Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades (12 page)

“Maybe he’s in hiding. Maybe his neighbors discovered what he was and he had to run away in the night. Maybe he put a kenning on someone,” the boy went on, his expression rapt. “Something really evil, and—”

Akiil chuckled. “And then he came up here to kill a few goats?”

“They
do
things like that,” the boy insisted. “Eat brains and drink blood and stuff.”

Kaden shook his head. “They do not, Pater. They’re men and women, just the way we are, only … twisted somehow.”

“They’re
evil
!” the small boy exclaimed. “That’s why they have to get hanged or beheaded.”

“They are evil,” Kaden agreed. “And we do have to hang them. But not because they drink blood.”

“They
might
drink blood,” Akiil suggested unhelpfully, knuckling Pater in the ribs to goad him on.

Again, Kaden shook his head. “We have to hang leaches because they have too much power. No one should be able to twist the fabric of reality to their own ends.” Hundreds of years earlier, the Atmani leach-lords had gone insane and nearly destroyed the world. Whenever Kaden wondered if leaches deserved the loathing and opprobrium heaped upon them, he had only to remember his history. “Only the gods should have that kind of power.”

“Too much power!” Akiil crowed. “Too much
power
! And this from the person who’s going to be the ’Kent-kissing Annurian
Emperor
someday.”

Kaden snorted. “According to Tan, I don’t have enough wit in my head to make it as a simple monk.”

“You don’t
have
to make it as a monk. You’re going to rule half the known world.”

“Maybe,” Kaden responded, doubtfully. The Dawn Palace and the Unhewn Throne felt impossibly far away, a hazily remembered dream from his childhood. For all he knew, his father would rule another thirty years, years Kaden would spend at Ashk’lan hauling water, retiling roofs, and, oh yes, getting beaten by his
umial.
“I don’t mind the work and the whippings when I feel like it’s all part of some bigger plan. Tan, though … I might as well be some sort of insect, for all he cares.”

“You should be happy,” Akiil responded, rolling onto his back and staring up at the scudding clouds. “I’ve worked my ass off my whole life precisely in order to keep the expectations for me low. Low expectations are the key to success.” He started to turn to Pater, but Kaden cut him off.

“That is
not
more Thieves’ Wisdom,” he said to the boy. Then, turning back to Akiil, “You know what Tan’s had me doing for the past week? Counting. Counting all the stones in all the buildings at Ashk’lan.”

“
That’s
what you’re complaining about?” Akiil demanded, stabbing a finger at him. “I was getting harder tasks when I was ten.”

Kaden rolled his eyes. “You always were precocious.”

“No need to show off the big words. Not all of us grew up with a Manjari tutor.”

“Aren’t you the one who claims the only schooling a man needs he can get from a butcher, a sailor, and a whore?”

Akiil shrugged. “The butcher and the sailor are optional.”

Pater had been trying to follow the exchange, head swiveling back and forth with the conversation.

“What’s a whore?” he asked. Then, distracted by his earlier reasoning, “If a leach didn’t kill the goat, what did?”

Kaden saw it all again, the shattered skull, scooped clean.

“I told you, I don’t know.” He looked out across the courtyard, past the stone buildings and the granite ledges to where the sun was sinking toward the endless grasslands of the steppe. “But it’s going to be dark soon, and if I don’t get cleaned up and find Tan before dinner, I’m going to find myself envying that goat.”

*   *   *

Umber’s Pool wasn’t a proper pool so much as a pocket of rocks half a mile from the monastery where the White River paused, gathering itself in deep, still silence before spilling over a shelf in a dizzying waterfall, tumbling hundreds of feet into a deep ravine before snaking lazily into the steppe far below. After a childhood spent bathing in copper tubs filled with steaming water by the palace servants, Kaden had been shocked to realize that any washing at Ashk’lan would take place outside, in Umber’s. Over the years, however, he had grown accustomed to it. The water was viciously cold, even in summer; anyone stoic enough to brave it in the winter had to hack a hole in the ice with the rusty, long-handled axe that was left between the rocks for just that purpose. Still, after a long day lugging tile beneath the glare of the mountain sun, the water would feel good.

