The Other Lands (15 page)

Aaden drew back from his drink and nodded his single, sharp nod. “I understand. Only I don’t think I’d like it if Mena was like an eagle. They have cold eyes.”

“Better the cold eyes of an eagle than the timid ones of a dove. I’ve no use for doves.” She said this more sharply than she intended. She paused for a moment, wondering why. “As for Dariel … I don’t know what’s happened to him. He used to be fearless, they say, a raider. I didn’t know him then, but it’s clear he has a natural gift for leading people. I just wish he would use it more. He has no stomach anymore for the hard things. He still smiles and entertains and knows how to show joy, but he carries a weight around in his center. He seems to feel he must make amends with the world and all the people in it. His building projects … I don’t deny they’re useful, but he goes about them for mistaken reasons.”

“Is that why you sent him away?”

“I didn’t ‘send him away.’ I sent him on a mission. When it’s complete, he’ll return better for it. You see, Aaden, I am trying to help them both become stronger, stronger in ways that truly matter, in ways that sharpen them, ways that harden them.”

Again, she did not like the edge in her voice. She backed away from it, touched Aaden on his still bouncing knees. He was getting restless. She would have to let him go soon, go and be a boy for a while, free of lessons like these. She wished, not for the first time, that she did not have to say such things to him. Let him just be the boy he wants to be. But if she allowed that, she would be committing all the mistakes her father had made. Dariel had been but a little older than Aaden when he was cast out into the world alone, everything taken from him. Such things had happened before. They could happen again. If they did in his life, Aaden would never be able to fault her for not preparing him.

“Aliver was no better,” she said. “You should know that from me, because the tales they tell of him make no mention of it. He may have dreamed fine notions, but what are dreams? They’re nothing without the backbone to achieve them. Your uncle did wonderful things, of course, but he died with his work unfinished. He would have left the world in chaos had I not been here to set things right. His flaw, Aaden, was that he let emotion drive him. He let notions take the place of deliberate thought. Akarans have done that for too long. Tinhadin killed his older brother to secure his throne, but he killed his youngest out of fear. Even my father only half governed as he should have, choked as he was by an idealism that made him idle. But not any longer. I am not of that mold, nor will you be. I will teach you better than that. So, what I say is this …” She paused until he looked up at her with his full, gray-eyed attention. “Love our family without being weakened by them; honor them as infallible in public while noting their flaws to yourself; demand the most from friends without expecting it; imagine the worst from your enemies so that they cannot surprise you; and rely only on yourself.”

Smiling and softening her voice she added, “Yourself and your mother, I should say.” She mussed his hair. “All right, Aaden, enough of this talk! I can see you’re restless.”

“May I go to the Marah hall and train?”

“Yes. Do that. Show me what you’ve learned later.”

Aaden handed his glass to a servant, who took it lightly, bowing and thanking his highness. The prince mumbled his own thanks to the servant, and then stepped close to Corinn and whispered, “Mother, do you ever use your singing to make the arrow … hit?”

Corinn slipped her hand around the back of his head and pulled him close. With her lips brushing his ear, she said, “Never.”

A
n hour later the queen was back in her offices, sitting straight backed and expressionless as Rhrenna introduced Paddel, the head vintner of Prios. He was a jowly man, squeezed unflatteringly into a silken suit that bulged in all the wrong places. He was technically bald, but his scalp had been tattooed a dark blue-black. The ink followed his natural hairline, but the effect was unnervingly peculiar. Paddel seemed quite pleased with it. He regularly touched his scalp with his fingers, as if stroking and repositioning his hair.

Corinn decided to keep this meeting short. She actually knew most of what the vintner could tell her, having received detailed reports from the league for some years now. They had done their work; hopefully Paddel had done his as well.

“How have the trials gone?” she asked.

“Oh, wonderfully! Wonderfully!” The vintner could barely contain himself. He seemed oblivious of the fact that he flung spittle with each excited sentence. “You could not have asked for greater success. All that you wished for, Your Majesty, has been made reality. All of it.”

Corinn sat some distance away, behind her desk, but she held her hand out before her chest, a posture half protective and half a threat that she might smack him. He didn’t notice this either. “I hope so. Sire Dagon assured me the product would be worth any wait. In order for that to be true, your Prios vintage will have to be a very fine thing.”

“My queen, my wine is the balm our thirsty nation needs. You will be delighted.”

Corinn doubted delight would play any part in her emotions. She did, however, hide a keen interest behind her intentionally bland façade. She had waited years for this vintage. Balm for the thirsty nation. That would be a useful thing, indeed. It had not taken her long after seizing power to realize that her brother—however he had managed it—had left her gravely handicapped. The people were off mist, and their memories of the nightmares the drug had begun to induce must have been vivid, for none of them returned to the pipe. That was fine in the early days after Hanish’s demise. There was work to be done, and more than enough for the people to focus on.

Before long, however, their clear-eyed awareness began to be a problem. They set their sights on her and started to grow disgruntled. First one nation and then another grumbled for independence, complained about being overtaxed, claimed that agents in the night still stole their children, argued Aliver’s old pledges as if they were words from some holy book. Corinn was sure that she had to maneuver, cajole, bribe, flatter, and punish at a frenetic rate precisely because the people were no longer drugged. No Akaran monarch since Tinhadin had worked as hard as she had. If she had clamped down on dissent forcefully, it was the people’s own fault! The Numrek were hers to deploy, and use them she did.

