Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(34)

He had last walked that trail eight years ago, craning his skinny neck for a glimpse of his new home, a home that seemed to be perched in mountains so high that their peaks etched the clouds. He had been frightened; frightened of this cold, stone place, and frightened to show his fear.

“Why?” he had pleaded with his father before leaving Annur. “Why can’t you teach me about ruling the empire?” Sanlitun’s stern face softened as he replied. “Someday I will, Kaden. I will teach you, as my father taught me, to tell justice from cruelty, boldness from folly, friends from fawning sycophants. When you return, I will teach you to make the hard decisions through which a boy becomes a man. But there are other lessons you must learn first, lessons of the greatest importance, and these I cannot teach you. These, you must learn from the Shin.”

“But why?” Kaden had begged. “They don’t rule an empire. They don’t even rule a kingdom. They rule nothing!”

His father smiled cryptically, as though the boy had made some kind of clever joke. Then the smile was gone and he was taking his son’s wrist in the strong handshake men called the soldier’s clasp. Kaden did his best to return the gesture, although his fingers were too small to gain any real purchase around his father’s muscled forearm.

“Ten years,” the man said, exchanging the face of a parent for that of the Emperor. “It is not long, in the life of a man.”

Eight years gone, Kaden thought as he leaned back against the sloping boulder. Eight years gone, and the things he’d learned were as few as they were useless. He could craft pots, cups, urns, vases, and mugs from the clay of the river shallows, and he could sit still as a stone or run uphill for hours on end. He could mind goats. He could draw any plant, animal, or bird perfectly from memory—at least as long as someone wasn’t beating him bloody, he amended wryly. Although he had grown fond of Ashk’lan, he couldn’t stay there forever, and his accomplishments seemed a sad showing for eight years, nothing that would help him to run an empire. And now Tan had him counting rocks. I hope Valyn’s making better use of his time, he thought. I’ll bet he’s passing his tests, at the very least.

The thought of tests conjured up the pain in his back where the willow switch had broken open his flesh. Better to wash them out now, he thought, eyeing the cold water. Won’t do any good to let them fester. He pulled his robe over his head, wincing as the rough fabric scraped over the bloody gashes, and tossed it in a rough heap. The pool wasn’t deep or wide enough to accommodate a dive, but at the upstream end one could step off a narrow ledge and drop in to the chest all at once. It was easier that way—like ripping off a scab. Kaden took three breaths, stilling his heartbeat and calming himself for the shock, then plunged.

As usual, the icy chill stabbed into him like a knife. He’d been bathing in the pool since he was ten, however, and had long ago learned to shepherd his body’s heat. He forced himself to take a deep, calm breath; hold it; then drive the meager warmth out through his trembling limbs. It was a trick the monks had. Scial Nin, the abbot, could spend whole hours sitting quietly in the winter snow, his shoulders bare to the elements, flakes dissolving in little puffs of steam when they struck his skin. Kaden couldn’t manage that yet, but he could keep himself from biting his tongue in two as he reached over his shoulders to wash the dried blood out of the gashes. After a minute of vigorous scrubbing, he turned to the bank. Before he could hoist himself out, however, a voice broke the stillness.

“Stay in the water.”

Kaden froze and sucked in his breath. Rampuri Tan. He turned, searching for his umial, only to find the man seated in the shadow of an overhanging flake of granite just a few paces away, legs crossed, back erect. Tan looked like a statue hewn from the mountain itself rather than a figure of flesh and blood. He must have been sitting there the whole time, observing, judging.

“No wonder you can’t paint,” Tan said. “You’re blind.”

Kaden clamped his teeth together grimly, forced down the creeping cold, and kept silent.

Tan didn’t move. He looked, in fact, as though he might never move, but he scrutinized Kaden with the attention one might bring to a vexing problem on the stones board.

“Why didn’t you see me?” he asked finally.

“You blended with the rocks.”

“Blended,” Tan chuckled. The sound held none of Heng’s mirth. “I blended with the rocks. I wonder what that might mean.” He glanced up toward the darkening sky, as though the answer were scrawled in the flight of the peregrines wheeling far above. “A man blends water with tea. A baker blends flour with egg. But blending flesh with stone?” He shook his head as though the concept were beyond him.