Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(50)

Kaden had just about reconciled himself to spending the next week and a half lugging the stones back up the steep paths and replacing them in their earthen divots when Pater arrived, breathing hard and waving him away from the work with a small hand. Tan had sent him, evidently—something about a meeting in the refectory, a meeting of all the monks. The abbot rarely called such an assembly, and Kaden felt his curiosity quicken.

“Why does Nin want the meeting?” he asked patiently.

Pater rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. They don’t tell me anything. Something about that goat you found.”

Kaden’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. It was almost a month since he’d come across the mangled carcass, and he’d done his best to put it out of his mind. After notifying Nin and the others, there wasn’t much else to do, and Tan had kept him busy. Sometimes, however, as he was lugging a rock down from high in the mountain passes, he would feel the skin on his neck prickle and look back. There was never anything to be seen. Now, however, if Nin was calling a meeting …

“Has something happened?” he asked.

Pater just pulled harder. “I don’t know. Come on!”

Clearly he wasn’t going to get anything else out of the small boy, and so Kaden slowed his breathing and stilled his impatience. It wasn’t far back to the main buildings of the monastery.

On a normal morning, the rough square would be quietly busy with monks going about their labors: novices hauling water in heavy iron pots for the afternoon meal, acolytes hurrying on errands for their umials, older monks strolling the paths or seated beneath the junipers, shaved heads bent beneath their cowls as they followed their own private devotions to the Blank God. On a normal morning, the low drone of chanting from the meditation hall would hang on the breeze, a bass rumble beneath the percussive striking of axe against block as acolytes split wood for the fires. While the monastery was rarely lively, it always felt alive. Today, however, Ashk’lan lay empty and silent beneath the harsh glare of the spring sun.

The inside of the refectory was another matter. Nearly two hundred bodies were crammed into the space, the oldest and most respected monks seated on benches near the front of the hall, novices standing on tiptoe in the back. The scent of wool, smoke, and sweat hung heavy in the air. Shin discipline obviated any real commotion—monks who had trained to sit silent and cross-legged in the snow for hours weren’t likely to get rowdy—but the group was as animated as Kaden could remember. Dozens of quiet conversations buzzed at the same time, and everyone seemed curious and alert. He and Pater squeezed in at the rear of the hall and nudged the wooden doors shut behind them.

Akiil stood a few paces away, and Kaden caught his friend’s eye as he sidled through the crowd with Pater in tow.

“How’s that palace you’re building coming along?” Akiil asked.

“Glorious,” Kaden replied. “I might move my capital here when I finally ascend the throne.”

“And give up that glitzy tower back in Annur that your family is so fond of?”

“Nothing wrong with a little honest stonework,” Kaden replied, then gestured toward the front of the hall. “What’s going on?”

Akiil shrugged. “Not sure. Altaf found something.”

“Something?”

“Spare me a lecture on the importance of specificity. No one tells me anything. All I know is Altaf, Tan, and Nin have been locked up in the abbot’s study for most of the morning.”

“Tan?” Kaden raised an eyebrow. That explained why his umial hadn’t been around to berate him. “What’s he doing with them?”

Akiil fixed him with a long-suffering glare. “As I just explained, no one tells me shit.”

Kaden was about to press harder when Scial Nin had stepped out in front of the assembled monks.

“I can’t see,” Pater whispered.

Kaden hefted the boy up onto his shoulders.

“Three weeks ago,” the abbot began without preamble, “Kaden came across something … unusual.”

He paused, allowing a silence to settle over the refectory. Scial Nin was around sixty, thin as a post, brown as a juniper trunk, and lean as old mutton. He no longer had to shave his head, which had gone naturally bald, and the corners of his eyes were deeply creased from squinting at objects in the distance. When Kaden first arrived at the monastery, he had thought the abbot elderly, even frail. Hours of laboring up steep trails in the man’s wake, however, had disabused him of that notion. Nin’s age and slight frame belied a vigor that appeared in his step when he ran, and resonated in his voice when he spoke, carrying clear and strong to the back of the hall.