The Other Lands (29 page)

“Street performers!” Lady Shenk complained. “They’re as fickle as the weather.”

“Yes, but they’ve voiced our message to the people more often than not,” Barad said. “Elaz, you were closest to the queen recently. Tell us what you observed.”

The former warehouse manager from Nesreh set down his spoon before he spoke. “I did as you asked, Barad. I joined the throng following the queen’s caravan. It was a small group at first, sycophants and beggars, but their numbers grew as tales of her deeds spread. She had made her way across northern Talay, and everywhere she went she left miracles in her wake. She made dry wells gush with water.”

“Through what trick?” Renold asked. He was a scholar newly defected from the academy at Bocoum.

“I know not. I have seen the water flowing in the Bocoum canals. It’s real water. Not a cloud in the sky. The air dry as a desert. And yet she filled them. The landowners were ecstatic. The peasants got drunk on the stuff, jumping and swimming the irrigation canals. I can’t explain it, but everything I’m describing I witnessed. If it wasn’t the queen’s work, I’d think it a great blessing to us all.”

“If it wasn’t the queen’s work, it would be a blessing,” Hunt said, “but we know she does nothing without her own purpose. To fatten a pig, a farmer will feed him well. The pig must think his life a paradise, never knowing he gorges himself so that he will be fatter for the knife later on.”

“You compare the queen to a pig farmer, then?” Ganet asked.

Hunt shrugged.

“Pig farmer or not,” Elaz continued, “she has worked miracles, without a doubt. Children come out to her caravan as it approaches new towns. Even old women with tear-filled eyes call out to her. I’ve seen this myself. Young girls from the villages threw wildflower petals at her feet. They’ve taken to calling her ‘Mother of Life.’”

“She made the title up herself!” Lady Shenk said. “She’s wily, Barad. I’m not sure that you’re a match for her after all.”

The large man furrowed his brow. “It is not a matter of my being a match for her. It’s the will of the people that must best her.”

Renold smirked. “All the worse for us. The ‘people’ are lapping up her gifts. And, in truth, it’s no small thing that she can make water flow from a dry well. She works sorcery. Think about that. It can only be that she has discovered Santoth secrets.”

“The Song of Elenet,”
Hunt whispered.

The group fell silent. Barad opened his mouth to say something dismissive, but he was unsure of what to say and chose to share the silence.
The
Song of Elenet
. Could it be, he wondered for the hundredth time, that such a book exists and that Corinn has it? Throughout most of his life he had considered Santoth lore simply fantasy, stories meant to amuse the masses and feed the Acacians’ sense of their past grandeur. But that was before Aliver and the way he dream whispered the masses off mist, before the sorcerers appeared on the fields of Talay to destroy Hanish Mein’s army, and before giant beasts began popping up here and there like weeds. Something had changed in the world. There were old powers at work once again, and—if that was true—it might also be true that the queen had found a way to tap into them. That was a dreadful thought, and it was not the only one they had to face.

To change the subject, Barad asked Renold to detail what he had learned about the league’s plans. The scholar said that on most things the league was impenetrable and their specific intentions shrouded as if by the mist they once trafficked in. Most who sailed the Gray Slopes believed that the league had burned what remained of their damaged platforms and abandoned the site in exchange for the Outer Isles. League vessels patrolled the archipelago’s waters like barracuda seeking prey, boarding any ship that blundered too near, even sinking a few and leaving the crews bobbing in the waters, food for sharks.

It wasn’t possible for him to get to the islands, but Renold had found out a few things about their doings through barroom interviews along the Coastal Towns. In Tendor he had spoken to squatters who had been ousted from the islands by Ishtat Inspectorate officers. Several used spyglasses and had seen league engineers surveying the land; and a few reported having been hired as laborers on compounds of buildings that dotted the island chain. Another man claimed to have shuttled a shipload of wooden dowels and thin boards to Thrain. He had noted the cargo because there were so many of the same objects, with no explanation given as to what they were for. The sailor had speculated that they were to be made into training swords, but Renold had a different idea.