He lingered before entering the pool. It was nice to have a few moments to himself, away from Tan’s discipline, away from Pater’s questions and Akiil’s goading. He stooped to scoop up a clear handful of water, then straightened, allowing the icy drink to trickle down the back of his throat while he peered down the vertiginous trail that descended to the foothills and steppe below.

He had last walked that trail eight years ago, craning his skinny neck for a glimpse of his new home, a home that seemed to be perched in mountains so high that their peaks etched the clouds. He had been frightened; frightened of this cold, stone place, and frightened to show his fear.

“Why?” he had pleaded with his father before leaving Annur. “Why can’t
you
teach me about ruling the empire?” Sanlitun’s stern face softened as he replied. “Someday I will, Kaden. I will teach you, as my father taught me, to tell justice from cruelty, boldness from folly, friends from fawning sycophants. When you return, I will teach you to make the hard decisions through which a boy becomes a man. But there are other lessons you must learn first, lessons of the greatest importance, and these I cannot teach you. These, you must learn from the Shin.”

“But why?” Kaden had begged. “They don’t rule an empire. They don’t even rule a kingdom. They rule nothing!”

His father smiled cryptically, as though the boy had made some kind of clever joke. Then the smile was gone and he was taking his son’s wrist in the strong handshake men called the soldier’s clasp. Kaden did his best to return the gesture, although his fingers were too small to gain any real purchase around his father’s muscled forearm.

“Ten years,” the man said, exchanging the face of a parent for that of the Emperor. “It is not long, in the life of a man.”

Eight years gone,
Kaden thought as he leaned back against the sloping boulder. Eight years gone, and the things he’d learned were as few as they were useless. He could craft pots, cups, urns, vases, and mugs from the clay of the river shallows, and he could sit still as a stone or run uphill for hours on end. He could mind goats. He could draw any plant, animal, or bird perfectly from memory—at least as long as someone wasn’t beating him bloody, he amended wryly. Although he had grown fond of Ashk’lan, he couldn’t stay there forever, and his accomplishments seemed a sad showing for eight years, nothing that would help him to run an empire. And now Tan had him counting rocks.
I hope Valyn’s making better use of
his
time,
he thought.
I’ll bet he’s passing
his
tests, at the very least.

The thought of tests conjured up the pain in his back where the willow switch had broken open his flesh.
Better to wash them out now,
he thought, eyeing the cold water.
Won’t do any good to let them fester.
He pulled his robe over his head, wincing as the rough fabric scraped over the bloody gashes, and tossed it in a rough heap. The pool wasn’t deep or wide enough to accommodate a dive, but at the upstream end one could step off a narrow ledge and drop in to the chest all at once. It was easier that way—like ripping off a scab. Kaden took three breaths, stilling his heartbeat and calming himself for the shock, then plunged.

As usual, the icy chill stabbed into him like a knife. He’d been bathing in the pool since he was ten, however, and had long ago learned to shepherd his body’s heat. He forced himself to take a deep, calm breath; hold it; then drive the meager warmth out through his trembling limbs. It was a trick the monks had. Scial Nin, the abbot, could spend whole hours sitting quietly in the winter snow, his shoulders bare to the elements, flakes dissolving in little puffs of steam when they struck his skin. Kaden couldn’t manage that yet, but he could keep himself from biting his tongue in two as he reached over his shoulders to wash the dried blood out of the gashes. After a minute of vigorous scrubbing, he turned to the bank. Before he could hoist himself out, however, a voice broke the stillness.

“Stay in the water.”

Kaden froze and sucked in his breath. Rampuri Tan. He turned, searching for his
umial,
only to find the man seated in the shadow of an overhanging flake of granite just a few paces away, legs crossed, back erect. Tan looked like a statue hewn from the mountain itself rather than a figure of flesh and blood. He must have been sitting there the whole time, observing, judging.

“No wonder you can’t paint,” Tan said. “You’re blind.”

Kaden clamped his teeth together grimly, forced down the creeping cold, and kept silent.

Tan didn’t move. He looked, in fact, as though he might
never
move, but he scrutinized Kaden with the attention one might bring to a vexing problem on the stones board.

“Why didn’t you see me?” he asked finally.

“You blended with the rocks.”

