There is more.
With the passing of decades he aged. Physically, no, but still, he aged inside. His body stayed young, but as he passed the normal span of a long mortal life he began to forget his own childhood. The lack of it became a yawning chasm chasing him. His work grew harder. He felt different when he set his hands on children’s shoulders and looked into them. More and more often, his gaze lingered on their faces, on the small curves of their muscles and the lines of their collarbones. More and more, he found a beauty in their small, growing life.
One day, performing his duties as selector, he met a boy. Perhaps it would have happened with another boy or a girl. The next day or the week after or in a year’s time. It would have happened at some point, he now believed, but fate had it that it was this boy. Ebrahem, a Halaly boy from one of the tiny villages along the western coast of Talay. The boy gazed up at Na Gamen’s face with timorous, hungry, desperate hope. He had seen this expression a thousand times. All the boy’s hopes were there on his face. All his dreams written in the lines of his lips and the bushy flares of his eyebrows and in the uneven circlets of his nostrils. All the things he had left behind, all that would not be for him-the loved ones lost, the home he would never see again.
Na Gamen knew all these were there, things that he had always thought small, just punishments. Childish things that he recognized because in them he recognized himself. He had always understood them, and, understanding, he had found the strength to be cruel. But this time, written there… was nothing. Features like he had seen before, and yet this time he saw nothing but the boy himself.
L ater that night, after telling both his stories, Dariel could not find sleep. Birke lay flat on his back, snoring. Bashar sat beside him, studying the night. Cashen walked the patrol he had set up from their boulder down to the hollow where the others were and back again.
Nothing but the boy himself, Dariel thought. He remembered the boy’s face as if he had seen it with his own eyes. That face began to change Na Gamen from what he was into what he became. Dariel wondered if Val had seen the same thing on the night he found Dariel shivering and hopeless in a mountain shack in Senival. He had never considered the changes he created in his adopted father’s life. He had shied away from thoughts of himself. Perhaps he had changed Val. Maybe that was what he was telling him when he stayed behind to set the platforms ablaze.
“I’ve never forgiven you for that,” he whispered.
“For what?” Anira’s voice startled him. She had walked up behind Cashen and stood with her face shadowed. Her body, in silhouette, was muscularly feminine, strong as a man’s but contoured like the woman she was.
“You like seeking me out in the night?”
“Yes, I do. I hope you’re more vigilant when you’re on watch.”
“Sorry. My mind is elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere can be a good place to be,” she said. After studying him for a moment, she added, “Or not. Sometimes it’s better to be right here. Are you worried about tomorrow?”
“Should I be?”
“I used to be afraid of Yoen… when I was a child. When I grew up, I learned to love him. He’s gentle, wise. Deliberate. He’ll see through you if you lie to him. So don’t do that.”
“I hadn’t planned on it.”
“Then you’ve nothing to fear. Now, tonight, come swim with me. There’s a pool just down the ravine a little.”
“It’s too cold,” Dariel said.
“We can warm each other. Come.” She stretched a hand toward him.
C hildren are how we return to youth, Na Gamen had said. There is no other way. A span of years does not make one immortal. Children do .
That was why he selected that boy whose face told him nothing. He did not take the boy to the soul catcher. It took him some time to understand what was happening to him, but he knew it was not the boy’s soul he wanted. He did not want to steal his life. Instead, he watched him. The boy lived in his fabulous palace. Na Gamen let him explore it, fed him, had him cared for. He watched as the child lost his timidity and began to play. He marveled at the sound of his laughter, at the way he made stories in his head. He brought another boy to him. And then a girl.
There, in secret, I became the father that I couldn’t be. I raised child after child. For years upon years I thought nothing of it. It was simply my way, a kindness I did to my slaves, treating them as my children. That’s how I thought of it. In truth, it was more than that. I had forgotten my own childhood. Do you understand? I had forgotten part of what it means to be human. Without them, I would have lost my humanity entirely.
