Acacia, The War with the Mein

by David Anthony Durham

  Larken was courteous and deferential, and also efficient and forceful and decisive all at once. He knew each thing that needed to be done and managed it all smoothly. She simply had to follow his instructions. Doing so, she watched the world slip by around them. Out of the compound and down to the worker’s town of Crall they went, through the streets and back alleys to the docks, into a sloop that Larken cast into the wind single-handedly, with the skill of a lifelong sailor. By the time the sun was fully up they had rounded a cape and were out of sight of Crall. He named each landmark they passed on Kidnaban and explained just what he intended when they cut away from the island and aimed at the Cape of Fallon. By the time they crept into the quiet, sleeping town of Danos late that night, she had placed her fatigued person entirely into his hands.

  Larken had explained that they were to meet a magistrate at a predetermined time and place. He was the only one who knew how they were to proceed from that point on, and he could be trusted entirely. The man was exactly where Larken said he would be. He greeted Corinn so effusively that it embarrassed her, something that had never happened before.

  “We are safe here,” the magistrate spoke as they walked. “This meeting was kept entirely secret. No one but myself read the orders from the chancellor. The preparations for each stage of your safekeeping have been made separately, so that no one but myself understands the situation fully. This was all as Thaddeus ordered, and I’ve followed him to the letter. Trust me, Princess Corinn, the worst is behind you now.”

  “Nobody knows of our arrival?” Larken had asked. “You are certain of this?”

  The man answered that he was certain. He would swear to it on his life and that of his children. He had all the documents the two of them would need to proceed, with written instructions on whom to contact and the secret words to invoke to win their trust. They were, believe it or not, destined for Candovia. There were people there loyal to the Akarans who would shelter Corinn in such perfect hiding that Hanish Mein would never find her, even if he searched a hundred years.

  All of this seemed to satisfy Larken. He said nothing more, and for a time they walked on. The magistrate chattered without pause, bemoaning the situation in the empire, lamenting Leodan’s death, and providing fragmented details of what she should expect in the coming days, promises that everything would soon be righted. Corinn half wished he would shut up and half welcomed his talkativeness, wanting to grasp onto him and hold tight until the order of the world stabilized again. She had never felt a greater need to cling to other people. She already felt herself slipping from Larken’s care into the magistrate’s.

  This, in part, was why what had happened next stunned Corinn so completely. For some time the actions her eyes witnessed did not register meaningfully in her consciousness. As they passed around a corner and into a short section shaded from the moonlight, Larken whispered something. The magistrate turned toward him, as if reacting to a warning. Thus he was staring clear-eyed at Larken when he swept toward him. Larken lifted something above his head and slammed it down into the magistrate’s forehead. The man stood pinned to the spot that connected them, his body seeming to hang from Larken’s fist. Larken yanked his arm back, and the other dropped. His form, in silhouette against the moonlit courtyard, betrayed the weapon: a small ax Larken had worn at his waist. Corinn had noticed it before without thinking twice about it.

  Larken took her by the elbow. “Do not make a sound. I’ll not kill you, but if you call out I’ll silence you in a way that will pain you greatly.” He led her forward a few steps, to the edge of the shadow. His face was close to hers, his breath hot against her skin. “That had to be done, Princess. Do not blame me or him. We are all players in a drama greater than ourselves. Come, our journey is not yet complete.”

  “What—what are you doing?” Corinn gasped at the pressure of his grip on her wrist. “Where are you taking me?”

  For the first time Larken ignored her queries. No polite response. No thorough but efficient explanation. He just dragged her on. Into hiding, yes, but not the hiding her father had planned for her. Larken, it turned out, was neither a loyal Marah nor an overt traitor. He simply held Corinn captive in an old monk’s cabin and waited to sell her to whichever power emerged victorious from the war. It was inland from Danos, well into the rugged hills, along a portion of the riverbank so steep and boulder strewn that few humans found reason to venture there. They passed the days in long silences, broken occasionally by conversation Corinn hated herself for allowing. He fed and cared for her. He bound her every few days and ventured back into Danos to gather news. So Corinn heard the progress of the war from his reports. Beyond this Larken had a great deal to tell her, incredible things she did not believe at the time but which were impossible to deny now.

