Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades

by Brian Staveley

  “It’s an island,” he said, taking in the contours, searching along the bottom of the page for a scale marking out distances.

  “He’s going to be a good commander,” Gwenna said, rolling her eyes. “He knows an island when he sees one.”

  “Save it,” Valyn grumbled. “It’s Sharn—about twelve leagues south of here.”

  “Means we’ll want Suant’ra,” Laith said, turning from the group, heading toward the massive rookery where the birds were tethered.

  “Wait,” Valyn shouted. He wasn’t even sure what they were supposed to do yet, but the flier just waved.

  “I’ll be back by the time you’ve got it sorted.”

  “’Shael can have him,” Valyn said as he turned his attention back to the map. Gwenna was hovering over one shoulder, Talal over the other, and Annick seemed to be reading the entire thing upside down from her seat on the bench. “Everyone, just take a step back,” he snapped. “I’ll let you know when I’ve looked it over.”

  “Oh yes, Your Radiance,” Gwenna said, recoiling with a look of mock horror on her face. “We didn’t mean to crowd you, Your Excellency.” She sketched a dubious curtsy. “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your proper honorific. Do you prefer Sir, Commander, or My Most Noble and Honored Lord?”

  Valyn tried to keep his temper. Maybe Gwenna was testing him, and maybe she just didn’t like the idea of taking orders from a Wing leader her own age. Either way, getting in a fight with his demolitions master on the day of Wing Selection wasn’t likely to improve their chances of success at whatever ’Shael-spawned task Fane had thrown their way.

  “Commander will do fine,” he growled. “Do you have your kit? We don’t know what we might need out there. Maybe some moles, or some starshatters.”

  Gwenna’s green eyes blazed. “Of course. Maybe you’d forgotten that the new Wings always have a test right after selection.”

  Valyn silently cursed himself. Between trying to ferret out Lin’s killer and recovering from his exhaustion in the Hole, he had forgotten. Not that he could afford to let the others know that.

  “Good,” he said gruffly. “Annick, you’ve got your bow.”

  “We’re wasting time,” the sniper said curtly. She gestured to the map.

  Valyn bit off a sharp response and returned his attention to the inked lines.

  “It’s a grab-and-go,” he said. “There’s a target in the middle of the island—doesn’t say what. We go in, we get it, we get out. Basic.”

  “What about the other Wings?” Talal asked. The leach wasn’t paying as much attention to the paper in front of them as he was to the surrounding knots of soldiers. They had maps, too, Valyn realized. Sami Yurl was hunched over, gesturing to his people, then back to the paper. They had the same map, and they were already formulating a plan.

  “Fine,” he said, trying to slow down his thoughts and his pulse, failing at both. “We’ll come in from the north—”

  Annick shook her head, a curt, clipped gesture. “Not good.”

  “Why not?” Talal asked, turning to the parchment.

  “Sharn is to the south,” Valyn pointed out impatiently. “The interior is all jungle, too heavily forested to make a drop there, which means we need to put down on a beach. The closest is to the north, and the route overland to the target is shorter.”

  “Except it’s overland,” Annick said, her eyes locked on his. “If we come in from the east, we go a little farther, but we can take this ravine—” she pointed to a crooked line on the map“—all the way up. No getting lost. We walk in the water. No tripping over roots or hacking through brush.”

  Valyn eyed the ravine. He didn’t like the thought of following the low ground, but the sniper was right—they would move faster out of the jungle. A good commander didn’t just command; he listened as well. Valyn took a deep breath and swallowed his pride. “Thank you, Annick. I think you’re right. Let’s take the eastern approach.

  “Talal,” he went on, turning to the leach. “What’s your well?”

  The youth drew back, his dark eyes narrowing. “I don’t … I don’t tell anyone that.”

  Gwenna rolled her eyes. “This isn’t just anyone. This is your commander, and he wants to know your well.”

