Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades (59 page)

“He said they brought that pavilion all the way up the mountain just so they’d know right where
he
was and they didn’t want
him
slipping away when things got messy,” Pater tumbled on, still breathless from his run down from the Talon and the urgency of his message. “That’s when I figured out that
he
was
you
! I almost fell off the Talon, I was so scared. I climbed down and I ran all the way here, but there’s a huge man with a sword in front of the door, and so I had to sneak in the back. You have to
leave,
Kaden!” he finished with a rush. “You have to leave right
now
!”

“We have to tell Ut,” Kaden responded, heading for the door.

Pater dived for him, grasping him around the legs while shaking his head furiously. “No, Kaden,” he begged. “He’s on their side! They said his name, the men in the mountains, and I made sure to remember it. ‘Ut wants this.…’ ‘Report to Ut.…’ He’s on
their
side,” Pater repeated. “That’s why I had to sneak in the back of the tent.”

Kaden tried to gather his wits. The sudden arrival of the imperial delegation combined with the shock of his father’s death had left him disconcerted and raw, but he had done his best to tamp down his emotions, to smother them and play the young Emperor. Micijah Ut, even changed as he was, had been one familiar spar in a baffling flood, something to cling to as Kaden made his way back toward the capital. And now, it seemed, the man had been sent to kill him. The discipline he spent years cultivating threatened to evaporate as quickly as a late spring snow, and with desperation he reached for the novice exercises he had mastered in his first years among the Shin.

Each breath is a wave,
he told himself, visualizing the long, lapping breakers of the bay outside Annur as he inhaled.
The fear is sand.
As the breath escaped, he let the sand and the fear slip from his mind, sliding down the long shingle into the bottomless belly of the sea. Slowly, he brought his breathing and then his pulse under control.

“All right,” he began finally. “All right. We have to warn the other monks. We’ll tell the abbot first—”

Triste cut him off. “We have to get out of this tent. Listen to him—they’re coming
here
first!” Fear filled her voice, but beneath the fear there was something else, something surprisingly hard.
Resolve,
Kaden realized.
Readiness.
Triste had shown neither quality all night, not at dinner, nor when he brought her back to the pavilion. The realization gave him pause, but Pater was nodding vigorously in agreement, tugging at Kaden’s robe, leading him to the hole he had sliced in the back of the canvas. The boy started for the small tear, but Kaden held him back.

“Let me go first. Once I know it’s safe, I’ll motion you through.”

The hole Pater had torn in the canvas wasn’t quite big enough for Kaden’s larger shoulders. He set the candlestick down and tugged gingerly at the fabric. It tore easily, but the harsh ripping sound made him wince. Pater had said Ut was out front—how much could he hear?

Kaden waited, straining his ears for the crunch of boots on gravel or the dull clank of armor. He could hear nothing but the sound of blood in his ears. Slowly, he eased his head through the rip.

The courtyard was empty and the night calm, the moon climbing her quiet path through the stars overhead, casting shadows beneath the junipers. Kaden listened again and then, with a gulp, levered himself out through the gap. For a horrible moment the canvas tightened around his torso and he thought he was stuck, but a strong tug freed him and he stood up in the cool night air, trembling.

Shame filled him. Pater had run all the way back here without a thought for his own safety and all he, Kaden i’Sanlitun hui’Malkeenian, twenty-fourth of his line and Emperor of Annur, could do was peer uselessly into the night. Ruthlessly, methodically, he identified his fear, compartmentalized it, and put it to the side.
Fear is sand,
he reminded himself.
Nothing more.
Steadied slightly, he put his head back in through the flap.

Triste and Pater crouched just inside the canvas, staring at him wide-eyed. Kaden nodded urgently and Triste grabbed the boy by the back of his robe, thrusting him at the opening with surprising strength. Pater squirmed through in a flash and crouched beside him in the dark. Kaden put his hand through to motion the girl to follow, then froze. Across from the pavilion, pressed close to the wall of the dormitory, something moved in the shadow.

