Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades

by Brian Staveley

  “Wait,” he pleaded, trying to calm the girl without drawing attention from beyond the insubstantial canvas walls of the pavilion. “Stop!”

  The words only spurred her frenzy. Each year, Kaden helped to tie goats for shearing and slaughter—and each year, he found himself shocked by the strength in the body of an animal driven to panic. That same panic had seized Triste, and for several heartbeats she overpowered him, driving him down and backward despite his greater height and weight. Her hands around his wrists might have been manacles, for all his ability to break her grip. She’s stronger than I am, he thought, amazed even in the midst of the contest. Then something seemed to snap in the girl. She fought still, but the impossible power had gone, and Kaden was able to subdue her at last. When he finally managed to extricate himself, he looked down to see her violet eyes welling with tears.

  “We must,” she sobbed. “We must. We must!”

  “Must what?” Kaden asked, although he had a pretty good idea already. “We don’t have to do anything,” he added quickly.

  Triste shook her head so violently, he thought she might hurt herself. “They told me,” she cried. “They told me we must.”

  Kaden stood quickly, straightening his robe about him and turning to examine one of the priceless tapestries hanging from the wall. It depicted a battle, he realized gradually, some sort of conflict between gorgeous men and women, half naked but wielding long spears against ranks of foes in drab, gray armor. He bent all his energy to the study of the weave, the alternation of color and pattern, using the focus to still his pulse, slow his breath, relax … everything, and after a long, awkward minute he was able to look back at Triste. She was crying softly.

  “They may have said we must,” he began, trying to put more resolve into his voice than he felt, “but they also told me that I’m the Emperor, and as your Emperor, I command you to put on some clothes.”

  It was a ridiculous commencement of his imperial prerogatives, but he had to start somewhere. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that she had ignored him, wrapping her naked body tightly into a ball instead. So much for the irresistible heft of the Emperor’s decree, he thought to himself.

  “He said that you would want to,” she moaned, hugging her knees to her chest in a way that covered her breasts but accentuated … other things. Kaden quickly looked away again. “He said if you didn’t want to, that it was my fault. Now they’ll kill her,” she choked. “They’ll turn her out of the temple and she’ll die.”

  In spite of himself, Kaden turned back to her, curious and disturbed.

  “They’ll kill who?” he asked carefully. “Who is threatening to kill whom?” As he spoke, he picked up one of the blankets folded at the foot of the bed and hastily draped it over her shivering form. Huddled under the fabric, cheeks streaked with tears, she suddenly looked like the frightened girl that she was. “You can tell me,” he added gently.

  Triste shook her head miserably, but met his eyes for the first time, her face filled with blank resignation. “My mother,” she responded when the sobs had subsided enough to allow her to speak. “Tarik said if I didn’t lie with you, he would see that my mother was turned out of the temple and forced to earn her living as a common whore.”

  “What temple?” Kaden asked, anger slowly replacing the confusion inside him. “Who is your mother?” He remembered Adiv’s mocking smile at dinner, the smugness with which he had presented Triste as Kaden’s “gift.” Sanlitun may have promoted the man to the Mizran rank, but Kaden didn’t intend for him to stay there long if this was how he treated innocent girls.

  “Louette,” Triste responded. The shuddering fear had gone out of her, replaced by a deep, unplumbed grief. “That’s my mother’s name. She’s a leina.”

  Kaden stared. The leina were the high priestesses of Ciena, women trained since childhood in the arts of pleasure, all the arts of pleasure. “Stuck-up, too-good whores,” Akiil called them, but he was only half right. The leina did trade their skills for money, but they had no more in common with the whores of Akiil’s Perfumed Quarter than a two-penny fishmonger did with the Vested merchants of Freeport.

  The leina were a religious order. Like the Shin, they spent their time in study, exercise, and prayer, but unlike the monks, they would have scoffed at the never-ending rigor of the vaniate. Ciena’s priestesses were devotees of pleasure. They spent their days and nights studying dancing, fine wines … and other, more alluring arts. The richest men spent princely sums to share the company of a leina, even for a single night, such princely sums, in fact, that Ciena’s temple in Annur boasted nearly as much gold, marble, and silk as the Dawn Palace itself.