  “Gwenna,” Valyn said, raising a hand. “Please.” He turned his attention back to Talal. “I need to know,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. Yurl’s Wing was already moving toward the harbor, and Essa was gesturing vigorously to her map and her soldiers, evidently putting together some sort of attack. “We’re Wing mates now. You can share that sort of thing.”

  The leach shook his head. “I can tell you that I’ll have access to it on the island, but it won’t be very powerful.”

  “What is it?” Valyn demanded, more heatedly than he’d intended.

  “I’m not telling you.”

  Annick looked from the leach to Valyn and back again. “You’re acting like a fool,” she said flatly. “You’re hurting the Wing.”

  “I’ve told him what he needs to know,” Talal insisted, his voice quiet but hard. “We can waste time arguing about it, or we can get on with the planning.”

  Valyn locked eyes with the leach. It was a direct challenge to his nascent authority, but the other Wings would be airborne shortly and bungling his first exercise as Wing commander might be even worse.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” he said curtly, turning his attention back to the map. “Talal, you’ll take point; hopefully whatever you can do will be enough if we’re surprised. Gwenna will be a dozen paces back. I’ll be moving through the trees to the right of the stream. We’ll have Laith on the left bank. Annick, you’ll be in the water, shallow enough that you can still shoot. If we flush out someone, hit ’em with a stunner.”

  The sniper nodded curtly.

  “Here comes the bird,” Gwenna said, gesturing over her shoulder, and then Suant’ra was upon them in a flurry of wings and wind.

  * * *

  The exercise did not go well. The river was deeper than anticipated, the current stronger. Valyn’s Wing was forced out of the water into the thick brush along the banks, and even with their swords out hacking a path, they made horrible time and put up enough of a racket that anyone listening would have plenty of time to flee or attack, as they saw fit. Yurl’s Wing chose to attack.

  It was a standard rattrap ambush: three men high in the trees on the right bank, two in the water dead ahead. Laith went charging off before Valyn could give an order to consolidate, and one of Hern’s stunners dropped him in his tracks. Valyn called for smokers to cover their retreat, but the wind was blowing the wrong way, as Gwenna pointed out in a fusillade of profanity. Whatever Talal’s well was, he never made visible use of it, and after Annick had loosed her first arrow, something hard and invisible crunched into the side of her head, depositing her in the murky water. In the end, Valyn resorted to a pathetic, useless charge up the center channel, tripping a flash-and-bang, ending up on his back in the mud, staring up at Sami Yurl’s grinning face while he tried to rub the stars from his eyes, to clear the ringing from his ears.

  “Tough break, Malkeenian,” the youth drawled, spitting a gob of phlegm into Valyn’s face. “I have to say, I’m not surprised that you managed to bugger the attack, but I am impressed that you did so so adeptly.

  “You know, all these years of you and Lin working together, I always thought you were the smart one.” He chuckled. “Funny. Now it turns out that in addition to having the sweetest ass on the Islands, she was the brains as well.” He shook his head in mock regret. “But you never managed to get into that, did you? And now she’s dead. What a shame.”

  Rage burned in Valyn like acid, and he scrabbled to reach over his shoulder for the second of his two blades. Yurl’s boot came down on his wrist, grinding until it felt like the bones would break. “Don’t,” he said, his face growing serious. “It’s not that I wouldn’t kill you, but it would be a blemish on my record. You are another Wing leader, after all,
at least until you get yourself killed.”

  Valyn searched for something to say, for something to do that might buy him time, but Yurl never gave him the chance. The flat of his blade swung in a vicious arc, pain split Valyn’s skull, and the sky went dark.

  30

  Kaden spent the lengthening days of late spring tracking, running—at night and during the day, blindfolded and not—throwing bowls in the pottery shed, and painting, all under the watchful eye of Rampuri Tan. There had been no more gruesome deaths since Serkhan’s body was found, but the older monk insisted on accompanying his pupil whenever he left the central compound of the monastery, and it was some small comfort that Tan always carried that strange naczal spear. At least, it would have been a comfort if he didn’t spend half his time beating Kaden black and blue with the flat of it.

