The War With The Mein (10 page)

“The old woman that watches over me takes a drink that puts her to sleep.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, so it’s boring just sitting there.”

Val shoved a biscuit in his mouth and talked while chewing. “Who wants to watch an old lady sleep?”

Again, Dariel heard something ironic in the man’s voice, but he ignored it. He saw a rare invitation to speak about the things that troubled him. He explained that his older siblings were not always nice to him. Immediately afterward he corrected himself: Mena was pretty much always nice, but Corinn thought he was stupid and Aliver did not like him. Aliver had once shouted at him to leave him in peace, and Corinn had told him to stop breathing on her and said she wished he had been born a girl. None of them made time for him. None seemed to care that he had no one to play with, ever. He painted a sad picture of daily abandonment, hours in solitude, lifetimes of loneliness.

Val listened to all of this without interrupting. He just grunted every now and then, ate his lunch, and seemed to follow the movement of ships on the sea. Glancing up at him, Dariel stared for a moment at the flaring of his nostrils as he breathed, the hairs inside heavy with coal dust. For some reason he thought of how his father sometimes came into his room at night and kissed him on the cheek and forehead and mouth. Dariel never let on that he was awake, although he was a light sleeper and often opened his eyes just from the ruffle of movement as his father stepped into his room. Sometimes he had felt the man’s tears fall on his skin.

And then he felt bad for all the things he had just said. Why had he spoken any of those things? The truth was, he loved all his family so much it frightened him. His siblings were each in their own way versions of perfection that he adored. He feared the day that his father stopped lavishing him with affection, even though he also feared the unfathomable sadness that seemed to bring it on. He knew his mother had died, and he had no memory of her. If this could have happened already, something just as awful could happen again. He could lose somebody else, too terrible a thought. To change the subject he asked his friend to talk about when he used to be a raider.

Val seemed unsure if he should, but a moment later his memories got the best of him. He said that he had been born into a raiding family, the Verspines. Since his earliest memories he had lived a wandering life, mostly aboard the swift ships of their trade, sometimes camped on one of the Outer Isles, where they hid after successful raids. They raided up and down the ocean coast, from northern Candovia far down into Talay. They always struck at night, sneaking into cities or towns and waking the citizens into terror. They took what they liked and dealt harshly with any who opposed them. They traded their booty for any supplies they needed, and then they retired to the islands to live for months in tranquillity, fishing and lying about near the beach, drinking, fighting, enjoying life until the time came to raid again.

Dariel had started to really feel the cold now, the wind pressing at them from the northwest, but he did not want to admit it to Val. “Why are you not still a raider?”

Val shrugged. He mumbled that he had better get back to work and rose stiffly to his feet. Once at his full height he paused and took in the view of the sea for a little longer. “The truth is that I lost the heart for raiding,” he said. “Too many that I knew died the wrong way. When I was young, that didn’t bother me so. I believed that I deserved to have whatever I could take and that whoever I killed or hurt to get what I wanted was just in the way. You’ve got to understand that the world’s full of men who are little better than animals. I may joke about it now; you and I may sit here thinking on them times; but an animal is what I was for thirty odd years of my life. Problem is that a man is different from an animal. In the quiet afterward we know when we’ve done wrong. When I left them ways behind I came here to serve your father. You just think of me as Val, the feeder, who used to be a dead-hearted killer in some time long ago. Can you picture that?”

Dariel looked at the man’s craggy features, so large and wide spaced and blackened; his head perched atop a width of shoulders that might as well have been a mountain range for all the largeness of the shadow they cast over him. Despite all that Dariel could not imagine him as any sort of killer. As terrible and vivid as the man’s tales were and as eager as his boy’s mind was to hear them, he still could not believe that Val had ever done any man any harm. He was simply a laborer from the world beneath the palace, a sympathetic giant who had probably inherited his position from his father and who may never have ventured off the island, one who knew exactly the type of tales to tell a boy like Dariel and did so as a kindness.

