When he was finally ushered into Sire Dagon's chambers he found he was late in joining the meeting. Along with Dagon, Neen, and several league navigators sat the bulky and all too familiar forms of Calrach and his two seconds. The leaguemen sat at repose in their intricate, presumably uncomfortable chairs. The Numrek dwarfed them-all hard-edged muscle and rough features-and yet both parties seemed at ease.
"Ah, Rialus Neptos," Sire Dagon said, speaking through an exhalation of mist, "you join us at last. We've nearly concluded our meeting. Be prompter in future."
Rialus began an explanation that he had been sitting in the outer offices for nearly an hour, but nobody seemed interested. Calrach rose and greeted him with a crushing hug and then stood back, smacking his massive hand down on the frail man's shoulder. "My friend," he said in Numrek, "good to see you. You are not so much a rat anymore. More of a weasel now." He turned to his companions for agreement, which they gave. Each of them in turn inflicted the same chest-crushing embrace on him.
Rialus fumbled through it in terse Numrek. He still hated the language for the barbarity of it and for the contortions it demanded of his tongue and lips. He did speak it well, though, having learned it during his tenure as Hanish Mein's ambassador to the foreign invaders turned allies. Not a thing he liked being reminded of for many reasons. It had been a humiliating period of his life, worse, in some ways, than his exile in Cathgergen. Actually, his wrestling with the Numrek language had helped cure him of his stammer. He now spoke almost as smoothly as he would like.
Once he was seated, rail-thin servants gave him a sweet plum wine in a glass that would not sit straight when he set it down. Nobody else seemed to have the same trouble, which was odd because their glasses looked just like his. It suddenly seemed quite important that he did not spill any of the sugary liquid. He sat back in his chair, small glass held in his lap with what he hoped passed for composure. He wondered what they had discussed before he arrived. The best stuff, he was sure.
Sire Dagon cleared his throat and spoke without a hint of emotion, humor, or irony. "So, good Calrach, you see in Rialus a loyal servant of the queen. He's to shepherd the young prince about; keep him safe from harm, treachery, and such. Just between us, I sometimes suspect the queen thinks we harbor ill intentions toward her brother. I've assured her the league can forgive and forget as well as anyone. Dariel is a prince now, not a brigand, thief, and saboteur. Anyway, Rialus will, no doubt, strive to work in the Akaran interests in every way. But what of the Numrek? Is it at the queen's bidding that you will journey to Ushen Brae? Or have you your own purposes?"
"I believe Queen Corinn demanded that they go," Sire Neen offered, "no doubt to keep an eye on us. The Numrek, too, are loyal to her majesty-"
Calrach stopped him by snapping forth his arm, palm out. He looked for a bare spot on the floor to spit and then did so. "We care nothing about the queen. She is not our queen anyway. She is a bitch who flaunts her tail but doesn't give it up. Instead, she bares her teeth and snaps. We have grown tired of her."
In the silence after this, the two leaguemen exchanged troubled glances. Sire Neen put a hand to his throat as if a cough needed to be soothed down by his fingers. It was a reasonable reaction for any not well acquainted with the Numrek, except that Rialus had spent enough time among these foreigners to know that belligerence was the norm in their speech. They could not be judged by Acacian standards of behavior, even as regarded insulting the queen. He knew this, but so did the leaguemen. There was just slightly too much timidity in their reaction. Noticing it, Rialus figuratively narrowed his eyes.
"But you are still in her service?" Sire Dagon asked.
"We are. There is no reason not to be. If she, through you, allows me to see Ushen Brae again, I am happy to serve her. I will say the words she asks of me." The Numrek leaned back. "Yes, I will do that. She will not be disappointed. But I don't do it because I love the smell between her legs."
A horrible expression, Rialus thought, one that Numrek men and women both used without embarrassment. It threatened to bring with it a flood of memories, but he pushed them back. Keep your wits, Rialus. He took a sip of the wine and tried to remain as unobtrusive as possible.
Mulat, Calrach's half brother, added, "We do it because what is good for the Akarans is good for the Auldek, and we as their cousins want only what is good for them."
