The Other Lands (30 page)

To this, Barad nodded, a gesture of finality that he would let stand for words. What he did not say was that he would arrange to ensure Grae’s loyalty by keeping Ganet close at hand. He would teach the prince things, mentor him, complete his knowledge of the Known World. Or so he would explain it. In truth, the young prince would be insurance. He would be safe and prospering as long as Grae stayed true. If the king somehow fell under Corinn’s power, however … well, they would face that if they had to.

T
he morning Corinn was scheduled to meet with the Queen’s Council—just a few days since returning from her well-filling tour of Talay—she walked out into the sun of the upper gardens, Rhrenna at her side. Though the day was warm, she wore a long-sleeved dress of Teheen cotton, elaborately embroidered with overlapping animal figures that cavorted across her chest and back. She wore her hair in a tight bun, pierced by decorative combs that looked vaguely martial, as if she could pull them out and toss them as daggers if she grew angry.

She found Aaden swimming in the maze of canals and pools that cut through the gardens. His friend was with him. Devlyn was his name, the one Aaden seemed so fond of. It was unlikely that the pools had been intended for swimming, but Corinn had swum in them when she was young. It warmed her to see Aaden’s legs and arms sweeping out in the glass-clear water. He and Devlyn dove among gold, silver, and crimson fish, some as large as a man’s arm but all of them harmless. Up until this moment, she was still haunted by her nightly torment. She now banished the memory of the dream. It was a foolishness anyway. Aliver and Hanish were dead; Aaden was alive, and hers, and would be forever.

“Mother!” Aaden called, suddenly discovering he was being watched. He treaded water, losing his rhythm for a moment so that his mouth dipped below the surface. Up an instant later, he spat, then spoke. “Mother, Devlyn saw a hookfish in the pools. As long as a man, he said!”

Corinn stepped to the raised lip of the pool. She gestured for the boys to swim to the edge nearest her. “A hookfish, you say?” Aaden nodded. Devlyn did not, but he swam with a motion somehow more graceful than the prince’s. “What’s a hookfish?”

“You don’t know?” Aaden asked, though he seemed quite pleased to hear it. “It’s one of those long, scaly things with barbs down their tails. Like hooks but sharp as Marah swords.”

The queen could not help but bend and wipe the light strands of hair back from the panting boy’s forehead. Though the very notion of such a fish swimming below her son’s feet stirred a flash of unease through her, she knew it was nonsense. The pools had been safe since the sixth king built them for his wife generations ago. Why do boys always wish for monsters? she wondered. Out loud, she said, “Really?”

“Yes! And they have teeth sharp enough to cut to the bone! If they bite you, they don’t let go, even if they’re taken out of the water. Right, Devlyn?”

The other boy did not immediately meet the queen’s gaze. Speaking to the stone rim just in front of him, he said, “Yes. They have green eyes.”

“You saw the color of its eyes? That’s alarming. Why, then, are you still in the water?”

“To hunt it,” Devlyn answered.

Aaden nodded, but Corinn kept her eyes on the other boy. He was handsome enough in his way, with dark eyes and curls of brown hair that glistened with moisture. He would be stunning in a few years, a notion that did not sit altogether comfortably with her. Would he, in olive-skinned beauty, outshine Aaden? “And I suppose you plan to slay the beast yourself?” she asked.

To her surprise, the boy did not miss a beat in responding. “No,” he said, his eyes darting up to hers for just a moment, “Aaden will. I’m his second.”

Ah, so you do know your place? “And as a second, what do you do for Aaden?”

“Whatever he needs me to. Anything. I have to keep him safe.”

“I’ll be the king, Mother,” Aaden said, sounding older, a bit weary, for a moment. “He knows that. He knows to protect me. That’s why—”

Aaden stopped himself, but not before Corinn knew what he had almost said. He had nearly mentioned his wish that Devlyn become his chancellor again. He had stopped, knowing that she would not welcome the conversation in front of the boy. That was wise, although it was obvious from the way both boys’ faces went momentarily blank that they had discussed the matter between themselves. That was not as wise.

