Ioma, who had stood silent, whispered into the pause. "It may be that we have found that knife."
Kelis stared from him to Sangae, disbelieving his ears. It was not that he disputed that Corinn's rule was flawed. She had inherited a foul system from Hanish Mein, who had taken it from her father, who had perpetuated the crimes of the generations before him. None of them seemed willing to break the old order of the world. Corinn, perhaps, was more like Tinhadin's daughter than Leodan's. She might yet do great harm. But… "Why does this burn like treason in my ears?" he asked.
"Treason is a betrayal of one's accepted ruler," Ioma said, "but it is not treason to reject an usurper. In truth, it is a treason to accept a false rule once you know it is false."
Sinper inched forward on his seat, like an anxious youth. He pointed at Benabe. "Kelis, can you confirm that Aliver was intimate with this woman? You were his closest companion. If they were intimate, you surely-"
"Nobody can confirm what another man does in his tent," Kelis said.
"Oh, speak truth!" Benabe said. "I remember quite a bit about what you did-and with whom you did it. We weren't shy back then, were we? You know I lay with Aliver many times."
Benabe had always had a quick tongue. She was as easy with anger as she was with laughter. That ease was part of what had bothered him about her-that and the fact that Aliver had found the same traits so alluring. He heard himself say, "You weren't the only one."
"No, but I did not keep track like you did. If you can name another who was with him, you can likewise name that I was with him."
Kelis wiped at the heat that suddenly flushed through his face. They would think him bitter, jealous. Perhaps they would be right to think so. He controlled his voice as he added, "I cannot know what happened between these two, but if you ask me what I believe, then, yes, they were lovers."
This seemed to satisfy Sinper, though he demonstrated that with an expression more like a grimace than a smile. "So we have a witness."
"Not that we needed one," Ioma said. "Benabe's testimony should not be questioned."
"It will be, though," Sangae said. "It will be."
Benabe stared at Kelis so intently that he had to meet her gaze. "Thank you, Kelis. I know you loved him, too. Aliver knew it as well."
Another flash of heat surged across Kelis's face. Fortunately, his dark skin did not betray it. Yes, Aliver knew it, but he didn't return it-not, at least, in the physical manner Kelis would have welcomed. He had always been careful not to betray the true nature of his feelings for Aliver, and he did not want to now. He spoke as if he had not heard her. "A witness to what? I still don't understand what this is about."
The others exchanged glances.
"Bring the child, then," Sangae eventually said. "Let him see her."
"The child?"
Sangae nodded. "She is a beautiful child, Kelis. She is hope for us all. Call her, Benabe, and let her come on her two feet."
Hope for all of us? Kelis felt his fingertips begin to tingle. Hope for all of us?
Benabe rose and walked to the door at the other side of the room. The four men sat in silence as she spoke to somebody in the hallway. A few moments later she returned, leading a girl of perhaps nine years of age. The tingling in Kelis's fingers became a throb, a heartbeat that moved to the center of his palms.
Benabe said, "This is my daughter. She named herself. She likes us to call her Shen."
The girl walked with her eyes downcast, but as soon as she stopped before them, she raised her head and looked candidly at the four men. Her face was round and gentle, her mouth small, with thinner lips than her mother's. Her skin was a rich brown, but it had been stirred with a cream that lightened it. She looked out at them with remarkably large eyes. Though she said not a word, Kelis could not help but think her quite intelligent. Her features were familiar. They were Benabe's, yes, but that was only one way in which he knew them, had known them since before he ever saw her, before she was ever born. There was no denying it. The girl, Larashen-Shen-was Aliver Akaran's daughter. How could he have lived those years and not known-felt-her living?
"She named herself?" Kelis asked.
Benabe nodded but did not explain.
"Kelis Umae," the girl said. Her voice was clear and high, and the two words on her tongue were neither a greeting nor a question. Just a statement.
"You-you know me?"
"Yes. They've told me about you. You went as far as the river of the southern basin. There you waited, as good as your word."
