Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(171)

“Holy Hull,” Gwenna muttered. “Meshkent, Ananshael, and sweet, holy Hull. And now he’s off the Islands.”

The realization hit Valyn like a bucket of ice. He’d been so busy looking backward, trying to make sense of the past months, that he’d nearly forgotten what started them down the path in the first place. Balendin was not only free; he was also away.

“Who did Shaleel say assigned them their mission?” he demanded, slamming a hand down on the table.

“What does that matter?” Laith asked.

“Who?”

“She assigned it herself,” Annick replied, voice hard.

Valyn’s skin prickled, waves of cold and nausea rolling over him in great, heady swells. “We’ve got to go,” he said. “We’ve got to gear up, get the bird, and go.”

Talal raised a hand to slow him down. “You heard what she said. We’re grounded. We can’t leave the Islands. We so much as touch a flatbow, we’re all traitors.”

“That’s the point!” Valyn erupted. “That’s exactly what Baledin wanted. Shaleel is the commander for operations in northeastern Vash.”

“So?” Laith said, trying to catch up. “What’s in northeastern Vash?”

“Ashk’lan,” Valyn growled. “My brother. Kaden. The Emperor.”





41





It was all well and good for Adiv to joke about the talks that Kaden could have with Triste “over the pillow,” but now that dinner was over, he found himself suddenly and acutely nervous. It didn’t help that his head was muddled with wine, and it certainly didn’t help that once they stepped out of the refectory door, all four men had looked at him expectantly.

“Your pavilion awaits,” Adiv said with a generous sweep of his arm, as though Kaden couldn’t see the ’Kent-kissed thing perfectly well from where he stood. The fact that the servants had erected it smack-dab in the middle of the main square made him cringe. If it wasn’t enough that his special dinner had deprived the monks of their own meal, now they couldn’t look out the windows of their own sober cells without staring at the palatial opulence of his overgrown tent. White canvas walls, immaculate as if they had been woven the day before, practically glowed in the light of the setting sun. Pennons fluttering from the central pole overtopped even the roof of the dormitory, Ashk’lan’s largest building.

Akiil is never going to let me live this down, Kaden thought ruefully.

“A fitting pavilion for the Emperor and his lovely consort,” Adiv said, the shadow of that mocking grin lurking around his lips.

Kaden knew how this was supposed to work, of course. Despite his eight years away from the Dawn Palace, he still remembered his father’s concubines, a dozen or so quiet, graceful women who slipped through the marble halls in silent satin shoes, eyes demure and downcast. When still very young, he had asked his mother about those women. She had put down her carefully buttered bread and looked at him for a while, lips pursed tight.

“They are concubines,” she said finally.

“What’s concubines?” he had asked, perplexed.

“Women who … comfort a man when his wife cannot.”

Kaden had rolled that idea around in his head for a while. It didn’t sound like a bad thing, although something in his mother’s bearing had him on edge.

“Do you have concubines,” he had asked, “to comfort you when father is away?”

She had laughed then, a short bitter laugh. “It is a man’s prerogative.”

Kaden considered that. “Will I have concubines someday?” he asked.

His mother never took her eyes from him. “Yes. I suppose you will, Kaden.”

Well, he thought, glancing over at Triste, evidently this is the day. Whatever education his mother had neglected, Akiil had more than made up for, regaling Kaden almost nightly with tales of the delicious, foul-mouthed whores from the Perfumed Quarter. Triste, however, was no whore, and Akiil’s stories had neglected the finer points of romantic etiquette.

The abbot, as though sensing Kaden’s discomfort, said softly, “You are welcome, of course, to spend your last night in your own cell, putting your things in order.”

Adiv laughed good-naturedly. “What things? A few robes? He would shame the servants not to sleep in the pavilion they have labored to set up.” He turned to Kaden with a more deferential tone. “Your Radiance, you are the Emperor. Today or tomorrow, you must accept the trappings as well as the title.”