Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(158)

“We are grateful,” Adiv replied with a nod. “Until tonight, then, Your Radiance.” Once again he knelt, his head bowed, while Ut did the same at his side.

“Rise,” Kaden said, feeling all at once just how wearying it would be to utter that simple word again and again to men and women of all stations for the rest of his life.

Only as they withdrew to their quarters and silence descended on the courtyard once again did Kaden realize he did not know how his father had died. Oddly, he had not thought to ask.





38





I’m not ready.

The thought plagued Kaden like the fragment of an inane tune reeling about in his head. I’m not ready. He sat in the same chair from three nights before, and as on that night, the abbot sat silently behind his desk. A small fire burned on the hearth, filling the room with the scent of smoke and juniper while keeping the mountain chill at bay. Outside the windows, Kaden could hear the bleating of goats as Phirum Prumm and Henter Leng shepherded them toward the pens for milking. Nothing was different, but everything had changed. The old monk hadn’t begun falling to his knees or calling him Your Radiance, a fact for which Kaden was profoundly grateful, but there was a new distance in Nin’s steady blue gaze, as though the old abbot had already let him go.

“I guess I won’t make a good monk after all,” Kaden began at last, laughing weakly.

“Life is long,” the abbot replied, “and the paths through it are many.”

Kaden shook his head at the absurdity of the past hour. “I’m not ready.”

There. He had said it, and having said it, the other words came out in a rush, as though the stopper had been pulled from the base of a large cask. “I haven’t learned anything. I don’t know anything. You’ve trained me to be a monk, not an Emperor.”

The old man raised an eyebrow at the outburst, but that was all. A week prior, the rant would have earned Kaden five laps on the Circuit of Ravens or a night on the Talon, and he found himself wishing the abbot would snap at him as he had in the past, tell him to stop being a child, to master his emotions, then send him out to haul water from the black pool. But you don’t send an Emperor to haul water, Kaden thought, and indeed, Nin’s response was calm and measured.

“As I have already explained, you were not sent here to become a monk.”

Kaden opened his mouth to respond, then closed it when he found he had nothing to say.

“I’m doubly sorry for your loss,” the old monk began after a time. “First, because every son should have a chance to know his father, not as a child knows his protector, but as a man knows another man. More pressingly, however, I worry for the empire. As you have observed, Sanlitun died before he could complete your education. He would have taught you the intricacies of politics, intricacies of which we know nothing here. Annur is the most powerful empire since the fall of the Atmani. The fates of thousands, millions, depend on your knowledge.”

“And the gates,” Kaden added, glancing out the window as though there were some escape in the serrated mountains beyond. “I still haven’t learned the vaniate. I can’t use the gates.”

The abbot nodded somberly. “You’re close, very close, but close is irrelevant. If you tried to pass the kenta without achieving the vaniate—” He shook his head, gestured to the air around them with one mottled hand.

“The Blank God,” Kaden concluded.

“The Blank God.”

Kaden hesitated before his next question. “Is there one here?” He asked finally. “A kenta? Could I see it?”

The abbot shook his head. “The Ishien used to build their fortresses by the gates in order to guard them, but Ashk’lan … we don’t know who laid the foundations, but there is no kenta. If there were, your father could have visited you whenever he pleased. Many have been lost, but to the best of my knowledge, there is not a Csestriim gate within a hundred leagues of here.”

“So … what?” Kaden asked. “I have to return to Annur—it’ll take months, even if we travel by ship from the Bend—and Adiv says I don’t have months.”

“It’s unusual,” Nin replied. “Both your father and his father completed their training here. Perhaps we could convince Rampuri Tan to accompany you.”

Kaden stifled a desperate laugh, but Scial Nin caught the expression.

“You find the idea troublesome?” he asked.