The Emperor's blades

41

It was all well and good for Adiv to joke about the talks that Kaden could have with Triste “over the pillow,” but now that dinner was over, he found himself suddenly and acutely nervous. It didn’t help that his head was muddled with wine, and it certainly didn’t help that once they stepped out of the refectory door, all four men had looked at him expectantly.

“Your pavilion awaits,” Adiv said with a generous sweep of his arm, as though Kaden couldn’t see the ’Kent-kissed thing perfectly well from where he stood. The fact that the servants had erected it smack-dab in the middle of the main square made him cringe. If it wasn’t enough that his special dinner had deprived the monks of their own meal, now they couldn’t look out the windows of their own sober cells without staring at the palatial opulence of his overgrown tent. White canvas walls, immaculate as if they had been woven the day before, practically glowed in the light of the setting sun. Pennons fluttering from the central pole overtopped even the roof of the dormitory, Ashk’lan’s largest building.

Akiil is never going to let me live this down, Kaden thought ruefully.

“A fitting pavilion for the Emperor and his lovely consort,” Adiv said, the shadow of that mocking grin lurking around his lips.

Kaden knew how this was supposed to work, of course. Despite his eight years away from the Dawn Palace, he still remembered his father’s concubines, a dozen or so quiet, graceful women who slipped through the marble halls in silent satin shoes, eyes demure and downcast. When still very young, he had asked his mother about those women. She had put down her carefully buttered bread and looked at him for a while, lips pursed tight.

“They are concubines,” she said finally.

“What’s concubines?” he had asked, perplexed.

“Women who … comfort a man when his wife cannot.”

Kaden had rolled that idea around in his head for a while. It didn’t sound like a bad thing, although something in his mother’s bearing had him on edge.

“Do you have concubines,” he had asked, “to comfort you when father is away?”

She had laughed then, a short bitter laugh. “It is a man’s prerogative.”

Kaden considered that. “Will I have concubines someday?” he asked.

His mother never took her eyes from him. “Yes. I suppose you will, Kaden.”

Well, he thought, glancing over at Triste, evidently this is the day. Whatever education his mother had neglected, Akiil had more than made up for, regaling Kaden almost nightly with tales of the delicious, foul-mouthed whores from the Perfumed Quarter. Triste, however, was no whore, and Akiil’s stories had neglected the finer points of romantic etiquette.

The abbot, as though sensing Kaden’s discomfort, said softly, “You are welcome, of course, to spend your last night in your own cell, putting your things in order.”

Adiv laughed good-naturedly. “What things? A few robes? He would shame the servants not to sleep in the pavilion they have labored to set up.” He turned to Kaden with a more deferential tone. “Your Radiance, you are the Emperor. Today or tomorrow, you must accept the trappings as well as the title.”

Kaden looked from the two monks wrapped in their coarse robes to the councillor who would be his right hand in the months to come. He wished that Nin could accompany him to the capital-despite the old monk’s lack of “practical” knowledge or political training, Kaden would have welcomed his steady, familiar wisdom-but the wish was a childish one, and he put it out of his mind. There was nothing to do but to take a deep breath and nod. Adiv and Ut evidently understood this as a dismissal, bowing low, fingers to their foreheads.

“Until the morning then, Your Radiance,” Adiv said. “Micijah will keep guard here, in the square.”

Kaden shook his head dubiously. “I’ve lived here for eight years without protection.”

Adiv’s tone stiffened. “You are the Emperor now, Your Radiance, and the Aedolian Guard does not take chances with the Emperor.” Kaden found himself wondering if the man actually had eyes underneath the blindfold, or if they had been plucked out. The thought of the raw red sockets seeping blood beneath the cloth made him shiver.

Kaden acquiesced with a nod. There was the matter of Pyrre and Jakin Lakatur. Tan had insisted that the two were not merchants, that they had come for some sinister purpose. Now that they knew who Kaden was and where he was sleeping, perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have someone watching the pavilion after all. He realized, with a sickening lurch, that his days as an anonymous acolyte were over. The sooner he accepted the burdens of his new office, the easier it would be for everyone.

And then, of course, there was the ak’hanath. The surprise he had felt at the arrival of the Annurians, the grief at the news of his father’s death, the glasses of wine at dinner had pushed the creature to the back of his mind. It was hard to worry about a monster he’d never seen, a thing that, by Tan’s own admission, should have been wiped out thousands of years earlier. And yet, as the cold night wind picked at his skin, he felt a shiver of dread. There was something out there, something capable of killing a man. It hadn’t attacked inside the walls of the monastery, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t. Perhaps he would sleep better with the Aedolian outside.

As Adiv bowed his way out of the square, the abbot approached. “We will speak in the morning, Kaden. Until then, rest, and try to clear your mind.”

Tan looked at Triste swaying slightly on her feet, then turned away without a word.

“Until the morning,” the abbot repeated, not unkindly, and the two monks turned down the gravel path to the dormitory.

Eager to put off entering his new lodgings, Kaden stared out over the shapes of the mountains, dark and slumbering in the moonlight. He could hear the rushing of the White River in the canyon below, the distant crack and rumble of rocks, loosened from the icy grip of winter, crumbling from the cliffs to smash themselves to pieces on the ground below. The Bone Mountains were a hard place, and for the past eight years he had thought longingly of Annur, wishing something would happen to end his exile and bring him home. The low, drafty buildings of the monastery were just a world he had to endure-and endure it he had, although not without a constant spark of resentment. Now that the time had come to leave, however, he found that he had developed more of a connection to Ashk’lan than he could have known. When he thought about the crowded, vibrant chaos of Annur, the squares filled with vendors, the streets packed with thousands of people, he realized that he would miss the cold, clear nights, the sight of the sun rising over Lion’s Head to the east. He laughed softly to himself. He might even miss running the Circuit of Ravens, although he wasn’t about to bet on that.

He turned around to face the central square of the monastery. A few monks went about their business with heads bowed, silent as shadows in their dark robes. They paid no more mind to the enormous tent that had abruptly sprouted in their midst than they might to a stone wren scratching at the gravel. He had come to admire these men, Kaden realized, had come to appreciate their calm and unflappable resolve.

A flickering light in the deepening darkness drew his eye. Ut was walking a circuit around the pavilion, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword, the other holding a torch aloft. A sudden gust of wind blew the light to a blaze, illuminating the southern buildings of the quad, and Kaden realized with a start that Pyrre Lakatur stood in the window of the guest quarters, looking down at him. The woman’s eyes held neither the jocularity of her first arrival nor the deference that had marked her behavior since the Aedolian almost took off her head. They were the eyes of a cat, still and focused, as it crouches by the pond. Yes, perhaps it was good after all that Ut would be standing guard. Kaden wondered if the Aedolian ever slept, then decided that was for him to figure out. He glanced over at Triste shivering silently beside him. He had his own problems to attend to.