Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades (46 page)

“If you speak a word of this,” he said, his voice ragged, “to anyone on the Wing, I’ll rip out your throat and we’ll make do without a leach.”

“Iron,” Talal replied, voice quiet but sure.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Iron,” the leach said again, gesturing to the knife at his belt, the rough bracelets around both wrists. “That’s my well. Of course, we don’t carry much iron, but there’s plenty of iron in steel, enough to do the job.”

Valyn put his palms flat on the table, trying to stow his own emotions and make sense of the claim. There was every chance the leach was lying to him, and no way to know for sure. He considered those dark, still eyes.

“Why isn’t it more powerful?”

Talal shrugged. “Not that much iron around most of the time—a few blades, a few arrowheads. Enough to work with, usually, but rarely enough to do anything impressive.”

“If we were going in after a fortified position,” Valyn asked warily, “could you bring it down?”

“Not a chance.”

“What about something that wasn’t built out of stone? Something less sturdy—like a wooden palisade?”
Or an alehouse on stilts,
he thought to himself.
What about Manker’s?

Talal considered the question. “If there was a great deal of steel present—as there would be on a densely packed battlefield—maybe. And if the structure was already flawed in some crucial way.” He spread his hands. “Then I
might
be able to manage it. Or I might not.” He shook his head ruefully. “I’m sorry, Valyn. I’m sure you were hoping for more out of your Wing’s leach. Aacha could have knocked down a stone gatehouse when his well was running strong. Same with most of the leaches.” He frowned. “Bad luck. I’ve got enough power to get me hanged, but not enough to protect myself. It’s why I had to get so handy with the blades,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder to the twin swords sheathed across his back.

That fact, more than anything else, carried the question for Valyn. Soldiers gravitated to their strengths, as much as their trainers tried to beat the tendency out of them. Annick carried that bow of hers everywhere, Laith preferred to be on the bird’s back, and Gwenna never seemed happy unless she was blowing something up. Deception or no, it was hard to believe that Talal would have devoted so much time to his blades if he had a powerful, secret well to draw upon. Anything was possible, of course, but sometimes you had to play the odds.

“What about Balendin?” Valyn asked cautiously. “Could he knock down a building?”

Talal nodded slowly. “He hides his full strength pretty cleverly, but I’ve seen him manage some things.…” His eyes drifted with the memory, then snapped back. “He’s dangerous, and not just because he’s cruel.”

“Any new ideas about his well?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you have any
guesses
?” Valyn pressed, wary and impatient all at the same time.

“I’ve had about a thousand of them.”

“He keeps those dogs of his close—”

“That’s the obvious thing,” Talal agreed, “but the obvious thing isn’t usually the right one. We’ve all got our masks and disguises.” He gestured to the stone amulet hanging around his neck, to the gold hoops in his ears. “And then there’s the whole business of intentional deception. Before I started flying with you, I would avoid using my well on random days, even if it meant losing an exercise or contest, just to keep the others off my scent.” He grimaced. “It’s a bad way to live. Always lying. Always trying to lead people on.…”

Valyn had never considered it that way. In the stories, the leaches were always the villains, the nefarious meddlers behind the scenes, the ones pulling the strings, the ones making the world dance their own unnatural jig. He had never thought that their power might force
them
to dance.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said finally, awkwardly.

“I always figured I’d tell someone eventually,” Talal replied. “You keep something like that hidden for too long—” He shook his head slowly. “—there’s no telling what it might do to you, no telling what you might become.”

32

There were no locks on the door, but for three days, ever since the dinner for Pyrre and Jakin, Kaden had been a prisoner in the clay shed. He had sneaked back just in time, slipping out of the dovecote with Pater, sprinting down the path, and sliding inside with barely enough time to light a lantern, slow his heartbeat, cool his skin, and compose his face before Tan arrived to check up on him.

“How was the dinner?” Kaden had asked nonchalantly. He yearned to question his
umial
about Pyrre’s strange behavior—if anyone else picked up on it, it would have been Tan—but, of course, if he let on that he’d been hiding in the dovecote, Ae only knew what sort of penance the monk would devise.

