Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(149)

“I was a part of the group that picked the Wings,” the Flea said, breaking into Valyn’s thoughts.

Valyn stared at the man, aghast. “You helped select that team?” he asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

The Flea shrugged. His pockmarked face remained indifferent. “I didn’t select ’em, but I approved the list.”

“Why?”

“Thought they’d make a good Wing,” the commander replied simply.

Valyn opened his mouth to snap a quick response, then shut it. Either the man was taunting him, or there was something to the lesson. Command the Wing you have, not the Wing you want. It would mean throwing out the whole protocol and reworking the barrel drop entirely.

“So what you’re saying, sir—,” Valyn began, trying to work through the implications.

The Flea cut him off. “Can’t talk now. I gotta go.”

Valyn looked around, confused. “Where are you going?”

“Barrel drops,” the Flea grunted, gesturing over his shoulder toward the dim shape of a bird in the distance.

“Barrel drops like we did?”

“Hopefully a lot better than you did. Those were shittiest barrel drops I’ve seen since I was a cadet.”

Valyn tried to wrap his weary mind around it. “Why are you still doing them? What’s the twist?”

“No twist,” the Flea replied, picking idly at a callus on his thumb, seemingly unaware of the rapidly approaching bird.

“But they’re a novice exercise,” Valyn protested. He’d heard fables of the training the veteran Wings went through: rose-and-thorn scenarios, impossible point landings, high-speed multiple casualty extracts … “None of the veteran Wings do barrel drops.”

The Flea shrugged. “We do.”

It didn’t make sense. The Flea and his Wing were professionals. They were practically gods. It was like hearing that a master bladesman still practiced slicing vegetables for the dinner pot.

“How often?” Valyn asked, stepping back as the massive black bird swept in on close approach. Chi Hoai Mi, the Flea’s flier, was coming in fast and hard, faster than Laith, even, and seemingly low enough to knock her Wing’s commander from the cliff. The Flea didn’t even look over his shoulder at the approaching bird. He just raised one hand and seemed to contemplate Valyn’s question.

“Just about every day,” he replied, eyes abstracted, as though tallying up the days and weeks, the years. “Yeah,” he concluded, nodding as though that were settled. “Just about every day.”

The bird was upon them in a rush of wind that knocked Valyn back onto his heels. The Flea, however, just leaned forward slightly, snagged a leather loop that had appeared at the last moment, seemingly out of nowhere, and pulled himself effortlessly onto the talons. Before Valyn could make sense of the sight, Chi Hoai had put the bird into a steep bank and the whole Wing disappeared over the edge of the cliff.





35





For two days Kaden remained in the cellar of the meditation hall, toiling with a shovel and pickaxe in the rocky soil. Tan had said he wanted the cellar deeper, but he hadn’t specified by how much. Kaden took the omission to mean he had a lot of work ahead of him. He had rolled the huge hogsheads of vinegar and weak beer out of the way, stacking them in the far corner, then set to work on the task. The ground was stony and unyielding. Often he would spend hours trying to find the edges of a boulder, then further hours levering it out of the earth with various picks and prybars. The solitary, monotonous work provided labor for his back and hands, but allowed his mind to wander over the events of the last week.

Pyrre and Jakin Lakatur weren’t merchants; that much was clear, and their arrival had something to do with Kaden. It seemed as though, however improbably, the intrigue of the imperial court had found its way to Ashk’lan, a thought that made Kaden shiver despite his labors. The silk-hung corridors of the Dawn Palace had seen both spies and assassins over the centuries, and here, a thousand leagues from his father’s court, Kaden had no Aedolian Guard to protect him.

What information a spy might hope to glean from Kaden, however, he had no idea. Despite the fact that he stood to inherit the Unhewn Throne, after eight years at Ashk’lan, he knew less about politics than the most incompetent footling. Pyrre and Jakin weren’t likely to have undertaken a trek of a thousand leagues just to watch him run up and down Venart’s Peak and turn bowls in the clay shed.