The Empire's Ruin, page 47
She nodded uncertainly. “Maybe?”
They looked like two people who had known each other a very long time, friends maybe, or lovers, or family, sharing a secret that was all their own.
30
“Tell me again,” Akiil said, turning from the window back to the dim room, “about the vaniate.”
As usual, Yerrin sat on the floor of the small garret. Over the weeks since they’d arrived in Annur, the monk had managed to befriend a small squirrel living in the space between the walls, coaxing it farther and farther into the room each day with trails of nuts pilfered from the kitchens below. As Akiil watched, the tiny creature perched on the man’s knee, holding a sliver of walnut in its paws.
“She prefers acorns,” Yerrin said, almost accusingly.
Akiil nodded wearily. If he could have chosen another monk to teach him the greatest secrets of the Shin, he would have. Unfortunately, all the other monks were dead.
“I know that I can’t want things,” Akiil said. “I know that desire gets in the way of the vaniate.”
Yerrin sniffed. “You think too much about the vaniate.”
Akiil resisted the urge to strangle the old man.
The other monks at Ashk’lan had devoted their lives to achieving the mystical trance, the annihilation of self, the perfect union with the Blank God that would bring absolute peace, absolute stillness. Akiil had told the Emperor that much of the truth, at least. Yerrin was the only Shin monk who didn’t seem to give one watery shit for the vaniate.
“There are men outside right now, Yerrin,” Akiil said. “The Emperor’s men. Large, humorless men with swords and spears.…”
He’d already done everything he could to stall.
First, he’d told Adare that he needed to purge his body of all impurities.
Next, he’d claimed that the kenta wouldn’t admit someone who had engaged in sexual acts within the moon; the leftover desire, he’d claimed, clung to the body like oil.
Then he’d said he was too sick to enter the necessary trance.…
For almost a month, he’d managed to string her along, presenting himself at the Dawn Palace each morning, teaching her “lessons” that mixed a handful of Shin teachings together with a bushel of bullshit. The genius of the con was that no one in the world could contradict him. Only the Shin and the Csestriim could use the gates, which meant that whatever yarn Akiil decided to spin, whatever imagined bits of the Blank God’s wisdom he managed to drum up—well, Adare could believe him or not, but she couldn’t very well check on his story.
Except, of course, by tossing him through the ’Kent-kissing gate.
That had always been the danger, the reason he should have walked away when she first offered to cut him loose. The Emperor was playing at a disadvantage, not having known the Shin, but she hadn’t managed to hold on to the most precarious seat in the world by letting people lie to her indefinitely. It was built into the bones of the scheme that sooner or later Akiil would have a choice: step through the kenta or run away.
He’d been avoiding that unpleasant fact, but there was no avoiding it any longer.
He glanced through the narrow gap in the shutters of his room. Six men stood on the street outside, hands resting casually on the pommels of their swords. Six men, not two.
The Emperor, of course, had been having him trailed since the very first day. She’d tried to get him to stay inside the Dawn Palace itself, but Akiil had demurred, and—because she was shrewd enough to realize she could learn more about him by having him followed as he wandered free—she’d allowed him to go. For weeks, he’d been playing a kind of cat-and-mouse game with her spies. Every afternoon he led them directly back to his inn, let them get comfortable, and then, when it was dark, slipped out through his window, climbed a dozen feet to the eaves, then set off over the rooftops. There wasn’t anywhere in particular that he wanted to go, but he liked going, liked knowing that, despite the men loitering on the street or in the common room below, he was still free. Some nights he would range for miles, leaping from roof to roof, slipping down into the alleys, then climbing up into the warm night air once more. Oddly, it wasn’t so different from running the cliffs around Ashk’lan—tile and slate beneath his bare feet rather than clean white granite, but the feeling of space was the same, of solitude and danger and freedom.
Freedom that, if the men in the street were any indication, Adare intended to forcibly curtail.