  She emerged from the cabin a different person than she had been on entering. She had shed all vestiges of innocence, all inklings that she could ever again find solace in hopeful, naïve belief. She would never be caught unprepared again, she swore to herself. She would never trust. Never love. Never put faith in other human beings again. She would learn all she could of the shape and substance of the world, and she would find a way to survive in it.

  A full six weeks after he had abducted her, Larken presented Corinn to Hanish Mein. In so doing, Larken bought himself a place of privilege in the new chieftain’s empire. For her part, Corinn found herself thrust into the strange purgatory in which she still lived, nine years later.

  She did not speak at all as the group of women rode back toward the palace. They arrived at one of the back gates. Blond-haired guards called down to them playfully, pretending that they must provide a code word to win entry. Corinn had no patience with the game. Nor was she happy to find a messenger awaiting her when the gate did swing open. Hanish Mein wished to see her that afternoon, at a given hour. She groaned inwardly and almost answered that she was ill and could not see him. But she felt the eyes of the other women on her, admiring and envious and curious all at once. Not sure how she wished to react, she accepted the message without comment, apparently nonplussed by it.

  As she stood in the hallway outside his chambers—the very ones that had been her father’s—she found it took effort to keep a flush from her face, to slow the beating of her heart, and to keep her features stony. Hanish had an effect on her that she struggled to resist. She remembered, as she always tried to before speaking with him, the way he had laughed at her at their first meeting. She had invoked Igguldan’s name, promising that he would not stand for her imprisonment. Hanish had parted his lips and laughed and said, “Igguldan? The Aushenian whelp? It’s he you think of now? Fine, I understand that he was a handsome lad, a poet, they tell me. Perhaps you would think differently of him if you knew that he led his army to his nation’s greatest defeat. It’s true. They all died…quite horribly, really. His name, dear princess, will be noted only in ignominy. But if it heartens you, you may remember him as you wish. You Acacians are good at that.”

  Corinn had never hated a person more than she hated Hanish at that moment. He had seemed to her the height of callous arrogance, cruel, repulsive, and irredeemable. It frustrated her to no end that she had to try so hard to remember this about him. Too often, she knew, she stole glances at him with a very different emotion than she wished.

  “Corinn?” Hanish’s voice called to her. “Princess, I can hear you breathing out there. Come in and let us talk a moment. I’ve learned something that might interest you.”

  That was another annoyance! Hanish really did seem to have unnaturally well-tuned senses. She stepped across the threshold to find him leaning back on her father’s desk, a fan of papers in one hand. He tugged at one of his lengths of braided hair, the one, she knew, that indicated the number of men he had killed in the Maseret dance the Mein were so fond of. He looked up at her and grinned, and she hated him for the way motion sparked the beauty of his eyes to life. What eyes he had! They drew her gaze to them unerringly. It seemed he was lit from the i
nside, his face a lantern in human form and his eyes the outlets for the gray glow within him. There was peace in them. They affected her as would looking upon the turquoise water of one of the white sand beaches near Aos. Some things are just meant to be beheld. Hanish Mein’s eyes—his entire face for that matter—were such things. It took considerable effort for Corinn to form her features into the suitable mask of cold disregard she always wore before him.

  “The sun suits you so very well, Corinn,” Hanish said. He spoke Acacian, as he almost always did to her. “Such an even complexion, so well suited to the brilliant summer days down here. By the way, I am pleased that you have been riding with my cousin and her circle.”

  “It is not a service I do willingly,” Corinn said. “It was, you will remember, a command you yourself gave me.”

  Hanish smiled as if she had said something quite pleasing. “It is no easy task teaching Meinish women the ways of an imperial court. They are as ill prepared for it as our men were. I know, though, that they value your example to learn from.”