  The training, which had started out brutal, only got worse; the blows grew sharper, the labors longer, the respites ever more brief. Strangely, Kaden was starting to realize that in many ways his umial seemed to know him better than he knew himself—knew just how long he could be held under the mountain streams before drowning, how long he could run before falling, and how close he could hold his hand to the flame without burning away the flesh—and as the days passed, Kaden found that, though his body still recoiled from the physical torment, his mind accepted it with growing equanimity. Still, it was a relief when he had a few scant hours to himself.

  The stone cell in which he slept was small, barely large enough for a thin reed mattress, a simple desk, and a few hooks on which he could hang his robes. The granite of the walls and floor was cold and rough. Still, it was his own, and when he closed the door to the hallway, he had the illusion of privacy and solitude. He seated himself at the desk, glanced out the narrow window into the courtyard, unstoppered his ink jar, and took up his quill. Father—he wrote at the top of the page. The letter would take months to reach the Dawn Palace, even if he was able to send it along with Blerim Panno when he left for the Bend. From there it would have to go by boat to Annur. Whatever information Kaden cared to share would be hopelessly out of date by the time it arrived, and yet, it felt important to write, despite the fact that he didn’t have anything to say. Maybe it was Tan’s tutelage, or the deaths around the monastery, but Kaden felt as though some important part of himself, some human cord that tethered him to his past, to his family, to his home, was being stretched, that if he neglected it for too much longer, it might suddenly and unexpectedly snap. He paused before remembering to add his sister’s name to the opening lines.

  Father and Adare—

  I’m sorry it’s been so long since last I wrote. We accomplish little here, but the days are full. Most recently

  Before he could finish the sentence, the door crashed open. Kaden spun in his seat, searching for a weapon of some sort, but it was only Pater, sweaty and breathless in his robe. The small boy’s face was flushed, his eyes wide with excitement.

  “Kaden!” he shouted, trying to slow himself as he careened into the cell. “Kaden! There’s people here, Kaden. Strangers!”

  Kaden laid down his quill. Visitors to the monastery were rare, exceedingly so. There was a new crop of acolytes every year, of course, but they arrived together, on the same day, led by Blerim Panno, who guided them up into the mountains from the Bend. Sometimes Panno arrived from the west, but the way was long and arduous: barren steppe and intermittent desert with only the nomadic Urghul for company. Either way, the Footsore Monk wasn’t scheduled to arrive for at least another month; Kaden had been getting an early start on his letter. “What kind of strangers?”

  “Merchants!” the small boy chirped. “Two of them, and a pack mule, too!”

  Kaden sat up. The Shin grew or made almost everything they needed, and for the rest they traded with the Urghul during the fall. Still, the occasional gullible trader, lured by rumors of fabulous hidden wealth in a monastery far to the north, would make the trek of hundreds of leagues. Their disappointment when they discovered the austerity of the Shin was so palpable that Kaden almost pitied them. It was unlikely that anyone would make the voyage so early in the year, but it sounded as though Pater had actually seen them.

  “Where are they?” he asked.

  “They’re cleaning up now, but they’re coming to the refectory for dinner. All the monks are going to be there, and we can ask questions! Nin even said so!”

  The small boy was practically jumping out of his skin as Kaden rose to his feet.

  “You run ahead,” he said. “See if you can get a glimpse of them. I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”

  Pater nodded and bolted out of the room all at once, leaving Kaden alone with his truncated letter. Merchants. The thought filled him with more excitement than he would have expected. It seemed he had almost forgotten what real excitement felt like. Still, these men would have news of the world, news of his family, Kaden realized as he doffed his mud-stained robe and started to pull a clean one over his head. It wasn’t often that the monks had visitors, and Nin would want to make a favorable impression on whoever had taken the trouble to trek all the way across Vash.

  “Don’t bother,” said Rampuri Tan. He had entered the room without knocking, and stood just inside the door, his dark eyes hard. The naczal, as always, was in his hand, although why he would carry it inside the dormitory was anyone’s guess. Whatever had killed Serkhan surely wouldn’t be bold enough to enter one of Ashk’lan’s largest buildings.

