The Other Lands (41 page)

Devoth. His name was Devoth. One day she would get to him, find him unprotected. Then she would kill him and let her brother free.

S
tanding in her private chambers as her servants made her up for the Blood Moon banquet, Corinn mulled over the strange letter she had received from her sister. It pleased her to learn that Mena had been found alive and well. Corinn did not, however, care for the flippant tone of mystery in the note Mena had dispatched to Acacia via messenger bird. It said, simply,
I am found, sister. All well. I’m winged! Will fly to you. Look up
. What in the Known World did that mean? Perhaps Mena had suffered an injury after all, one to the head. Even if she remained of sound mind, Corinn did not like the triumphant tone of it.
All well
. Never, in Corinn’s experience of rule, was all well. Mena might have dealt with all the foulthings, but there would be something else to occupy them soon enough. She would have to drill this into her sister when she returned.

“Please, mistress,” a thin-limbed servant said, “would you lift your arms?”

The queen did so, and the servant wrapped her vest around her and fastened it in place. Technically, the gown was a version of the garment that tradition dictated her to wear at the Blood Moon banquet, which commemorated the fifth king’s—Standish’s—suppression of the first mine revolt in Crall. A cruel act, though one the histories praised. As with her other clothes, Corinn had had the tailors cut the dress to the contours of her body. This changed the look of the garment considerably. Corinn would hardly be able to eat or drink anything at the banquet, so snug was the fit, but that did not matter. The maroon dress displayed her breasts and the slimness of her torso and the flare of her hips all to startling effect, an unnerving combination of ancient authority and sensuous beauty.

Her sister’s were not the only words written by one of her siblings that roiled around in Corinn’s head. She had also spent part of the morning with several volumes open on the great wooden tables in the library. She had gone there, as she had several times before, to read in solitude about the ancients: Edifus, like a wolf fighting for dominance among a pack a snarling competitors; his son, Tinhadin, who built upon his father’s shaky legacy with a mastery of god talk so complete that he came to fear he might utter it in his sleep and wake to find the world altered; Queen Rabella, four generations after Tinhadin, who rose to power and held it until her death, no king to rule her. She outlived six male consorts, but never agreed to wed. A smart woman, Corinn thought, and a documented argument against the conniving climbers who wished to bed her on their way to the throne.

She read these old texts to try to discern who her ancestors had really been, how they had succeeded, and what they could teach her. Ironic, but increasingly she reached back to those long dead for guidance while shielding her thoughts from those around her. She also read, searching for insights on the Santoth. Though she came across passages about them often, she never felt she understood them any better. They remained shadowy figures, like beings standing at the edge of her peripheral vision.

This morning, though, it had been a newer volume, one on her brother Aliver, that drew her in. Strange to read words that were supposed to be his. The transcripts of his speeches had about them a hint of the same formality that flavored the old texts. Though the book purported to be a transcription of his words, the shaping of scholarly hands was all over them. Rarely did she catch in them any hint of the brother she had known. But, of course, she had not known this adult Aliver, this warrior prince leading an army and stirring the masses to revolt.

And the content? Oh, such dreams. Such morals! He would remake the world as if it were moist clay that he could mold in his hands. Throw out the quota. Sweep away the league. Unclench the Akaran fist and let all nations rise. Free and equal. Partners in the workings of the world. How could he ever think that such idealism could survive a minute in the brawl that was life? It was folly of the highest order. The fact that so many had followed him just served as further proof of that. Fools’ folly.

The Snow King, the text called him. Corinn could not help but scoff. She remembered the night Aliver had proclaimed himself that. Did the scholars in their studies and the peasants in their hovels telling tales of the Snow King not realize that Aliver had been but a boy talking about a snowball fight when he spoke those words? Though at times his idealism struck chords within her, she could not forget the reality of things long enough to fall under his spell. There was a difference, she believed, between the words in books and the manner in which the living must move through the world. She had no intention of forgetting this.

When Rhrenna approached her, clicking her tongue in praise of Corinn’s appearance, the queen turned her thoughts back to the letter still in her hand. “What do you make of this?”

Rhrenna took the document and scanned it, though she had read it already. “She sounds pleased with herself. It makes me wonder—”

“Mistress, lean forward please.”

Corinn did as instructed. Funny that a hairdressing servant at times commanded her in ways that generals and senators and soldiers never could.

“Makes you wonder what?” Corinn asked.

Rhrenna pressed her thin lips together. “I don’t know if we should credit it, but Sinper Ou sent a message saying he’d heard Mena had captured the last foulthing instead of killing it.”

It took Corinn a moment to answer. She waited for the hairdresser to finish the braid work around her forehead. It was painfully elaborate, but Corinn liked a certain amount of discomfort while at official functions. It kept her from relaxing, which was useful. “Why would she do that?” she asked, once her head was her own again.

Rhrenna shrugged. “I don’t know. As I said, there’s no reason to credit it. The people like to make up tales about your sister. Given the slightest opportunity, they embellish.”

Corinn snorted in agreement. “Maeben on earth, she is.”

“Yes, well … I came to tell you that King Grae has just arrived.”

“Has he?”

“Surprise visit, apparently. He’s asked to attend the banquet. Just as an observer, he says. He’s content to stand to the side and watch.”

“Why has he come?”

“He didn’t say. To show off his freckles, perhaps, and the dimple in his chin.” Rhrenna grinned. “He’s not hard to look at.”