Or perhaps it was … perhaps a prince needed to secure his companions when he was young. Perhaps Aaden would be better off than she, with the pack of ambitious fools she had to contend with. So thinking, she was reminded of the day’s meeting. She bade the boys safe hunting and left them again enlivened and shouting excitement to each other.

The Queen’s Council was just one of the many panels of advisers she consulted. Unlike the others—who humbly brought her hard facts on the various subjects important to her rule—the members of the Queen’s Council tended to inflate their own import. She had accepted that she needed them, but she did not trust them. If they had not been necessary in order to keep up the appearance that she honored traditions, she would have dismissed them and bought advice, entirely with coin, from agents of her choosing.

Early in her rule she had selected some of the ten councillors herself in an effort to create a truly guiding body. She had handpicked Jason, her former tutor. It had not taken her long, however, to realize that most of her choices were just as self-interested as those thrust upon her by tradition. She had stopped trying to make them friends long ago. With the Council members, her guard was up and senses as alert as they would have been at a meeting of declared enemies. None of this, however, showed on the surface.

“Good councillors,” she declared as she entered the chamber that had once been her father’s, “do me the service of your knowledge that I may govern with wisdom.” It was one of the traditional greetings. She said it with every appearance of sincerity.

As she seated herself, the councillors answered her just as warmly. They could not say enough about the great things they had heard about her trip to Talay. “A triumph!” Sigh Saden declared in his nasally, aristocratic Acacian.

“A voyage of miracles!” Balneaves of the Sharratt family pronounced. In his subdued way, even Sire Dagon seemed impressed. He should be, Corinn thought, impressed and enriched because of it, and more than a little discomfited, too. On the surface they were all praise; beneath, they had to be wondering how she had managed these miracles. They must be stewing over what other powers she might have, a reaction she had intended all along.

Deciding to let them worry a little longer, she indicated that Rhrenna could call the meeting to order.

She did so by invoking the first five Akaran kings, calling on their spirits to infuse the gathering with wisdom. After that grandiose opening, Rhrenna directed their conversation to mundane matters, as Corinn had instructed. Records and accounts, mining production estimates, and even an assessment of the Vumu Archipelago’s potential as a source of timber: on such things they passed a long, boring hour.

Turning to military matters, General Andeson, the commander of the Acacian army, admitted that there had been a drop in the overall troop numbers but said it was for the best. He put forth the opinion that the military would better serve as a slightly smaller force than by recruiting less worthy new soldiers. Without a foe to fight, he said, it was dangerous to have too many armed men and women milling about.

“What about security?” asked Talinbeck, a bone-thin engineer with bushy, recalcitrant eyebrows. “My managers swear there’s something afoot among the workers—nothing they can put their finger on, but something.”

Andeson rubbed his thumb over his close-cropped black beard. “Show me a foe and I’ll act, but I can’t defend against something nobody can put a finger on.”

“I’ve heard rumors of discontent before,” Corinn said. “Are there signs that the dissenters are organizing?”

“No, Your Majesty,” Balneaves said. “It’s just the low-level grumbling of the masses. That’s nothing new. When the mist flowed freely, it was nothing but a murmur. It’s still little more than that, but the commoners want to be sedated! That’s why they drink. That’s why they smoke whatever leaves will blur the world for them. That’s why they fornicate and breed and brawl drunkenly in taverns.” He could barely keep the scorn off his jowly face. “I say get that new wine to them sooner rather than later. We’ll all be happier for it.”

Sire Dagon cleared his throat, puckered his lips, and held the room a moment. “The league is ready to distribute when you are, Your Majesty.”

Corinn knew they all wanted the empire sloshing in the stuff. Such a course was likely for the best and would commence soon. She told herself that she wasn’t delaying. She just needed to know the time was right. “I know,” she answered. “And in my time I will allow it.”

Baddel, the only Talayan on the Council, went into raptures again. “Your trip was such a success,” he said, “that I wonder if you plan another. Talay is big enough. You touched the coastal area, but in the interior—” He stopped, pursing his full lips as if he had not considered that before. His machinations were obvious, but Corinn almost liked him despite it. “Vast, dry mile upon mile. Another hundred wells between Umae and Halaly would do such good. Think what it would mean for the Halaly to have their lake back at full level!”

