Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades

by Brian Staveley

  “The Csestriim have returned,” he said.

  “Csestriim,” Valyn replied, sucking air between his teeth. “That’s what Yurl claimed. It’s tough to believe.”

  “It is necessary to believe,” Tan replied. “Some of them have survived this long precisely because people failed to believe.”

  “Adiv?” Kaden asked, voicing the question that had been on his mind all day as he watched the kettral circle and search. “You think he’s Csestriim?”

  Tan considered him with a flat, disapproving stare. “Speculation.”

  Valyn glanced from the older monk to his pupil and back. If he felt any deference toward Tan, Kaden couldn’t see it.

  “I’m not sure what’s so wrong with speculation, and I have no ’Kent-kissing idea where those two bastards ended up, but I’ll tell you one thing—they’re not our problem anymore.”

  Kaden frowned. “One of them might be Csestriim and the other is a Kettral-trained emotion leach who nearly destroyed your Wing.”

  “And now we have two birds,” Valyn shot back. “Balendin and the minister are on foot with no food or water and no gear to speak of. We can be in the air by nightfall and out of this miserable maze of mountains you call home by morning. Of course,” he added grimly, “that brings us to our real problem—the Flea.”

  Kaden looked over at Tan and Pyrre. The Skullsworn shrugged; Tan made no reply at all.

  “What,” Kaden asked finally, turning back to Valyn, “is a flea?”

  “The Flea is the best Wing commander in the Eyrie. He makes Yurl and me look like children, and his Wing is just as good as he is.”

  “And he’s part of the plot?” Pyrre asked. Ut had left her with a light slice across the shoulder, but otherwise she seemed none the worse for wear. “Why can’t some of the really dangerous players be on our side for a while?”

  “I have no idea if he’s part of the plot,” Valyn replied, his expression bleak, “but I’ll tell you this—he’s coming for us, sure as shit. He’s probably one day back, sent up as soon as my Wing went rogue. Yurl and Balendin were part of it, and we don’t know how far up the conspiracy goes.”

  Pyrre shrugged. “If he’s not part of the plot, he’s not part of the problem. Kaden,” she said, making an exaggerated curtsy, “bright be the days of his life, rules the empire now, which means he waves his little finger and your Flea has to start bowing or kissing the dirt or whatever it is you Annurians do.”

  “You don’t know much about the Flea,” Valyn said, “or about Kettral. It’s the mission that matters. My Wing disobeyed orders to come after you. As far as the Eyrie’s concerned, we’re traitors.”

  “The Kettral serve the empire,” Pyrre replied, “which means they serve the Emperor, which means, they serve him.” She poked a finger at Kaden. “Working for Kaden is, by definition, not treachery.”

  “It’s not quite that simple,” Kaden said, thinking through this angle for the first time. “Imperial history has been pretty messy at times: brother fighting brother, sons killing fathers. Atlatun the Unlucky murdered his own father out of impatience. What was it, Valyn, four hundred years ago?”

  Valyn shook his head. “If there wasn’t a battle involved, I didn’t study it.”

  “There wasn’t a battle. Atlatun wanted to rule, but his father looked a little too healthy for his taste, so he stabbed him in the eye over the dinner table. The point is, despite being Atlatun’s heir and having Intarra’s eyes, he was executed for treason. The Unhewn Throne went to his nephew.”

  “You didn’t kill your father,” Pyrre pointed out. She frowned. “You didn’t, did you?”

  “No,” Kaden replied, “but no one in Annur knows that. Whoever is behind the conspiracy could be spreading whatever rumors they want. They could be claiming that Valyn and I cooked up a plot against our father together, that we paid that priest to kill him while we were out of the capital.”

  “Until we know conclusively otherwise,” Valyn said, “we have to figure the Eyrie views us as traitors.”

  “And how does the Eyrie handle traitors?” Kaden asked.

  “They send people,” Valyn replied.

  “The Flea.”

  “His Wing might be in the mountains already.”

  “The mountains are endless,” Pyrre said. “I’ve been running around the ’Kent-kissing things for the past week. The nine of us could have a parade with pennons and drums, and no one would find us.”

  “You don’t know what they can do,” Valyn replied, eyeing the dusky sky as he spoke. “I trained with them, and I don’t know what they can do.” Kaden followed his brother’s gaze, searching above the snowy peaks for a hint of movement, for any suggestion of a dark bird bearing death on her wings.

