Nine years had passed since she had wrested the Acacian Empire from Hanish Mein's grasp. Nine years of wearing the title of queen. Nine years of bearing the nation's burdens on her shoulders. Nine years in which she confided fully in no one single person. Nine years of showing only glimpses of herself to different people, never the whole to anybody. Nine years as a mother. Nine years of secret study. Nine years of learning to speak like a god.
Her beauty was such that few noticed the effects of the passing seasons on her. She was slim enough to be the envy of women ten years her junior; youthful enough to be the ideal for girls who did not yet have to measure themselves against her; shapely enough in her carefully tailored gowns that men's eyes followed her of their own accord, whether the man himself wished them to or not. No man who was attracted to women failed to see beauty in her full mouth, in her olive complexion, in her rounded shoulders and bosom, and in the curve of her hips. When had such a form ever embodied so much power and been driven by a mind as calculating? When had such a sensuous face ever been so latent with danger? She had surprised everyone with her sudden emergence to power, and all who had known her in her youth remained shocked by it.
Corinn knew these things as well as anyone. She made a point of knowing things. She knew that in the lower town the people called her the Fanged Rose. She rather liked the name. She knew which nobles were still fool enough to think they might bed her. She knew that a movement was afoot in the Senate to force her to marry. If they had their way, she would produce a legitimate heir to displace the son Hanish had fathered. They would not have their way. She knew which senators most hated her for curtailing their power and which clans and tribes most chafed against her recent decision to establish one national currency-the hadin-that the royal reserve exclusively minted. She knew which nobles needed to be played against one another during the intricate work of pushing her plans forward. She was glad to know all these things. Added together and weighed one against another, the balance always tipped in her favor. She was secure in rule, and she had plans to become even more so soon.
If all the scheming complexity of her position had etched fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, so be it. If she was fuller in the hips and chest than she had been before childbirth, what did that matter? If she walked more on her heels and less on the eager balls of her feet, that was as it should be. She had been lovely as a girl, but she knew that there were other ways to be lovely as a woman. She was not yet the age her mother was in her memories, which meant she had not reached the age to measure herself against her understanding of beauty. And of mortality. That day would come, she knew, but not just yet.
For the time being, her physical appearance was a gift to be used as readily as skill with a sword. The core of her power now resided in her mind, her thoughts, and her capacity to outflank others from a place of intellect hidden behind her pleasing facade. She had never been the vacuous vessel so many had assumed. It just took a great deal of anger to finally awaken the talents she had long let lie dormant. For that anger she had Hanish Mein to thank. In her own way, she remembered that daily.
At one corner of her desk sat a letter from the winery of Prios. Their vines were ready, it declared. They would happily begin the mass production the queen charged them with. Just as soon as the additive reached them, they would begin bottling. Good, she thought. The people had been clear-eyed too long already. She knew they were starting to grumble, and with good reason, too.
The document she now studied was the last of the reports she had commissioned on the state of agriculture in northern Talay. It told a dire story. While central Talay had always been arid, the north had been somewhat more temperate. The sea currents and the wind that drove them had brought moisture enough to keep the land fertile, well suited to producing grains and fruits and vegetables that could be traded with the floating merchants for goods from throughout the Inland Sea and from as far away as the Vumu Archipelago. These goods, in turn, were sent south into central Talay, which had its own goods to offer in the form of livestock and mineral wealth. Thus, there had been a balance of farming and trade for generations.
Not so any longer. The damage done to the plains of Talay by the war and by the Santoth magic had left them parched. Something in this had changed the flow of the winds. Now a scorching breeze swept up from the plains and evaporated the sea moisture before it ever reached land. What fog there was, they said in Bocoum, hung offshore, temptingly haunting them like a mirage that appeared each morning but would come no nearer. Northern crops had withered more year by year, and this summer looked to be the driest yet. Even the wheatgrass-usually so hearty-had silvered to straw. It combusted and fed wildfires that blackened the sky.
The last time the merchants docked at Bocoum they found the Talayans had little to trade. Instead of engaging in commerce, the merchants found themselves fighting off assaults from the famished, desperate farmers and townspeople. Considering the way the sea currents whirled trade around the heart of the empire, this break in the chain of commerce had far-reaching consequences.
Who would have thought that a lack of water in one place would affect the prosperity of nations hundreds of miles away? It was, Corinn knew, a threat more formidable than any of the foulthings her sister hunted. It required her focused attention, and she was now ready to offer it. Her answer was a simple thing, really, rooted in a basic need and in her newfound ability to deliver gifts no other living being could. If what she had planned worked as she believed it would, they would surely find another name for her in Talay. A name of praise. Perhaps she would decide upon the name herself and have it whispered among the people until they took it up. She would make them think the name was of their own devising. There was a power in naming, she had come to believe, a great power.