He shoved his hand back through the canvas, frantically trying to keep Triste inside. His fingers met with the smooth skin of her chest, and she paused. He could feel her heart pounding beneath her rib cage, a frenzied counterpoint to his own, but she kept still as Kaden peered into the darkness.

A thin strip of shadow hemmed the back of the pavilion, and he tried to will himself into it more deeply. Pater crouched motionless at his side. They could run. He and Pater had run these paths every day for years—no armored soldier would be able to keep pace with them. But running would mean leaving Triste, and in a flash, he understood the subtlety of the plot. Triste was the bait and the distraction all rolled into one. She was the excuse to separate Kaden from the rest of the monks, the trump card that would ensure he left the dormitory, and the guarantee that when the men came to kill him, he would be distracted.

She could even be part of the plot, Kaden realized after a moment. He hastily recalled the
saama’an
of her face as she told her story. There was terror there, and regret, and even anger, but no halting or deception. Unless he had badly miscalculated, she was as much a victim of Adiv’s schemes as he was, and he didn’t want to contemplate what would become of her if they left her behind.

As he racked his brain for another option, the figure in the shadows across from him took form. Kaden’s body tightened, then sagged in relief as he recognized Tan’s solid shape. His
umial
stepped into the moonlight, beckoned to them urgently, then stepped back. Kaden closed his hand around the front of Triste’s dress and hauled her through. As soon as she gained her feet, they raced across the moonlit space, hunched over as though cringing from the blow of some great hammer. They reached the shadow of the dormitory just as a cry went up from inside the stone building—a befuddled yell twisted abruptly into a scream of terror, then silence.

Kaden looked back for Pater, but the boy, already tired from his sprint from the Talon and slowed by his shorter legs, hadn’t even made it halfway across the square. At the bloody shout from above, he had dropped to the ground, a dark huddled mound in the vast expanse of silvery moonlight. Kaden silently cursed himself for not taking the boy in his other hand when he ran.

Immediately, other cries inside the dormitory filled the terrible silence left by the first, followed shortly by the sounds of flight and struggle. The rough voices of soldiers called out to one another, cursing their victims, and then the men poured into the square, making for the front of the tent, the steel of their drawn swords flickering with cold menace.

As the men disappeared, Pater stared longingly at the gulf separating him from the others, then back at the shadow of the tent. A deep hole opened in Kaden’s stomach.

“No,” he hissed, “over here!” but Pater was already scurrying back to the dubious safety of the pavilion. Kaden could hear Ut curse inside the tent, then begin barking orders. “Pater!” he called again, letting go of Triste for the first time in order to run back for the boy. Tan stopped him with an iron grasp on his wrist just as Ut’s broadsword swept a long gash in the canvas, and the man stepped through.

The Aedolian peered right then left. Kaden prayed he might not see the small boy huddled almost at his feet.
It works for fawns,
he told himself, years of useless accumulated knowledge bubbling to the top of his mind.
The fawn has no scent. So long as it remains motionless, the crag cat passes by.
He had almost managed to convince himself when the Aedolian glanced down, snorted, then hoisted his squirming quarry into the air with one arm, the action terribly effortless. Pater stopped wriggling when Ut brought the point of his sword to the boy’s belly.

“Where is the Emperor?” he ground out.

Pater shook his head defiantly.

“I’m here to protect him, you fool,” the man insisted, lowering without softening his voice.

“No, you’re
not
!” Pater insisted. “You want to hurt him. I
heard!
”

Kaden tried to wrest his arm free of Tan’s viselike grip, to step into the moonlight. Whatever these men wanted with him, whoever they were, it had nothing to do with Pater. Before he could move, however, the Aedolian slid his sword smoothly into the boy’s body, driving it all the way through until it emerged, slick and dripping, just below his shoulder blades. Kaden stared, transfixed.

“Run, Kaden,” Pater tried to yell, but his voice was terribly weak, the strangled wheeze of a dying creature. No sooner were the words out than he slumped forward against the blade.

For what felt like an eternity, Kaden couldn’t move. His mind played and replayed the horror of the scene until he thought the vision might have scoured all other thought from his mind.

