Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(68)

“White shallows clay,” Kaden responded readily, “medium grain.” Pass this test, he told himself silently, and you may just get to see the sun again before winter.

Tan went down the line of pots, all dozen of them, each time asking the same questions: What is this made out of? Anything else? At the end of the row he frowned, looked at Kaden for the first time, then shook his head.

“You have not made progress.”

Kaden stared. He’d made no mistakes; he was sure of it.

“Do you know why I sent you here?”

“To make pots.”

“A potter could teach you to make pots.”

Kaden hesitated. Tan might whip him for his stupidity, but the beating he would receive for trying to bluff his way through the conversation would be even worse. “I don’t know why you sent me here.”

“Speculate.”

“To keep me from going up into the mountains?”

The monk’s eyes hardened. “Scial Nin’s command is not bar enough?”

Kaden thought back to his conversation with Akiil and schooled his face to stillness. Most of the Shin umials could smell deception or omission the way a hound scented a fox. Kaden himself hadn’t stepped foot out of the clay shed, but he wasn’t eager to land his friend a hefty penance.

“‘Obedience is a knife that cuts the cord of bondage,’” he responded, quoting the start of the ancient Shin maxim.

Tan considered him, silent, inscrutable. “Go on,” he said at last.

Kaden hadn’t been forced to recite the whole thing since he was a novice, but the words came back easily enough:

Obedience is a knife that cuts the cord of bondage.

Silence is a hammer that shatters the walls of speech.

Stillness is strength; pain a soft bed.

Put down your basin; emptiness is the only vessel.

As he uttered the final syllables, he realized his mistake. “The emptiness,” he said quietly, gesturing back toward the silent row of earthenware. “When you asked me what they were made out of, I was supposed to say ‘emptiness.’”

Tan shook his head grimly. “You know the words, but no one has made you feel them. Today we will rectify that. Come with me.”

Kaden rose reflexively from his stool, steeling himself for some new brutality, some hideous penance that would leave him battered or bleeding or bruised right down to the bone, all in the name of the vaniate, a concept no one had ever bothered to fully explain to him. He rose, then paused. For eight years he had run when the monks said run, painted when they told him to paint, labored when he was instructed to labor, and fasted when they refused him food. And for what? Akiil’s words from the day before came back to him suddenly: They tell us about as much as I’d tell a hog.… Training and study were all well and good, but Kaden wasn’t even sure what he was training for.

“Come,” Tan said, his voice hard and unyielding.

Though Kaden’s muscles ached to obey, he forced himself to remain still. “Why?”

The older monk’s fist struck his cheek before he realized it was moving, splitting the skin and knocking him to the floor. Tan took a step forward, looming over him.

“Get up.”

Kaden rose unsteadily to his feet. The pain was one thing—he could handle pain—but his mind was blurry, dizzy from the blow.

“Go,” Tan said, pointing toward the door.

Kaden hesitated, then took a step back. The split skin of his cheek wept blood, but he forced himself to leave his hands at his side. He shook his head again. “I want to know why. I’ll do what you tell me, but I want to understand the point. Why do I need to learn the vaniate?”

It was impossible to read any emotion in the older monk’s eyes. He might have been staring at a carcass or a passing cloud. He might have been a hunter looming over his wounded prey, readying himself for the kill. Kaden wondered if the man would hit him again, would keep hitting him. He had never heard of an acolyte being murdered by his trainer before, but then, if Tan wanted to beat his pupil to death, who would stop him? Scial Nin? Chalmer Oleki? Ashk’lan lay more than a hundred leagues past the border of the Annurian Empire, past any civilized borders. There were no laws here, no magistrates, no courts of justice. Kaden watched his umial warily, trying to still the pounding of his heart against his ribs.

“Your ignorance is an impediment,” the monk concluded finally. He stood for one more moment in stillness before turning toward the door. “Perhaps your training will be more effective once you understand the urgency behind it.”