  Regardless of the wealth lavished upon them, however, the women owed their devotion to the goddess they served rather than to the men who paid so richly for their attentions. There were rules governing the behavior of the leina, observances to be paid, holidays to be observed, tradition to be respected. A man could not simply arrive at the temple, toss a jingling sack of Annurian suns on the counter, and demand to be served. It didn’t work like that, at least not in the stories Kaden had heard. Even Emperors owed respect to the handmaids of a goddess.

  “Adiv can’t do that,” he said. “He might be the Mizran Councillor, but he’s not in charge of Ciena’s temple.”

  “He can,” Triste insisted, nodding vigorously. “You don’t know him. He can.” She sat up on the bed, hugging the blanket tightly to her chest.

  “Well, I’ll see that he doesn’t,” Kaden replied firmly. “It’s as simple as that. I’ll just see that Louette, that your mother isn’t harmed.” The words sounded confident as they left his lips, and he dearly hoped they were true.

  For the first time, Triste regarded him with what might have been hope. It was buried deep beneath fear, suspicion, and doubt, but it was there. Kaden’s heart warmed at the sight.

  “How did Adiv … find you?” he asked slowly.

  A cloud passed over Triste’s face, but she answered readily enough. “I grew up in the temple. My whole life, I lived there.” With a sweep of her fingers she brushed back her black hair, revealing the necklace tattoo. At least, it looked like a tattoo, but Kaden had never seen work so delicate.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Goddessborn,” she replied.

  Kaden shook his head at the unfamiliar word.

  Triste continued, “My mother always says, ‘Men want the bliss without the burden.’ The ones who come to the temple are always rich, and they pay well, but they have names and estates. They have their own proper children to think of.”

  Kaden thought he heard a note of bitterness there, but she continued without dropping her eyes.

  “The leina are careful—my mother taught me all the herbs and potions—” She colored, then rushed ahead. “Even though I haven’t needed them, she taught them to me, just to be sure. Anyway, even if you’re careful, sometimes things happen, sometimes a man gets one of the leina with child. Then the woman has a choice—she can kill the baby or mark it as goddessborn.” She touched the tattoo at the base of her neck again, as though assuring herself it was still there.

  Kaden had some idea where this was going; it made perfect sense when you thought about it.

  “The goddessborn belong to Ciena. We can never own anything, never inherit anything, never lay claim to our fathers’ names. Most of us don’t even know who our fathers are.”

  She shrugged, a frustrated, girlish gesture that seemed somehow incongruous after her matter-of-fact description of the political realities underlying her station.

  “So,” Kaden pressed gently, “Adiv came to the temple looking for a—” He was about to say “gift” but changed his mind at the last moment. “—for a leina, and you were the one he chose.”

  “No. Well, yes.” Triste bit her lip. “But I’m not a leina. My mother never wanted me to enter the service of the goddess.”

  “But you were raised in the temple,” Kaden replied, confused.

&
nbsp; “She raised me in the temple because there was nowhere else, but she always said that if I studied hard and made myself into a proper lady—” She paused and looked down at the blanket wrapped around her, as though remembering her nakedness for the first time. “If I made myself into a proper lady,” she persisted, her voice cracking just slightly, “my father might take me in. Not as his daughter,” she rushed on, as though frightened Kaden might reprimand her for the thought. “He wouldn’t have to acknowledge me ever, but as one of the ladies of his court, maybe a handmaid or something.”

  It seemed an unlikely proposition to Kaden. Bastards were dangerous business, even if they were girls, even if they were tattooed girls. A young woman as beautiful as Triste would have dozens of suitors, and if one of them married her and then realized she was the daughter to some sort of potentate …

  “I studied the low arts at the temple,” she continued, oblivious of his thoughts, “but my mother refused to have me inducted into the high mysteries.”

  “The high mysteries?” Kaden asked, intrigued.

  Triste colored once more. “The arts of bodily pleasure,” she responded, eyes downcast. “All girls in the temple learn the low arts—dancing, singing, all of that—but you can’t be a leina without years studying the high mysteries. My mother says you can sing yourself hoarse—that’s not what the men pay for.”

