The War with the Mein

by David Anthony Durham

  A few moments later, Corinn stepped away from the cliff. She stopped beside Mena, leaned in close, and asked, “Do you really want to know what I offered the Numrek? There is one thing they want above all else—to return to their homeland and revenge themselves on the Lothan Aklun, who chased them up into the ice years before. This is a war I believe we must participate in, for our own reasons. When the time is right we will begin to prepare. We and the Numrek and the league will launch a fleet into the Gray Slopes against the Lothan Aklun. Once we defeat them, we will control the trade with the Other Lands. Then I will have enough power to change the world for the better.” Corinn drew back so that she could see her sister’s eyes. “Our battles are not over, Mena. We will not be safe until the whole world bows to us. Now you know what I intend.”

  With that she moved away, leaving Mena standing as the procession issued around her. She felt a person beside her and knew it to be Melio when he slipped his hand into hers and asked if she was well. Mena was not sure how to respond. Watching Corinn’s back as she receded, she realized that she had not fully acknowledged the world as it was now to be and who was to rule it. She understood for the first time just who her sister really was. She had heard the title before, but now it came to her like words engraved in the air before her. It stunned her. There before her, receding down the hill through the windswept light of dusk, went the Queen of Acacia, with her forearms cupped around her heir and her entourage close behind her, the future hers to shape.

  The End

  About the Author

  David Anthony Durham is the award-winning author of three previous novels: Gabriel’s Story, Walk Through Darkness, and Pride of Carthage, which has been translated into six foreign languages. He has taught at the University of California, Cal State University in Fresno, for the Stonecoast MFA program, and he most recently was the MacLean Distinguished Writer in Residence at Colorado College. For further information and updates, please visit his Web site, davidanthonydurham.com.

  ALSO BY DAVID ANTHONY DURHAM

  Pride of Carthage: A Novel of Hannibal

  Walk Through Darkness

  Gabriel’s Story: A Novel

  FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, AUGUST 2008

  Copyright © 2007 by David Anthony Durham

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006.

  www.anchorbooks.com

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Endpaper map by David Cain

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Durham, David Anthony, 1969–

  Acacia : a novel / David Anthony Durham.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  I. Title.

  PS3554.U677A33 2007

  813'.6—dc22 2006029726

  eISBN: 978-0-307-47293-9

  v3.0