets, one of the best snipers on the Islands, despite the fact that she had yet to pass Hull’s Trial. The girl was a mystery. She seeme
d to have no need or desire for human contact, and despite her size, she was every bit as brutal as Yurl or Balendin. Valyn had watched her working with her bow once in the fields to the north of the compound. She had shot a rabbit through the foot at a hundred paces, and the creature was shrieking—a terrified, unearthly sound—as it tried to drag itself to safety. Annick cocked her head to the side before loosing a second arrow. This one transfixed the rabbit’s back leg. Hitting the creature at all at that distance was impressive, but Valyn started to suspect that she was missing its heart on purpose. “Why don’t you kill it?” he’d asked. Annick had looked at him with those icy eyes of hers. “I want a moving target,” she replied, nocking another arrow to the string. “If it’s dead, it doesn’t move.” Valyn had little trouble believing that Annick would destroy a tavern and the people inside it just to accomplish her objective. But then she, like Yurl, was no leach.

  “How about a tall guy, ink on the arms, feathers in the hair?” Lin asked.

  “Nah,” Juren replied, waving away the suggestion. “Nobody like that.”

  “He’s always got a couple of wolfhounds with him,” she added.

  “I told you. There wasn’t no one like that there.”

  Valyn was about to ask what Annick was doing at Manker’s when the door burst open. He dropped a hand to his belt knife. People who slammed open doors weren’t usually looking for a quiet evening of cards, and he readied himself for some drunken sailor, half-dead on rum and swinging a busted bottle. Instead, a young woman stumbled into the room. She wore a grimy, red, low-cut dress a few sizes too big for her small frame, and a cheap ribbon in her mousy hair. Tears streamed like rain down her white cheeks, and her baffled brown eyes shone in the meager lamplight.

  “Amie’s dead,” she sobbed. “They took ’er, and they sliced ’er up, and now she’s dead!”