“I realized it when I stopped at my sister’s house on my way here,” he said. “She has four children, two of them still young enough that they sleep in cribs. The slats that make up the crib’s sides are just as the sailor described.” Something about this made him uncomfortable enough that his words choked to a halt. The others waited as he took a drink of water, then cleared his throat. He gestured with his hands that he needed a moment to explain. “In the past, the quota was taken regularly from each province. Aushenia avoided this for generations, but I’m sure you’ve felt the insult of it in recent years.” He glanced at Grae, and went to sip again from his wooden cup. It appeared to be empty. “You pay the quota now, just as any other province—”

“Aushenia is not a province,” Grae said.

“As you say,” Renold demurred. “Regardless, I think a time may come when the league no longer collects quota.” Several began to question him, surprised, but he spoke through it. “The isles are to become plantations for the production of one crop: children. That’s what they are building. Compounds in which mothers will give birth to children. That’s what those dowels are for—for the cribs they will sleep in. Thousands of them.”

Hunt said, “As in a factory?”

Renold nodded. “There will be mothers and fathers and children who never know freedom. They will live and die on those islands or in the Other Lands.”

“Can this be true?” Elaz asked.

“Monstrous,” Hunt said.

“Worse than monstrous,” Renold added. “It will look clean to the world. The people won’t see it, but it will go on and on.”

“They’ll see it if we shout about it!” Lady Shenk said.

“Perhaps, but if they cover their ears …”

Barad let them argue for a while. Renold had confirmed what he had already expected. It was good that the group hear such things from one another, though. He had always known the league was capable of anything—anything at all—that would ensure their profits. This business on the islands was a logical progression of sorts. Why roam the Known World rounding up children, taking them from parents who then needed to be appeased or quelled? It was inefficient and messy. How much better to control production themselves, to treat the children purely as products, and to do it all far from the sight of the masses? If it proved feasible, the day might indeed come when the queen and the league stopped requiring quota from the provinces. Corinn could declare that she had freed them from the burden, and the Known World wouldn’t feel the crime. If that happened, they could shout about it all they wanted. People rarely believe what they cannot see. Not, at least, when seeing is more frightening than not.

“You understand the murky ground we tread on, then,” Barad eventually said, cutting in. “If Corinn declares to the masses that she has abolished the quota trade, they will hail her as a savior. She’ll put the scholars to work writing new volumes of the Akaran myth. She will tell the people that she has delivered on the Snow King’s promises, and the people will eat the lie. They will not believe—or care—unless we could take every one of them to see the place. Obviously, we cannot do that.”

Barad let this sit a moment, shifting his eyes from one to another. “That is why time is of such importance. We should announce the uprising before the winter sets in. I proposed we rise at the beginning of the harvest. We spoke of this before. What better time, when the world sees the fruits of a year’s labor seized and taxed by Alecia? I mean, we rise at the beginning of this year’s harvest, just four months from now. We cannot wait longer, not with the queen spinning magic and the league about to start this slave factory. This is our time. Do any doubt me?”

None seemed to, but Elaz did offer, “There will be many details to see to before then.”

“Yes. Yes there will. Let us not fear details. Let us make them our friends instead. For one, there is the issue of the queen and what she is doing. Has she the book of sorcery? If so, what other powers might it give her? And what powers would it rob from her if we took it?”

“Barad, we don’t have anyone to answer those questions,” Elaz said. “We had an agent within the palace—a maid I had great faith in—but she has gone missing. And we should not forget the blacksmith of the lower town. He was caught outright with an unfortunate document in his hand. He died to keep our secrets. And even they had no real access to the queen. She is not easy to get to, especially not when in spying on her we’re always at risk of bumping into the league—who are doing the same with all their considerable resources. At present we are blind—”

Barad interrupted. “What if we send the young king?”

Elaz froze. “Grae?”

The king, who had been considering the selection of carrots before him, snapped to alertness. “Me? You want me to spy on the queen?”

“You are due to visit Acacia, aren’t you? Drop in on them now. You would be received as befits your royal status. You can get yourself and your servants into areas of the palace we could not gain. You would arrive with a particular purpose, of course, one that would get you close to the queen.”