Sire Dagon accepted a pickled plum from a servant, and then dismissed him-or her, it was hard to tell-with a flick of his wrist. He held the soft fruit in his fingers, sniffing it. "Cousins, you say? I've never entirely understood the relationship between the Auldek and the Numrek. Did they not displace you, drive you into the-"
"No, no, no," Calrach said, exasperation flaring. He thumped his palm against Mulat's chest with a force that made Rialus cringe, though it did not really seem to bother the Numrek. "Do not test me again, Leagueman! This thing we don't speak of. It does not concern you. Stop finding ways to ask of it."
Hmm, Rialus thought. So the sires had asked about the connection between the Numrek and Auldek enough times that Calrach had noticed. True, Calrach was sharper than his gruff exterior suggested, but if the league had pressed him on it, they obviously did not know as much about the Auldek as they wished. That was interesting, or troubling, to consider.
"My apologies," Sire Dagon said, bowing his head. "Yours are such an interesting people. You cannot blame me for being curious. In any event, you will be an honored member of our delegation. Invaluable, I'm sure."
Appeased, Calrach let his large frame fall back against his chair.
"Excuse me," Rialus said, "but what was that name you used? Ushebra-"
"Ushen Brae," Mulat corrected. "That is the name of our land."
"Oh, I've not heard that before."
Mulat had a handsome face for a Numrek, cut of features better proportioned for human eyes to appreciate. Still, the slightest displeasure made his face a creviced mask that was hard not to cringe from. "That doesn't mean it's not so. You call our lands the Other Lands, but why should we do so? They are not other to us. This place here is other. Now that we are to see our home again, we will again call it by its proper name."
"Should I-"
"Do what you wish," Calrach said. "It makes no difference. Sires, there are two things more about our going on this ocean voyage. One, I will bring my son. Don't protest. It's no matter of yours. But I'll take him to see Ushen Brae. Two, you must bind us."
Sire Neen's head dipped to one side, birdlike, and straightened again.
That, Rialus thought, was the first genuine show of surprise he had seen yet on a leagueman. He went to set his glass down, fumbling when it wobbled and then reconsidering. He took another sip instead.
"Bind you?"
Instead of answering, Calrach shifted, uneasy suddenly. He thrust his chin at his half brother, and it was Mulat who answered. "We abhor the water. In sight of land, as here in the Inner Sea, it's not bad. But the Gray Slopes… these we don't care for."
The sires responded warmly enough. They understood this well. The Auldek did not care for the sea either. They had, in fact, never once seen one of them aboard a ship, a fact that greatly benefited the Lothan Aklun. "This is why you came into the Known World over the Ice Fields. Hardly an easy route."
"It was a feat to make us immortal," Calrach said with a bravado that, even for him, felt a bit forced. "No other has ever accomplished it. We are not so different from gods, yes?"
Sire Neen nodded but did not answer. Instead, he looped back. "Amazing that you fear the sea so much, and yet-"
"Fear! Fear?" Calrach spat, this time without aiming at all. "I know no fear, but the water will not support us!"
"So you cannot swim? Surely, you could learn. Even the smallest child can-"
For a moment Rialus was sure Calrach was going to smash the league-man across his too-thin jaw. Indeed, the Numrek half rose from his seat. He grasped Neen's chair at the armrests and pushed his face close, the muscles in his nec
k quivering, his jaw tight. "We have heavy bones!"
Sire Neen, straight-faced and nonplussed, asked, "Heavy bones? That's a strange ailment."
"I am iron inside," Calrach said. "Drop me in the ocean, and I will sink to the bottom like an anchor. I would not like that. I would have to walk along the bottom to return to land. I could do it, but the very thought of it makes me angry."
Despite the fact that Rialus did imagine Numrek bones to be nearly as hard and heavy as iron, he had to duck his head and clear his throat to keep his amusement from curling his lips. Angry, indeed! Angry like a child lost in the woods. He had not thought the Numrek so adept at manipulating language.