"These people told you that? Your mother? Sangae?"
"The stones told me." She smiled, and then lowered her gaze, at moments looking no different than a shy girl.
"Stones…" He almost framed a question, but let it fade. The fine hairs on his forearms and the back of his neck were bristling. The pulse in his palms was actually painful now. He looked up at Benabe. "Who is this girl's father?"
"You know that already," Benabe said.
"She is a child of two nations," Ioma said. "Look at her, Kelis. She is our future. She is a trembler, but others have been so."
"Do not call her a trembler," Benabe snapped, and then rubbed her fingers into the girl's shoulders soothingly. "She has visions. She has fits during which she falls on the ground, shaking, insensible, but that is only what we see on the outside. Her mind goes to another place-that is why she trembles. She says that in those moments the stones call her. It is they that possess her body and seek to put things inside her. You know what stones she speaks of. Did not Aliver first see the Santoth as stones? He saw them rise and walk toward him. My daughter sees the same."
Sangae had moved closer to him, leaning in as if he wanted to see her from the same vantage as Kelis. He whispered. "What did I tell you? Nobody told the girl that; she told us of it, just as she told us her name… You ask who her father is, but you can see who she is as clearly as I can. What man would not recognize his brother's child? That's who she is. And we think she is in danger."
"Word of her could reach agents of the queen," Ioma said.
Sinper was silent for a moment and then added, not whispering this time, "We should talk of this privately."
"And why does this matter to you?" Kelis said, his voice edged by the unease all this stirred into him. Again, that was not one of the pressing questions he had, but it was what came out.
It was Ioma who answered. "Because, Kelis, Benabe is of the family Ou. Shen is my cousin. Isn't that right?"
"Yes, cousin." The girl nodded. She studied Kelis a moment, then stepped closer. She reached out with one hand and touched her fingertips to his forearm. "I have to go. I would like it if you would go with me. It would be good that way. They will keep me safe. They promised, so long as you take me."
Benabe took the girl away after that. Nobody explained what the child was referring to and Kelis for some time could not form the words to ask. He moved through the rest of the meeting with an outward appearance of dazed indifference, giving little indication of what he thought. He knew they were talking, vaguely understood the things they were saying, but before he could engage with any of that he had to stare in the face the realization of what Shen's existence meant. Aliver's child! She was the heir to the Acacian throne. Without a legitimate heir to take precedence, rule could have gone to her to be passed down to her line, not Corinn's. She was only a girl, but the eyes of the world would not see her as that. She was enough to set the world at war again, and he, being witness to her, had a role in whatever was to come.
"What did she mean," Kelis asked, breaking back into the conversation that had gone on without him, "about my going with her? With her where?"
"Oh…" Sangae let out the word as a long breath. "I thought you would know right away. To the Santoth. She says they are calling her to them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The way it happened was strange, Rialus thought. He had lived through it, watching the change in their fortune as it occurred, but it was all so oddly muted. I
t was sudden, yes-and Dariel had made a fuss-but for all that it was cordial as well. It barely seemed possible that the civil interactions he and the prince had had with Sire Neen and the Ishtat Inspectorate had actually led to him and the prince becoming prisoners.
There was no other word for it. Chains. Manacles. That strange bit shoved in the prince's mouth and strapped tight. They spent a long night together in a cramped cabin, and the new morning found them propelled into motion with nothing explained. Ishtat guards escorted them-with shoves and prods and more threats than the situation called for-down and down into the belly of the ship. Eventually, they emerged through a hatch in the hull near the water level. A gangway descended to what appeared to be a floating platform. It was already crowded with leaguemen and Ishtat, all of whom stood apparently waiting for them. There were several other figures there. Numrek. Rialus had not seen them since the voyage began, but he recognized Calrach and his entourage of ten or so.
