The Emperor's blades

43

A glint of steel poked through the canvas, then the body of a belt knife, flashing in the lamplight as it sawed back and forth slowly, carving down through the heavy fabric. Kaden’s mind darted immediately to the long blades he had discovered inside Pyrre’s pack, and he tightened his hold on the candlestick, trying to get a good grip with his sweaty palms. Whoever it was would have to come through headfirst, and as soon as they were partway inside the tent, he could smash the candlestick down on the nape of their neck. He moved cautiously to the side of the growing rent and raised his weapon.

A small shaved head poked inside, pulled back a moment, then reappeared, followed immediately by a wriggling body.

Kaden started to swing, then checked himself.

“Kaden,” the intruder whispered urgently. “Kaden, you’ve got to listen!”

“Pater,” he exhaled heavily. “What are you doing here?” The small boy looked over at Triste, and for a moment it seemed all thought had gone out of his head, but when he turned back to Kaden his urgency returned in a rush.

“There’s men, Kaden, with armor.”

Kaden let out a long breath and Triste slowly relaxed. He noticed she had picked up the other candlestick, but lowered it now, unsure what to make of their diminutive intruder. “Those are probably just a few of the Aedolian Guards. They’re here to protect me, Pater.”

“No!” Pater insisted. “They’re in the mountains. All over the mountains. I was on the Talon. Heng caught me eating a carrot when I should have been fasting, but we only had to fast because you took over the refectory-” He glared at Kaden accusingly, then remembered his purpose.

“But I was on the Talon and I heard them and I knew that you’re Emperor now and I thought like you thought, that they were soldiers, but then I listened to them and they are soldiers, but I listened to what they were saying, listened to it and remembered it exactly, just like those boring exercises we always have to do. One of them said, ‘Make sure the perimeter is secure before you move.’ Then another one said, ‘I don’t see why we don’t just kill the boy and have done with it.’ And I got scared then, because I didn’t know who the boy was, but I kept listening, and the first one called the second one an idiot, he said, ‘If those were our only orders, we could have taken off his head in the square.’”

Kaden felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to prickle. He glanced over at Triste. Her pale face had gone white in the candlelight and she shook her head in confusion, hugging her arms around her chest. “What did they say next?” Kaden asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“He said, the first one did, that if they didn’t secure the perimeter before the attack, some of the monks would get away. ‘Once you’ve nailed down the perimeter, make sure they’re all dead, but do not begin until they’ve finished with the boy.’” Kaden could feel his heart thundering in his chest and he took a moment to slow his pulse. He had to think. Triste was staring at Pater and tugging her gossamer dress tighter about her.

“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.

The merchant’s knives flashed, first high, then low, probing, pressing-so fast, it seemed she must have five or six spinning between her fingers rather than the two Kaden had seen when she walked so calmly into the slaughter. Ut was quicker than his men, however, and wearing heavier armor.

As the two circled each other in the center of the yard, a man’s voice hissed from the shadows. Kaden turned to see Jakin, a crossbow in his right hand, Triste’s arm clasped roughly in his left. He was dressed in his customary tunic and breeches, as though he never went to bed, as though he had expected the sudden outburst of violence.

“Worry about yourselves,” he snapped. “Pyrre Lakatur has lived long in the shadow of Ananshael. She will meet us later, if the god wills.”

Kaden felt Tan stiffen at his side. He looked over at the monk, surprised to see his mouth twisting with some sort of emotion. Tan started to speak, but more soldiers were already flooding into the square, slowed for the moment by the sight of their commander locked in a duel.

“I need to find Akiil,” Kaden insisted. “He’s in the dormitory.”

“The dormitory is crawling with Aedolians,” the man shot back.

“Then kill them!” he replied, gesturing to Jakin’s crossbow.

“This is useless indoors,” he spat. “Your friend’s dead, or he will be dead. I’ve been paid well not to let you join him.”

Kaden hesitated, but Tan took him by the arm with that implacable grip.

“Now!” he said. With a wordless shout of rage, Kaden turned, and the four of them rushed past the stone dormitory, past the screaming and bellowed commands, past the flames licking from the meditation hall, and into the night.

They raced up the trail to the Circuit of Ravens, Tan keeping pace despite his bulk, Triste and Jakin stumbling every so often on the unfamiliar stones. Kaden tried to shut out the sounds echoing at his back: harsh orders barked in the darkness, the clash of steel on steel, screaming. The scene of Pater’s death kept running through his mind, and he realized sickly that the boy would not be the only one murdered that night. Kaden thought back to his words-I heard them, Kaden, “Make sure they’re all dead.…” Jakin had insisted that the monks in the dormitory were already dead, but Akiil was no ordinary monk. He was fast and smart. He’d learned to stay alive in the alleys of Annur before he was ever carted off to Ashk’lan. He would have been sleeping in the dormitory with the rest of the monks, but surely he’d heard something. If he could win free of the immediate carnage, he could lose himself in the rocks for days. Had he escaped? Or had Kaden already heard his dying scream? Nausea filled him.

Near the top of the ridgeline, just below the notch that would lead over the saddle and into the shallow defile beyond, Jakin pulled up sharply. Kaden started to ask what was wrong, but the man glared him into silence, then inched his head up over the rise. After only a moment, he pulled back with a low curse.

“What is it?” Kaden whispered, his throat tight.

