Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades (54 page)

While the merchant had a certain rough elegance, the woman in the doorway looked as though she had stepped straight from a vision of opulence, a dream of beauty made flesh. She wore a long gown of Si’ite silk, the fabric red as arterial blood and supple as water. The dressmaker had known his art, cutting the cloth to emphasize the fullness of her breasts, the curve of her hip, while a separate loop of fabric ringed her neck, tied below her chin in an elaborate bow.

Even more striking than the presentation was the girl herself: the Dawn Palace had been filled with attractive women—the wives of atreps, well-known courtesans, priestesses and princesses by the dozen—but Kaden was certain he had never seen one so beautiful. Night-black hair cascaded past her shoulders, framing a pale face with full lips and high cheekbones. She might have been one of the Nevariim he read about as a child—an impossibly beautiful, infinitely graceful creature from the tales told at his bedside. Of course, the Nevariim were long dead, if they had ever lived at all, and this woman was very real. Kaden put the children’s stories out his mind.

Adiv had cocked his ear to one side, as though listening to the stunned silence. After a moment he grinned, evidently satisfied with the reaction, then spoke: “She is called Triste, and the bow around her neck is yours to untie. Although,” he added, turning to face Kaden with that disconcertingly blank blindfold, “I would leave her at least partly packaged until after the meal. The Shin are famed for their asceticism, but I fear our dinner conversation might suffer if she sat here just as Bedisa made her. Triste,” he said, beckoning imperiously, “come closer that the Emperor might admire you.”

The young woman kept her eyes fixed on the rough stone floor as she approached, but there was nothing bashful about her stride, a languorous swaying of the hips that arrested Kaden’s gaze. He stood hastily, almost knocking over his chair in the process, grabbing at it with his hand to keep it from falling and cursing himself silently for an idiot as he did so. From the length of the hall, the ripeness of Triste’s body had led him to believe she was older than him, a woman grown. This close, he could see how young she was—sixteen at the most. He wondered absently if someone had lit a fire in the hearth. He was sweating beneath his robe as though he had been running for hours.

“You should greet the Emperor, Triste,” Adiv urged. “Be thankful you have been given to a great man.”

She raised her head slowly, and Kaden saw that her round violet eyes were full of fear.

“It is an honor, Your Radiance,” she said, the hint of a quaver in her voice, and suddenly he felt shame mixed with his desire, shame for drinking in the sight of her so fully and shame for thinking that she might be his, packaged up and delivered like a new suit. He bent to free her from the bow at her throat, and her perfume, a concoction of sandalwood and jasmine, made his head reel.

He fumbled with the simple knot for what seemed like minutes, uncomfortably aware of his knuckles pressing into the girl’s firm flesh and the eyes of the small dinner party on his back. He didn’t dare look at her face again, fixing his gaze instead on the tiny, intricate tattoo of a necklace that circled her neck.

“Go on,” Adiv urged. Even the man with that infernal blindfold could sense his awkwardness! Ae only knew what Tan and Nin were thinking. “She won’t thank you for keeping her standing much longer.”

Kaden’s face burned, and all the exercises he had studied over the past eight years to still the mind and slow the pulse fled. Pain was one thing, but this … this was something else altogether. He thought he might never be able to look Tan in the eye again. Finally the silk fell away.

He went to pull out her seat and found that one of the slaves had already done so. Awkwardly, he gestured for her to sit down. Adiv clapped his hands together again in good humor.

“I understand from his silence that the Emperor is not used to such … luscious gifts. You will soon become accustomed to the trifles that befit your exalted station, Your Radiance.”

Kaden risked a glance at the other guests. Micijah Ut sat ramrod straight in his chair, arms folded across his chest. The two monks watched Kaden with blank expressions. He looked away, turning to Triste in desperation, casting about in his mind for something to say. The normal monastic subjects of conversation, the things he had talked about day after day, night after night for years, seemed suddenly drab and pointless. This woman didn’t care about the level of snowmelt from the Triuri glacier or the sighting of a crag cat on the Circuit of Ravens. He tried to imagine his father or mother entertaining guests in the comfortable opulence of the Pearl Hall, their easy manner as the servants poured the wine and arranged the plates.