Initially, she had asked the league to find some way to spread the drug again. After all, it would upset their trade with the Lothan Aklun. Those foreigners still wanted quota. That was why the league had taken over the Outer Isles, to make them into a plantation for raising quota. But the Known World, it seemed, no longer wanted mist in return for it. The league had urged caution, patience. They said that to simply put the people back on mist would be a mistake, even if it were possible. It was too easily recognizable, too much a sign of their old condition. Some might take to a slightly altered variation, yes, but others would chafe and foment against it. All still remembered Aliver and considered him their deliverer from mist. It would not do for Corinn to simply reverse that. They convinced her to wait for a new product to control the people, and in the meantime she accepted payment for the quota in coin and jewel and a variety of other things needed to rebuild the empire. That she couldn’t argue with.

It was seven years before they finally came to her saying the new drug had been perfected. It was, they said, made from the same base elements as mist, but they had managed to formulate it in such a way that it could be consumed day or night, without altering one’s ability to work, sleep, or procreate. It had proven difficult to contain it in liquid form and in a substance that did not degrade over time. This was important to them, though, as they were convinced the drug should not be smoked. It should seem nothing like mist. This time, they urged, it should be consumed as a beverage, a beverage like … wine. Prios had long had a history of wine making. With Corinn’s permission, and under league supervision, the operations had been expanded to cover as much of the island as possible. The result, finally, was this Prios vintage, a wine with a measure of the formula mixed in before bottling.

“Watching the test subjects,” Paddel said, “one almost wants to throw reason away and join them.” He leaned forward, beads of sweat clinging to his tattooed hairline. “The vintage, it isn’t grandiose. It isn’t unpredictable like mist. It doesn’t take one over completely. Instead, from the first drink of it one feels the hum of mild bliss, a constant, happy sense of expectation. On the wine, they are convinced that something wonderful is about to happen. Always
about
to happen. The feeling, when properly dosed, never wears off. They never wonder why this wonderful thing hasn’t happened; they only know that it is going to. It’s coming. Always coming.”

“And yet they still work?”

Vigorous nodding. “They do. Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they? They feel wonderful, so what’s a few more hours cracking rocks or whatever labor they’re at?”

Corinn glanced at Rhrenna, the only other person in the room. Her small features did not do justice to the sharp mind behind them, but Corinn liked that about her. With her freckled Meinish skin and pale blue eyes she could sit within most rooms without drawing any more attention than an average household servant. She was much more, though. She asked, “And when they are deprived of it?”

“That’s another bit of brilliance,” Paddel said, addressing the queen as if she had asked the question. “If we withhold it, the test subjects feel only a vague unease, like the start of hunger pains or like a chill. And what does one do when hungry?” The vintner paused, grinning. “Eats! What does one do against a chill? Puts on a cloak. Nobody thinks ‘Why am I slave to this hunger?’ or ‘Damn this chill, I’ll fight it!’ No, they do what comes naturally, Your Majesty. The same is true of the wine. In our trials the patients don’t even understand that they crave the vintage. They’ll do anything to get it, but they don’t even know they want it. And I do mean anything …”

Corinn watched him rub his fingertips across his thumbs at some memory of this anything. “What of our military? If our own soldiers drink this stuff, will it make them unwilling to fight? Peaceful?”

“Not at all. They’ll rush to battle confident of victory! Understand that the vintage—Oh, how should I say …” Paddel squinted his entire face as he searched for the words to explain himself. “They see the world with gilded highlights, yes, but they still see the world. They still walk through the motions of life as before, and honor their responsibilities. They honor them even better, in fact! You, my queen, will rule an empire of happy citizens. They’ll do whatever you wish, and they’ll never see their lives for what they are—complete and total drudgery!”

“And how do we control it?” Rhrenna asked. “Much of the empire drinks wine. Even children drink it diluted. How do we control who is on it and who is not?”

Paddel responded directly to the queen, grinning through his words. “That is for her majesty to determine, but in my opinion … Well, in my opinion, each and every person in the land could drink the stuff. They would all be happier for it, so what’s the harm?”

Rhrenna, catching the queen’s eye, expressed her loathing with quick pursing of her thin lips. Corinn silently agreed. She had never heard of anything worse, but she did not say so or let any emotion other than vague displeasure show on her face. “Fine. Continue production as you will, then. Store it carefully. Securely.”

“Of course. We do. We do. The Ishtat Inspectorate guards the warehouse. When, Your Majesty, might we begin distribution? Sire Dagon said the league are ready and will aid at your pleasure.”

“At my pleasure is correct,” Corinn replied. “You may go now.”

Go he did, ushered out by Rhrenna, although he clearly had to swallow a host of questions and declarations to do so. Once the two left the room, Corinn inhaled deeply, trying to loosen the tension that had built in her as she spoke with the vintner. She smelled him—a sweet, salty scent as if his sweat were some sort of sugared seawater. She would ask Rhrenna to have incense lit when she returned. A soothing scent—that was what she needed. Something to let her think clearly on this.

She loathed the pleasure Paddel seemed to take in the venture. Coming from him the entire project seemed tainted by his vile fingertips. But that should not matter, she knew. It was the result that she cared about; and the results, by all accounts, were as advantageous as she could have hoped. She understood now why the league had been willing to wait to see the formula and the means of distribution perfected. She had only to give the word. The wine would flow through the veins of trade, to markets and taverns, to sit on tables in every corner of the empire. It would wet the lips of laborers and thieves, farmers and merchants, scholars and officials. It would be hard to keep it from the gilded goblets of the aristocracy, but they were as troublesome in their simpering ways as ranting prophets like Barad were among the masses. Let them all be deluded. Let the world rest for a while without strife. Even Aliver could not have objected to that.