“Unremarkable,” Tan replied, looking over Kaden’s work. “You haven’t made much progress.”

“The process is the goal,” Kaden responded innocently, trying not to feel smug. It was about time one of those Shin maxims worked in his favor.

“You will continue the process tomorrow.”

“And tonight?” Kaden asked. “Should I return to the dormitory?”

Tan shook his head. “Sleep here. If you have to piss, use a pot. Someone will come for it in the morning.”

Before Kaden could formulate another question that might lead back to Pyrre, Jakin, and the evening meal, Tan was gone, leaving him in the narrow stone room surrounded by the silent shapes of the bowls and jugs. Kaden worked awhile longer—busying his hands helped to still the worries in his mind—and then curled up in his robe on the hard stone floor to sleep. He woke in the night, shivering so badly, his teeth rattled against one another, and moved up to a hard wooden bench. It was narrow and uncomfortable, but at least the cold didn’t radiate out of it.

He expected Akiil to come that night. Before the dinner had finished, while the monks were still nursing the dark dregs of their tea, Kaden had left Pater with a message for his friend:
Find me after the midnight bell.
The bell came and went, however, a somber tolling in the darkness, without a sign of the young monk.

He spent the next two days crafting pots and mugs that Tan never bothered to inspect, the following two nights huddled in awkward positions on the small bench, trying to shrink into his robe to avoid the night’s chill. Nightmares filled his dreams—inchoate visions with no real narrative in which his father fought against a host of foes while Pyrre looked on as though nothing were amiss. It was a long time since he’d had nightmares—years, in fact. The Shin believed that disordered dreams were the product of a disordered mind. The oldest brothers claimed not to dream at all. Kaden would have been happy enough to join them, but the visions kept coming, night after night, as soon as he closed his eyes. Finally, on the third night, Akiil arrived, slipping through the wooden door just after the midnight bell.

“Nice jug,” he said, glancing at Kaden’s newest project—a large, two-handled ewer of red river clay. “Too bad we don’t have any wine to go in it.”

“’Shael can take the jug,” Kaden responded more harshly than he’d intended. “It’s been two days. What’s happening out there? Did anyone find what’s killing the goats? What’s going on with those two merchants?”

Akiil flopped onto the bench wearily and spread his hands. He looked bored. Bored and frustrated. His robe, never very clean to begin with, had dirt ground into it, a sure sign that he, like Kaden, had been spending the bulk of his days performing some sort of menial labor rather than lounging around with the strangers. He raked a mop of hair out of his eyes.

“What has been happening with the merchants is what always happens with merchants. A lot of song. A lot of dance.”

“Meaning
what
?”

Akiil shrugged. “Pyrre and Jakin try to sell us shit. Nin says we don’t want it. Pyrre says, ‘But surely you would enjoy a robe made of these fine silks.’ The abbot says he prefers roughspun. You’re not missing much.”

Kaden shook his head in frustration. “There’s something strange about those two, something … not right.”

“They’re shitty merchants, that’s for sure.” Akiil’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. How do you know? Tan’s had you locked in here the whole time.”

“I was in the dovecote,” Kaden confessed. Quickly, he ran through the whole story—the merchants’ strange entrance, the overpowering sense that Pyrre was holding something back, despite her urbane geniality, that vague suspicion that Kaden felt so powerfully but could barely articulate. “There’s something … something they’re not saying about my father,” he concluded weakly.

Akiil frowned. “Sounds like your imagination has flown the coop.”

“I didn’t imagine it.”

“Halva’s always lecturing me about how we see what we want to see. That could have happened to you. Of course, if I saw what I wanted to see, Pyrre’s breasts would be a fair amount larger.”

“Why would I
want
to see something troubling about my father?”

“Not that you want bad news, but it’s only natural to worry about your parents—provided you know who they are. It’s an affliction I’ve been spared.”

“I’m looking at Pyrre’s face now,” Kaden replied, his mind filling with the
saama’an.
For the hundredth time, he tried to pinpoint what it was about the woman’s expression that bothered him so. “There’s …
something.
” He sighed. “There’s something strange, but I can’t see what it is.”