He blew out an irritated breath, turned away from the window. He’d hidden most of Adare’s gold—the fee she’d paid him for her “training” when he first arrived—beneath the furthest floorboard, the one crammed in the angle where the roof met the floor. After some sweating and cursing, working at the gap with his belt knife, he popped the board up, reached in, and scooped out the leather purse. It was stippled with mouse shit and smelled vaguely of piss and mold. When he upended the contents on the bed, however, the coins gleamed in the light of the lantern, a fortune large enough to buy a small farm.
Not that he wanted a fucking farm.
Yerrin glanced over, squinted at the gold.
“Not acorns,” he said after a moment.
“Better than acorns, old man.”
The monk shook his head. “The squirrel prefers acorns.”
“The squirrel is going to have to get used to disappointment. We’re leaving.”
“It looks to me,” Yerrin said, nodding toward the pile of coin, “as though you are taking.”
“Taking the coin, leaving the city. It’s not safe here anymore.”
The vexing thing was that he’d come so close.
Kaden had achieved the vaniate—Adare had revealed that much—and Akiil had spent more time at Ashk’lan than Kaden. They’d run the same mountains, stared into the same rivers, slept in the same cells, suffered under the same teachers.… Which meant he had to be close. Since arriving in Annur, he’d gone hammer and tongs at the old Shin exercises, meditating on the rooftops whenever he wasn’t “teaching” the Emperor or exploring the city. Sometimes he could feel something inside his mind, a kernel or a seed, smooth, dark, and empty. Whenever he reached out to grasp it, though, it slipped away. If just one other monk had survived—Scial Nin, or Huy Heng, or Rampuri Tan—one person to teach him the last few lessons …
Instead, he had Yerrin.
Wringing the secrets of the vaniate out of the old monk was like wringing water from a ’Kent-kissing rock.
Don’t bother, Yerrin had told him once.
Another time: You can’t do it.
“Did you see those men outside the window?” Akiil asked.
“Men?” Yerrin asked. He didn’t sound particularly interested.
“The ones with the swords. The Emperor’s soldiers.”
“The Emperor does not have soldiers.”
“I assure you she does.”
“No one has soldiers.”
“I am looking at them right now. They are standing directly outside the door to our inn.”
Yerrin shook his head, stroked the squirrel gently along the length of its back. “It is not our inn. We do not have an inn.”
Akiil started to respond, then clamped his mouth shut, sucked a long breath in through his nose, held it in his lungs. It was impossible to argue with Yerrin; he’d learned that years earlier. It wasn’t that you couldn’t win an argument against the other monk; there was never even an argument to be had. Fighting with him felt like planting your feet for a tug-of-war, bracing your back, tightening your grip, then hurling yourself backward to the ground when you discovered no one holding the other end of the rope.
“Regardless,” Akiil replied finally, “those men, the ones outside, are going to take me to the Dawn Palace tomorrow morning. They are going to lead me to the kenta, and they are going to shove me through it.”
Yerrin looked up at him with an expression of mild, benign interest, as though waiting for the good part of the story.
“If I can’t master the vaniate between now and then,” Akiil went on, “I will die.”
“Oh!” The monk smiled. “Yes. You will die.” He nodded something that might have been encouragement, then went back to stroking the squirrel with a gentle finger.
“I appreciate the confidence.”
“I will die,” Yerrin went on. He nodded toward the nibbling creature. “She will die.”
“I’d prefer to wait a little while.”
“So wait a little while.”
Akiil shook his head. “Why have I been taking care of you all these years?”
He didn’t expect Yerrin to answer, partly because the monk almost never responded to questions, and partly because Akiil didn’t quite know the answer himself. ’Shael knew life would have been easier without the monk. Yerrin slowed him down, ate his food, refused to blend in to any city or town. Without Yerrin he could have reached Annur months faster, years faster. He certainly would have gotten laid more often along the way. Instead, he’d found himself babysitting an old man with half a mind.