“Blended,” Tan chuckled. The sound held none of Heng’s mirth. “I blended with the rocks. I wonder what that might mean.” He glanced up toward the darkening sky, as though the answer were scrawled in the flight of the peregrines wheeling far above. “A man blends water with tea. A baker blends flour with egg. But blending flesh with stone?” He shook his head as though the concept were beyond him.

Kaden had started to tremble beneath the icy water. The heat he had built up hauling tiles all afternoon was little more than a memory now, swept over the ledge with the chill current.

“Do you know why you are here?” the monk asked after an interminable pause.

“To learn discipline,” Kaden replied, trying not to catch his tongue between his chattering teeth. “Obedience.”

Tan shrugged. “Important, both of them, but you could learn discipline and obedience from a farmer, a bricklayer. The Shin can teach you more.”

“Concentration,” Kaden managed.

“Concentration? What does the Blank God want with your concentration? What does it matter to him if an acolyte in a dim stone building is able to recall the shape of a leaf?” Tan spread his hands as though waiting for Kaden’s response, then continued. “Your concentration is an affront to your god. Your presence, your
self,
is an affront to your god.”

“But the training—”

“—is a tool. A hammer is not a house. A knife is not death. You muddle the method with the goal.”

“The
vaniate,
” Kaden said, trying desperately to control his shivering.

“The
vaniate,
” Tan agreed, repeating the strange syllables as though he were tasting them. “Do you know what it means?”

“Emptiness,” Kaden stammered. “Nothingness.”

Everything the monks studied, all the exercises the
umials
set their pupils, the endless hours painting, and running, and digging, and fasting, were aimed at that one constant goal: the emptiness of the
vaniate.
Two years earlier, in a frustrated moment, Kaden had been foolish enough to question the value of that emptiness. Heng had laughed out loud at the challenge, and then, smiling genially, replaced his pupil’s bowl and mug with two stones. Each day Kaden stood in the refectory line only to have the monk serving the food ladle his soup over the shapeless lump of granite. Sometimes a chunk of lamb or carrot balanced miraculously on top. More often, he was forced to watch in famished agony as the thick broth ran off the stone and back into the serving pot. When the monks filled their own mugs with deep drafts of cold water, Kaden could only splash the stone and then lick it off, the quartz rough against his tongue.

After two weeks, Heng brought out Kaden’s bowl and cup with a smile. Before he returned them, however, he hefted the rock Kaden had been trying to drink from. “Your mind is like this rock: full, solid. Nothing else can fit inside. You pack it with thoughts and emotions and claim that this fullness is something to be proud of!” He laughed at the absurdity of the notion. “How much you must have missed your empty old bowl!”

Over the following years, Kaden had worked diligently at the skill, learning how to hollow a space out of himself, out of his own mind. He hadn’t mastered it, of course—most monks didn’t reach the
vaniate
until their third or fourth decades—but he had made progress. Memorization and recall, the
saama’an,
played a central role in the practice; they were the picks and levers with which the Shin pried away the self. Heng taught him that a packed mind resisted new impressions; it tended to force itself onto the surrounding world, rather than filling itself with that world. The inability to recall the shape of a thrush’s wing, for instance, indicated a mind transfixed with its own irrelevant ephemera.

And mind was not the only obstacle. The body, too, came packed with aches, itches, pains, and petty pleasures. When a monk emptied his mind of thought and emotion, the voice of the body proved all too ready to fill the void. To silence that voice, the Shin stood naked in the baking sun, ran barefoot in the snow, sat in the same cross-legged position for days on end as the muscles cramped and the stomach twisted itself into knots. As long as the body impinged on the mind,
vaniate
was impossible. So, one by one, the Shin confronted the demands of the body, faced them down, and discarded them.

The practice was not easy. Earlier in the year, Kaden had helped to carry the body of one of the acolytes from the bottom of a gorge. The boy, only eleven years old, had fallen to his death while trying to run away in the night. Such tragedies were rare, however. The
umials
knew the limits of their students, and the monk whose acolyte had fallen was subjected to severe penance. Still, the testers considered sliced feet, frostbitten hands, and broken bones an inevitable portion of a boy’s first five years at the monastery.