Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(138)

He expected Akiil to come that night. Before the dinner had finished, while the monks were still nursing the dark dregs of their tea, Kaden had left Pater with a message for his friend: Find me after the midnight bell. The bell came and went, however, a somber tolling in the darkness, without a sign of the young monk.

He spent the next two days crafting pots and mugs that Tan never bothered to inspect, the following two nights huddled in awkward positions on the small bench, trying to shrink into his robe to avoid the night’s chill. Nightmares filled his dreams—inchoate visions with no real narrative in which his father fought against a host of foes while Pyrre looked on as though nothing were amiss. It was a long time since he’d had nightmares—years, in fact. The Shin believed that disordered dreams were the product of a disordered mind. The oldest brothers claimed not to dream at all. Kaden would have been happy enough to join them, but the visions kept coming, night after night, as soon as he closed his eyes. Finally, on the third night, Akiil arrived, slipping through the wooden door just after the midnight bell.

“Nice jug,” he said, glancing at Kaden’s newest project—a large, two-handled ewer of red river clay. “Too bad we don’t have any wine to go in it.”

“’Shael can take the jug,” Kaden responded more harshly than he’d intended. “It’s been two days. What’s happening out there? Did anyone find what’s killing the goats? What’s going on with those two merchants?”

Akiil flopped onto the bench wearily and spread his hands. He looked bored. Bored and frustrated. His robe, never very clean to begin with, had dirt ground into it, a sure sign that he, like Kaden, had been spending the bulk of his days performing some sort of menial labor rather than lounging around with the strangers. He raked a mop of hair out of his eyes.

“What has been happening with the merchants is what always happens with merchants. A lot of song. A lot of dance.”

“Meaning what?”

Akiil shrugged. “Pyrre and Jakin try to sell us shit. Nin says we don’t want it. Pyrre says, ‘But surely you would enjoy a robe made of these fine silks.’ The abbot says he prefers roughspun. You’re not missing much.”

Kaden shook his head in frustration. “There’s something strange about those two, something … not right.”

“They’re shitty merchants, that’s for sure.” Akiil’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. How do you know? Tan’s had you locked in here the whole time.”

“I was in the dovecote,” Kaden confessed. Quickly, he ran through the whole story—the merchants’ strange entrance, the overpowering sense that Pyrre was holding something back, despite her urbane geniality, that vague suspicion that Kaden felt so powerfully but could barely articulate. “There’s something … something they’re not saying about my father,” he concluded weakly.

Akiil frowned. “Sounds like your imagination has flown the coop.”

“I didn’t imagine it.”

“Halva’s always lecturing me about how we see what we want to see. That could have happened to you. Of course, if I saw what I wanted to see, Pyrre’s breasts would be a fair amount larger.”

“Why would I want to see something troubling about my father?”

“Not that you want bad news, but it’s only natural to worry about your parents—provided you know who they are. It’s an affliction I’ve been spared.”

“I’m looking at Pyrre’s face now,” Kaden replied, his mind filling with the saama’an. For the hundredth time, he tried to pinpoint what it was about the woman’s expression that bothered him so. “There’s … something.” He sighed. “There’s something strange, but I can’t see what it is.”

“Sounds like you’ve been spending too much time buried up to your nose or running around with a blindfold on. That can do things to a man, can do things to his mind—”

“There’s nothing wrong with my mind.”

“That’s up for debate,” Akiil shot back. Then, seeing the blaze in Kaden’s eyes, he raised his hands in surrender. “But let’s assume you’re right. Still, wouldn’t Nin or Tan or one of our aged wards have noticed? I mean, you’re good at the saama’an, but they’ve been going at it hammer and tongs for decades.”

Kaden spread his hands helplessly.

“Of course,” his friend went on, a sly grin creeping onto his face, “old Shin tricks are all well and good, but there’s a way we can get some more … practical information.”