“Sounds like you’ve been spending too much time buried up to your nose or running around with a blindfold on. That can do things to a man, can do things to his mind—”

“There’s nothing wrong with my mind.”

“That’s up for debate,” Akiil shot back. Then, seeing the blaze in Kaden’s eyes, he raised his hands in surrender. “But let’s assume you’re right. Still, wouldn’t Nin or Tan or one of our aged wards have noticed? I mean, you’re good at the
saama’an,
but they’ve been going at it hammer and tongs for decades.”

Kaden spread his hands helplessly.

“Of course,” his friend went on, a sly grin creeping onto his face, “old Shin tricks are all well and good, but there’s a way we can get some more … practical information.”

Kaden looked at him. That grin suggested Akiil had devised a plan that would get them both beaten half to death if Nin or Tan found out. Which was all the more reason to make sure they didn’t find out. “Go on.”

Akiil leaned forward conspiratorially, rubbing his hands together, fully engaged for the first time since he entered. “I’ve been watching that woman, Pyrre.” He pursed his lips appraisingly. “She’s not much, compared to the whores I grew up around, but, up here in the mountains, I figure you have to take what you can get.”

“You’ve been spying on her.”

“Let’s call it ‘supervising.’ At any rate, she’s slipped away from the monastery a few times, usually at dusk, when Jakin’s haggling with Nin.”

“Maybe she’s just taking a look around,” Kaden responded. He wanted Akiil to have an idea, but this seemed pretty thin.

“She goes
east.
Away from the sunset. Away from all the pretty views. Besides, Nin told her the first night about whatever’s been killing the goats. You know many women who enjoy taking midnight strolls around a strange mountain monastery perched on the edge of a cliff when they’ve just learned that an unknown predator is ripping the heads off goats and men alike and then eating the brains?”

Kaden nodded, warming to the idea. “That’s strange. So where does she go?”

“No idea,” Akiil replied. “I haven’t had a chance to follow her—I’ve been shoveling out a new channel for a branch of the White River the past three days.
Tonight,
however…” He grinned. “I thought maybe we might put some of our Shin tracking skills to work.”

Beshra’an,
the “Thrown Mind,” had originated as a way to trail lost livestock or to hunt down predators; it was, in fact, the way Kaden had tracked down the slaughtered goat two months earlier. Following prints in the earth was all well and good, but most of the land around Ashk’lan was rock, not earth. When the prints disappeared, as they inevitably did in the granite peaks, the monks needed another method.

The goal of
beshra’an
was to slip outside one’s own head, to throw one’s mind into another creature, to think, not like a man following a goat, but like the goat itself. The monks who were good at it could follow animals over blank stone with uncanny success, abandoning their own humanity to sniff out the scent of fresh grass, to tread the fine gravel that the goats favored, to move into the lee of a massive boulder when the storms came. Kaden had had some luck with it, even a few times where he felt as though he really
had
“thrown” his mind into the head of his quarry. Unfortunately, he’d never tried following a human.

“All right,” he whispered to Akiil once they’d slipped from the monastery proper and out toward the broken land to the east. A gibbous moon hung low in the sky, and once his eyes adjusted, there was enough light to see by. Rock slabs and boulders leaned against one another, casting dark shadows beneath the argent glow of the moon. Crooked branches of the junipers, twisted by the wind, reached toward them, threatening to snatch a robe or scratch an eye. The evening sounds of the monastery were barely audible above the light breeze.

“This seemed like a better idea when we were inside,” Akiil said. His voice was sarcastic, but his eyes flitted from rock to rock, quick and alert. Kaden didn’t have to remind him that whatever killed Serkhan was still out there, still waiting. They had to hope that the staves they’d taken from the goats pens along with the knives at their belts would be enough to discourage it.
After all,
Kaden reasoned with himself,
Pyrre is sneaking around out here every night, and she hasn’t been killed yet.

“We’ll be quick,” he said, trying to reassure himself as much as his friend.

“That’s what I told myself right before I cut that purse. The one that earned me this,” Akiil replied, gesturing to his brand. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you can dim those eyes of yours. It’s nice that a goddess fucked your great-great-grandad, but they’re a little obvious.”