Casually, almost dismissively, Ut let his sword drop, sliding the limp body onto the ground. The tiny heap of bloodied rags was no larger than a dog. Was it possible Pater had been so slight, so insubstantial?
It was his voice that made him seem bigger,
Kaden realized.
He was always talking.

The thought snapped something inside him, some bundle of caution, fear, and restraint, and with a roar he leapt into the square. He could hear Tan trying to follow him, but he had always been faster than his
umial,
and half a step was all the lead he needed.

Ut turned toward the sound, and Kaden could see a cold, cruel smile spread across the Aedolian’s face.

“We would have stabbed the kid anyway,” he said, slinging the blood off his sword in a slow arc. “We’re not leaving anyone alive.”

I don’t need to kill him,
Kaden thought.
I just need to distract him, and Tan will finish the job.
A small part of his mind told him that the idea was incoherent. He had no idea if the older monk was following him, no idea if he had his
naczal,
no idea if he even knew how to fight.

Kaden was beyond caring. He felt only a hint of dismay when two soldiers burst through the tear in the canvas while a half dozen more appeared around the side of the pavilion. When they saw the figure rushing at them across the flagstones of the courtyard, they hesitated, then spread out, flanking their commander. Whichever one he attacked, the others would cut him down from the side. Even now, the closest was readying his blade as Kaden clumsily raised his candlestick in defense.

Then, with the moist sound of metal tearing through flesh, the man collapsed, a crossbow quarrel jutting from his neck.

Kaden didn’t have time to gape before two more fell, blood gurgling at their throats. The others paused, then took a tentative step back. With a curse, Ut turned his attention from Kaden to the darkness surrounding them, searching for their invisible assailant. They both stared as Pyrre Lakatur strode into the square.

Kaden recognized the knives first, the same knives he had seen in the merchant’s pack three nights before, the long, oiled killing knives. Lakatur held one in either hand, loosely, as though she could scarcely be bothered to keep her grip on them. Gone was the brash merchant’s swagger, the easy grin and expansive manner. Gone, too, were the cringing and doubt she had shown when Ut put the sword to her neck the day before. If Pyrre was concerned about the Aedolian’s huge broadblade, or the soldiers massed before her, or the whistling crossbow bolts that struck like hail all around, she didn’t show it. She walked into the killing with all the concern of an atrep entering her own ballroom, nodding to the baffled soldiers as though they were young gallants, sweaty-palmed and twitchy at the thought of their first dance.

“Ananshael will be pleased,” she said, surveying the carnage with a sober eye.

Tan’s words of caution shoved into Kaden’s mind:
Somewhere this woman has learned to suppress the most basic imperatives of the flesh.
Overhead the moon still shone, but the night seemed to have grown darker, heavier.

Ut gestured curtly, and two of the Aedolians took a step forward, tentative now. The first collapsed with a bolt through the eye. Seeing his companion fall, the second roared, raised his sword to strike, and charged. Though the man stood half a head taller than her and wore steel to her leather, Pyrre Lakatur didn’t break stride. She stepped easily into the space beneath his raised arms, driving, as she moved, one of her knives up into the soldier’s armpit. As her foe crumpled with a sickly, rattling cough, Pyrre rotated past him, eyes locked on Ut. The other soldiers rushing to intercept her might as well have been wheat for all the attention she paid them.

In the explosion of activity, Tan had caught up with Kaden, seizing him by the forearm.

“We go
now,
” he barked, “if I have to knock you over the head and carry you.” Adrift in his own shock and confusion, Kaden allowed himself to be led, looking back over his shoulder at Pyrre as he went.

The other soldiers were down, either fallen beneath the merchant’s blades or the quarrels of their invisible assailant. With a growl, Ut swung his sword in that wide terrible arc that had almost taken off Pyrre’s head the day before. Kaden stared, unable to tear his eyes from the inevitable. This strange woman had defended him, saved him, and now she was going to die. The sword sliced through the air and Pyrre simply … wasn’t there. Even as Ut tensed for the blow, the merchant rolled beneath the attack while the Aedolian’s blade swung harmlessly into the night. Then it was Ut’s turn to look shocked, and a moment was all Pyrre gave him.