The War With The Mein (46 page)

Holding her small glass out to accept Hanish’s offer of a refill, Corinn asked, “What next? Will you offer me a draw on a mist pipe?”

The question was posed playfully, but Hanish rubbed the grain of the weathered balcony abutment nervously, looking for a moment like a child trying to leave an indentation with just the pressure of his fingers. “Never.”

“Did you bring me here to seduce me? Is that what this is all about?”

Blood rose to Hanish’s cheeks. Even his forehead reddened. She had never seen such an involuntary display register on his features before. “I brought you here to offer you a gift. I fear you’ll throw it back in my face.”

“I strike fear in you, then?”

“You fill me with trepidation, Corinn, in a way that nobody has before.”

Corinn looked at him, her face giving nothing away, waiting. Hanish motioned for her to sit beside him on a nearby bench, from which they leaned forward and gazed over the railing. They sat side by side, near enough that their legs touched at the knee.

“What if I said that this was all yours?” Hanish asked. “This villa, I mean. There is no reason you shouldn’t have the best of everything. You were a princess; you are still a princess. It confounds me that you won’t take me at my word on this. I imagine a day when you and your siblings will gather here and enjoy—”

“You need not buy me, lord. I’m your slave anyway.”

“Please, Corinn,” Hanish said. “This home belonged to a family called Anthalar. You knew them, yes?”

Corinn nodded.

Hanish admitted that he had met one of them himself. It was during the war, before a battle. He had given the young man death, he said. He had always regretted that death. He saw strength in him, pride. He reminded him of his brother Thasren. So angry, so intent on doing right for his people. But it could not have been any other way. Being where he was that day, the young man simply had to die. A life lived truly created regrets such as this. There was no way around it. He regretted the things done to Corinn also.

“I know you cannot be bought,” he said, “but if you have any kindness within you, you’ll understand this gift is one I must try and give. If I’ve kept you penned up in the palace for too long I apologize. I used to fear to let you out of my sight.”

“Why?”

He shook his head, just enough to indicate he was not going to answer that question just now. “But you’re not a slave. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, actually I do know that.” Corinn drew her knees in, breaking the contact between them. She no longer felt giddy or elated from the drink. “I saw real slaves once. I was staying with a noble’s family in a village near Bocoum. I knew I was wrong to do it, but my friend and I stole out late at night and climbed onto the roof. We did this sometimes back then to look at the stars and tell stories. But this night we found a spot from which to watch the street below and there we saw a strange…Well, at first I thought it was a parade. But who has a parade in the middle of the night? In complete silence? And in what parade are the marchers all connected by chains? They were the same age as I was then. Ten, eleven, just on the verge of starting the change. They were chained at the necks, one to another to another, hundreds of them. Men drove them with drawn swords. They made not a sound over the shuffling of their feet and the tinkle of chains and…I never forgot that silence. It was dreadfully loud.”

“This sounds like a dream to me,” Hanish offered.

Corinn shook her head. “Don’t even allow me that much. It was no dream. Some part of me knew it, even back then. I did not know details, but I knew not to ask any adult what that procession had been. It was the Quota, of course. The Quota, upon which everything depends.” She stared at Hanish for a long moment. The small scar on his nostril was more pronounced than usual, his nose flushed from the liqueur, perhaps. “Why do the foreigners want our children so badly? What do they do with them?”

“Some questions are best left unanswered. But listen, you’ve confessed to me. Let me do the same. I want you to understand me and my people. We suffered so terribly during the Retribution. Do you understand that level of suffering? Twenty-two generations—as many in my line as in yours. But yours reigned supreme; mine struggled just to survive. And eventually we began to dream that old wrongs could be set right. All of that disruption we caused over the years—the petty squabbles and hijackings, the raids on Aushenia—none of that was true to our character. That was all just noise we made with drums and horns, behind which we hid our true objectives. We wanted Acacians to believe they knew us. I know our success gives you no joy. I’m just trying to explain myself. It is your right to judge us, but it is mine to want you to judge us fairly.”

“And so you killed my father,” Corinn said. She intended her voice to sound cold, angry, but instead she heard something pitiful in it, a desire to be comforted.

“I wish every day that there could have been an alternative. You do not know how much I wish I could have come to know you in some other way. But what I did against the beast that was the Acacian Empire I did not do against you. I’m no monster. Sometimes I wish the world to believe me so, but in truth my only distortion is that I feel the sorrow of an entire people. I must think of them first, understand that? I don’t love that I now send thousands of children into bondage. I hate it. But my own people have to come first. Understand that and you understand me.”

