Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(33)

Akiil chuckled. “And then he came up here to kill a few goats?”

“They do things like that,” the boy insisted. “Eat brains and drink blood and stuff.”

Kaden shook his head. “They do not, Pater. They’re men and women, just the way we are, only … twisted somehow.”

“They’re evil!” the small boy exclaimed. “That’s why they have to get hanged or beheaded.”

“They are evil,” Kaden agreed. “And we do have to hang them. But not because they drink blood.”

“They might drink blood,” Akiil suggested unhelpfully, knuckling Pater in the ribs to goad him on.

Again, Kaden shook his head. “We have to hang leaches because they have too much power. No one should be able to twist the fabric of reality to their own ends.” Hundreds of years earlier, the Atmani leach-lords had gone insane and nearly destroyed the world. Whenever Kaden wondered if leaches deserved the loathing and opprobrium heaped upon them, he had only to remember his history. “Only the gods should have that kind of power.”

“Too much power!” Akiil crowed. “Too much power! And this from the person who’s going to be the ’Kent-kissing Annurian Emperor someday.”

Kaden snorted. “According to Tan, I don’t have enough wit in my head to make it as a simple monk.”

“You don’t have to make it as a monk. You’re going to rule half the known world.”

“Maybe,” Kaden responded, doubtfully. The Dawn Palace and the Unhewn Throne felt impossibly far away, a hazily remembered dream from his childhood. For all he knew, his father would rule another thirty years, years Kaden would spend at Ashk’lan hauling water, retiling roofs, and, oh yes, getting beaten by his umial. “I don’t mind the work and the whippings when I feel like it’s all part of some bigger plan. Tan, though … I might as well be some sort of insect, for all he cares.”

“You should be happy,” Akiil responded, rolling onto his back and staring up at the scudding clouds. “I’ve worked my ass off my whole life precisely in order to keep the expectations for me low. Low expectations are the key to success.” He started to turn to Pater, but Kaden cut him off.

“That is not more Thieves’ Wisdom,” he said to the boy. Then, turning back to Akiil, “You know what Tan’s had me doing for the past week? Counting. Counting all the stones in all the buildings at Ashk’lan.”

“That’s what you’re complaining about?” Akiil demanded, stabbing a finger at him. “I was getting harder tasks when I was ten.”

Kaden rolled his eyes. “You always were precocious.”

“No need to show off the big words. Not all of us grew up with a Manjari tutor.”

“Aren’t you the one who claims the only schooling a man needs he can get from a butcher, a sailor, and a whore?”

Akiil shrugged. “The butcher and the sailor are optional.”

Pater had been trying to follow the exchange, head swiveling back and forth with the conversation.

“What’s a whore?” he asked. Then, distracted by his earlier reasoning, “If a leach didn’t kill the goat, what did?”

Kaden saw it all again, the shattered skull, scooped clean.

“I told you, I don’t know.” He looked out across the courtyard, past the stone buildings and the granite ledges to where the sun was sinking toward the endless grasslands of the steppe. “But it’s going to be dark soon, and if I don’t get cleaned up and find Tan before dinner, I’m going to find myself envying that goat.”

*

Umber’s Pool wasn’t a proper pool so much as a pocket of rocks half a mile from the monastery where the White River paused, gathering itself in deep, still silence before spilling over a shelf in a dizzying waterfall, tumbling hundreds of feet into a deep ravine before snaking lazily into the steppe far below. After a childhood spent bathing in copper tubs filled with steaming water by the palace servants, Kaden had been shocked to realize that any washing at Ashk’lan would take place outside, in Umber’s. Over the years, however, he had grown accustomed to it. The water was viciously cold, even in summer; anyone stoic enough to brave it in the winter had to hack a hole in the ice with the rusty, long-handled axe that was left between the rocks for just that purpose. Still, after a long day lugging tile beneath the glare of the mountain sun, the water would feel good.

He lingered before entering the pool. It was nice to have a few moments to himself, away from Tan’s discipline, away from Pater’s questions and Akiil’s goading. He stooped to scoop up a clear handful of water, then straightened, allowing the icy drink to trickle down the back of his throat while he peered down the vertiginous trail that descended to the foothills and steppe below.