The abbot looked away, gazing at an indeterminate point over Kaden’s left shoulder. Rampuri Tan shook his head, not turning from the window. Kaden looked from one to the other, but neither seemed willing to speak.
“You did capture them, didn’t you?” he asked. He tried to stand, but his legs would have none of it, and he dropped back into the chair. Silence stretched out before them, bleak and cold as the night sky.
When the abbot finally spoke, it was not to him. “You told me he was making progress.”
Tan grunted.
“I don’t see progress,” Nin continued. “I see a blind, impulsive boy tied so tightly to himself that he can barely move.”
Normally the insult would have stung, all the more so for the flat, careless tone in which it was delivered. Memory of his assailants and worry for Akiil, however, left no space for wounded pride, and as Kaden lowered the pressure of the blood in his veins, he tried to make himself sound rational, unemotional.
“Abbot,” he began quietly, amazed that his voice was so level—he felt like shaking and screaming all at the same time. “Clearly you know already, because you rescued me, but the merchants are not what they appear. One of them or both caught Akiil and me—”
“How long,” the abbot interrupted with a raised hand, “has Tan been your umial?”
“What does Tan have to do—”
Without raising his voice, the abbot cut him off. “How long?”
“Two months,” Kaden replied, mustering his patience.
“And after two months, you still don’t recognize your own master when he is close enough to kill you?”
Kaden looked in confusion from the abbot to Tan, who turned from the window, eyes inscrutable as always. “I came to check on you at the shed,” the monk began. “When you were not there, I tracked you and brought you here. Akiil is unharmed.”
Kaden gaped.
“You brought me! How did you track me?”
“The Beshra’an. Your mind is a simple thing, although cramped to inhabit.”
He ignored the insult. “What about the merchants? Why didn’t you just ask me to come? Why did you attack me?”
“You would have argued,” Tan replied simply. “And the woman was approaching. There was no time.”
Kaden took a firm grip on his emotions. He had been conscious for several minutes now, but things weren’t getting any clearer. Determined not to make a fool of himself again, he paused to consider this new information. Tan returned to his post at the window as if there were nothing left to discuss, but the abbot continued to look directly at him.
“You didn’t send me to the clay shed as some kind of penance,” Kaden concluded after a time.
“I might as well have,” Tan responded, “considering how poorly you have performed.”
“But you didn’t,” Kaden replied doggedly. “If you had, there would be no need to knock me out in the dark, no need for this late-night conference. When you found me in the streambed, you would have simply sent me to haul water all night, or to sit on the Talon until dawn. But then we would have run into the merchants.
“You weren’t trying to keep me from seeing them,” he went on, the realization seeping in slowly. “You wanted to keep them from seeing me.”
He shivered beneath his robe. During his years at Ashk’lan, the maneuverings and machinations surrounding the imperial throne had faded to a distant memory. In fact, Kaden often wondered if he had been sent to the monastery, not for any particular education, but simply to keep him out of harm’s way until he was older. Was it possible that Annurian politics had found him even here?
“This is about my father,” he said, feeling the truth of the statement as it left his lips.
“Why,” the abbot responded slowly, “do you think anything is wrong with your father? Pyrre Lakatur said that the Emperor was strong as ever. Jakin agreed.”
“I know,” Kaden replied. He took a slow breath. What he was about to reveal would earn him an even more severe penance, but the water around him was already boiling. He had to know the truth. “There’s something not right about Pyrre, about both of them. You obviously already know about the knives and the crossbow, but that’s not all. That first night, the night in the refectory, I was in the dovecote, watching.”
Tan’s face hardened, but he did not speak. The abbot raised an eyebrow.
“Pyrre wasn’t looking at you when she came in the door,” Kaden continued. “Then, when she answered the question about my father, something was…” He paused, the scene springing clearly into his mind once more. He examined the faces for the hundredth time: the woman’s easy smile, the casual wave of her hand, the angle of her head as she looked down the table at the gathered monks. Everything seemed normal. Kaden let out the breath he’d been holding. “Something was … not right,” he trailed off lamely.