  “All I know is that he’s coming,” Valyn said. “I don’t know how he’ll do it, I’m not sure when, but he’s coming.”

  “Then we will have to handle him,” Tan replied.

  Kaden watched Valyn turn to his umial, incredulity playing across his face.

  “Handle him? And just who in Hull’s name are you, old man? You’ve got the robe, but I’ve never heard of monks running around with gear like that,” he said, indicating the naczal in Tan’s left hand.

  The monk met the gaze but refused to answer the question.

  “All right,” Pyrre said, spreading her hands, “let’s take these birds, fly back to Annur, and set things straight. It’s not like they won’t know who you are—those ridiculous eyes have got to be good for something.”

  “Who made you a part of this, assassin?” Tan asked grimly.

  Pyrre cocked her head to the side. “After I saved the Emperor and killed that ox of an Aedolian, you expect me to walk out of here?”

  “She’s coming,” Kaden said, surprised at the certainty in his own voice. “We’ve got two birds. That should be enough to take everyone.” He glanced over at Valyn.

  Valyn nodded. “We can be in Annur in a week if we fly hard. If we stay ahead of the Flea. Maybe a little more.”

  Kaden turned his gaze west, to where the sun had just sunk behind the icy peaks. Annur. The Dawn Palace. Home. It was tempting to think that they might simply mount the kettral, fly from the carnage, return to the capital, and avenge his father. It was tempting to think it might be so easy to set things right, but from somewhere, the old Shin aphorism came back to him: Believe what you see with your eyes; trust what you hear with your ears; know what you feel with your flesh. The rest is dream and delusion.

  “… and stay well north, over the empty steppe,” Tan was saying.

  “No.”

  Three pairs of eyes turned to Kaden, boring into him.

  “You don’t think the steppe is the best route?” Valyn asked. “It’ll keep us clear of the Annurian territory south of the White River—”

  “I’m not going west at all. Not yet.”

  Pyrre squinted. “Well, to the north, there’s a whole heap of ice and frozen ocean, south takes us right back toward any pursuit from the Eyrie, so—”

  “And we can’t go east,” Valyn cut in. “Not that we’d have any reason to. Past the mountains there’s just Anthera, and we’d all be killed on sight if we landed there. Il Tornja authorized some pretty nasty operations over the border in the past few years. We’ve got to go west, got to get back to the capital.”

  Pyrre was nodding. “How far north of the White do you think we need to fly to avoid these unsavory friends of yours?”

  Kaden shook his head slowly, something hardening inside him. He didn’t know what was going on in Annur, and neither did anyone else. It was tempting to return, to believe that the people would hail his arrival, but that was the dream and the delusion. His foes had killed his father, had very nearly destroyed his entire family, and the only certainty remaining was that someone was hunting him, guessing at his movements, tracking.

  He thought back to the early spring, to the long cold day he had spent tracking a lost goat through the peaks, inhabiting its mind, feeling fo
r its actions, following its decisions until he ran it down. I will not be that goat; I will not be hunted. If the Shin had taught him anything, it was patience.

  “The rest of you should fly west. Go to Annur to try to see what’s happening there as quickly as possible.”

  “The rest of you?” Pyrre asked with a raised eyebrow.

  Kaden took a deep breath. “I am going to visit the Ishien. Tan and I both.”

  The older monk’s face hardened, but it was Valyn who spoke.

  “And just who in ’Shael’s name are the fucking Ishien?”

  “A branch of the Shin,” Kaden replied. “One that studies the Csestriim. One that hunts the Csestriim. If the Csestriim are involved in this, they might know something.”

  “No,” Tan said finally. “The Ishien and the Shin parted ways long ago. You are expecting quiet monks and hours of contemplation, but the Ishien are a harder order. A more dangerous order.”

  “More dangerous than the ak’hanath?” Kaden asked. “More dangerous than a contingent of Aedolian Guards come to kill me in my sleep?” He paused. “More dangerous than the Csestriim?”

  “I don’t know shit about the Ishien,” Valyn interjected, “but I’m not letting you wander off without protection. You’re tougher than I’d expected, but you still need my Wing for cover.”

  Tan shook his head. “You do not know what you ask for.”