Na Gamen told of how much he loved to have them near. The vibrancy within them. The innocence. The capacity to heal and thrive no matter what the world threw at them. He gave those children the happiest lives he could. He gave to them-for increasingly it felt like he owed them and the other quota children a great debt-but they also gave to him. He watched them grow into men and women over and over again, and then grow old and die. In all of it he learned and relearned the natural order of life.
They made me human again, Na Gamen said. After all the wrongs I did to them, they made me human again.
Why did you walk away from that? Dariel asked. How did you end up here?
The Watcher’s ears flexed and rippled in the air currents. It took him some time to find the words to go on with. Eventually, his voice resumed inside Dariel’s head.
I had a network of swimming pools on the upper level of my palace. I didn’t swim in them myself. Hadn’t for hundreds of years. But the children did. One day I was lounging near the pools, at a short distance. There was a barrier. He divided the air in front of his face with the edge of his hand, squinting one eye closed. I could see the edge of the pool, but not the area just next to it. Two boys… I remember their names, but I’ll hold them inside me, if you don’t mind. Two boys would both run to the edge as if to jump in, but pull back at the last minute. I would just see them appear, sprinting suddenly at the edge, in motion and then skidding, arms wheeling around to stop them. One would tease the other. Plead to jump the next time. Again and again they did this. I wanted to call out to them to stop it. They might slip and crack their heads. The words were in my throat, but I couldn’t speak. They were so joyful-and I so afraid-that I couldn’t speak.
For a moment Na Gamen’s face was warm with the memory. Then the expression faded. And that was it.
What do you mean? What was it?
Watching them, I realized for the first time that I would die so that either of them could live. That’s what I thought: I would trade my life for either of theirs in an instant. And if that were so, what sense did it make for me to steal the lives of other children? What a crime. It all came to me at once. Not understanding our crimes. I had always done that. But the knowing. That was new. The horrible knowing. It was love, Dariel. I loved those children. I had loved all of them, from Ebrahem onward. I loved them as if they were part of me. Knowing that, I could no longer sort souls. I feared what became of the stolen souls once they died. Would they know peace? Would they understand who they were, or would they be trapped in between? I knew the answers, and I hated them.
Images poured into Dariel’s mind again. He watched Na Gamen speaking before an audience of the Lothan Aklun. They watched him with faces of sublime indifference as he implored them to stop the trade. He asked them to search in their hearts. They knew how wrong it was. They knew that the punishment of Tinhadin was hurting innocents and also making them into greater villains than the one they hated. He railed at them, but he could not change their course. He could not stop them. Their hatred was too deep. If they had looked into so many children’s souls-as he had-they might have understood, but they had not. They did not wish to listen. Nor could he fight them. They were his brethren. He loved them, more so, perhaps, because of the sadness of their error.
I did not sort souls after that. Instead, I learned to shepherd them.
He traveled to Rath Batatt with
the quota slaves he had learned to call his family. He chose the peak atop which to build the Sky Mount, and he set to work. He used the song trapped in simple tools to work the stone. He made it malleable and shaped it to suit him. There he lived through the lives of those mortal children, doing the best he could to give them joyous childhoods, meaningful lives, ease in the elder years, and painless deaths to true release. One by one, he shepherded them through lives worthy of them and then let them go.
I have not done enough. I took apart an evil castle built of stone one small block at a time. Much of it remains, and ever will. I did what I could, though. Now, I hope you will as well. Dariel, seeing what I have done, can you forgive me? Do you forgive me?
Of course, Dariel said.
Na Gamen closed his eyes for a time. Opened them. Thank you. Forgiveness is a circle, Dariel. A band that joins us. Thank you. If you will accept it from me, I will give you a blessing. It’s the last thing I have to offer you. Will you accept?
Of course.
T he pool was beautiful. Boulders hemmed it in on all sides, with a large shelf of rock blocking most of the downstream end. It was deep enough to dive into, lit from below by some of the rocks-which glowed the same pale green as the stones of Amratseer.