  Kaden hesitated.

  “You won’t be going to the evening meal,” Tan continued. “You will not speak with the merchants. You will not approach the merchants. You will remain out of sight in the clay shed until they leave.”

  The words landed like a slap.

  “They could be here a week,” Kaden pointed out warily. “Longer.”

  “Then you will stay in the clay shed for a week. Or longer.”

  The older monk stared at him, then exited as abruptly as he had come, leaving Kaden with his rope belt halfway tied and a look of disbelief on his face.

  Visitors to the monastery were such an unusual diversion that a large dinner was always prepared—two or three goats would be slaughtered, trenchers filled with turnips, potatoes, and carrots, and everyone would eat crusty loaves of warm bread. Even more enticing than the meal, however, would be the conversation. All the monks would have their chance to ask a question or two, to learn something of the world that continued to turn outside the walls of Ashk’lan. Bohumir Novalk would want to talk politics, of course, and so would Scial Nin. No doubt, fat Phirum Prumm would ask for news of Channary, which the merchants would have in abundance, and news of his mother, which they would not. Kaden couldn’t remember an acolyte being forbidden to a meal when there were visitors present.

  “Ae only knows what I did to deserve this,” he muttered to himself, “but I hope Tan’s got Akiil scrubbing out the privy.”

  He shrugged the clean robe back over his head and tossed it onto the bunk. No point sullying it with clay. He dressed quickly and then, just as he was leaving, walked directly into Pater’s headlong rush.

  “Kaden!” the boy shouted, trying to disentangle himself and pull Kaden down the hallway all at the same time. “Some of the monks are in the refectory already. We have to hurry!”

  Kaden picked the boy up by his armpits, set him on his feet, and dusted him off.

  “I know,” he said, trying not to let his bitterness show. “But I can’t go. You remember to tell me what they say, what they look like. You remember everything, all right?”

  Pater stared at him, his mouth hanging open. “Can’t go? Kaden, who even knows who they are? We have to go!”

  It was just like Pater to shift from I to we, and Kaden smiled in spite of himself. “Tan sent me to the clay shed to polish bowls. He’ll notice right away if I’m anywhere near the refectory. You go ahead.”

  Pater shook his head so vigorously it looked like it might rattle right off his shoulders. “We won’t go
to the refectory.”

  “But that’s where the merchants are.”

  The boy beamed, obviously pleased with his chance to help. “We’ll go to the dovecote.”

  Kaden smiled slowly. The dovecote. Leave it to Pater to remember that old hideout.

  The granite of the high peaks was cold and hard, impossible to cut or quarry. The Shin were forced to scavenge their building stone—exfoliated flakes and small, uneven boulders. Given the labor involved, the monks made the most of their existing structures and so, countless years back, when some brother long dead decided to build a dovecote, he built it up against the rear of the refectory, saving himself the labor of constructing a fourth wall. In their early years at the monastery, Kaden and Akiil had discovered the dovecote’s true value: a hidden spot where they could escape the severe eyes of their umials. When they outgrew their childhood hideout, they had passed the secret on to Pater, and Kaden had to smile now at the idea of the younger boy reminding him of his own secret.

  “Is there anyone out back?” he asked. “Anyone who might see us?”

  Pater shook his head emphatically once more. “They’re all out front, hoping to ask the merchants a few questions before the meal begins.”

  “And Tan?”

  “He’s there, too! Right next to Scial Nin!”

  That settled it. As the two made their way toward the back of the refectory, Pater bounding ahead, Kaden pulled his hood up over his face, trying to look nondescript. He cast a glance over his shoulder before slipping through the narrow doorway, then climbed the ladder to the tiny second story, where the doves were housed in narrow cells. He could hear their soft cooing, the gentle, delicate sound they made deep in their hollow chests. Even the musty scent of hay and droppings was a comfort, a memory of a childhood when he and Akiil had hidden in the gloom, eluding their chores and their umials. That was before Rampuri Tan. Well before.