43
A glint of steel poked through the canvas, then the body of a belt knife, flashing in the lamplight as it sawed back and forth slowly, carving down through the heavy fabric. Kaden’s mind darted immediately to the long blades he had discovered inside Pyrre’s pack, and he tightened his hold on the candlestick, trying to get a good grip with his sweaty palms. Whoever it was would have to come through headfirst, and as soon as they were partway inside the tent, he could smash the candlestick down on the nape of their neck. He moved cautiously to the side of the growing rent and raised his weapon.
A small shaved head poked inside, pulled back a moment, then reappeared, followed immediately by a wriggling body.
Kaden started to swing, then checked himself.
“Kaden,” the intruder whispered urgently. “Kaden, you’ve got to listen!”
“Pater,” he exhaled heavily. “What are you doing here?” The small boy looked over at Triste, and for a moment it seemed all thought had gone out of his head, but when he turned back to Kaden his urgency returned in a rush.
“There’s men, Kaden, with armor.”
Kaden let out a long breath and Triste slowly relaxed. He noticed she had picked up the other candlestick, but lowered it now, unsure what to make of their diminutive intruder. “Those are probably just a few of the Aedolian Guards. They’re here to protect me, Pater.”
“No!” Pater insisted. “They’re in the mountains. All over the mountains. I was on the Talon. Heng caught me eating a carrot when I should have been fasting, but we only had to fast because you took over the refectory—” He glared at Kaden accusingly, then remembered his purpose.
“But I was on the Talon and I heard them and I knew that you’re Emperor now and I thought like you thought, that they were soldiers, but then I listened to them and they are soldiers, but I listened to what they were saying, listened to it and remembered it exactly, just like those boring exercises we always have to do. One of them said, ‘Make sure the perimeter is secure before you move.’ Then another one said, ‘I don’t see why we don’t just kill the boy and have done with it.’ And I got scared then, because I didn’t know who the boy was, but I kept listening, and the first one called the second one an idiot, he said, ‘If those were our only orders, we could have taken off his head in the square.’”
Kaden felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to prickle. He glanced over at Triste. Her pale face had gone white in the candlelight and she shook her head in confusion, hugging her arms around her chest. “What did they say next?” Kaden asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“He said, the first one did, that if they didn’t secure the perimeter before the attack, some of the monks would get away. ‘Once you’ve nailed down the perimeter, make sure they’re all dead, but do not begin until they’ve finished with the boy.’” Kaden could feel his heart thundering in his chest and he took a moment to slow his pulse. He had to think. Triste was staring at Pater and tugging her gossamer dress tighter about her.
“He said they brought that pavilion all the way up the mountain just so they’d know right where he was and they didn’t want him slipping away when things got messy,” Pater tumbled on, still breathless from his run down from the Talon and the urgency of his message. “That’s when I figured out that he was you! I almost fell off the Talon, I was so scared. I climbed down and I ran all the way here, but there’s a huge man with a sword in front of the door, and so I had to sneak in the back. You have to leave, Kaden!” he finished with a rush. “You have to leave right now!”
“We have to tell Ut,” Kaden responded, heading for the door.
Pater dived for him, grasping him around the legs while shaking his head furiously. “No, Kaden,” he begged. “He’s on their side! They said his name, the men in the mountains, and I made sure to remember it. ‘Ut wants this.…’ ‘Report to Ut.…’ He’s on their side,” Pater repeated. “That’s why I had to sneak in the back of the tent.”
Kaden tried to gather his wits. The sudden arrival of the imperial delegation combined with the shock of his father’s death had left him disconcerted and raw, but he had done his best to tamp down his emotions, to smother them and play the young Emperor. Micijah Ut, even changed as he was, had been one familiar spar in a baffling flood, something to cling to as Kaden made his way back toward the capital. And now, it seemed, the man had been sent to kill him. The discipline he spent years cultivating threatened to evaporate as quickly as a late spring snow, and with desperation he reached for the novice exercises he had mastered in his first years among the Shin.