Leodan Akaran was a man at war with himself. He carried on silent conflicts inside his head, struggles that raged one day into the next without resolution. He knew it was a weakness in him, the fault of having a dreamer’s nature, a bit of the poet in him, a scholar, a humanist: hardly traits fit for a king. He enveloped his family in the luxurious culture of Acacia, even as he hid from them the abhorrent trade that funded it. He planned for his children never to experience violence firsthand, even though this privilege was bought with a blade at others’ necks. He hated that countless numbers throughout his lands were chained to a drug thatguaranteed their labor and submission, and yet he indulged in the same vice himself. He loved his children with a breathless passion that sometimes woke him in terror from dreams of some misfortune befalling them. But he knew that agents working in his name ripped other parents’ children from their arms, never to be seen again. It was monstrous, and in many ways he felt it was his fault.

He had not instigated any of these things himself; like his children he had been born into it. He had grown up on the same tales he was now sharing with his youngest. He had learned the same reverence for the early heroes of his nation. He had practiced the Forms, stared respectfully at dignitaries from around the empire, and believed uncritically that his father was the rightful ruler of the entire world.

When he first saw the mines of Kidnaban as a boy of nine—the gaping chasms carved into stone, masses of humanity naked but for loincloths, laboring like thousands of insects in human form—he simply did not understand it. He could not fathom why those men and boys would choose such a life, and he did not ask why the day left twisted knots of anxiety in his abdomen. But just after his fourteenth birthday he had learned in quick succession that those mine laborers were conscripted from each of the provinces, that the heads of the various nations that visited Acacia were the privileged few, the very ones entrusted with the suppression of the bulk of their people.

This was shocking enough, but it was learning of the Quota that prompted him to action. In the throes of righteous adolescence, he went to his father, full of reproach. He came fresh from the lesson that introduced him to it and broke in on his father at sword practice. Was it true, he asked, that since Tinhadin’s time they had provided a yearly quota of slaves to a nation across the Gray Slopes? Was it true that agents in the Akaran name collected hundreds of boys and girls from the provinces, children sold and never seen again? Was it true that no one even knew to what labor or fate those children were banished? Was it true that these foreigners—the Lothan Aklun—paid for the slaves with a vast supply of a drug that kept much of the empire addicted and dependent?

Gridulan broke off his fencing. He tipped the point of his naked sword into the mat at his feet and looked at his son over the upraised stretch of his nose. He was a tall man—Leodan would never reach his height—with a stiff, military bearing. His companions—thirteen men he had known since boyhood—dotted the training space, a few fencing, the bulk of them standing beside one of the pylons, conversing. “Those things are true, yes,” Gridulan said. “The Lothan Aklun also promised that they would never wage war against us. This is something we should be thankful for. Tinhadin wrote that they were each like serpents with a hundred heads. I am glad that you are learning the realities of rule, but I do not care for—”

The young Leodan had interrupted then, his voice low, venomous, altogether unusual for him. The notion of slavery seemed a personal insult to him, such a foul thing that he could not hold back his anger. “How can you permit such an abomination in your name? We should do away with it at once, even if it means war with these Lothans. This is the only honorable course. If you do not do it, then when I am—”

Leodan might have been able to respond to the king’s movement had it not been so unexpected. Gridulan switched his sword to his left hand, stepped forward, and slapped his son with an upsweeping force enough that the boy’s head tilted toward the roof. He fell back, stumbling. As Leodan placed a hand to the stinging heat of his cheek, his father railed at him. He hissed that everything they had came from this very thing. To do away with it not only endangered all their lives but also denigrated the memory of the entire Akaran line, all of whom had seen the Quota as just. Only a fool would value the freedom of a few over the welfare of an entire nation.

