“Be clear on one thing,” the monk cut in, his low voice driving through Kaden’s own like a chisel through clean wood. “You are Emperor of Annur, but we are not in Annur. The fact that you have entered the vaniate means no more than that: you have entered the vaniate. You still cannot see clearly, nor think carefully, nor kill quickly, and all three may be required, and soon. Your feelings still blind you to the facts of the world. You are not yet what you need to be.”

“Here is a fact,” Kaden said. “She helped me.”

“A single fir is not the forest.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning there is more to her tale than helping you. Much more.” Tan kept the naczal at Triste’s throat at he glanced over at Kaden. “Destroy what you believe.”

Destroy what you believe. Another Shin aphorism. Another monastic exercise on which Kaden had spent years.

You believe the sky is blue? What about night? Storm? What about clouds?

You think you are awake? How quaint. Perhaps you are dreaming. Perhaps you are dead.

Grimly, Kaden set to work. According to the story, Triste was meant as a distraction, a lure to hold Kaden’s attention while the Aedolians went about surrounding his tent and butchering the monks. If so, she had proven utterly superfluous. He tried to imagine the scene without her—the arrival of the imperial delegation, the feast, the vast pavilion . . . Triste wasn’t necessary for any of it.

And then there was her endurance through the high peaks, endurance to match a Skullsworn assassin and two monks who had spent their lives running in the mountains. Where would a girl raised on the velvet cushions of Ciena’s temple learn to run like that? Where did she learn the ancient script of Assare? How did she know anything about the ravaged city? And the kenta . . . how had she passed unscathed through a gate that should have annihilated her?

Kaden forced himself to consider Tan’s claim. According to Sami Yurl, the Kettral leader Valyn had slaughtered, the Csestriim were involved in the conspiracy against his family, a claim buoyed up by the presence of the ak’hanath. Would immortal creatures, creatures of godlike intellect and perfect reason, give their plot wholly over into the hands of men, flawed men like Tarik Adiv and Micijah Ut? Kaden stared at Triste, trying to see past his own initial conception, to shatter the lens of belief. She looked like a young woman, but the Csestriim were immortal; age did not touch them. And then there was the stony calm she had showed just a moment before, as though her mask had dropped. . . .