  “So you haven’t done … this … before?” Kaden asked, cursing himself silently for his clumsiness.

  Triste shook her head. “No. My mother never wanted…” She trailed off, staring at her hands as though she had never seen them before. “No.”

  A rustling at the back of the tent interrupted her before she could say more. Eyes wide, she put her finger to her lips. Kaden nodded. Perhaps it was only wind, but the memory of Pyrre Lakatur and the ak’hanath remained fresh in his mind. Ut was an Aedolian, but he was only one man—he couldn’t watch all the walls of the pavilion at once.

  Kaden gestured toward Triste’s fallen dress urgently—her nakedness seemed to make both of them more vulnerable—and as she struggled to pull it on, he cast about for something that could serve as a weapon. He still carried the short knife on the belt of his robe, but that seemed a feeble defense. The supporting poles holding up the pavilion might stave off an intruder, but they were inextricable from the canvas. A heavy gilded candlestick caught his eye—twice as thick as his thumb and two feet long. The rustling came again, punctuated by a short ripping. Kaden hastily snuffed the wick, yanked the taper out of its sconce, and hefted the makeshift weapon tentatively. It wasn’t a sword, but a solid blow would knock a man unconscious. He forced himself to move toward the sound.

  43

  A glint of steel poked through the canvas, then the body of a belt knife, flashing in the lamplight as it sawed back and forth slowly, carving down through the heavy fabric. Kaden’s mind darted immediately to the long blades he had discovered inside Pyrre’s pack, and he tightened his hold on the candlestick, trying to get a good grip with his sweaty palms. Whoever it was would have to come through headfirst, and as soon as they were partway inside the tent, he could smash the candlestick down on the nape of their neck. He moved cautiously to the side of the growing rent and raised his weapon.

  A small shaved head poked inside, pulled back a moment, then reappeared, followed immediately by a wriggling body.

  Kaden started to swing, then checked himself.

  “Kaden,” the intruder whispered urgently. “Kaden, you’ve got to listen!”

  “Pater,” he exhaled heavily. “What are you doing here?” The small boy looked over at Triste, and for a moment it seemed all thought had gone out of his head, but when he turned back to Kaden his urgency returned in a rush.

  “There’s men, Kaden, with armor.”

  Kaden let out a long breath and Triste slowly relaxed. He noticed she had picked up the other candlestick, but lowered it now, unsure what to make of their diminutive intruder. “Those are probably just a few of the Aedolian Guards. They’re here to protect me, Pater.”

  “No!” Pater insisted. “They’re in the mountains. All over the mountains. I was on the Talon. Heng caught me eating a carrot when I should have been fasting, but we only had to fast because you took over the refectory—” He glared at Kaden accusingly, then remembered his purpose.

  “But I was on the Talon and I heard them and I knew that you’re Emperor now and I thought like you thought, that they were soldiers, but then I listened to them and they are soldiers, but I listened to what they were saying, listened to it and remembered it exactly, just like those boring exercises we always have to do. One of them said, ‘Make sure the perimeter is secure before you move.’ Then another one said, ‘I don’t see why we don’t just kill the boy and have done with it.’ And I got scared then, because I didn’t know who the boy was, but I kept listening, and the first one called the second one an idiot, he said, ‘If those were our only orders, we could have taken off his head in the square.’”

  Kaden felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to prickle. He glanced over at Triste. Her pale face had gone white in the candlelight and she shook her head in confusion, hugging her arms around her chest. “What did they say next?” Kaden asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.

  “He said, the first one did, that if they didn’t secure the perimeter before the attack, some of the monks would get away. ‘Once you’ve nailed down the perimeter, make sure they’re all dead, but do not begin until they’ve finished with the boy.’” Kaden could feel his heart thundering in his chest and he took a moment to slow his pulse. He had to think. Triste was staring at Pater and tugging her gossamer dress tighter about her.