  Corinn had nothing to say to this. Hanish set the papers down on the desk, turned more fully toward her, and said, “I have news you might be interested in. Larken just returned from Talay. He brought back information on your brother.” He waited a moment, studying Corinn for a reaction. “We have not found him, not yet at least. But I have no doubt we will. He is somewhere in Talay, in the interior. Larken believes he just missed him. He raided a village on a tip from one of the natives, but the Acacian who had been hiding there slipped away just ahead of him. Your brother Aliver has proven quite elusive.”

  “How do you know it is Aliver and not Dariel?”

  Hanish shrugged. “I thought you might clarify that for me. Is it Aliver? Is it Talay that he was sent to?”

  “Would it help you to know?”

  “Yes, I admit it would.”

  Corinn stared straight into his eyes and answered honestly. “I have not the slightest idea.”

  Hanish did not look quite so pleased with her anymore. He looked like he might push free of the desk and close on her, but instead he crossed his arms and spoke in Meinish. “You have changed a great deal, haven’t you, from the girl who stood before me nine years ago? Remember how we nursed you through the fever? The Numrek curse. Believe me, Princess, without our knowledge of the illness, you would have suffered much more greatly. Perhaps your siblings felt the full brunt of it, with no one to explain to them that it would likely pass. They will have changed also. It may be that you would not recognize them. Perhaps they would not recognize you. Maybe, Corinn, you are more one of us now than one of them.”

  Corinn’s eyes snapped up, fixed on him, clear in their scorn for such a suggestion.

  “Princess, where are your siblings?” Hanish pressed, speaking Acacian once more.

  “You have asked me that before.”

  “And I will ask you again and again and again. It may be that you speak truthfully, but I would happily ask you the question five times a day for the next twenty years if it would help.”

  “After that would you stop?”

  “After that I would ask you ten times a day for the next forty years, should I stay apart from the Tunishnevre that long. Corinn, you have lived nine years in my house, as a guest in the palace that was once yours. Have I harmed you? Have I cut a hair from your head or forced you in any way? Then help me find your siblings. As I have told you before, I want only that they return to your father’s palace and live in peace, as you have done. Why do you prefer that they live in exile, in hiding in some corner of the provinces?”

  “Wherever they are they are free,” Corinn said. “I would not change that for the world. Neither would they.”

  “You’re so sure of that, are you?” When Corinn did not answer, Hanish scowled. “All right, fine. It doesn’t matter. We will find them. I have the time and the power. They have few friends and fewer resources. We almost captured one of your brothers. I am sure of it. This means he’s on the run, apt to make mistakes, to trust someone he shouldn’t…. Believe me, Corinn, they are not living the life of luxury that you are here. I am sorry we have spent so little time together. Years have passed, but still you are largely unknown to me. I would like to change this. I will not be traveling as much as I have been. You and I will spend more time together. I am confident that when you know me better you will like me more. Perhaps then we will be able to figure out what you and I are meant to be to each other. How does this sound to you?”

  “May I go?” she asked, framing the question defiantly.

  “You may always come and go as you please, Corinn. When will you acknowledge this?”

  She turned without answering and put her back to him. She knew his eyes would follow her out of sight, fixed on her figure. This made it difficult to walk casually, but she managed it. She passed from one area of the chambers into another, and then turned a corner so that Hanish was soon far behind her. She had just exhaled a pent-up breath and started to let her face relax when she realized she was not yet free from observation.

  Maeander stood in the passageway she would need to go through. He had just stepped in, and was saying something to somebody in the hallway. He noticed her, paused. Larken stepped in from behind him and took a few steps into the room before seeing the princess. He looked instantly amused. Though he was an Acacian, he spoke only Meinish now. Standing near Maeander the two of them were tall, slim, sculpted testaments to all things manly in their respective races.

