Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades (51 page)

Kaden frowned. The Ut he knew had been distant and difficult to know, hard as cast iron in his convictions, but never rude, never bullying. Whatever brought him here had both strained and hardened him.

The second man appeared content to let his companion do the talking. Kaden couldn’t see his face, but long dark hair tied with red silk hung loosely down his back. Despite the rigors of travel and the unpredictable weather of the mountains, he wore a finely tailored red silk coat, buttoned up the center in the style of the highest-ranking imperial ministers, a low collar ringing his neck. Sunlight flashed on the man’s golden cuffs, and Kaden blinked. Only the Mizran Councillor, the highest ranking nonmilitary minister, wore gold at both his cuffs and his collar. This man was one of a half dozen in the entire empire who outranked the Aedolian at his side.

Suddenly the councillor turned his head, and Kaden drew in his breath in surprise. The strip he had taken for a band to hold back hair was, in fact, a thick blindfold completely covering the man’s eyes. In spite of it, he looked directly at the window where Kaden stood, then put a hand on the soldier’s arm, as though to calm him. Unlike Ut, the Mizran was a complete stranger—he must have been extremely talented to have risen through the baffling ranks of the imperial bureaucracy in the eight short years since Kaden had left Annur. Once again the wind died, and this time Kaden could hear the councillor’s voice, smooth as the silk he wore.

“Patience, my friend. He will come. Tell me,” he said, addressing himself to the abbot, “how old is the monastery?”

“Almost three thousand years,” Nin replied. If he was uncomfortable hosting two of the most powerful men in the world, he didn’t show it. In fact, he spoke with the same measured patience that he used when addressing novices in his study.

“And yet,” the man mused, “there are maps in the imperial library, recovered from the Csestriim, I believe, showing a fortress here long before that time. Of course, such maps are often the unreliable children of rumor and mythology.”

“The place was chosen,” the abbot replied, “for the preexisting foundations, among other reasons. Someone built here long before us. I cannot say if it was the Csestriim. It was not a large structure—as you can sense, perhaps, there is little space—but judging from the foundations the walls were thick and strong.”

“Nevariim?” the councillor asked, tilting his head to the side speculatively.

The abbot shook his head. “In the stories I read, the Nevariim never built fortresses. They didn’t build at all—it was one of the reasons the Csestriim were able to destroy them.”

The man in silk waved a hand dismissively. “Ah well, stories, stories. Who’s to say what to believe? There are plenty back in the capital who would claim the Nevariim didn’t exist at all.”

“I admit,” Nin replied, “we have little knowledge of such things here.”

As the wind picked up, carrying away the two voices, Tan looked over at Kaden. “Do you know them?”

“The Aedolian is named Micijah Ut,” Kaden responded. “He once commanded the Dark Guard and now, evidently, has risen to the rank of First Shield.” He returned his gaze to the other, sorting through his memories. “But the man in the silk … no. I don’t know him.”

In the few minutes they had paused to gaze down on the scene, Kaden’s excitement had cooled, like bathwater left too long standing. Micijah Ut seemed different, transformed somehow, and the other man was a complete stranger. Moreover, he felt a growing unease as he considered the rank of the two. His father would not have sent the commander of his personal guard and his highest minister all the way across Vash for a social visit. Something was awry here, badly awry.

“All right,” Tan said finally. “Let’s go see what the First Shield of the Aedolian Guard and the empire’s Mizran Councillor want with a boy who hasn’t even learned to paint.”

36

For the better part of three days, Valyn’s Wing spent every spare hour in the gear shop trying to redesign the harness and buckle system for Suant’ra’s talons. The work did not go smoothly. Although everyone seemed to accept the fundamental premise—that they needed a quicker and more efficient way to detach from the bird if they were going to make drops at Laith’s speed—each member of the team had a different idea of the form that new system should take.

Gwenna was all for simple hand loops and no backup belts.

“And if you can’t hold on to the ’Kent-kissing thing,” she argued, stabbing a finger at Valyn, “maybe you
ought
to get dumped in the drink.”

Talal shook his head. “That’d be fine for short runs, but do you want to be hanging from hand loops all day? And what if we need to retreat with someone wounded?”