  “He said they brought that pavilion all the way up the mountain just so they’d know right where he was and they didn’t want him slipping away when things got messy,” Pater tumbled on, still breathless from his run down from the Talon and the urgency of his message. “That’s when I figured out that he was you! I almost fell off the Talon, I was so scared. I climbed down and I ran all the way here, but there’s a huge man with a sword in front of the door, and so I had to sneak in the back. You have to leave, Kaden!” he finished with a rush. “You have to leave right now!”

  “We have to tell Ut,” Kaden responded, heading for the door.

  Pater dived for him, grasping him around the legs while shaking his head furiously. “No, Kaden,” he begged. “He’s on their side! They said his name, the men in the mountains, and I made sure to remember it. ‘Ut wants this.…’ ‘Report to Ut.…’ He’s on their side,” Pater repeated. “That’s why I had to sneak in the back of the tent.”

  Kaden tried to gather his wits. The sudden arrival of the imperial delegation combined with the shock of his father’s death had left him disconcerted and raw, but he had done his best to tamp down his emotions, to smother them and play the young Emperor. Micijah Ut, even changed as he was, had been one familiar spar in a baffling flood, something to cling to as Kaden made his way back toward the capital. And now, it seemed, the man had been sent to kill him. The discipline he spent years cultivating threatened to evaporate as quickly as a late spring snow, and with desperation he reached for the novice exercises he had mastered in his first years among the Shin.

  Each breath is a wave, he told himself, visualizing the long, lapping breakers of the bay outside Annur as he inhaled. The fear is sand. As the breath escaped, he let the sand and the fear slip from his mind, sliding down the long shingle into the bottomless belly of the sea. Slowly, he brought his breathing and then his pulse under control.

  “All right,” he began finally. “All right. We have to warn the other monks. We’ll tell the abbot first—”

  Triste cut him off. “We have to get out of this tent. Listen to him—they’re coming here first!” Fear filled her voice, but beneath the fear there was something else, something surprisingly hard. Resolve, Kaden realized. Readiness. Triste had shown neither quality all night, not at dinner, nor when he brought her back to t
he pavilion. The realization gave him pause, but Pater was nodding vigorously in agreement, tugging at Kaden’s robe, leading him to the hole he had sliced in the back of the canvas. The boy started for the small tear, but Kaden held him back.

  “Let me go first. Once I know it’s safe, I’ll motion you through.”

  The hole Pater had torn in the canvas wasn’t quite big enough for Kaden’s larger shoulders. He set the candlestick down and tugged gingerly at the fabric. It tore easily, but the harsh ripping sound made him wince. Pater had said Ut was out front—how much could he hear?

  Kaden waited, straining his ears for the crunch of boots on gravel or the dull clank of armor. He could hear nothing but the sound of blood in his ears. Slowly, he eased his head through the rip.

  The courtyard was empty and the night calm, the moon climbing her quiet path through the stars overhead, casting shadows beneath the junipers. Kaden listened again and then, with a gulp, levered himself out through the gap. For a horrible moment the canvas tightened around his torso and he thought he was stuck, but a strong tug freed him and he stood up in the cool night air, trembling.

  Shame filled him. Pater had run all the way back here without a thought for his own safety and all he, Kaden i’Sanlitun hui’Malkeenian, twenty-fourth of his line and Emperor of Annur, could do was peer uselessly into the night. Ruthlessly, methodically, he identified his fear, compartmentalized it, and put it to the side. Fear is sand, he reminded himself. Nothing more. Steadied slightly, he put his head back in through the flap.

  Triste and Pater crouched just inside the canvas, staring at him wide-eyed. Kaden nodded urgently and Triste grabbed the boy by the back of his robe, thrusting him at the opening with surprising strength. Pater squirmed through in a flash and crouched beside him in the dark. Kaden put his hand through to motion the girl to follow, then froze. Across from the pavilion, pressed close to the wall of the dormitory, something moved in the shadow.

  He shoved his hand back through the canvas, frantically trying to keep Triste inside. His fingers met with the smooth skin of her chest, and she paused. He could feel her heart pounding beneath her rib cage, a frenzied counterpoint to his own, but she kept still as Kaden peered into the darkness.