Each breath is a wave, he told himself, visualizing the long, lapping breakers of the bay outside Annur as he inhaled. The fear is sand. As the breath escaped, he let the sand and the fear slip from his mind, sliding down the long shingle into the bottomless belly of the sea. Slowly, he brought his breathing and then his pulse under control.
“All right,” he began finally. “All right. We have to warn the other monks. We’ll tell the abbot first—”
Triste cut him off. “We have to get out of this tent. Listen to him—they’re coming here first!” Fear filled her voice, but beneath the fear there was something else, something surprisingly hard. Resolve, Kaden realized. Readiness. Triste had shown neither quality all night, not at dinner, nor when he brought her back to the pavilion. The realization gave him pause, but Pater was nodding vigorously in agreement, tugging at Kaden’s robe, leading him to the hole he had sliced in the back of the canvas. The boy started for the small tear, but Kaden held him back.
“Let me go first. Once I know it’s safe, I’ll motion you through.”
The hole Pater had torn in the canvas wasn’t quite big enough for Kaden’s larger shoulders. He set the candlestick down and tugged gingerly at the fabric. It tore easily, but the harsh ripping sound made him wince. Pater had said Ut was out front—how much could he hear?
Kaden waited, straining his ears for the crunch of boots on gravel or the dull clank of armor. He could hear nothing but the sound of blood in his ears. Slowly, he eased his head through the rip.
The courtyard was empty and the night calm, the moon climbing her quiet path through the stars overhead, casting shadows beneath the junipers. Kaden listened again and then, with a gulp, levered himself out through the gap. For a horrible moment the canvas tightened around his torso and he thought he was stuck, but a strong tug freed him and he stood up in the cool night air, trembling.
Shame filled him. Pater had run all the way back here without a thought for his own safety and all he, Kaden i’Sanlitun hui’Malkeenian, twenty-fourth of his line and Emperor of Annur, could do was peer uselessly into the night. Ruthlessly, methodically, he identified his fear, compartmentalized it, and put it to the side. Fear is sand, he reminded himself. Nothing more. Steadied slightly, he put his head back in through the flap.
Triste and Pater crouched just inside the canvas, staring at him wide-eyed. Kaden nodded urgently and Triste grabbed the boy by the back of his robe, thrusting him at the opening with surprising strength. Pater squirmed through in a flash and crouched beside him in the dark. Kaden put his hand through to motion the girl to follow, then froze. Across from the pavilion, pressed close to the wall of the dormitory, something moved in the shadow.
He shoved his hand back through the canvas, frantically trying to keep Triste inside. His fingers met with the smooth skin of her chest, and she paused. He could feel her heart pounding beneath her rib cage, a frenzied counterpoint to his own, but she kept still as Kaden peered into the darkness.
A thin strip of shadow hemmed the back of the pavilion, and he tried to will himself into it more deeply. Pater crouched motionless at his side. They could run. He and Pater had run these paths every day for years—no armored soldier would be able to keep pace with them. But running would mean leaving Triste, and in a flash, he understood the subtlety of the plot. Triste was the bait and the distraction all rolled into one. She was the excuse to separate Kaden from the rest of the monks, the trump card that would ensure he left the dormitory, and the guarantee that when the men came to kill him, he would be distracted.
She could even be part of the plot, Kaden realized after a moment. He hastily recalled the saama’an of her face as she told her story. There was terror there, and regret, and even anger, but no halting or deception. Unless he had badly miscalculated, she was as much a victim of Adiv’s schemes as he was, and he didn’t want to contemplate what would become of her if they left her behind.
As he racked his brain for another option, the figure in the shadows across from him took form. Kaden’s body tightened, then sagged in relief as he recognized Tan’s solid shape. His umial stepped into the moonlight, beckoned to them urgently, then stepped back. Kaden closed his hand around the front of Triste’s dress and hauled her through. As soon as she gained her feet, they raced across the moonlit space, hunched over as though cringing from the blow of some great hammer. They reached the shadow of the dormitory just as a cry went up from inside the stone building—a befuddled yell twisted abruptly into a scream of terror, then silence.