The bone whistle by which her door guards alerted her of arrivals came to her, two notes that identified the person entering as her secretary, Rhrenna, a relative of Hanish Mein's who had been something of a friend to her during her captivity in the Meinish court. Corinn chose her over Rialus Neptos, the other nonfamilial holdover from her previous life. He was her confidant in many areas, yes, but she could not stand having him around too often. It suited her much better that such an intimate position be filled by a woman, and a woman decidedly indebted to her.
For a time after her sudden rise to power Corinn thought Rhrenna had been killed during the massacre of Mein she had orchestrated with Numrek aid. It was not until a number of weeks later that the young woman was found hiding aboard a trading vessel off the Aushenian coast along with several of her maids. When Rhrenna was brought back to Acacia, Corinn had welcomed her with something between honest affection and relief. It was good to know that not all those she had sentenced to death were lost forever. It gave her the opportunity to provide amnesty, and she needed that.
Rhrenna entered. She was pale and slim, attractive in a fine-boned way, but she looked as if the bounty of Acacia never quite nourished her as completely as one might hope. She spoke in a pleasant voice, one suited to song and often called for late on banquet evenings. "Excuse me, Your Majesty, but you have visitors. Sire Dagon and Sire Neen of the league wish a brief audience with you."
"Dagon and Neen? I didn't even know they were on the island."
"Yes, they just arrived. They beg your forgiveness but swear the matter is urgent."
By custom, the leaguemen should have petitioned her officially for a meeting at least three days ahead of time. As much as she would have liked to turn them away, Corinn knew that if she did she would wonder what had brought them so urgently. She would spend her time trying to figure it out. Better to hear them and know from their mouths. Then she would search out the truth behind what they said.
She greeted them in the meeting room adjacent to her main balcony, one large chamber open to the air down its whole length. Instead of enjoying the view, however, she sat at ease in a high-backed chair, the brightness of the day at her back. Her fingers curled around the knobbed f
ists of the armrests. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?" she asked, crossing her legs as Dagon and Neen approached. "Two sires calling on me at once. A rare treat."
"The pleasure is all ours," Sire Dagon said, bowing his head in the slow manner of leaguemen.
"We beg forgiveness for the intrusion," Sire Neen added. "The matter is of considerable import, Your Majesty. We could not but bring it to you immediately."
Both men fell into ritual greeting, spreading platitudes like rose petals they hoped would scent the room. They were dressed in the silken, luxurious robes of their sect and moved with a monklike air of reverence. They were not from a religious organization-indeed, their main doctrine centered on the insatiable appetite for wealth-but they were a closed group with mysterious ways that few outsiders understood. Outwardly, they were always gaunt, most often tall, with necks elongated by a lifelong stretching process. Their heads were bound in infancy and squeezed into a conical shape that eventually hardened to permanence. It was said they smoked their own distillation of mist-one so potent it would kill normal folk-that lengthened their life spans. But as no one outside the league knew when any of them was born or when most of them died, it was impossible to verify this rumor.
Though they talked as if this visit had no purpose other than social interaction, Corinn noticed that neither man fingered a mist pipe. This, more than anything else, was an indication they were anxious to get to the point. She obliged them. "Sires," she broke in, "sit down, please. I know your time is valuable. I trust you haven't had problems with the additive? You assured me it was perfected."
"It is!" Sire Dagon exclaimed. "It is. Even as we speak it is being delivered to Prios with careful instructions. No, it's another matter…" He paused a moment, cleared his throat, and began, "We have always been direct with each other, you and I. Direct and completely honest. I will be exactly that way with this matter."
Mentally Corinn rolled her eyes. League directness had a lot in common with the knotted brambles that choked the hills along the rivers in Senival. One could get tangled in that "directness," pricked a thousand times by barbs that dug deeper if you fought them. It was true that she had known Sire Dagon longer than Sire Neen. She felt vaguely more comfortable with him. It was he with whom she had brokered the arrangement that withdrew league support from Hanish's war effort and with whom she had drawn up the basic details of their continued commerce. They were not details she was proud of, but such were the realities of rule.
Chief among the concessions she had made was deeding the league ownership of the Outer Isles. The chain of white sand islands that had once been Dariel's haven as a brigand was now a series of plantations for the breeding and raising of quota. They deemed it necessary for the entire system to be self-enclosed. There could be no outside influence whatsoever. Nobody could trade or interact with the breeding population. What's more, the breeders themselves could have no memories of anything other than their life on the islands. For this reason, they had acquired infant children for several years now.
It would be some time yet before they were truly producing quota as Sire Dagon and the others envisioned, but it would lead to complete self-sufficiency. The slaves themselves would plant and harvest their own food. They would trade for goods among themselves within an enclosed system that cost the empire nothing. They would know nothing other than the existence the league engineered for them-and that, Sire Dagon had promised the queen personally, would be an existence of stability and even some measure of comfort. Once the league set in place a system of apparent self-governance for them, along with a religious doctrine shaped to the situation, the slaves need not even feel themselves slaves at all.