Rialus walked down the gangway on careful feet and landed on the strange surface. It was like an enormous slab of gray stone, rectangular and smooth but otherwise featureless. Initially Rialus thought they were to wait here for whatever vessel was going to ferry them to land. Despite the complete uncertainty of what they were heading toward, he rather wished it would arrive. He disliked the hulking enormity of the ship at his back, so huge it could have squashed them if it shifted. Since he was thinking about that, he nearly fell over when the platform beneath him moved. The entire thing pulled away from the Ambergris and slid toward the shore. It was such a strange feeling, for the gray slab did not so much float on the water as drive through it like a solid wedge, unaffected by the swell of waves and tide.
"You look perplexed, Prince," Sire Neen said, "as do you, Neptos. Well you should be. There are a great many things you don't know about the world. Even I am surprised by new things on occasion. How to explain this to you?" Sire Neen searched for the words, clicking his tongue. He ostensibly spoke to the two Acacians, but he pitched his voice loud enough for the amused leaguemen around them to hear.
"Think about the ways that we harness the natural world," he said. "Wind billows against our sails and drives our ships forward. We are familiar with that, but it's no less amazing. We can sit in a cabin while the invisible wind drives us across the globe. A thing we can't see, can't touch-the air itself-can do work that thousands of laborers couldn't accomplish. We can harness the power of flowing water to grind grain or lift loads. We can heat a cold room with fire. Have you never thought how strange that is? Why does wood burn? Why does it make heat? What happens that turns the log into ash? There are so many mysteries, but the league has long pondered such questions. And we have learned some answers.
"But I speak of our own knowledge, not of the Lothan Aklun's magic-which is what powers this vessel. For centuries they told us nothing, gave us nothing, kept all their secrets to themselves." Several of the listening leaguemen grumbled at this. "Recently, though, we had two occasions during which to extract some secrets from them: when we negotiated a contract between them and Hanish, and when we struck new terms between them and your good sister. They gave us a barge like this one. Even as they gave us these things, they withheld the secrets of them. We don't know how to make a vessel like this. It's sorcery, but a very useful sorcery. We will know their secrets soon, of course, since we can now explore their libraries and warehouses and records at will."
Rialus could see that Dariel wished to say something. Sire Neen could, too. He smiled. "I know what you would say, Prince. You'd curse us-the league-as treacherous, devious beasts. And you'd be right! In commerce it's the bold who succeed. The league is bold, and-I'm sure you're starting to see-we have succeeded incredibly. Isn't that right, friends?"
The leaguemen around them agreed. A few of the Ishtat guffawed. Rialus had never seen the company so chipper. It was downright unnerving. He itched to try speaking to Sire Neen again. How to do so, though? What words to catch his interest? He could think of nothing that the leagueman wouldn't squash before he'd even finished his first sentence. He knew more was coming, more news, more revelations, likely more horrors. He did know that Dariel was no longer a person he wished to be too closely associated with. He slid a step away from the prince, as far as he could get before a guard jabbed him.
He set his eyes on the approaching shore-if shore it could be called. There was no sign of actual earth or beach or other natural features. It was a confusion of buildings that together made one continuous barrier several stories high. It was undecorated, pale hues of tan stone, stained by the sea and by weather, with few windows or anything else to indicate that the inhabitants could look out. It was like the unadorned backs of buildings, like warehouses viewed from a rarely trafficked alleyway.
"Look at those walls," Sire Neen said. "Our spies told of these, but it was hard to credit them. On one hand they spoke of the Auldek being a military power that no longer fears anyone-neither in the Other Lands nor among the Lothan Aklun-but they swore they built massive walls to hide them from the sea. I think I understand it better now, having listened to the Numrek howls."
"They'd be howling right now," another leagueman added, "if they weren't so ecstatic about seeing Ushen Brae again."
"It may simply be that the Auldek fear the ocean, fear it so much they believe they must hide behind a wall to be safe from it. Isn't that strange?" Sire Neen waited a moment and then turned to Dariel. "All right, Prince, hold your tongue. Keep your eyes open, though. There's going to be plenty to see. But what of you, Rialus? You've barely said a word all day."