The young man looked startled for a moment, but then resumed a calm air. Plucking up a thin carrot, Grae considered it from several angles before he crunched down on the root. He spoke while he chewed. “And what purpose is that?”

He would have us think him calm and collected, Barad mused. He did not fault the young man, but he thought bluntness might crack the façade usefully. As with most things that Barad ever spoke aloud, he had considered what he was about to say carefully. He said, “You arrive on Acacia as a suitor! Flowers in hand, honeyed words on your lips.”

Grae spit out the chunk of carrot. “You’re joking!”

“It has been a long time since I felt mirth enough to jest.” He glanced at Hunt, winked, and looked back at the Aushenian. “I appreciate humor in others—but, no, Grae, I do not joke.”

Elaz sucked his teeth, a sure sign his mind was turning over the possibilities rapidly. “There is a movement in the Senate to force the queen to marry,” he said. “It’s gaining steam, I hear. While she’s away making water flow from the dry ground, the talk in Alecia is about who should bed her and how she can be convinced that she needs a man at her side for the benefit of the empire.”

Lady Shenk laughed. She slammed the table with one of her large, big-knuckled hands. “For the ‘benefit of the empire,’ they say? More like for the benefit of some lecher’s cock. That’s what they’re thinking with. It’s a mass agitation of ambitious cocks! Believe me, I’ve seen it before.”

“Lady Shenk is not wrong,” Renold said, speaking as the scholar he had so recently been, “but the Alecian Senate is not a Senivalian tavern. No, let’s not jest too readily about this. Acacian monarchs are bound by the old laws. Among them is the provision that the ruling monarch should be wed. They should endeavor to produce heirs to the throne, as many of them as possible to keep the royal line alive. Corinn has a son, yes, but a single heir is not enough, and Aaden is not the child of a legitimate union. If the senators push this issue formally, they have a case.”

“It’s about cock,” Lady Shenk repeated. “But you’re right about the Senate being no tavern. I’d not let a senator into a tavern of mine. Poor tippers, they are, and always complaining.”

Barad placed a hand atop the woman’s fleshy arm, to acknowledge her humor while also silencing it. To Grae, he said, “It is rumored that before Hanish’s war Corinn—then just a princess—was enamored of your elder brother, Igguldan. Had things been different, they might have married. You might be linked directly to the Akarans already. I know; things are not different. They are what they are, but there is history here to be exploited. I don’t just propose this because of Grae’s fine jawline and long legs. Those things will help, but what may entice the queen more are the political factors. If I read her correctly, she disdains the Senate. It is a necessary nuisance to her. I doubt that she will wish to marry anyone from that gilded chamber. A union with Aushenia would shut the senators up without giving them any new power. Actually, it would bring her your military might, which would make it even harder for the senators to cause her trouble. I’m sure Corinn will calculate all these things in the time it takes you to bend your knee in greeting. And besides that, the queen is a woman still. She must have womanly needs, just like any other.”

“Cock,” Lady Shenk said, looking at Grae as if the idea of sending him on this mission no longer seemed quite so absurd.

“Lady Shenk, you have added considerable wisdom to this discourse,” Barad said. “Even if the royal cock does not prove sufficiently enticing, Grae will still have the time and resources to uncover whatever secrets he can—including searching for
The Song of Elenet—
if it exists and if Corinn does possess it.”

“What if her highness accepts the king’s offer?” Lady Shenk asked.

Barad leaned back from the table, inhaling a long breath through his nose. “In that case, friends, we will have to keep a close eye on the young king. The lure of imperial power will be great. Just as the lure of Corinn Akaran’s bed will be. I trust, King Grae, that the honor of your ancient line and the righteousness of a free world will shield you against temptations to betray us?”

Grae aimed his blue eyes at Barad and held his gaze a long moment. “If I betray you, it will only be in that I cut the bitch’s throat before I deliver her. On all else, though, you may be sure that nothing can tempt me. I carry a hope that generations have been denied. It is bigger than you and bigger than I. I will be true to it.”