Brian Staveley - The Emperor's blades

Valyn shook his head. “If there wasn’t a battle involved, I didn’t study it.”

“There wasn’t a battle. Atlatun wanted to rule, but his father looked a little too healthy for his taste, so he stabbed him in the eye over the dinner table. The point is, despite being Atlatun’s heir and having Intarra’s eyes, he was executed for treason. The Unhewn Throne went to his nephew.”

“You didn’t kill your father,” Pyrre pointed out. She frowned. “You didn’t, did you?”

“No,” Kaden replied, “but no one in Annur knows that. Whoever is behind the conspiracy could be spreading whatever rumors they want. They could be claiming that Valyn and I cooked up a plot against our father together, that we paid that priest to kill him while we were out of the capital.”

“Until we know conclusively otherwise,” Valyn said, “we have to figure the Eyrie views us as traitors.”

“And how does the Eyrie handle traitors?” Kaden asked.

“They send people,” Valyn replied.

“The Flea.”

“His Wing might be in the mountains already.”

“The mountains are endless,” Pyrre said. “I’ve been running around the ’Kent-kissing things for the past week. The nine of us could have a parade with pennons and drums, and no one would find us.”

“You don’t know what they can do,” Valyn replied, eyeing the dusky sky as he spoke. “I trained with them, and I don’t know what they can do.” Kaden followed his brother’s gaze, searching above the snowy peaks for a hint of movement, for any suggestion of a dark bird bearing death on her wings.

“All I know is that he’s coming,” Valyn said. “I don’t know how he’ll do it, I’m not sure when, but he’s coming.”

“Then we will have to handle him,” Tan replied.

Kaden watched Valyn turn to his umial, incredulity playing across his face.

“ Handle him? And just who in Hull’s name are you, old man? You’ve got the robe, but I’ve never heard of monks running around with gear like that,” he said, indicating the naczal in Tan’s left hand.

The monk met the gaze but refused to answer the question.

“All right,” Pyrre said, spreading her hands, “let’s take these birds, fly back to Annur, and set things straight. It’s not like they won’t know who you are-those ridiculous eyes have got to be good for something.”

“Who made you a part of this, assassin?” Tan asked grimly.

Pyrre cocked her head to the side. “After I saved the Emperor and killed that ox of an Aedolian, you expect me to walk out of here?”

“She’s coming,” Kaden said, surprised at the certainty in his own voice. “We’ve got two birds. That should be enough to take everyone.” He glanced over at Valyn.

Valyn nodded. “We can be in Annur in a week if we fly hard. If we stay ahead of the Flea. Maybe a little more.”

Kaden turned his gaze west, to where the sun had just sunk behind the icy peaks. Annur. The Dawn Palace. Home . It was tempting to think that they might simply mount the kettral, fly from the carnage, return to the capital, and avenge his father. It was tempting to think it might be so easy to set things right, but from somewhere, the old Shin aphorism came back to him: Believe what you see with your eyes; trust what you hear with your ears; know what you feel with your flesh. The rest is dream and delusion.

“… and stay well north, over the empty steppe,” Tan was saying.

“No.”

Three pairs of eyes turned to Kaden, boring into him.

“You don’t think the steppe is the best route?” Valyn asked. “It’ll keep us clear of the Annurian territory south of the White River-”

“I’m not going west at all. Not yet.”

Pyrre squinted. “Well, to the north, there’s a whole heap of ice and frozen ocean, south takes us right back toward any pursuit from the Eyrie, so-”

“And we can’t go east,” Valyn cut in. “Not that we’d have any reason to. Past the mountains there’s just Anthera, and we’d all be killed on sight if we landed there. Il Tornja authorized some pretty nasty operations over the border in the past few years. We’ve got to go west, got to get back to the capital.”

Pyrre was nodding. “How far north of the White do you think we need to fly to avoid these unsavory friends of yours?”

Kaden shook his head slowly, something hardening inside him. He didn’t know what was going on in Annur, and neither did anyone else. It was tempting to return, to believe that the people would hail his arrival, but that was the dream and the delusion. His foes had killed his father, had very nearly destroyed his entire family, and the only certainty remaining was that someone was hunting him, guessing at his movements, tracking.

He thought back to the early spring, to the long cold day he had spent tracking a lost goat through the peaks, inhabiting its mind, feeling for its actions, following its decisions until he ran it down. I will not be that goat; I will not be hunted. If the Shin had taught him anything, it was patience.

“The rest of you should fly west. Go to Annur to try to see what’s happening there as quickly as possible.”

“The rest of you?” Pyrre asked with a raised eyebrow.

Kaden took a deep breath. “I am going to visit the Ishien. Tan and I both.”

The older monk’s face hardened, but it was Valyn who spoke.

“And just who in ’Shael’s name are the fucking Ishien?”

“A branch of the Shin,” Kaden replied. “One that studies the Csestriim. One that hunts the Csestriim. If the Csestriim are involved in this, they might know something.”

“No,” Tan said finally. “The Ishien and the Shin parted ways long ago. You are expecting quiet monks and hours of contemplation, but the Ishien are a harder order. A more dangerous order.”

“More dangerous than the ak’hanath ?” Kaden asked. “More dangerous than a contingent of Aedolian Guards come to kill me in my sleep?” He paused. “More dangerous than the Csestriim?”

“I don’t know shit about the Ishien,” Valyn interjected, “but I’m not letting you wander off without protection. You’re tougher than I’d expected, but you still need my Wing for cover.”

Tan shook his head. “You do not know what you ask for.”

“I am not asking,” Kaden replied, stiffening his voice. “Valyn, I need your Wing back in the capital and soon, to sort out what happened there before the trail goes cold.”

“Then we’ll go visit the Ishien first, and then we’ll all go to the capital.”

Kaden opened his mouth to try to explain it once more, then closed it. Perhaps he could convince his umial and the others, and perhaps he could not-that was beside the point. He never asked for his eyes, but they burned just the same.

“Tan and I are going,” he said once more. “The rest of you are returning to Annur. There is no more to the matter unless you would disobey your Emperor.”

Pyrre chuckled and opened her mouth to speak. For a moment Kaden thought he’d made a fool of himself. They were thousands of leagues from the Dawn Palace, lost in a labyrinth of mountains, fleeing from the people he had been born to command. Why should a Skullsworn, a renegade monk, and a Kettral Wing leader listen to him, a boy with one robe to his name?

Then, all in one motion, Valyn stood. Kaden rose stiffly to his feet as well, in time to see his brother touch a hand to his blades before kneeling and placing his knuckles to his forehead.

“It will be as you say, Your Radiance. I will make the birds ready at once.”

When Valyn finally raised those black eyes, Kaden could see nothing in them, not even his own reflection.