“Men.”

“With you?”

“There is no one with us,” he hissed. “When they sent us to protect you from assassins, they forgot to mention that the assassins were an entire regiment of the Emperor’s own ’Kent-kissed Aedolian Guard.”

“What about that?” Triste asked, gesturing to the crossbow.

Jakin hefted it with disgust. “Only one quarrel left. I didn’t count on having to use so many down below.” As they spoke, Kaden realized with a sickening lurch that the sounds of slaughter behind them had ceased. Sooty red tongues of flame licked against the night sky, casting shifting shadows on the rocks around them. So they were finished with the monks, and presumably their own slaves as well. It doesn’t take long to kill two hundred people, Kaden thought hollowly, staring back over his shoulder until Tan broke into his daze.

“They’re coming up the trail behind us. How many ahead?”

“Four,” Jakin replied.

“The crossbow will make it three,” Tan said. “And if you’re anything like your friend with a knife-”

“I’m not,” he spat, glaring at him. “There’s a reason we work as a team. She does the close work; I deal with unexpected problems from the roof.”

Tan cursed, then hefted his naczal. “Ahead there are four. Behind, looks like a hundred. You shoot, we go. Kaden, hold the girl. Stay back.”

Jakin looked hard at the monk, then nodded.

Their attack seemed to last only moments. Jakin shot one soldier through the eye, and then he and Tan were on the remaining three. The monk’s spear flickered out to catch the closest man in the neck, while Jakin cut down one of the others, finding with his knife the weak joint where helmet met gorget.

So he can use that spear, Kaden thought to himself absently. He didn’t know much about combat-his father’s guardsmen had taught him and Valyn only the rudiments before they were shipped away-but Tan moved with a confidence and deadly speed that couldn’t be faked.

Rather than pressing the attack, the remaining Aedolian stepped back, unnerved by the death of his companions. He seemed to have no relish for a heroic duel, and turned his head to glance down the trail behind him. That’s when Jakin leapt.

He was fast, almost as fast as Pyrre, fast enough to close the distance and thrust his knife through the gap in the helmet and into the brain, but not, Kaden realized with horror, before the soldier could raise his blade. The two fell to the ground, the Aedolian dead where he lay, the sword he still clutched buried in Jakin’s stomach. Kaden started to run to him, but Tan stopped him with a hand on the arm.

The monk wasted no time catching his breath. “He’ll be dead in minutes,” he said, as though that settled the matter.

Kaden tugged his arm free and turned to the fallen man.

He had pulled the sword from his body and rolled onto his back, blood welling from the deep puncture. Pain creased his face, and when he spoke, his words were weak, his lips flecked with blood and spittle. “The base of the Talon,” he managed weakly. “Pyrre will meet you at the base-” He broke off as coughing racked his body, squeezing his eyes shut with agony. Kaden made to cradle his head, but Triste stopped him.

The girl’s gown was badly ripped, her jaw trembling, her breathing heavy, but she hadn’t panicked. If she didn’t have Tan’s stony resolve, she did, at least, seem in control of herself, and she pushed Kaden out of the way gently but firmly, then took the dying man’s hand in her own and pressed her other palm to his brow. “Thank you for saving our lives,” she said simply. The two remained motionless, like a statue carved from the mountain. Then, for the first time since the two merchants had arrived at the monastery, Kaden saw Jakin smile, the spasms that had racked his body subsiding.

“Go,” he said weakly, then closed his eyes. “I will wait here for the god.” With a final squeeze of his hand, Triste nodded, then stood, unshed tears in her eyes.

“There is nothing more we can do for him,” Tan said. “Come.”

They had just started to run once more when Kaden remembered his candlestick-the only weapon he had. It was just a few paces behind, and heart hammering in his chest, he turned back for it. The unlikely weapon had yet to prove its value, but it would be foolish to leave it behind for the sake of a few more seconds, seconds that couldn’t possibly make a difference. He was bending to pick up the bloodied silver shaft when he heard the panting and scrambling. Someone was coming, climbing the far side of the small rise just a short stone’s throw away. Cursing himself for a fool, Kaden snatched the candlestick and spun about to chase after his companions. The voice stopped him cold.

“Kaden! Help me!”

He stared as Phirum Prumm hauled his bulk up over the rise. The monk was sweating and shaking, his robe ripped away from one shoulder, blood from a gash on his forehead running down over his quivering jowls. His chest heaved with the effort of running up the path. How he, of all people, had escaped the carnage below, Kaden had no idea. All he could think was that Phirum was in danger because of him, because of the soldiers he had somehow brought down on them all, and he had to find some way to help.

“Can you keep running?” Kaden asked.

Phirum’s eyes widened still further, as though the question terrified him, but then he looked behind him to where the ruddy flames from the burning monastery flickered against the clouds, the roar of the fire punctuated by curses and screams. He turned back to Kaden and nodded.

“All right,” Kaden said, taking a deep breath. “Keep a hand on the belt to my robe. You’re still going to have to run, but I can help pull you some, especially on the uphills.”

“Thank you, Kaden,” the youth replied.

Kaden just nodded.

“Let’s go,” Tan said. The older monk started to double back, but Kaden waved him on.

“We’re coming,” he replied.

Without another word, the four of them turned from the ghosts of the dead and the cries of the living to race into the emptiness of the night.