"So you say we must bind you?" Sire Dagon said. "With chains, you mean?"
Calrach loosened his grip and returned to his seat. "Yes, if you wish to live. I cannot promise we'd not go into a rage out of sight of land. You wouldn't want that."
For a moment, as Sire Dagon spoke and Calrach detailed the strength of the bonds that would be needed to contain his great power, Rialus watched the other leagueman. Sire Neen's bland visage did not quite hide the amused interest with which he listened. His eyes were wide and attentive, his cheeks flushed. This might have been from staring into Calrach's shouting face, but he looked pleased. His mouth hung open just slightly, and the tip of his tongue slipped across the round little nubs that were his teeth.
A moment later, one of the navigators began to brief him on preparations being made for the prince, but Rialus only half listened. And then Rialus understood something that had tugged at the edge of his understanding since he arrived at the meeting. He knew, of course, that not even a single word spoken by a leagueman could be taken as truth. He had sensed in every question and glance and pleasantry that the two men were so entangled in deceptions that their spoken words had only the semblance of truth to them. But all of this was standard. Anybody with a working knowledge of the league knew these things. What Rialus saw, however, was there on the tip of Sire Neen's pink tongue as it slid across his teeth. Rialus could not have explained exactly how he knew it, but an uncanny ability to recognize deceit was his chief skill. Who can explain the gifts the Giver bestows on him?
Neen, Rialus realized, was hiding something, plotting something all his own. Rialus turned away from him before Neen noticed him watching, but he kept the image locked in his mind, studying it.
CHAPTER SIX
Do you ever wonder what the world would be like if Aliver had lived?" Melio asked.
"Of course," Mena said. "You know we all do."
"Yeah," Melio agreed. "We all do."
He pulled her closer with the arm he already had wrapped around her shoulders. The two of them lay together in the predawn, touching along the length of their naked bodies. They had just made love, the sort of silent, spontaneous coupling they were often driven to in the quiet hours before facing danger once again. Though they had said nothing since wishing each other a good rest the evening before, Melio's question seemed the continuation of an ongoing conversation.
He continued, "What if he really had abolished the quota trade? What if he had really freed all the races to govern themselves? Can you imagine that? I know it would be a grand confusion in some ways, but it might have been beautiful. Corinn has betrayed it all, though. Your sister, the Fanged Rose. She rather scares me, Mena. You know that?"
"You don't understand her."
"You do?"
Mena shrugged. "I haven't always. And… no, I don't completely. But I do know that she tries. She tries harder than you know to do what's right. It may not look like what Aliver would have done, but she is no less devoted to us, to the empire."
"Forgive me, Mena, but she seems mostly devoted to keeping an iron grip on power."
Staying silent for a time, Mena weighed whether she should answer. Talking about her sister-no matter whether she was being critical or speaking praise-always felt like a betrayal of sorts. Certainly, Corinn herself would have thought of it that way. But Melio owned part of her heart as well. He gave her so much and deserved to know how she felt.
"I need you to understand something about her," Mena said. She started slowly, seeking out the right words, testing them first to make sure she was speaking truly. "Corinn is strong. You know that. But she is also very scared."
"The Fanged Rose scared?" Melio laughed. "That I don't believe. I've seen her look warriors in the face as if she were about to bite off their noses."
Mena stayed him with a hand. "I said she was strong as well, but you have to know that strength… well, it springs from different sources. It has different roots in different people. In Corinn, it's fear."
"Fear of what?"
"Of being alone. Of being unloved. Of dying. No, don't laugh. I knew some of this about her even as a girl. When our mother died, Corinn felt like part of her died. Everyone had always said she was our mother reborn. Her twin. She was the beautiful one." Melio began to make some jibe, but she cut him off. "No, listen to me. When our mother died, Corinn felt that she lost part of herself. And then… well, I don't know how I know this, but I always felt that she believed Father should live for her then. That some of the love he held for Aleera should be transferred to her, just to her. I don't know that I can blame her for that. I was too young to even remember our mother. The loss was different for her. But then Father died, too. She took it as a betrayal. And then there was Igguldan, her first love, I think. He died, too. And then she didn't even manage to escape Acacia like the rest of us. Her guardian, Larken, betrayed her to Hanish Mein. You see, every time she trusted someone… every time she put her heart in someone's hands and let him decide her fate… And then came Hanish. She fell in love with him."