Corinn did not recall. She had seen him a few times since she ascended to the throne but had been content to keep him at a distance. She did recall that he favored his brother Igguldan, and something about this had displeased her. “He may attend,” she said, “but keep him at a far table. Even a king should provide us fair warning of his arrival.”

“As you wish,” Rhrenna said, “although I might need to wander over to the far tables myself.” Smiling, she nudged aside the servant who had just lifted Corinn’s slim crown. She slipped it in place herself. Made of white gold shaped like delicately thorned branches, it had a ruby at the center that was so dark it appeared black. Acacian royals wore crowns on occasion, though they could just as easily demonstrate their rank with necklaces, earrings, or bracelets, even with garments of a style made only for them for centuries now. But Corinn had taken to this piece since the jeweler first presented it to her. There was a rough texture to the gold, and the stone itself seemed to hide secrets within its depths.

“There,” Rhrenna said, backing up and studying Corinn as if she had worked the transformation herself. “You’re cruel, Corinn. You’ll have the men sweaty with lust and the women sick with envy. Most of them, at least. A few might go sick with lust as well.”

W
hen Corinn arrived at the crowded outdoor courtyard in which the banquet was already in full swing, she remembered vaguely that she had once thrived on adolescent courtly intrigue. In her early teen years she had cared about nothing so much as the jockeying for status and favor among her peers. Handsome boys, rival girls, older men’s lingering gazes and solicitous flattery; who bested whom on the training grounds; who wore the finest garments and how—it had all, for a time, been the very stuff of life. How foreign that girl was to Corinn now. How maddening that her father had let her live in that illusion for as long as he had.

Although what am I truly doing differently? the queen wondered, as she nodded and smiled and accepted the lips pressed to her hand. Again I walk through a maze of illusion, one of my own making. Perhaps some evening just like this one, some raving lunatic from the fringes will strike me down, just as befell my father. Much as befell Aliver. It’s a fool’s game, but what choice have I? Should I lock Aaden and myself up in the palace or in Calfa Ven? The latter was an appealing idea, but it would not do. Such a course was perhaps more dangerous anyway. No, she thought, better that I see where the snakes lie than that I find myself stepping on them. At least this way I can weed them out.

She moved through the gathered people with a cool detachment, guided by a bevy of maidens who flanked her as persistently as her Numrek guards. Unlike the taciturn guards—who, she noted, had grown more somber in recent weeks, almost as if they were displeased with their work—her maidens were all mirth. The court was a galaxy of many constellations. Corinn was master of them all, but before her floated representatives from around the empire—royal children, rich younger brothers and sisters, tribal princes and princesses—each the sun of some ally’s heart, each surrounded by his or her own attendants. And through this patrolled the ambitious and the arrogant: senators and nobles, Agnates and landowners, shipbuilders and leaguemen, mistresses and lovers, guards and escorts. Sycophants all. Liars most. Some loved her, but these she suspected of their own sort of weakness.

Her mind only really engaged when she felt a need to calculate, study, observe particular others to see what they might betray in unguarded moments. She sat in the chair prepared for her, a throne on a dais, a low table laden with food in front of her, a few chairs on either side for the chosen ones fortunate enough to spend some of the evening near her.

As a Vadayan priest mumbled at her ear, Corinn took in the room. It sometimes surprised even her that her understanding of what was really going on around her was so at odds with the appearance of things. On the surface she sat above a party of people, sumptuously dressed, smiling and gay. Torches lit the place. They were sheathed in tall glass tubes that funneled the smoke up above the revelers and cast blue and red and green and yellow light, depending on the tint of the glass. Musicians lined the walls and the railings that hemmed the space, playing tunes that danced from one portion of the courtyard to another, like a chorus of birds at play. Everywhere there were smiling faces, laughter, conversation, flirtation; between them servants wove with food and drink liberally belched up from the kitchens. In one small area performers enticed the guests to dance. She spotted Aaden at play with his friends. They were like silver fish swimming amid the adults in some complicated game of tag. And above it all the night sky, mild and clear, stars twinkling into being as the sun slipped over the western horizon.

As if all of that were not enough, Corinn had woven a spell from
The Song of Elenet
, a small work of her own creation that would enchant a few hours before fading. It was a mild euphoria let loose in the air of the courtyard, circling unseen, just the thing to make the revelers feel themselves especially attractive, to make jokes sure to succeed, to make the light sparkle a bit brighter, and to make food and drink taste even better than it was. So it was another festive evening in Acacia; what could be more pleasant? It never took her long to spot the things slithering beneath the surface, parasites at work despite the evening’s pleasures.

Delivegu was a reminder of it. She spotted him conversing with the party from the Prios Mines. How he had gotten in and what those men thought he was she had no idea, but in a strange way she was glad to have him near at hand. Eyes that lit with smiles when she made contact with them were misleading. She could sense the same eyes go malevolent when she was not looking. She could tell when conversation was amiable, and when the whispered words where unkind to her. She noted small things to examine further later. Senator Saden, while haranguing the woman beside him about something, avoided making eye contact with the newly enriched land speculator from Alyth. The man who passed beside him might have uttered something, but Saden did not acknowledge him until the two were some distance apart. Then he looked back and exchanged a knowing glance. Some petty treachery in the works between them? Likely. She would have Rhrenna look into it later.

Corinn’s eyes drifted away from Saden to settle on a young man who stood at the far side of the courtyard, nearly atop the staircase that led to the lower terraces. He was flanked by several men with the firm-jawed look of trained guards. The man’s reddish-blond hair was tousled as if an older brother had just mussed it up, yet his face—which Corinn sensed to be handsome even at a distance—took in the crowd with a confident composure.