“No, really!” she said, rounding on him. “If these things are real, we could save a whole lot of Hull’s sweet time using them. They eat less than birds and I can’t imagine they shit at all. . . .”

“The kenta would destroy you,” Tan said, cutting through her words.

Pyrre raised an eyebrow. “How frightening. They sound like fascinating artifacts, but this is all beside the point. My contract stipulates I keep Kaden safe. Playing nursemaid for his brother might be entertaining, but it’s not what I crossed half of Vash to accomplish.”

Valyn ignored the jibe. “The Emperor has decided,” he said. “It is ours to obey.”

The words were true enough, but they did little to allay his misgivings. Orders, he reminded himself. You’re following orders.

Orders hadn’t been too much trouble for him back on the Islands—he had been a cadet then, and the men and women telling him what to do had earned their scars dozens of times over. Kaden, on the other hand, might be the rightful Emperor, but he was no soldier; he had none of the training, none of the instincts. Letting him get involved with the reconnaissance of Ashk’lan at an immediate, tactical level had been a mistake. Valyn’s mistake. Not only had Kaden interfered with a crucial decision, he had put himself in harm’s way to do so. And Adiv was alive. Valyn forced down the thought along with his mounting anger.

Kaden was the Emperor, and Valyn hadn’t flown two thousand miles just to undermine his brother’s nascent authority.

“I have told you before,” Tan said, shaking his head slowly, “the Ishien are not like the Shin.”

“As I recall,” Kaden replied, “no one is like the Shin.”

“You thought your training hard?” the older monk asked. “It was a pleasant diversion compared with what the Ishien endure. They have a different path and different methods, methods that lead to unpredictable results. It is impossible to know how they would respond to our arrival.”

“You were one of them once,” Kaden pointed out. “They know you.”

“They knew me,” Tan corrected. “I left.”

“If you don’t want the imperious young Emperor to go through the mysterious gate,” Pyrre opined, flipping a knife in the air and catching it without opening her eyes, “then don’t show him where the gate is.”

Kaden turned to the Skullsworn. “Why does it matter to you what course I follow?”

She flipped the knife again. “As I’ve explained, I was paid to keep you safe. No one’s stuck a blade in you yet, but I wouldn’t call this”—she waved her knife at the surrounding peaks—“safe.”

On that point, at least, she and Valyn agreed.

“I release you from your contract,” Kaden said.