Rialus was surprised Neen had noticed. No, he had not spoken for some time. He almost felt his own mouth as stuffed as the prince's, filled with awed questions that bulged his cheeks as much as a mouthful of stones would have. Actually, it was the fact that he had so many questions that kept him quiet. The things his eyes took in, the words he heard bantered about by Sire Neen and the others, the long history of things he had believed to be and had expected always would be and was now being told were no longer all struck him dumb.
Sire Neen waved his fingers toward him, almost flirtatiously. "Say something. Speak. Speak."
"I–I-" Rialus stammered. "I don't know where to begin."
"I'm not surprised. There is nothing harder for a mediocre mind to understand than the fact that the world is ever vulnerable to great change. People like you-and the prince here-believe that the world is. Just is. Some things are. There is an order, you believe, a pattern to things that you never imagine can be changed. You only ever see portions of the way things are. You are like a soldier on a battlefield. You see what is before you. You choose right or left and try desperately to stay alive. That's you, yes? You'll forever be surprised when you realize you have no control over your fate. But the league stands atop a high ridge. We look down and see the entirety of it. With such a view, the world is so much easier to navigate. And to reshape. There are risks, yes. Surprises, surely, but-Look, we've reached our destination!"
The structures that marked the shoreline were but a stone's throw away, the distance narrowing. For a moment, the leagueman's eyes scanned the dock and the heights of bare wall above it. He looked every bit as transfixed by the sight as Rialus felt.
"The league is bold," Sire Neen said, musingly, "and to the bold goes the world, all its riches, all the power. This will be a fine day."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dariel kept trying to decide what to do. He kept trying to take control, to act, to assert himself, to say something; but he also kept learning he could do nothing. He could not speak with his mouth stuffed, assert himself with his hands and legs bound, act with the Ishtat guards shouldering him on all sides, or take control while Sire Neen so completely held the reins. He had not felt this powerless since boyhood, since the day his guardian had abandoned him in a broken-down shack in Senival, since that horrible time when everything he knew of the world had been stripped from him. This felt the same.
The barge
floated up to a slot in a stone abutment. It slipped into place as if a part of it, like a puzzle piece. Dariel was jostled by the Ishtat, tugged into motion. He tripped on his ankle chains and would have fallen if the guards at his elbow had not held him upright. He tried to spit the bit out of his mouth, to push it with his tongue. He would have yelled for the guards to stop, just pause a moment and let him take in the world. Do him that kindness, at least. Glancing back, he noticed that Calrach and the other Numrek lingered on the barge, staring up at the walls looking stunned.
They were off the barge and trudging toward a gate in the wall. A contingent of others met them, but Dariel was not near enough to make them out in detail. Nor did he have much time to try.
Soon they were all in motion, walking through the gate and into the city. They marched down wide stone-paved thoroughfares, painted in different shades of green and blue. Stout buildings lined them. They were only two or three stories tall, but they were heavy looking, thick, with rounded contours and painted varying shades of red and orange and maroon. Here and there massive statues stood in the street, forms thirty or so feet in height, in postures of combat, rage, triumph. They were strangely familiar looking, although also totally bizarre. They mixed human and animal forms: a bear's head on a man's body; a standing lizard with two muscled, human arms; a bulbous-eyed frog thing that stood on two legs with its chest inflated; a horned, vaguely feminine form twisted into an acrobatic posture, bent over backward in a sensuous shape trapped in stone.
Dariel was not the only one staring at the statues. Many an Ishtat Inspectorate soldier stared gape mouthed at them. Only the leaguemen managed to seem unimpressed. They walked with their chins raised, faces calm, gestures as languorous as their pace allowed. Occasionally, they spoke to one another in voices meant to be overheard, meant to assure the group that they were in control.
"See this new place with open eyes," Sire Neen advised. "Open eyes but not fearful ones. It takes bold men to act boldly-and to receive the rewards. We come as partners to the Auldek. They will be pleased." Dariel, despite his hatred of the man, found himself hungry to believe him.
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