  “I am not asking,” Kaden replied, stiffening his voice. “Valyn, I need your Wing back in the capital and soon, to sort out what happened there before the trail goes cold.”

  “Then we’ll go visit the Ishien first, and then we’ll all go to the capital.”

  Kaden opened his mouth to try to explain it once more, then closed it. Perhaps he could convince his umial and the others, and perhaps he could not—that was beside the point. He never asked for his eyes, but they burned just the same.

  “Tan and I are going,” he said once more. “The rest of you are returning to Annur. There is no more to the matter unless you would disobey your Emperor.”

  Pyrre chuckled and opened her mouth to speak. For a moment Kaden thought he’d made a fool of himself. They were thousands of leagues from the Dawn Palace, lost in a labyrinth of mountains, fleeing from the people he had been born to command. Why should a Skullsworn, a renegade monk, and a Kettral Wing leader listen to him, a boy with one robe to his name?

  Then, all in one motion, Valyn stood. Kaden rose stiffly to his feet as well, in time to see his brother touch a hand to his blades before kneeling and placing his knuckles to his forehead.

  “It will be as you say, Your Radiance. I will make the birds ready at once.”

  When Valyn finally raised those black eyes, Kaden could see nothing in them, not even his own reflection.

  GODS AND RACES, AS UNDERSTOOD BY THE CITIZENS OF ANNUR

  RACES

  Nevariim—Immortal, beautiful, bucolic. Foes of the Csestriim. Extinct thousands of years before the appearance of humans. Likely apocryphal.

  Csestriim—Immortal, vicious, emotionless. Responsible for the creation of civilization and the study of science and medicine. Destroyed by humans. Extinct thousands of years.

  Human—Identical in appearance to the Csestriim, but mortal, subject to emotion.

  THE OLD GODS, IN ORDER OF ANTIQUITY

  Blank God, the—The oldest, predating creation. Venerated by the Shin monks.

  Ae—Consort to the Blank God, the Goddess of Creation, responsible for all that is.

  Astar’ren—Goddess of Law, Mother of Order and Structure. Called the Spider by some, although the adherents of Kaveraa also claim that title for their own goddess.

  Pta—Lord of Chaos, disorder, and randomness. Believed by some to be a simple trickster, by others, a destructive and indifferent force.

  Intarra—Lady of Light, Goddess of Fire, starlight, and the sun. Also the patron of the Malkeenian Emperors of Annur, who claim her as a distant ancestor.

  Hull—The Owl King, the Bat, Lord of the Darkness, Lord of the Night, aegis of the Kettral, patron of thieves.

  Bedisa—Goddess of Birth, she who weaves the souls of all living creatures.

  Ananshael—God of Death, the Lord of Bones, who unknits the weaving of his consort, Bedisa, consigning all living creatures to oblivion. Worshipped by the Skullsworn in Rassambur.

  Ciena—Goddess of Pleasure, believed by some to be the mother of the young gods.

  Meshkent—The Cat, the Lord of Pain and Cries, consort of Ciena, believed by some to be the father of the young gods. Worshipped by the Urghul, some Manjari, and the jungle tribes.

  THE YOUNG GODS, ALL COEVAL WITH HUMANITY

  Eira—Goddess of Love and mercy.

  Maat—Lord of Rage and hate.

  Kaveraa—Lady of Terror, Mistress of Fear.

  Heqet—God of Courage and battle.

  Orella—Goddess of Hope.

  Orilon—God of Despair.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BRIAN STAVELEY has taught literature, religion, history, and philosophy, all subjects that influence his writing, and holds an M.A. in creative writing from Boston University. He lives in Vermont with his wife and young son. The Emperor’s Blades is his first novel.

  bstaveley.wordpress.com

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE EMPEROR’S BLADES

  Copyright © 2013 by Brian Staveley

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Richard Anderson

  Map by Isaac Stewart

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Staveley, Brian.

  The Emperor’s Blades / Brian Staveley.—First Edition.

  p. cm.—(Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne; Book 1)

  “A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”

  ISBN 978-0-7653-3640-8 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4668-2843-8 (e-book)

  1. Fantasy fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619.T3856E47 2014

  813'.6—dc23

  2013025451

  e-ISBN 9781466828438

  First Edition: January 2014