“By now Mena must have rid the Halaly of the beast in the lake,” Rhrenna said.

“I truly hope so,” Saden said. “It will refill as it always has. I was wondering about a different matter. The Eilavan Woodlands were sorely taxed by the harvest of timber. First-rate lumber, of course, and invaluable to a nation that needed to rebuild after war. The demand remains high, and the replanting efforts have barely begun. Might you—oh, I don’t know—make the trees grow back faster?”

Inwardly, Corinn rolled her eyes. Outwardly, she just looked at him. When had one of these fools ever proposed anything not meant to benefit himself?

Rhrenna spoke for her. “I wonder, Senator Saden, if you are here as the Senate’s representative, or as your own? Don’t you own an interest in the woodlands’ harvest? Your family, if I’m not mistaken, have been harvesting there for a hundred years or more.”

“We are one of the many families, yes, but—”

“So you’ve had more than enough time to learn to manage it properly. The queen does not act to fulfill the personal interests of the few.” Rhrenna glanced at Corinn. “Shall we move on to other topics?”

“Forgive us,” Talinbeck said. “We just don’t know what you’re capable of. We don’t know how you do the things you do. If you explain it to us, we’ll know and—”

Corinn did not like the engineer’s earnest tone. The last thing she wanted was for them to start being honest with her now. “Yes, let’s move on.” She waited a moment. “Are there other topics?” She knew that there was one topic they would likely raise before she dismissed them, but as the silence continued she almost believed she would get away with ending the meeting without facing it.

But then Julian, the Council’s most senior member, cleared his throat and motioned that he would speak. He was the only one of the group who had been a member of Leodan’s Council. Quite notoriously, he was on record as having doubted that Thasren Mein’s attack on King Leodan had really meant Hanish was launching a war. He had been wrong about that, but he had been right in managing to stay alive long enough to see another Akaran rise to rule. It was for that connection with the past that he was a part of the Council.

“I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it, Your Majesty,” Julian said, his voice tremulous. “I know it’s a delicate matter and wholly up to you to consider, but I would be remiss … if I didn’t bring up the topic of your betrothal. The topic is discussed openly on Alecia. Openly, in truth. Some have even written asking me to speak with you about it.”

Yes, Corinn thought, tap old gray-haired Julian for your dirty work, as if I can surely find nothing lascivious in the urgings of such a revered elder. “And what did they bid you say?” she asked, tenting her hands on the granite table and creasing her brow in feigned interest.

Julian blinked. For a moment he looked as if he had forgotten, but then it came back, and he spoke as if surely he had described it all to her before—as, indeed, he had. “Why, they wish you to wed, of course! They’ve even commissioned a team of scholars to look into the lineages of all the eligible Agnates. There’s quite a list, I assure you. Should you be interested, I could have it for you—”

Corinn interrupted. “Is that a list of true Agnates, or does it include the new families?”

“New or old, it makes no difference,” Saden answered. “The recent Agnate appointments stand as solidly as the old. All the same now, as it has to be.”

“Does that strike you as true, Jason?”

Her former tutor started in his seat. He had not said a word yet other than reading one of the earlier accounting reports, and would probably have been content with that. Whatever things he had seen during his years of hiding during Hanish’s rule had crippled him. Creases carved his face and white strands outnumbered the brown in his hair, though he was just past forty. Sometimes, feeling his eyes studying her when she was not looking at him, Corinn felt he viewed her with a certain amount of uneasy astonishment. Perhaps he remembered the shallow girl she had been and could not recognize the person she was now. She rather liked that.

Jason answered, “I don’t doubt that the old Agnates will forever remember that they are, in fact, more ancient lines; but in point of fact in the law Senator Saden is correct.” His fingers trembled when he gestured with them. “Your list of possible suitors—should you choose to consider it—is larger this way. Easier to find a suitable match, one that none would contest.”

“I see.” Corinn pressed her lips together as if giving the idea renewed thought. “What I don’t see, however, is why I should marry anyone. Do any of you think me incapable of rule? Or is it that you wish to challenge my son’s right to the throne? You think him a bastard, perhaps?”