Annick was even blunter. “No. I need two hands to shoot.”

They had, strewn over the table in front of them, a baffling array of buckles, straps, hooks, catches, harnesses, rope, even an old leather saddle, although what they were supposed to do with that was anyone’s guess. There was enough gear in the shop to rig a dozen systems—and yet, none of them could figure a way to make it all fit, to put the pieces together in a way that was actually useful. Gwenna kept her hands busy tying knots, lashing hook and eye pieces to lengths of leather, while Talal held up one piece at a time, gravely considering each in turn. None of it was getting them anywhere.

At first Laith just sat back in his chair, regarding the whole conversation with a faintly concealed grin. He’d brought a firefruit from the mess hall, and seemed more concerned with trying to spit the seeds into the rubbish bin than he was with their abortive engineering project.

“You’re the one who’s been flying this ’Shael-spawned bird the past decade,” Valyn said. “You have anything to add?”

“Careful how you talk about my bird,” Laith said, spitting another seed toward the bin. Missing. “Women come and go, but Suant’ra’s been true to me for years.”

“How romantic. Do you have any ideas that might help?”

The flier shrugged. “I’m up there on her back. I wish you all the best, but it seems like what happens down on the talons is your problem.”

“It’s our fucking
problem,
” Gwenna snapped, “because you never learned to fly your bird the right way.”

“The right way?” Laith mused. “I prefer to think there’s not just one right and wrong, but rather, a great palate of options, each—”

“Oh, for Hull’s sake,” Valyn broke in. “Leave off with the horseshit for half a second.” He considered his friend carefully. Laith had a good mind, but as long as he considered the whole exercise irrelevant to his own role, he wasn’t likely to use it. Of course, if something happened to make him care …

“What about,” Valyn suggested innocently, “putting
two
soldiers on the bird’s back? As Laith’s pointed out, it’s easier riding up there.”

Talal opened his mouth to object, then, seeing what Valyn intended, shut it quietly.

“Two?” Laith spluttered, dropping all four feet of his chair onto the floor. “Where would the second one go?”

“Right behind you, I thought. They could hang on to your waist.”

“Any idiot hanging on to my waist while we’re flying maneuvers is just going to pull me off!”

“Luckily,” Talal slipped in, “we’re not idiots.”

Annick rolled her eyes at that.

“All I’m saying,” Valyn continued, pressing his success, “is that we need to keep all options on the table. If we can’t figure a way to get all four of us below, maybe we need to put an extra person on top.”

After that, Laith tossed the remainder of his firefruit in the trash and started confronting the problem in earnest.

At the heart of the matter was the trade-off between speed and security. It was easy to arrange a quick drop—it just meant you didn’t have much holding you in place during the gut-wrenching maneuvers leading up to it. On the other hand, all the buckles and knots of the conventional system made for great security—you could fall fully asleep dangling from the bird’s talons—but inefficient drops.

“What we
need,
” Laith burst out after they’d been going around and around for the better part of an hour, “is to stop screwing around with buckles. Why can’t the things just
explode
off?”

Gwenna pursed her lips, then nodded slowly.

“No,” Valyn said, stopping her before she could get started. “We’re not going to rig charges to ourselves
or
our buckles.”

“A very
small
charge,” Gwenna suggested, her green eyes bright, “if handled carefully, could do the job. We’d just need a slow-burn wick attached to—”

“No explosives,”
Valyn said, setting his fist firmly on the table. “We may be the worst ’Kent-kissing Wing on the Islands, but at least we still have all our fingers.”

“For now,” Laith added.

“I’m sorry, my most exquisite and sublime commander,” Gwenna shot back. “I’ll attempt not to speak out of turn in the future. Perhaps His Lordship would like to put a gag in my mouth?”

Valyn would have liked nothing better, but he was
trying
to bring the Wing together, not browbeat them into submission.

“I’ve got something I could put in your mouth,” Laith suggested, managing to look innocent and depraved at the same time. “Might keep us both out of trouble.”

Gwenna smiled back compliantly, but her words were barbed. “I’d like that,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed my meat soft and tender. It’s easier to chew.”

Annick snorted, whether with amusement or disgust Valyn had no idea.