“This thing has been done for generations,” Gridulan said, speaking close to his son’s face. “Tinhadin himself agreed to it. Who are you to doubt his wisdom? If that is not enough for you, consider that I do not command the army. In name, yes, but in truth the various portions of the army answer first to their governors. The governors, in turn, bow to the wishes of the league. And the league would never allow the Quota to be repealed. Instead they would connive behind our backs. They would arrange to destroy us and place somebody else upon the throne, understand? Then we would have nothing, and you would find yourself pining for the time lived blessed by this abomination. You might be sold as a slave yourself. There are many in Alecia who would welcome the irony of that.”

“Does it mean nothing to be a king, then?” Leodan asked, bracing himself for another blow.

Gridulan did not strike him again, though. His answer had more the quality of sadness to it than anger. “Of course I am a powerful man, but I am powerful because I am well placed in the dance of empire. I know the rules and step accordingly. But the dance is bigger than me, Leodan. It is a bigger thing than you. Perhaps this is too large a thing for you to understand yet. You want peace and fairness and justice for all, but your way would lead to none of these things.”

The king straightened, stretched his legs, and hefted his sword loosely in his hand. Before he turned back to his fencing partner he said, “Really, Leodan, you must study for years more yet before you challenge me. Do not speak of this again in public, even before my trusted men.”

Leodan, sitting on the sill of one of the large windows of his library, wondered if his father had at that point hardened his heart enough to become the murderer the coming years would prove him to be. He shook off the thought. He was spending too much time in the past, he knew. It was hard not to, especially on an evening like this, when the air seemed hushed with melancholy.

Though Acacia sat in a temperate zone well placed between the arid bushlands of Talay and the frigid expanse of the Mein, on occasion the island was visited by weather cold enough to allow snowfall. Usually this was no more than a dusting or two throughout a winter. A true accumulation came once every four or five years. This evening—the night of the Aushenian banquet—happened to be one of these, a late storm that ended a run of mild weather.

Snow had started with a few forlorn flakes twirling down through the dull light of late afternoon. By the early evening the clouds floated so low as to brush the spire points of the palace’s highest towers. They let loose a bombardment of white, puffy balls that fell in perfectly straight lines, pulled down by an appearance of weight at odds with their fragile nature.

In the short period of solitude after his afternoon meetings and before he had to prepare for the banquet, Leodan sought the seclusion of the library. It was a temporary reprieve, and already he felt it drawing to a close. He walked the deserted chamber with his eyes tilted up at the books, so many thousands of volumes. There was a book here that was supposed to be written in the language the Giver had used to create the world. As ever when he was alone here, he felt himself drawn to it.

He looked around a moment, verifying that he was truly by himself, and then he found the book. He ran his finger up the spine of an ancient volume, unmarked by anything but age. He had known where it was since his manhood ceremony, when his father had showed it to him. Inside it, Gridulan claimed, was knowledge of everything that made the world run. Inside it was the language of creation, and of destruction. Inside it were the tools Tinhadin had used to conquer the Known World. Terrible knowledge, Gridulan said. That was why Tinhadin had banished all who had ever read the book. He also had forbade his descendants to read it, although he charged them with remaining the custodians of the volume. He had hidden it in plain sight; they carried on the custom ever since.

As an adolescent Leodan had spent countless hours imagining himself wielding divine power, creating with words that left his tongue and reshaped the fabric of reality. He had never opened the book, though. He never entirely believed the story behind it, but he had been frightened enough to let the book rest. At times he had considered pulling the book from the shelf and leafing through it or tearing it apart or burning it or simply laughing at it; he never knew which he would most like to do. But he had never opened its covers before and would not do so now. He had largely stopped thinking about it some time ago. Stopped believing in such tales of magic. There was so little evidence of it in actual life, after all.

He set his finger atop the next book over, a volume of The Two Brothers. He tilted it free. He walked back to his alcove, thinking he might find inspiration to continue his tale for Mena and Dariel that evening. How he loved that he could still tell them stories; how he dreaded the inevitable moment he would watch them slip away from him, put childish things behind them, and shoulder themselves into the company of their peers. Part of him wanted his children safely happy, near at hand, content in the simplest ways, remnants of his love for his deceased wife that he could continue to watch grow.