“Is this safe?” Dariel asked.
“It’s not the Sheeven Lek, if that’s what you mean,” Anira said. “Don’t just stand, gaping. Off with your clothes!”
A few moments later, naked herself, Anira dove. Her body speared the glassy water, sending the clear image of the riverbed stones into sudden confusion. She kicked toward the depths. At the bottom she turned and stared up at Dariel, as if taunting him. He finished stepping out of his trousers and jumped.
The shock of the cold water froze the air he had just pulled into his lungs. He had planned to slice toward the bottom gracefully, but instead his arms and legs set hooks in the water. He pivoted toward the surface and broke into the air, gasping. Had it been possible, he would have clawed his way right out of the water. Instead, he paddled in circles, looking for a place to get ashore, teeth chattering.
Anira rose from underneath him. She ran her hand up his abdomen, her body sliding up after it. Her breasts slipped over his chest. Surfacing with her face inches from his, she parted her lips. Dariel thought she was going to kiss him. She seemed close to it, but instead she exhaled her long-held breath. Her legs kicked rhythmically to keep her up, close enough that he felt her thigh brush his. No accident, for she did not draw away.
“Dariel, I want you to dance with me,” she said. The green, liquid shifting light was lovely on her skin. Droplets of water slicked the scaled plates beneath her eyes and over the bridge of her nose. They highlighted her eyes. “I need you to. Do you know what I mean by dance?”
It would have been hard not to know, considering the way her hands caressed his torso. They were so warm, as were her legs, smooth against his. He felt himself stiffening despite the chill water. “It wouldn’t be right,” he said. “I have someone back on Acacia.”
“I would be surprised if you didn’t have someone. Can I take the love you feel for her from you?”
The image of Wren that popped into his head was an unlikely one. He saw her as she had been the night they blew up Sire Fen’s warship. Just after they dropped the pill that ignited fires inside it, she had climbed over the tall ship’s railing and leaped into the air. He remembered the way her hair rose, waving at him. He remembered exactly what her face had looked like and how much he had wanted her.
“No,” he said, “you can’t take my feelings for her from me.”
“Good. I don’t want to. Are you sure that you will live to see her again?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“I hope you do see her again. If you do, it’s up to you to tell her of the evening you spent making love to a black-skinned snake woman. Or not.” Anira smiled. Her teeth shone wonderfully white in the moonlight, like little jewels. They looked so smooth and clean and cheerful. “You are part of my destiny, Dariel Akaran. Making love with you is part of that. Anyway, you made your decision when you took my hand to come down here. Can we stop talking now?”
He felt her hand take hold of his sex. That did it. He could well imagine that Wren would box him bare knuckled when she found out, but what Anira said was true. He had already consented. Being with her already felt necessary in a way he could not explain. He pulled her closer. He touched the tip of his tongue to the enamel of her teeth. It was as he had thought. They were smooth and clean and cheerful. When her lips pressed full against his, he responded with more hunger than he knew he had felt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Delivegu folded himself into the chair. He managed to do nothing overtly indecorous, and yet he pushed up close to the line with every gesture: the manner in which he leaned back against the plush backrest, the way his fingers brushed the open collar of his white shirt, the cast of his long legs, parted just enough to invite eyes toward his virility.
Corinn watched him from the far side of her desk. With his trace of a smile and the way he seemed to shift his focus from one eye to the other and back again and the way his lips stayed parted, moistened by his tongue before he spoke, Delivegu acted as if there were no space between them at all. They might have been plastered together after lovemaking. Such was the sensual excess that dripped from him like sweat.
“Did you do it?”
“I saw to it, Your Majesty. I timed it to cast no blame upon myself. Or upon you. It’s done. Soon you’ll hear wailing coming all the way from Calfa Ven.”