The best explanation he could offer himself was that it felt like a debt. Which was strange, because Akiil had more or less made a career skipping out on debts. And yet, whenever he thought of abandoning the old man, just putting a small pile of coin in his gnarled hands and leaving him in some village square, the memory of Ashk’lan filled his mind, of the monastery aflame, dead monks scattered like leaves across the courtyard. Some of them had been surprised, but most had had time to understand what was coming. Some had gathered on the cliff’s edge, sitting in silence as they awaited their slaughter. None had tried to hide or run. None but Akiil.
The memory still filled him with fury. Living a life of quiet contemplation was all well and good, but when men came with fire and steel to annihilate your entire world it was time to do something other than fucking sit there. He’d been the smart one, the sane one, the only one who’d deserved to get away. If he’d killed the abbot in the process, well, the old man was going to be killed anyway, murdered by the Aedolians, just like the rest of them. There’d been no way for Akiil to save him. No way for him to save any of them.…
He shoved the memory aside.
“Can you just tell me what you do,” he asked wearily, “when you want to enter the trance?”
Yerrin shook his head, tickled the squirrel’s white belly. “I don’t.”
“Don’t go into the vaniate?”
“Don’t do anything.”
Akiil bit down on his impatience.
“I don’t know what that means.”
The monk’s face brightened. “That’s good. That’s right.”
“What’s right?”
“Know less. Know nothing.”
“I’m trying,” Akiil growled.
The monk shrugged, fed the squirrel another nut. “Stop trying.”
Akiil started to respond, then stopped himself. The squirrel made a sound that might have been happiness or hunger, gratitude or greed. Seemed like they should have been easier to tell apart. While Yerrin shelled another walnut, Akiil slipped a few coins into the hem of his robe, then filled two separate purses, each with half of what remained. Two coins he left out on the bedside table.
“I’m going away for a while,” he said.
Yerrin looked up, smiled. “No you’re not.”
Akiil had no idea how to explain the situation, so he didn’t bother trying.
“You can use the coins to buy food. The Emperor will send people for you. She’ll ask you questions, but she won’t hurt you.”
He didn’t think she would hurt him, at least. Adare could be ruthless—that much was obvious—but she was smart enough to see there was nothing to be gained from torturing a senile old man. She’d ask her questions, try to figure out where Akiil had gone, maybe try to learn something about the vaniate from Yerrin himself, and then, when she’d failed at all that, she’d let him go. Akiil would pick him up and they’d slip out of the city, alive, well, and quite a bit richer than the day they’d come. He’d conned the Emperor of the Annur and gotten away with it. Escaped.
Just like he always fucking escaped.
31
For days they followed the valley up and up. The plunging river at its center ran blue-white, ice-cold, and tasted of frost and stone. The last traces of human habitation had vanished days earlier, leaving them to thread their way between the moss-covered trunks of massive, ancient trees. Like so much else on Menkiddoc, the trees were unlike any Gwenna had ever seen. From a distance they looked like pines, but up close the strangeness was obvious—black bark peeling in scales, green-black needles, cones hard and sharp as shells. The creatures in the boughs proved as alien as the trees themselves, little beasts that might have been squirrels save for their vicious, scythelike claws. They watched with dark eyes as the column passed, shrieked their small furies, raked those claws across the scaly bark.
At first the soldiers found them amusing. A few of the men tossed scraps of food on the ground in an effort to entice them closer. The squirrels, however, showed no interest in the bread. Instead, they followed the column, leaping from branch to branch, pausing when they got too far ahead to sharpen their claws and stare down at the humans with those inscrutable black eyes. As their numbers grew—five, then fifty, then five hundred—the amusement of the soldiers rusted into disgust, then wariness. The sound—the rasping, the inhuman screams—harried them from all directions until one of the legionaries cursed, drew his bow, dropped one of the creatures from a branch overhead.
