Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(116)



Tan’s broad hand caught him flat across the face, knocking him backward into the table, where he upended the bowl of stew. A look of shock, then rage raced across Akiil’s face as the liquid spread across the table, then began to patter into a small pool on the stone floor. The older monk didn’t blink. “Three will be adequate. I will see you both at dawn.”

“He—,” Akiil began after Tan had closed the door behind him. The stew had splashed over his robe, and he wiped it away in short, angry motions.

“He will tie you to a pitch pine and leave you for the ravens,” Kaden interjected. “You think Yen Harval is a tough umial, think again. Look at this,” he continued, gesturing to his sunken cheeks and skeletal arms. “This is what happened to me, and I’ve been doing everything in Ae’s power to obey the man. Now, sit down and don’t do anything to make it worse.”

Akiil nodded and sat, but there was something new, and sharp, and defiant in his gaze that worried Kaden.





28





The morning dawned bright and cold. Frost limned the needles of the junipers, and a thin pane of ice slicked the surface of the water in the bucket outside the refectory door. Kaden rapped at it, slicing the skin across his knuckles and dripping a thin line of scarlet as he reached in to scoop some over his hair and face. The icy water trickled down his back beneath his robe, but he was glad for the sensation—it woke him, and he wanted to be well awake for whatever Rampuri Tan had prepared.

“Why don’t you ever remind me that ‘early summer’ up here doesn’t necessarily mean ‘warm’?” Akiil asked, joining him at the bucket. He dipped his hands, ran them through his scraggly black hair, then cupped them and blew into the palms.

The sun hadn’t yet cleared the peaks to the east, but light filled the sky, limpid and spreading. Kaden and Akiil weren’t the only ones up; a low hum emanated from the meditation hall—older monks about their morning devotions—while novices and acolytes lugged full pails of water across the paths of the courtyard.

“It’ll be hot enough by noon,” Kaden responded, although he could feel his skin rising in bumps beneath his robe. “Come on. Tan doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

The two crossed the small square, sandaled feet crunching the gravel, breath feathering out in front of them. Normally Kaden liked this time of day, at least once he’d had a chance to come fully awake. Morning sounds were crisper somehow, morning light more gentle. Today, however, something tickled the hair on the back of his neck. As he and Akiil followed the rough path beyond the outskirts of the monastery, his eyes kept darting to corners and hollows where the low sun had not yet driven out the night’s lingering shadow.

Tan waited in one of those shadows, standing silently beneath the large boulder marking the trail down to the lower meadow, his hood pulled up to shield his face from the morning chill. Akiil looked like he might walk right past until Kaden brought him up short with a discreet tug on the robe.

When the two had paused, the older monk stepped out from the shelter of the overhanging rock. Only then did Kaden notice the long staff he held at his side. No, he realized with a jolt of surprise, not a staff, a spear. The weapon looked a little like the polearms carried by the Palace Guard back in Annur, but unlike those, Tan’s spear stiffened into leaf-shaped blades at either end. The entire thing looked as though it had been forged from a single piece of steel, although that much steel would be difficult for any man to wield effectively, even someone as strong as Tan. As the older monk joined the two acolytes, however, he swung the double-ended spear at his side casually, as though it weighed no more than a dry cedar branch. An unstrung longbow hung on his back, but bows were common enough around Ashk’lan. Someone had to put food in the refectory pots. The strange spear, on the other hand …

“What’s that?” Akiil asked, excitement warring with caution in his voice. He didn’t sound at all certain that Tan wouldn’t spit him on the end of the weapon simply for asking, but he was willing to take the chance.

Kaden’s umial examined the spear as though considering it for the first time.

“A naczal,” he said, pronouncing the strange word in a sibilant hiss.

Akiil looked at what should have been the butt end skeptically, eyeing the graceful blade where it gouged the dirt. “Looks pretty easy to chop off a toe. Do you know how to use it?”

“Not as well as those who made it,” Tan replied.

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