It was not that Corinn was untouched by what he said. It was not that she did not believe him or that she did not warm at the thought of this softness in his heart. She felt all these things, but habit had so sharpened her tongue that she responded with a meaner thought, one meant to defend herself even now.

“This is a strange method of seduction,” she said.

Hanish lifted his face to hers, his eyes brimming with moisture. The weight of his tears shifted as he moved and broke free from both eyes, spilling down his cheeks. It was so achingly pathetic a transformation that Corinn reached out to him. She touched him at the shoulder blade. She slid her fingers in line with the bone, across the fabric of his shirt, and onto the bare skin of his neck. She had wanted to touch him there for so long. His flesh was warm, soft as she imagined few parts of him were. She thought she could feel his pulse through his skin, but it may have been her own throbbing at her fingertips.

It was tiring being faithful to her father, she thought, exhausting to hope that her siblings would appear and have some influence on her life. Her stomach churned with the acids she daily nurtured. Why not just give herself to Hanish? Who better than he? She wished that Hanish actually had the power to make her whatever he wanted. She wished that she had the temperament to accept whatever role he shaped for her. He did have a capacity for cruelty. That would remain, no matter this show of intimate vulnerability. In the morning he would be Hanish Mein again, and the world would never know of the cracks beneath his façade of complete control. But for some reason—and despite everything she knew to be right and true—she wanted to learn this very trait from him. She wanted to eat it piece by piece from his mouth and take it inside her and be a partner to it.

She did not retreat when he looked into her face. There was, in fact, an expression on her face like defiance. “How did you know to bring me to this villa?”

“I’ve made it my business to know. Tell me it pleases you and I’ll be happy.”

“Are there rooms here with glass floors?” she asked, knowing the answer already.

Hanish nodded. “In the children’s bedrooms. They are below us.”

“Show me them,” Corinn said, in barely more than a whisper.

Aliver returned to the world of the living. He parted with the Santoth, promises made on both sides, and he walked himself gradually back to an understanding of his corporeal body. At first, his limbs swung unwieldy about him, heavy as if flowing with molten metal. His legs were a chore to lift. Each time he set a foot down he felt guilt for placing the burden of himself onto the earth. Why had he never noticed that before? The flow of time, the progression of the sun, the brutal heat of day, and the sharp cold of night: so many things to remember. It seemed the world’s volume was out of all order. What should have been the tiniest of sounds—wind stirring sand grains to tumbling, a grumble of thunder in the far distance, the blast from his chest as he coughed—rocked him right to the center. Again and again he had to stop in his tracks, hold his head, breathe low and shallow. With each step he considered turning around. But this was never really an option. It was like the hunger of a mist smoker for the green cloud. He had no intention of giving in to it. In fact, he had never felt more resolved to face his fate back in the Known World.

He met Kelis just where the man promised he would be. Something about being with another person broke down the last barriers between Aliver and the world. He heard another human voice for the first time in what seemed like ages. He opened his own mouth in response and was relieved to find his speech no longer the discordant clatter it had been. By the time they reached Umae, he and Kelis were running again, the pair of them looking much as they had when they left weeks before.

Umae, however, was not the same as it had been. It had doubled in size, lapping out of the gentle bowl that housed it and reaching out in all directions. Makeshift tents clustered around the main village, satellite settlements that had a fledgling look of permanence to them. As he and Kelis approached, calls went up announcing them. People thronged the lanes between the fields, perched in acacia trees, squatted on every area of available ground. Walking through them, Aliver heard inflections that marked the dialects of neighboring tribes. He saw Balbara headdresses made of ostrich feathers and seashell necklaces from the eastern shore and the skintight leather trousers worn by the hill people of the Teheen Hills. A cluster of high-cheekboned warriors greeted him with a timed shout. He had no idea what people they were. He answered them with a nervous nod, which—judging by their grins in response—sufficed quite nicely.

Thaddeus and Sangae awaited them at the center of the village. Both of them wore similar expressions of fatherly relief, pride, awe. Sequestered safely inside the chieftain’s compound, Aliver did the best he could to answer their rapid barrage of questions. It must have been unsatisfying for them. He was vague on every detail. He knew it. His sentences dribbled away half finished. He paused for long intervals, stumped at how to possibly explain his experiences among the Santoth. He could not really. Most of it had happened in a place without words. Some of it—now that he was firmly back amid the tumult of humanity—seemed as hazy as the dreamworld.