The result of this all was that they would offer their children up without question. Different islands would host them at different ages, so that parents would not grow to love children. Children would never know their parents. The exact details the league never disclosed to her, and she never asked. Just the fact that she had allowed it was a close enough bond between them. It would hold, she believed, for generations, perhaps for another twenty-two, as had been the case with the original agreement Tinhadin had brokered. Did it ever trouble her conscience? Yes, but such, as she often reminded herself, was the burden of rule.
"I would expect nothing less from you, dear Dagon," she said, making sure her courteous tone had a bite to it, "and you will get nothing less from me. Proceed."
Sire Dagon nodded, his eyes half closed as if the words were music to him. "Queen Corinn, you must know by now that the league holds you in the highest regard. In truth, we haven't held such complete faith in an Akaran for several generations. No insult to your ancestors intended, of course. It's just that we find yours a remarkable reign, young though it is."
"So full of promise," Sire Neen slipped in, grinning. His teeth had been filed, not to points, but to roundness, each of them a gentle curve of measured uniformity. When Corinn looked at him she kept her gaze pinned to his forehead. His eyes had a dead quality to them, a reptilian flatness that she could not-and to some degree did not wish to-penetrate. She was not sure which of the leaguemen held greater rank, nor did she know where or how Sire Neen had served the league before taking over management of the Outer Isles project. They never offered the information, and she never asked.
Despite their claim of directness, a few minutes more passed with both men praising the peace she had brought, both of them sure that the empire would soon be more prosperous than ever in its history. Eventually, Corinn lifted her finger. "Please, you digress again. What are you really here to tell me or ask of me?"
The two leaguemen conferred with their eyes and seemed to conclude that the time had come. Sire Neen said, "There has been an unfortunate development. Recently, last fall to be precise, we sought intelligence about the Auldek."
"Sought intelligence?"
"There has never been a more closed, maddeningly secretive people than the Lothan Aklun," Sire Dagon said with no hint that his listener might find this complaint ironic coming from him. "As you know, the Lothan Aklun are to the Auldek what we are to you. They are not the market you trade with; they are simply the merchants who hold sway in the Other Lands."
Corinn interrupted. "This was a detail the league was slow in divulging."
"If we were cautious in divulging our information, it was largely because we knew and still know so little ourselves. Bad information is no better than information. Surely you agree?" He paused, but not long enough for Corinn to answer. "We know the Other Lands are vast. We know the Auldek are powerful. But that is all we know. As you will understand, that is no knowledge at all. So we concluded that now as we are entering a new age under your leadership it was essential that we learn more of this nation we are so dependent on."
"You sent spies among them?"
"Just so."
"But before we learned much of anything," Sire Neen proceeded, "one of our agents was found out and captured. He, in turn, was convinced to betray other agents. Several were captured and… questioned."
"How many?" Corinn asked.
"Oh…" Dagon pursed his lips as if the exact number were of no consequence, but then he produced it. "Twenty-seven."
"Twenty-seven? Are you mad?"
Neen fondled his gold neck collar, fingering the dolphin shape embossed there. "It is a large territory. One or two spies would have told us nothing. It would have been a waste and still a risk at that. Our spies were finely trained, disciplined, and looked perfectly the part of grown slaves. We were all shocked when one was caught and shocked that he gave up the others so thoroughly."
"It seems," the other leagueman said, "that the Lothan Aklun took possession of them. They have very persuasive forms of torture."
Corinn tapped her fingernails against the hard wood of the armrests, waiting for more. "So you've been caught spying? How have the Lothan Aklun responded?"
"Put simply," Sire Neen said, "this has placed us in an awkward position. What we believe will help
is a direct entreaty from yourself. We will make our own apologies directly to both parties, but if you could stand strong with us, while avowing complete innocence in the matter, it will strengthen our position. The Lothan Aklun need to know that the league and the Acacian crown are two fingers of the same hand."
"You want me to tell them you're my preferred middlemen, is that it? But what if they can offer better terms?"
Both men looked aghast, though she knew it was a show. Nothing surprised men like these. Sire Dagon said, "Majesty, you can have no idea what sort of mistake that would be."
Corinn smiled. "Why don't you tell me, then?"
Sire Dagon showed her the palms of his hands, his long fingers crooked. It was a rather odd gesture that she had yet to understand fully. "You and the next several generations of Akarans would waste your lives trying to learn all the many branches of Lothan Aklun duplicity. They are vile, completely without conscience; and they would seek to cheat you in every way possible. They huddle on the isles of the Barrier Ridge, scheming new treacheries. It is only because we-the league-have dealt with their every scheme over the centuries that you are spared such things. They would love nothing better than feasting on your ignorance of their ways."
"And," Sire Neen added, once more showing his ghastly teeth, "the league owns the Gray Slopes. Without us you can no more get to the Aklun than they can get to you. Only we have successfully navigated that great ocean and all its dangers."
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