But he also wished that they would fling themselves out across the world and tighten the strings of friendship around the whole empire. Although he did not like to travel himself, this was not an indication of disdain for the outside world. He had loved travel in his youth and had made many fast friends in distant lands. At least, he had believed them to be friends, although in truth he knew little of friendship. He had never been close to his peers like his father had been with his. Something about the mantle of kingship had made it difficult for him to find ease with men his age. Only in foreign courts—with translators speaking between him and others, with hand gestures and laughter a necessary feature of conversation, with the differences in culture a source of amusement and mutual interest—had he found the ease with others that he believed was friendship. This had been one of the joys of his youth.

Since Aleera’s death the world had seemed a different place. Perhaps all there was to it was that Aleera’s ashes had been scattered from atop Haven’s Rock on a day with a northerly wind that blew her remains all over the island. She was spread out across every square inch of the island. There was a piece of her in every handful of soil, in every item grown here, in the nutrients that fed the acacia trees, in the air he inhaled. He felt her touch daily. He thought of her each time a breeze buffeted him, whenever he turned his head and caught a scent in the air that reminded him of her. He even thought of her when he ran his fingers through dust gathered in some remote corner of the library. This was why he now feared leaving Acacia. He feared leaving her. Their lives had not been long enough together, but at least if his ashes were spread the same way, blown by the same sort of northerly breeze, they might share the long silence of death together. Other than the happiness and well-being of his children that was all Leodan wanted now. Who could assure this if he died in some foreign land? Who could guarantee that he would not spend eternity just as racked by sorrow as he had spent the years since Aleera left him?

Leodan looked up from the book. Such thoughts did not help matters. He was a king; there was a world around him that he could affect, perhaps for the better. There was one course that offered him the greatest chance of finding meaning in the rest of his life. One struggle worthy enough that if he triumphed he could stand a complete man before the memory of his wife and before his children. If he could break Tinhadin’s contract with the Lothan Aklun…if he managed it, he could die with some hope that the future held a noble legacy for the children. It was difficult to face the prospect directly and allow it to take form, but since the meeting with the Aushenian prince he had felt the renewed stirrings of possibility.

Igguldan had been a revelation for him. Clearly the young man understood the burden of foulness put upon one who would partner with the league. Though he felt his nation had to do it, one could see he still harbored enough moral backbone to loathe it. Maybe a young man such as that was just the person he needed beside him, a like-minded soul with whom he could work to change the nature of the empire.

His chancellor was right, of course, in suspecting that the league would not welcome Aushenia with open arms. It feared that the addition of one more nation might tip the balance of power temporarily out of its control. It wanted Aushenian products—not to mention their bodies to trade as merchandise—but it wanted them weakened even further first. As yet the Aushenians were not on their knees. They were strong of body and largely untainted by the drug addiction that stupefied so much of the Known World. They still had too much military power—something that troubled the league, as it had always considered martial power a threat, enough so that it even limited the size of its own security force.

Leodan suspected that Sire Dagon would soon come to him with proposals for a series of measures they could use to weaken Aushenia. They could smuggle more mist across their borders. They could send agents to foment intrigue or to entrap key persons into shameful scandals or remove them by innocent-looking means: an unfortunate accident, a fever, one ailment disguised to look like another. Leodan felt his hands trembling at the thought of it. His nation had used such tactics in the past. They would be proposed again.

Unless…What if he managed to bring Aushenia into the empire quickly? What if he secured them as an ally in a plot of his own? What if he received them as a partner to aid him in revoking the Quota, in wresting power back from the league, in breaking the ties with the Lothan Aklun? It might mean war on several fronts—first against the league and the conservative forces of the council and then, perhaps, against the Lothan Aklun, if they made good their centuries-old threats—but there might never be another moment of such opportunity in his lifetime.