Both of the older men seemed to understand this. They were thrilled that he had made contact with the Santoth, delighted that the sorcerers recognized Aliver, and overjoyed that he had returned safely. They explained that from the day he left rumor of his mission had escaped the village and flown across the plains. Aliver Akaran was among them! He was a man who had killed a laryx! The prince had gone in search of the banished sorcerers! Neither Thaddeus nor Sangae had planned for the news to escape. It happened spontaneously. People who had kept his identity secret every day for nine years could not hold it any longer. The world, it seemed, was hungry for word of him. In no time at all the pilgrims began arriving.

“The ones gathered here are just the first to join you,” Thaddeus said. “We can move north from here at any time, gathering our army as we go. We’ll pull together a host like the world has never seen, so grand an army, of so many nations, that Hanish Mein will have to face us.” The former chancellor paused, seeming to realize he was getting ahead of himself. “Prince, does this plan please you?”

“We cannot simply amass numbers,” Aliver heard himself say. “We have to train them as well. Without discipline and coordination our host will be but a flock for the Mein and the Numrek to slaughter.”

Thaddeus glanced at Sangae. He sent him some message with a slight motion of his eyebrows, as if marking a point earned, and then returned his gaze to Aliver. He was glad to hear the prince thought on such scale and looked for details within it. He explained that he had been doing the same thing for some time. He had been in contact with several former Acacian generals over the years. They had all nurtured support among intimate groups. They had sworn themselves to secrecy and waited for his call to arms. One of them, Leeka Alain, formerly of the Northern Guard, had found Aliver’s younger brother.

Aliver interrupted. “He found Dariel?”

Thaddeus nodded. “I received correspondence to that effect while you were gone. They should be on the way to us soon. And they’re not the only ones. There are people in every corner of the empire who remain loyal to the Akarans.”

His brother was alive! The news that one of his siblings had actually been found and won over to this effort filled Aliver with relief, followed fast by a flare of worry. Little Dariel! How could he survive amid the coming turmoil? He almost said that Dariel should stay in hiding, but he caught himself. He was picturing the small boy Dariel had been. That child was no more. The years would have changed him as much as they had changed Aliver. Even more, for he was so young when the exile began. He wanted to grasp the old chancellor and ask him question after question. Where was his brother? What sort of life had he lived? What had he become?

He would pose all the queries later, he decided. Before that he had to ask something else. “You say people in every corner of the empire remain loyal to my family. Are you sure of this? We did so little for them.”

“Because they remember your family’s nobility,” Sangae answered. He said this solemnly, his wrinkled chin jutting forward. No doubt he believed it completely, somehow feeling some ownership of that nobility himself.

“They believe in you, Aliver,” Thaddeus said, “just as they loved your father. They likely love your father in death more so than they did when he lived.”

Neither answer surprised Aliver, but neither seemed satisfactory either. He turned to Kelis. “How do you see it?”

The Talayan cleared his throat and answered with complete honesty, as Aliver knew he would. “Because the entire world suffered from Hanish’s war. Life is worse for them now, under the Mein’s new tyranny. But you…you’re a symbol of a lesser evil. That’s about all people can believe in and hope for. So it feels right to them.”

“That’s not good enough,” Aliver said. The answer came crisply. Hearing the words he felt a confidence in them that surprised him. It wasn’t good enough to be a lesser evil. If he was going to do this at all, he had to aim higher. “I don’t want them to fight just to return to the old position of bondage. If I win this war, Thaddeus, it must be with the promise of changing everything for the better. Tell people that if they fight with me, they fight for themselves so that they and their children will always be free. This is a promise I make them.”

Thaddeus gazed at him for a long moment, his face unreadable. So unreadable, in fact, that he must have worked hard to render it so. Eventually he asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Aliver said.

“You speak an ideal that may prove hard to put into practice. The world is corrupt from top to bottom. Perhaps more than you know.”

The prince looked hard at Thaddeus. “I’m more sure about this than anything else. This war must be a fight for a better world. Anything less is failure.”

“I understand,” Thaddeus said. “I will make sure that message is known. Your father would be proud to hear you speak.”

Aliver stood and moved over to one of the windows. He lifted the shutter and, squinting against the sliver of brilliant light on his face, studied the scene outside. “All these people,” he said, “they came of their own accord? They’ve been told the truth. Nothing more?”

“Yes,” Sangae said. “We’ve heard from all the southern tribes, Prince. They know the mission you’re set on. Most want to aid you. That’s why they’ve sent emissaries here, to attest to their faith in you. They may spin tales of their own about your greatness, about how you found the Santoth. They may even pass stories of feats you accomplished in your childhood. The kind of prodigious feats, Aliver, that may surprise you to hear of. But Thaddeus and I, all we did was admit that you lived and that you were ready to retake the throne of Acacia. That was all they needed to hear to flock to you.”

