Valyn hesitated. He hadn’t told Kaden about his experience in Hull’s Hole, hadn’t told him about the slarn egg or the strange abilities it had conferred, hadn’t told him . . . anything really.

“Why are you still awake?” he countered. “The plan was to get some sleep before you have to step through that thing.”

Kaden glanced toward the kenta and nodded, but made no move to lie down. “I don’t think a little more sleep is going to tip the balance one way or the other.”

“Those gates are really all over the empire?”

“And beyond it, evidently. They’re many thousands of years older than Annur. The boundaries of the empire weren’t even imagined when the Csestriim built them.”

“But Father knew about them,” Valyn pressed. “He used them?”

Kaden spread his hands. “That’s what the Shin told me.”

“Where is it?” Valyn asked. “The gate in Annur?”

“I don’t know. I never saw anything like this. Never heard of it before the abbot explained it all to me.”

“How do people not know?” Valyn wondered, staring at the gracile arch. “How could Father cross half the world in a heartbeat without anyone suspecting?”

“I’ve thought about that a lot,” Kaden said. “It wouldn’t be as obvious as you think. Say the Emperor steps through a gate from Annur to . . . oh . . . Ludgven. The people in Ludgven don’t know that he was in Annur. All they know is that the Emperor arrived unexpectedly. One of the chroniclers could piece it all together later, someone who kept detailed notes and a careful calendar, but it would have been difficult to keep good notes about Father’s coming and going. Half the time even we didn’t know where he was, and we lived in the palace.”

Valyn nodded slowly. Sanlitun had disappeared for days at a time when they were children. “Meditating,” their mother told them. “Praying to Intarra for guidance.” Valyn had never understood the need for all that prayer and contemplation. As he pondered the use of the gates, however, Sanlitun’s self-imposed austerity began to look far less arbitrary. As Hendran wrote: Be a rumor. Be a ghost. Your foes should not believe in your existence. The Emperor of Annur couldn’t afford to recede entirely into rumor, but their father had kept himself so aloof from the day-to-day business of the empire that he could well have disappeared for days without anyone noticing.

“All those years,” Valyn said, shaking his head. “All those years, and we had no idea.”

“We were children.”

“We were children.” Valyn exhaled slowly, watching his breath mist in the cold night air. “There was a lot I wanted to ask him.”

Kaden remained silent such a long time that Valyn thought he had faded off to sleep. When he glanced over, however, he found his brother’s eyes still open, still burning, twin embers in the darkness.