  Corinn kept moving toward them. She looked past them into the corridor, as if her eyes could latch on to something out there and pull her through them. She brushed past Larken without incident. As she reached Maeander, however, he shot his arm across the door, barring her way. She did not look at his face, but stared at the soft spot at the inner elbow of his muscled limb, covered in long golden hairs. An artery pulsed like a worm caught beneath his skin. She knew his eyes were on her, peering out from the shadows beneath the cornice of his brow. The touch of them was familiar. It seemed she had felt them ever since he first laid eyes on her, throughout each day that followed, in her dreams. She would sometimes awake looking sharply around the room, feeling that up until the moment of her awakening she had not been alone. This man, more than any other, had made her father’s home into a menacing place, while barely uttering more than a few words to her.

  As if recognizing this thought and considering it, Maeander did not speak now. He leaned toward her and touched the finger of his free hand to her chin. After studying her a few moments, he brought his face beside hers. The coarse hairs of his bristling beard brushed against her cheek. He turned and pressed his wet tongue against her temple, licked her with the warm flat of it.

  Corinn yanked her head away. She slammed the blade of her hand into the joint of his arm and fled out into the hall. She heard Larken ask, “Does she taste sweet or sour? I’ve always wondered.” She did not catch the answer. Later, she was not sure if she had actually heard Maeander’s laughter following her, but it would seem so. It seemed to follow her everywhere. Hanish Mein could say whatever golden words he wished. Maeander was the truth behind the Mein façade. She would never trust them. She had stopped trusting men long ago. She was not about to start now. She had not a clue in the world as to where her brothers and sister had fled. She was sure, however, that they must have landed in situations preferable to hers.

  Chapter Thirty

  The brig was going to run aground at full speed. It was right up against the reef, so close to it that the ship cut diagonally through the waves as they started to curl, teetering from one side to the other like an inebriated monstrosity. Spratling could see it all perfectly from the small platform that served as the Ballan’s crow’s nest. He was about to watch as the prize he had been chasing for four days had its hull ripped out and its bounty spilled into the sea. He would have a bird’s view of it, and he would have to tell Dovian all about it when he returned empty-handed. Do something, he thought. Bloody
do something, you fools! I haven’t chased you all this way just to—

  The old pilot, Nineas, shouted up at him. The veteran sailor had a way of making his voice heard no matter the circumstances. “They’re tacking back toward us! Spratling! You still want me to hold?”

  The young captain yelled back that of course they should hold! Of course! Their quarry was a league vessel, not one of their large open ocean crafts, but still a catch of enormous value. It was one of the brigs they used to transport their senior members from the coastline out to their platform base, a floating city anchored to the ocean floor about a hundred miles northwest of the Outer Isles. Normally, the brigs traveled within the shelter of several warships, each of these manned with soldiers of the league’s private military force, the Ishtat Inspectorate. Had it carried one of their board members, it would likely have borne riches unfathomable to a Sea Isle raider like Spratling. But it would have been impossible to get near without a fleet of ships. No one had ever even tried such an attack. This one, however, sailed all but empty by league standards, with no senior member aboard and not enough trade goods to merit deploying the Ishtat.

  Spratling knew this because one of Dovian’s spies, a so-called shifter, a master of disguise who had infiltrated the dockworkers of the league’s coastal base, had sworn this vessel was likely to be the only vulnerable one they would see the rest of the year. The message had arrived the night before the brig sailed, but Dovian was confident they could act on it. With his blessing, Spratling had sailed the next morning. The Ballan was a slim clipper meant for speed, with a tall mainmast and light construction. It was not a warship by any reasonable standard. Because of this, the brig had likely disregarded them the first day they trailed her. They might have noticed the strange contraption lashed to the ship’s bow, a sort of iron-backed series of connected planks tilted up on a large, reinforced hinge. At the top of it, projecting forward, was a hooked metal barb, treacherous looking at over seven feet long, sharp at the end, and as thick around as an arm for most of its length. It looked like a gangway that could be set down across a pier and hooked into place if the ship was to be unloaded over the bow, which would have been useful in the busier ports of the Inner Sea. But the purpose of the contraption was not nearly so benign, as Spratling hoped to prove. It was his design, after all. His “nail,” as he liked to call it.