“You say most want to aid me. Not all?”

Sangae shook his head regretfully. The Halaly, he explained, were the only powerful tribe not to respond enthusiastically. They had sent not a single soldier or pilgrim or representative bearing gifts and praise. They did send a messenger saying that they were aware of the claims being made in the Akaran name. They would, they said, hold council on them. With the Halalys’ haughty nature it seemed unlikely they would move without prompting of some sort. They were but one tribe out of many, but after the Talayans they were the second most numerous.

“We would do well to win them to our side,” Kelis said. “They are good fighters. Not as good as they think, but still…”

“Fine, then,” Aliver said, once again surprised at how quickly the decision came to him. “I’ll call on them.”

The kingdom of Halaly lay rimmed on three sides by hills. It centered around one great basin out of which a river flowed. The shallow lake there so teemed with aquatic and avian life that Halaly people never went hungry, even during periods of consistent drought. It was this bounty that made them the powerful nation that they were. They depended on the tiny silver fish that thrived in the lake—a protein source that was fried or put in soups, dried or pickled or crushed into a paste and fermented in earthen jars buried in the ground. As their totem, however, they picked an animal more in keeping with what they believed their nature to be. It was a less than original choice.

“Does every man in this land believe he was fathered by a lion?” Aliver asked, as he and Kelis approached the mud walls of Halaly. The stronghold stood three times a man’s height, lined across the top with twisting barbs of sharpened iron. It was formidable in appearance, but the wall served mostly to impress visitors, to seal the inhabitants safely away from the creatures that hunted in the night, and it stood as a backdrop upon which lion hides were pinned.

“Not all,” Kelis said, studying the skins. “On occasion a leopard did the deed.”

They had left Umae secretly, just the two of them. Aliver wanted to catch Oubadal by surprise, to honor him with a visit, and to hear whatever he had to say privately. He had been warned the Halaly chieftain would expect some sort of reward in return for his support. Just what he might want Aliver was not sure.

Since little surprised the chieftain of the Halaly, he was waiting for Aliver under a large shelter, a cone-shaped structure supported by a weave of gnarled shrub wood trunks, opened at the sides and thatched up above. Oubadal sat at the center, flanked by a few attendants. A group of aged men sat at the edge of the enclosure, just inside the line cut by the shadow. They followed Aliver’s approach with yellowed eyes and a belligerence at odds with their twisted, aged bodies, as if each of them were capable of leaping to his feet and throttling the newcomers should they pose any threat or cause any insult to their monarch.

Oubadal wore his royal status with a composure modeled on his totem, with the wide swell of a bare chest and a thick neck. His gestures were slow, eyes heavy and languid in their movements, his features rounded and prominent. Oubadal wore a gold nose ring on the flare of his nostril, brilliant against the charred blackness of his skin. The chieftain studied Aliver’s features with undisguised interest, intrigued by the thin blade of the Acacian’s nose and slight lips and by the dilute color of his skin.

“I wondered when you would come to me,” the chieftain said. “I heard of your triumph over the laryx. Congratulations. You should be proud; I was in my time. I am too rich now to chase after animals. Others do this for me. Nor have I ever spoken with the fabled Santoth. You are a prodigy, Prince Aliver.” He bared an impressive set of teeth, not exactly a smile but with some measure of mirth in it.

“I see there is not much Oubadal does not know,” Aliver said. “Then you will know why I have come to council with you also?”

The chieftain thrummed his thick fingers on his thighs a few times, a sign that Aliver was being too hasty. He moved the conversation back to pleasantries, asking about the health of the Talay, testing Aliver’s knowledge of that nation’s aristocratic families. Aliver answered as best he could, while silently chastising himself for launching into the point of his visit too quickly. As comfortable as he was in this country, he still too often forgot the traditional formalities in his haste.

When Oubadal fell silent a half an hour later the two men passed a few moments listening to the whir of insects outside and the calls of children in the distance. They each sipped a palm beverage, cool and refreshing in the languid heat. Aliver glanced at Kelis, who confirmed that the moment had come.

“Noble Oubadal,” Aliver began, “you may know already what I wish to speak with you about. Soon the world will be thrown into another great war, a struggle that will set right the wrong done when Hanish Mein led his people and a foreign army against Acacia. It may seem that the Mein prevailed, but in truth my nation was caught by surprise and only temporarily vanquished. My father had already begun a plan to unite the great powers of the world against the Mein. I am before you to ask for your support in this struggle. In return for your wisdom and for the strong arms of your fighting men Acacia will reward you greatly.”