Tan had dismissed the notion as sentimental folly. The reason to go back was to observe the remaining Aedolians, to ferret out their intentions; Kaden’s guilt was just further evidence of his failure to achieve true detachment. Maybe the older monk was right. A true Shin would have rooted out the coiling tightness that snaked about his heart, would have cut away, one by one, the barbs of emotion. But then, aside from Tan and Kaden himself, the Shin were dead: two hundred monks murdered in the night because of him, men and boys whose only goal was the empty calm of the vaniate burned and butchered where they slept to cover up an Annurian coup. Whatever waited at Ashk’lan, it had happened because of Kaden. He had to go back.

The rest was simple. Valyn commanded the Wing, Valyn obeyed the Emperor, and so, in spite of Tan’s objections and Pyrre’s, in spite of his own concerns, Valyn had bowed his head and obeyed, flying Kaden along with the rest of the Wing to discover what was left of his mountain home. They landed a little to the east, out of sight of the monastery, then covered the final miles on foot. The track was easy, mostly downhill, but the tension built in Kaden’s chest as they drew closer.

The Aedolians hadn’t bothered to hide their slaughter. There was no need. Ashk’lan lay well beyond the border of the empire, too high in the mountains for the Urghul, too far south for the Edish, too far from anywhere for merchants and traders, and so the brown-robed bodies had been left to litter the central courtyard, some burned, others cut down as they fled, dried blood staining the stones.

“Lots of monks,” Laith pointed out, nodding toward the monastery. “All pretty dead.”

“What about them?” Valyn asked, pointing toward a row of figures seated cross-legged on the far side of the ledge, staring out over the steppe. “Are they alive?”

Laith raised the long lens. “Nope. Stabbed. Right in the back.” He shook his head. “Not sure why they’re sitting there. No one tied them.”

Kaden looked at the slumped men for a moment, then closed his eyes, imagining the scene.

“They didn’t run,” he said. “They sought refuge in the vaniate.”

“Yeah . . .” the flier said, drawing out the syllable skeptically. “Doesn’t look like they found it.”

Kaden stared at the corpses, remembering the awesome emotional vacancy of the trance, the absence of fear, or anger, or worry. He tried to imagine what they had felt sitting there, looking out over the wide green steppe while their home burned a few paces behind them, watching the cold stars as they waited for the knife. “The vaniate might surprise you,” he said quietly.