“We
could
try going in slower,” Talal suggested quietly. “It’s what the other Wings do.”

Laith rolled his eyes. “You sound like my grandmother, ’Shael rest her soul. We had horses, but she always insisted on walking, said that if Bedisa had intended us to gallop around the globe, Bedisa would have made us with four legs and hooves. Anyway, if I went in any slower, everyone with a bow could take a shot at you. We might as well just hang dead meat from ’Ra’s talons.”

“It’s what the other Wings do,” Annick pointed out. “It’s the protocol.”

“Aren’t you the one who hammers her own arrowheads?” Laith demanded. “Since when do you give a whore’s heart for protocol?”

“Wait,” Valyn cut in, trying to focus on the words he’d just heard. “Hold on a second.”

The rest of the group stared at him for several long moments.

“You have something to say?” Laith asked finally. “Or you just need to take a shit?”

“Hooks,” Valyn replied, fixing on the idea. “Meat hooks.”

As a child, he’d been morbidly fascinated with the larder deep in the cellars of the Dawn Palace, where rows on rows of slaughtered pigs, cows, and sheep had been dressed and hung from frightening steel hooks. He and Kaden used to sneak down there, daring each other to snuff the lantern and wander in the darkness, hands stretched out before them to fend off the carcasses. It was where he had first learned about hearts, and brains, and livers, where he first understood that if you cut a body and bled it dry, the creature died. It did not seem an auspicious place to be gleaning combat ideas, but then, they didn’t have much else to work with.

“We use hooks instead of buckles.”

Annick squinted, tilted her head to the side as though calculating, then nodded once. “Good.” The sniper was a thorn in his side, but she was
fast.

The rest of the Wing wasn’t so quick. “Hooks
where
?” Gwenna demanded.

“High,” Valyn responded, warming to his idea. “High on ’Ra’s talons, a little above our heads. We toss a loop of rope from our belts over the hooks, and our weight holds us in place.”

Laith shook his head. “You’ll have the same problem you’ve got with the buckles—you can’t release the loop from the hook with your weight on it.”

Valyn smiled. “That
would
be a problem … if you bothered to follow standard drop protocol.”

“Ah,” Talal chimed in, understanding spreading across his face. “As the angle of our descent gets steeper and steeper, the loop will slip closer to the lip of the hook.”

Valyn nodded. “When we’re in a near-vertical dive, the loop will slide right off. We drop. We don’t ever need to touch a thing.”

“It’s clever,” Gwenna replied with a frown, “but it means we all drop at the same time.”

“Not if we change the angles of the hooks slightly,” Laith countered. “First to drop has the shallowest angle, the last, the most severe. As ’Ra stoops harder, you’ll fall off one by one.”

Talal nodded. “It makes so much sense,” he marveled. “Why don’t any of the veteran Wings do this?”

“Because
their
fliers follow orders,” Valyn responded, eyeing Laith appraisingly. “The hooks wouldn’t work at shallower attack angles. The attack angles we’re
supposed
to adhere to.”

“This mean we get to quit following orders?” Gwenna asked with a smirk.

For the first time, Valyn found himself smiling in return. It was a small step, really—smaller than small. They hadn’t even built a mock-up of the system, hadn’t come close to testing it, and yet, for the first time, he thought he understood the Flea’s words:
Command the Wing you have, not the one you want.
For the first time, they’d demonstrated that they could work in concert to solve a common problem.
Who knows,
he thought to himself with a small smile,
we might turn out all right after all.

Then the door to the shop slammed open.

Daveen Shaleel stepped into the room, followed immediately by Adaman Fane and the other four members of his Wing, all decked out in full combat kit.

“Don’t tell me,” Laith groaned. “You want us to swim around Qarsh underwater.”

Valyn started to chuckle, but the sound died in his throat. The soldiers in the door weren’t laughing. They weren’t even smiling. In fact, Valyn realized, his stomach tightening suddenly, they’d taken up standard assault positions just inside the room, as though they were getting ready to clear an enemy compound. He took a step forward, toward Shaleel, trying to formulate the right question. Fane’s blade brought him up short, whispering out of its sheath to point directly at Valyn’s throat.