That only made things worse. Instead of retreating, the animals pressed in closer. A few dozen darted down the trunks to rip apart the motionless carcass while the rest began to hurl twigs and sticks down on the party below.
Pattick, walking a few paces ahead of Gwenna and Rat, turned to Kiel.
“Are those…” He hesitated.
“Gabhya?” The historian shook his head. “No. Just a creature native to this portion of the world.”
As they spoke, the squirrels redoubled their clamor, then, between one heartbeat and next, went perfectly silent. Gwenna glanced up to find them moving, darting through the branches, scattering into the depths of the forest.
“What…?” Pattick breathed.
Before anyone could reply, Rat’s avesh swung into view. It moved through the treetops with a jerking, spasmodic motion, awkward and horribly fast at the same time. In just a few heartbeats it had reached the column, then passed it, then snatched one of the fleeing squirrels out of the air. The thing writhed, screamed, tried pointlessly to free itself. The avesh settled on a branch, took the creature’s leg in that nightmare of a mouth, and began chewing, ignoring the noise and writhing.
Gwenna stared.
The beast had been shadowing them since that first sighting, sometimes loping along just outside of the range of the column’s archers, sometimes disappearing for days at a time. It seemed to have no trouble hunting—Gwenna had seen it once with some kind of bird mangled in its jaws, once atop a bloody mound of flesh it had savaged beyond all recognition—but this was the first time she’d watched it make a kill. Not that the squirrel was dead yet. The avesh looked down with those huge, guileless eyes while it went to work on the next leg, rows of razor teeth crunching straight through the bone, splintering it.
“That,” Kiel said, pointing up into the trees with a gnarled finger, “is a gabhya.”
He sounded like a bureaucrat giving a particularly dull lecture.
Pattick looked like he might be sick.
* * *
Eventually the river narrowed to a gorge, and Jonon led them out of the tortuous valley up onto the shoulder of the mountain flanking it. From the high ground, Gwenna could just make out the head of the valley, maybe ten miles distant and five thousand feet above them. It looked like a plausible kettral nesting ground—a rough horseshoe of limestone cliffs, the bands stacked one atop the other, broken by less-vertical sections where a dusting of snow clung to the precipitous slopes. Dangerous terrain, even without the possibility of predators riding the thermals above.
Jonon halted the soldiers, studied the cliffs through his long lens, then gestured for Gwenna and Kiel to join him.
The men watched her with silent contempt as she made her way up to the front of the column. She kept her gaze on the ground, but out of the corner of her eye she could see Rat—following a pace away at the end of her chain—glaring at the legionaries.
Don’t do anything stupid, Gwenna prayed silently. As though she were some judge of what was stupid.
“This is the place,” Jonon was saying to the historian as Gwenna reached them. The admiral pointed to the map, to the peaks inked across the parchment, then to the mountains looming to the north.
Kiel simply nodded.
When it was clear he had nothing to add, Jonon’s expression hardened. “I don’t see any birds.”
“That’s a good thing,” Gwenna put in.
Jonon turned that green gaze on her. “If there are no birds, this expedition is a failure, a failure dear in both time and treasure, and while you may have accustomed yourself to failure, I assure you that I have not.”
“I think what Commander Sharpe is suggesting—” Kiel began.
The admiral cut him off. “She is not a commander.”
The historian bowed his head in acquiescence.
Jonon’s eyes bored into Gwenna, as though daring her to disagree. When she did not, he nodded. “I am waiting for you to explain why I should be delighted by this absence of kettral.”
“They have good eyes,” Gwenna replied. “If we could see them, they could see us. Down below, in the trees, we were safe. Up here…” She gestured to the bare slope, the steep, broken, rocky ground between them and the head of the valley, then shook her head. “Up here we’re not.”
“I did not voyage to the other side of the world out of a desire to remain safe.”
“Dead soldiers,” Kiel observed quietly, “are unlikely to return with eggs.”
Jonon ignored the man, passed the long lens to Gwenna. “Do you see nests?”