"Only to find out he was planning on sacrificing her to his ancestors. For all her beauty, she's not lucky in love, is she?"
"You see the pattern, then?"
"I do," he conceded, "and I know all these details. But we all have tragedies in our lives. It's no excuse."
"I know," she said, "and Corinn would never offer it as one. She's the last person who would ever do that."
"But think of the quota! Aliver would have abolished it; Corinn just reentrenched it. It seems so sad that instead of one monarch, we got another. Instead of one future, we-"
"Melio? Shhh. You're making a complicated thing sound simple. Don't." She wasn't sure that he would believe that. It was easier for him to see the black and white of it. But there was more to the world than black and white. Much more. He did not share blood with both of them, and she could only go so far in explaining her feelings about her siblings at one time. It was complicated, to her at least. "It's easy to see fault, I know. Fault is there, but she's my sister, Melio. I love her. She's part of me beneath the skin. Anyway, I would not want her position. I pray she lives long and that Aaden makes a strong ruler in his time."
Though she did not look at him, Mena could see the crooked smirk Melio likely greeted that thought with. "Never you?"
"Never. I wouldn't want that sort of burden."
"You risk your life-"
"You know that's different. That suits me. What Corinn carries is another thing. I would not accept the crown even if-may it never happen-it was thrust upon me."
"And Dariel? What if rule ever went to him?"
"I don't know," Mena said. She was quiet for a moment. "He did not fight Corinn for the throne when he could have. He has his own demons to wrestle with. He does search for a destiny. I know he wants to do something grand. He's talked about it, but I don't know where or how he'll find it."
The world outside their tent started to gray its way back into being, stirring others into life. Mena sat up, knowing the time had come to take up her role again. Her fingers flexed, wanting to hold her sword. Before that, though, there was something more mundane to take care of. She crawled off the sleeping mat and toward the basin she used to wash Melio's seed from inside her, infusing the water with a concoction of herbs prepared for her by a physician back on Ac
acia.
"Maybe you shouldn't do that," Melio said. He propped himself on his elbow. "Why not just trust what happens?"
Mena measured the herb powder and swirled it into the water. "Don't be silly. How would I look fighting foulthings while carrying around a fat belly? It would break all sorts of taboos."
"Then stop fighting foulthings," he answered, ignoring her joking tone. "You're not the only one who can do it. Give someone else charge. Not even Corinn could fault you. We've been wed for five years now, Mena. Let's make a child and live like-"
"Like what? Like everybody else? We're not everybody else." I'm Maeben on earth, remember? Wrath in raptor form. What sort of mother would I make? She did not say these things. She only half believed them, and she knew Melio would refute her point by point. He had many times before this. He started to say something else, but Mena had had enough of talking for the time being. She said, "Come. I want to reach Halaly by tonight. There's work to be done."
There was always work to be done. Or so it had felt for months now. Finally, though, it looked as if there might be an end in sight to this war against the foulthings. As far as she knew, there were only two left to face. One in Halaly, one across a large swath of hill region of northwestern Talay. Reports of the latter were scattered and unreliable. The word coming out of Halaly, however, was specific. And dire. It was toward that once-powerful interior tribe that she had pushed her band once the tenten creature had been vanquished.
With Melio and Kelis at her side, Mena spent her first evening in Halaly with Oubadal, the chieftain, and his councilmen. They sat on woven mats, beneath the cone-shaped shelter in which the aging leader held court. Mena pushed thoughts of home-or rest and calm and time for reflection-to the back of her mind and focused on the matter most immediately at hand. The tribesmen were impassioned, troubled, and anxious. The waters that had provided them with fish for all their history had been turned into a liquid desert, all because of a foulthing's voracious appetite.
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