“Triste, where are you from?” he asked at last. The words had sounded all right in his head, but as soon as they were out of his mouth, he felt ridiculous. The question was at once pedestrian and awkward, the kind of thing you might ask a merchant or a sailor, not something you put to a beautiful woman moments after she had joined you at the table. Triste’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth to respond, but before she could speak, Adiv interceded.

“Where is she from?” The councillor seemed to find the question amusing. “Maybe she’ll tell you tonight, over the pillow. Now, however, it is time to eat.”

Triste closed her perfect lips and for a sliver of a moment Kaden saw something flash through her eyes. Terror, he thought at first, but it was not terror. Whatever it was felt harder, older. He wanted to look closer, but the girl had dropped her eyes, while at Adiv’s command the servants, who had left the table after everyone was seated, glided in through the side door, carrying delicate plates of artfully arranged food.

After setting up the refectory, the Mizran’s men had taken over the kitchen, going to work with a stock of ingredients carried all the way from the markets of Annur. Kaden couldn’t begin to recognize all the flavors and smells. There were battered locusts and duck with plum sauce, some kind of delicate cream soup that reminded him of summer in the south, and noodles mixed with sausage so hot, it made him sweat. Each course came with a different kind of bread or cracker, and between plates the servants produced tiny silver bowls filled with mint or lemon ice or essence of pine drizzled over rice to cleanse the palate.

Each plate arrived with an accompanying wine, delicate whites from the Freeport hinterland, and rich, heady reds from the plains just north of the Neck. Kaden tried to take only a sip or two of each, but he had spent years drinking only tea and water from the mountain streams, and he quickly found the alcohol dizzying. Triste, on the other hand, drained every glass the slaves set in front of her until Kaden worried she might be sick. After a while, Adiv directed the man to stop pouring for her with a curt motion of his hand.

When the whirlwind of the first few courses had finished, a silence settled over the table and Kaden took a deep breath, steadying himself to ask the question that had been tugging at his mind since the men first fell to their knees before him and recited the ancient formula, the question he had somehow forgotten to ask.

“Councillor,” he began slowly, then threw himself into it, “how did my father die?”

Adiv put his fork down, lifted his head, but did not speak. As the silence stretched, Kaden felt himself growing dizzy with a sort of vertigo, as though he stood at the lip of a great cliff and stared down countless fathoms at the surf pounding the rocks below. He dropped his eyes from Adiv’s face, focusing on the plate in front of him, and only then did the minister answer.

“Treachery,” he said at last, his voice edged with anger.

Kaden nodded, his eyes still fixed on the table in front of him, suddenly fascinated by the grain of the wood, its intricate twistings and unravelings. It had been possible, of course, that Sanlitun had choked on his food, or fallen from his horse, or simply died in his bed, but somehow Kaden had known—maybe it was Ut’s grim transformation, or the alacrity with which Adiv wanted the retinue to depart for Annur—he had known that his father did not die a natural death.

“A priest,” Adiv continued, “Intarra’s High Priest, in fact. Uinian the Fourth, he styles himself. We departed before his trial, but no doubt his head has been taken from his shoulders by now.”

Kaden picked up the pigeon wing before him then set it down again, untouched. He had a vague memory of Intarra’s splendid temple, but knew nothing of this priest.

“Why?” he managed after a long pause.

Adiv shrugged. “Who can know the heart of a murderer? Most likely he resented your family’s ancient connection to the goddess. The man was an upjumped peasant with delusions of his own importance. He preached openly that Annur should be guided, if not ruled outright, by priests rather than Emperors. Your father agreed to meet with him in secret, leaving the scum an opening for his treachery.”

Kaden’s head ached with the thought; he wanted to hide his face behind his hands. This was not a time, however, for boyish weakness. It occurred to him, in a bleak flash, that there might never again be a time for either boyishness or weakness.

“How did the empire take his death?”

“Uneasily,” Adiv replied. “As long as you remain away from the Unhewn Throne, there will be worry over the succession. Meanwhile, the Urghul take this opportunity to press our northeastern frontier.”

