Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(66)

“Fear is blindness,” the youth intoned solemnly, wagging a finger. “Calmness is sight.”

Kaden let out a deep breath. “Thank you for that wisdom, Master. Did you complete your acolyte’s training in the two days I’ve been locked in here?”

Akiil shrugged, then dropped from the window ledge into the room. “It’s amazing the progress I was able to make without you around to hold me back. The vaniate’s like picking pockets—seems hard until you catch the knack.”

“And what is it like, O Enlightened One?”

“The vaniate?” Akiil frowned as though pondering. “A profound mystery,” he said finally, waving a dismissive hand. “An undeveloped maggot like you could never understand.”

“You know,” Kaden said, settling back onto the stool where he had been working, “Tan told me that the Csestriim practiced the vaniate.” He had had plenty of time to ponder this peculiar claim, but Akiil had been cooped up in the kitchen for days, boiling down bruiseberries in Yen Harval’s heavy iron pots, and the two hadn’t been able to talk. With all the confusion about whatever was killing the goats, Kaden had finally set the information about the vaniate to the side until he could share it with his friend.

Akiil furrowed his brow. “The Csestriim? I didn’t figure Tan to be one for tall tales and kids’ stories.”

“There are records,” Kaden said. “They were real enough.” The two of them had been over this before. Kaden had seen the volumes in the imperial library—scrolls and tomes penned in some illegible script that his father’s scribes claimed belonged to the long-dead race. There were entire rooms given over to the Csestriim texts, shelf upon shelf, codex upon codex, and scholars visited from the two continents and beyond—Li, even the Manjari Empire—to study the collection. Akiil, on the other hand, tended to believe only in what he could see or steal, and there were no Csestriim wandering around the Perfumed Quarter of Annur.

“Maybe the Csestriim are the ones killing the goats,” Akiil suggested with mock solemnity. “Maybe they eat brains. I feel like I heard that in one of the stories.”

Kaden ignored the sarcasm. “You can hear anything in the stories. They’re not reliable.”

“You’re the one who believes the stories!” Akiil protested.

“I believe that the Csestriim existed,” Kaden said. “I believe we fought a war against them that lasted decades, maybe centuries.” He shook his head. “Beyond that, it’s hard to know what to think.”

“You believe the stories. You don’t believe the stories.” The youth waggled a finger. “Pretty sloppy thinking.”

“Look at it this way,” Kaden replied. “The fact that half your tales are lies doesn’t mean the Perfumed Quarter of Annur doesn’t exist.”

“My stories!” Akiil sputtered. “Lies? I protest!”

“Is that part of the speech you practiced for the magistrate?”

Akiil shrugged, dropping the pretense. “Didn’t work,” he replied, gesturing to the brand—a rising sun—burned into the back of his right hand. All Annurian thieves were marked in such a way as punishment after their first offense. If half Akiil’s stories of picking pockets and pilfering wealthy homes were true, he was extremely lucky. A second offense called for a similar brand to the forehead. Men with the second brand had a hard time finding work, scarred, as they were, with the emblem of their misdeeds. Most returned to crime. For the third offense, the magistrates of Annur meted out death.

“Forget what you think about the Csestriim,” Kaden pressed, “you have to admit it’s strange that the Shin are pushing an idea based on the language and minds of an ancient race. It would be even stranger, actually, if the Csestriim weren’t real.”

“I think just about everything about the Shin is strange,” Akiil retorted, “but they put food on my plate two meals a day, a roof over my head, and no one has burned anything else into my flesh with a hot iron—which is more than I can say for your father.”

“My father didn’t—”

“Of course he didn’t,” Akiil snapped. “The Emperor of Annur is far too busy to see personally to the punishment of a minor thief.”

The years at Ashk’lan had blunted Akiil’s bitterness toward the social inequities of Annur, but once in a while Kaden would say something about slaves or taxes, justice or punishment, and Akiil would refuse to let it go.