Corinn let nothing show on her face, but inside, her heart caught for a moment on the thought of Dariel-wherever he was-hearing that wailing. Perhaps he would not hear it. Perhaps he was dead and gone, and would never know what she had done. Am I such a monster, she asked herself, that I would kill my brother’s lover and his child-and then look to my brother’s death with relief?
Worse things had been done by her ancestors, and for less reason. Reading through the Akaran royal archives had shown her that. By comparison to the secret crimes of her ancestors, Corinn’s acts were small wrongs done for larger goals. Who but other monarchs could understand the decisions rulers must make? Not even Aliver had carried such a burden. Not Mena. Not Dariel.
“None but my ancestors could judge me,” she said.
Delivegu dipped his head. “It was a small thing, Your Majesty.”
You’re right about that, Corinn thought. It had not seemed like a small thing when she gave him the mission, but so much had changed. The palace hummed now with energy for the coming coronation. She had been hosting the flood of dignitaries arriving from all over the empire for several days. Banquets and dances, speeches and parades and performances in the Carmelia. It was all hastily prepared. A good portion of the empire also mustered for war, but there was a giddy vibrancy to everything. She felt like a child, as if she believed again that the world could be as she wished. She was not sure that she had truly felt that as a child, but she knew a princess was supposed to feel that way. Now, because of her own hard work, she did.
Rhrenna appeared in the doorway. Standing framed within it, she reminded Corinn that Aliver would be along soon to escort her to the meeting. Corinn watched Delivegu appraise the secretary as she turned on her heel and moved out of sight. She was lovely in a thin-featured, Meinish way. Under Corinn’s critical eye, Rhrenna had developed a fine fashion sense, wearing clothes that flattered her slim figure.
Corinn wondered if Delivegu had slept with her. Rhrenna was discreet in her romantic life, but she had recently admitted to Corinn that she could not have children. She had never yet gotten pregnant. By her own estimation, she should have by now, if it was possible for her. Corinn made a mental note to advise her not to be seen with Delivegu, not if she wanted a chance at being an Acacian queen. And why shouldn’t she become queen? Rhrenna had been a more faithful servant to her than anybody. Hers was a disgraced people, but allowing such a marriag
e would be seen as an act of benevolence, forgiveness. Considering that she could not bear children… well, there would not be that complication to Aaden’s inheritance to deal with. It would not be so hard to weave an attraction to her into the binding spells around Aliver. She decided to begin to do that, slowly, at a pace that would bloom right around the coronation.
Delivegu found Corinn’s eyes still on him when he swiveled back to her. “With this behind us, what more would you have me do? You know I wish to serve you in any manner you require.”
The queen lifted her chin. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”
Delivegu bowed. “As you order. All I wish is to fulfill whatever you desire.”
Delivegu, you musky animal. As if it’s my desires you concern yourself with, Corinn thought after he departed. You will never have me. Nobody will.
“Nobody after me, you mean?”
The voice entered Corinn’s ear as if the speaker’s lips were just beside it. At first it was just a voice. She recognized it, though. She could not have mistaken the superior tenor of it, so smooth and confident, the speaker as pleased with himself as a pampered cat. By the Giver, she knew that voice!
“Because I certainly had you. Body completely. Soul… almost.”
She had heard it in so many variations. Giving speeches, rallying crowds, barking orders. She had heard it jesting over a banquet table, telling tales, poking fun at her. She had heard it panting her name in passion, and had lain entwined as it spoke softly, breaths against the nape of her bare neck.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
Then she felt the physical presence that came with the voice. He was there in the corner. She did not turn to look directly at him, but she saw him at the border of her vision. Just barely physical, so near the edge that with a step he could have slipped back around the corner of her mind, out of sight. He leaned against the wall, watching her with his gray eyes. She knew they were gray. Beautiful and gray, more at home in the face that displayed them than any eyes she had ever seen. She knew when he swept a hand up over his blond hair, combing it with his fingers. She did not look. For some reason it felt very important that she not look directly at him.
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