In the space of a few days, Kaden’s foes had multiplied beyond his own persistent failings, and these new enemies wore polished armor, carried swords in their fists, wielded lies by the thousands. If he was going to survive, if he was to take his father’s place on the Unhewn Throne, he needed to know about long lenses and swords, politics and people, about all the things the Shin had neglected in their single-minded effort to train him in the empty trance that was the vaniate. It would take years to fill in the gaps, and he did not have years. His father was dead, had been dead for months already, and that meant, prepared or not, Kaden hui’Malkeenian was the Emperor of Annur.

Until someone kills me, he added silently.

Given the events of the past few days, that possibility loomed suddenly, strikingly large. That armed men had arrived with orders to murder him and destroy the monastery was terrifying enough, but that they were comprised of his own Aedolian Guard—an order sworn to protect and defend him—that they were commanded by high-ranking Annurians, men at the very top of the pyramid of imperial politics, was almost beyond belief. In some ways, returning to the capital and sitting the Unhewn Throne seemed like the surest way to help his enemies finish what they had started.

Of course, he thought grimly, if I’m murdered in Annur, it will mean I made it back to Annur, which would be a success of sorts.

Valyn gestured toward the lip of the rocky escarpment that shielded them. “When you look, look slowly, Your Radiance,” he said. “The eye is attracted to motion.”

That much, at least, Kaden knew. He’d spent enough time tracking crag cats and lost goats to know how to remain hidden. He shifted his weight onto his elbows, inching up until his eyes cleared the low spine of rock. Below and to the west, maybe a quarter mile distant, hunched precariously on a narrow ledge between the cliffs below and the vast, chiseled peaks above, stood Ashk’lan, sole monastery of the Shin monks, and Kaden’s home.

Or what remained of it.