The abbot opened his mouth to reply, but Ut had already turned back to Kaden, dropping to one knee, mailed hand to his forehead. His companion mirrored the gesture and the two spoke together, their voices merging as though through long practice.
“All hail the scion of light, the long mind of the world, holder of the scales, and keeper of the gates.” The words echoed down to Kaden from the formal halls of his childhood. They were old words, as old as the empire, hard and unchanging as the stones of the Dawn Palace. He had heard the formula a thousand times when his father took his seat on the Unhewn Throne, when his father left the palace to walk along the Godsway, when his father appeared for state dinners. As a child, he had been comforted by the litany but now, as he listened, the words dragged a cold, iron nail up his spine. He knew what was coming, knew how it had to end, and though he wanted to beg the two men to stop, they spoke on, relentlessly: “All hail he who holds back the darkness. All hail the Emperor.”
Kaden felt he had been dropped from a great height. His mind tumbled over and over, trying to gain purchase on something solid, familiar. Outside this small circle comprising the abbot, the Annurians, himself, and Tan, the monks went about their quotidian business, heads bent beneath their cowls, hands drawn into the sleeves of their robes, their pace measured and deliberate, as though nothing in the world had changed. They were wrong; everything had changed. To speak the formula he had just heard in front of anyone but his father constituted the highest treason, punishable by the old and horrific rite of blinding and live burial. For the minister and the Aedolian to use them now could only mean one thing. His father was dead.
Images flooded unbidden into his mind. His father patiently drawing his bow over and over while Kaden and Valyn struggled to imitate the smooth motion with their own, much smaller weapons. His father’s grim face as he watched the men hang who had abducted his sons. His father pulling on his splendid golden greaves before marching to meet the armies of the Federated Cities. It seemed impossible that Ananshael could take a man of such force and vigor before his fiftieth year. Impossible, except that Ut and the councillor were here, and they had spoken the irrevocable words.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, but finally the abbot broke him from his daze.
“Kaden,” he said quietly, gesturing to the two men. They continued to kneel, hands to foreheads. Kaden wondered why they remained there, then realized with a start that they were waiting for him as so many thousands had knelt, waiting for his father before him. They were waiting for their Emperor. He wanted to moan.
“Please,” he said weakly. “Please get up.”
They rose, Ut no more slowly for the weight of his armor. As Kaden tried to master his shock long enough to compose his thoughts into sensible questions, the door to the guests’ quarters clattered open and Pyrre Lakatur sauntered into the courtyard, her husband a few steps behind.
The top three eyelets of the merchant’s tunic were unlaced, as though she had spent the afternoon napping, and she scratched her ear absently, waiting for her husband to catch up. On seeing the group, however, she paused, seemed to take stock, then forged ahead, a broad smile on her face. She might have been sallying into a country fair, sizing up Ut and the minister as if they were blowsy farmwives or blacksmiths tipsy with ale, fishmongers or haberdashers upon whom she could foist her wares. Jakin hung back momentarily, patting the sides of his vest unconsciously, as though to smooth it. Pyrre addressed herself to the Aedolian, nodding her head in casual deference.
“All glory to Sanlitun, may he live forever.”
The Aedolian fixed her with a blank stare, but it was the minister who responded.
“Sanlitun, bright were the days of his life, is dead. You stand where you should kneel, for you are in the presence of Kaden i’Sanlitun hui’Malkeenian, twenty-fourth of his line.”
“This whelp?” Pyrre laughed skeptically, eyeing Kaden. It was the first the woman had laid eyes on him, and beneath the offhand jocularity, there was something careful and measuring in that momentary gaze.
Ut’s broadblade was out of its sheath before Kaden could think to breathe, flashing in a savage arc. Pyrre didn’t move so much as a whisker, not even to flinch, and Micijah Ut’s cold sword came to rest on her neck, the pressure drawing a thin line of blood. The merchant’s eyes widened in obvious shock. She began to raise a belated hand to the blade, then thought better of it.
Ut addressed Kaden without taking his eyes from Pyrre. “Should I take her head from her shoulders, Your Radiance, or just remove the tongue from her mouth?”