That last comment brought Ut into the conversation for the first time. “Nomadic waste,” he grated. “We will sweep them aside like chaff.”

“Annur is at war with the Urghul, then?” Nin asked, his brow furrowing.

“It comes,” Adiv replied. He spread his hands. “It is regrettable, but it comes. Something has stirred them up. Some chieftain or shaman who has begun to unify the tribes. There are tales of his power. He may be a leach.”

“Leaches die just like other men,” Ut interjected, his jaw set. “We will put the Urghul down as quickly as they rose.”

“You speak as though they will be easy to defeat,” Tan said. They were the first words Kaden’s
umial
had offered all night, and as he turned to face the Aedolian, Kaden was struck by the similarity between the two men, the similarity and the difference. Both were hard, but Ut’s was the hardness of worked metal, hammered and annealed to its purpose. Tan, on the other hand, reminded him of stone, of the emotionless, unyielding firmness of the cliffs and the peaks themselves.

“The Army of the North will deal with them quickly enough,” Ut replied.

Tan’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at the soldier thoughtfully. If he was intimidated by Ut’s bulk or manner, he didn’t show it. “I have met the Urghul,” the monk began. “The children are taught to ride before they can walk, and the most inept among them can hit a man in the heart with an arrow at fifty paces from the back of a galloping horse.”

Ut dismissed the objection with a snort and a wave of his hand. “Individually they are strong, but they have no discipline. The Annurian soldier, on the other hand, is trained from the day he enlists to fight as part of a unit. He drills with the other men, eats with them, sleeps with them. If he takes a shit, his brother holds his spear. If he wants a woman, the others guard the door. You have not seen Annurian infantry take the field. They move, thousands of them, tens of thousands, as though controlled by a single hand. The Urghul,” he shrugged, “they are dogs. Vicious dogs, bloody dogs, but dogs.”

Adiv nodded regretfully. “Sanlitun, bright were the days of his life, never wanted to engage them. In fact, he planned to sign a treaty. There is nothing on the steppe to justify the expense of a major military expedition. The Urghul have no cities, no wealth, no arable land to tax. They are a nomadic, horse-herding rabble.”

“And yet, it is said the Emperor planned to move in force across the White River,” Scial Nin responded in his quiet voice.

The Aedolian looked at the abbot, a hard, searching look. “You are well informed here, on top of your mountain at the end of the world.”

Nin shrugged. “The Urghul are the closest group to us. When they are in their winter pasturage, they come to trade from time to time.”

Adiv’s voice was smooth as the silk he wore. “As I said, the empire would have preferred to leave these people alone. And yet, for the last ten years, they have persisted in attacking our border forts.”

“Forts you built on their side of the river,” Tan countered.

Adiv spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “More than Annurian forts are at issue. Their people are taken with some strange prophecy, the usual inanity about saviors rising and yokes being thrown off. Every conquered people has such stories and legends—the Annurians themselves did, during the tyranny of the Kreshkan kings. Normally such tales are harmless, but this new chief has galvanized the Urghul, breathed fresh life onto old tired coals, and suddenly they are mad for war.

“Unfortunately, they must be put down. This is rebellion—even if they are not a part of the empire—and rebellion encourages rebellion. Sporadic raids on the frontier a thousand leagues from Annur, we could tolerate. But what if Freeport is reminded of its ancient history and the Vested get it into their heads to look south of the Romsdal Mountains, to Aergad or Erensa? What if Basc decides the Iron Sea can protect it from Annurian navies once again? That would not do, not when we fight an ongoing war with the ever elusive Tsa’vein Karamalan and the jungle tribes of the Waist. No,” the councillor said, shaking his head, “resistance must be put down, even if we would prefer otherwise.” He turned to Kaden. “It is partly for this reason that we must make such haste to return you to Annur to take your father’s place on the Unhewn Throne.”

Kaden’s mind swam, partly with wine, partly with the staggering scope of the responsibility so recently laid in his lap. Tsa’vein Karamalan? The Vested? Half the things Adiv talked about he knew only from vague childhood stories, and the other half he didn’t know at all. It would take him months,
years,
to catch up, to learn the barest fraction of what he needed to govern the empire effectively.