Back at Ashk’lan, Kaden would have been whipped for such slovenliness. Another reminder, if one were needed, that the Ishien were not the Shin. Where the monks were cold as winter granite, solid as a hard frost, these soldiers, Trant very much included, struck him as less . . . hale. Not that they were weak or enfeebled, but the reek of smoke and sea on their clothing, the hooded shadow in each gaze, the feral intensity to all speech and movement struck him as wrong, somehow. Unnatural.

Finally Trant looked up, found Kaden’s gaze upon him, and frowned.

“It’s an island,” he said, gesturing vaguely around by way of illustration. “The whole thing.”

Kaden blinked. “An island? Where?”

“No,” Trant replied, eyes sly above a mirthless smile. “No, no, no. Secrecy is survival. Do you know Kangeswarin? Of course you don’t. That’s something he said. Wrote. Secrecy is survival.” He intoned the words as though they were scripture. “The Order hasn’t kept its freedom this long just to come under the thumb of some upstart emperor now.”

“I have no interest in bringing you ‘under my thumb,’ ” Kaden responded, careful to keep his voice level. He had hoped for deference and prepared for defiance. Trant’s casual dismissal, however, the apparent indifference of everyone in the Heart, was not a response he had reckoned on. His whole purpose in visiting the Ishien was to learn what they knew, perhaps to forge an alliance, and here he was defending himself to a filthy, low-ranking soldier in the mess hall. “I am hardly an upstart,” he continued. “My father was Sanlitun hui’Malkeenian. I trained with the Shin, as have all those of my line. I have the eyes.”

Trant narrowed his own eyes, sucked at a morsel of fish stuck between crooked teeth. “The eyes,” he mused, as though he had not considered that. “You do. That’s true. You do have some eyes. Long time ago there were men could tell the Enemy by the eyes.”

“The Enemy?”

“Childkillers. Builders. Graveless. Call them what you want. The fucking Csestriim. Long time ago, there were some could tell the Csestriim by the eyes.”

Trant stared at a blank space of wall, as though expecting the Csestriim to materialize from it. Like a goat in the early stages of brainworm, his eyes twitched erratically. He seemed unable to still his hands. Kaden shifted uneasily in his seat.

“The Csestriim didn’t have burning eyes—” he began, but Trant cut him off, waving a hand.

“Yes, yes. I know. The Malkeenians. Intarra. The Emperor. I know.” He squinted. “Or it could be a trick. A kenning.”

“A trick?” Kaden asked, trying to find his balance in the conversation. “I’m not a leach. And why would I play a trick?”