The War With The Mein (69 page)

Mena almost said that an army fought and thousands upon thousands died for the cause as well. She almost invoked Aliver’s sacrifice, almost reminded her sister that the Santoth had a great deal to do with their victory as well. But Corinn had not mentioned their victory. She had claimed the Numrek as her own and used the word me instead of our. Mena could have challenged her on all these things, but instead she said, “I will help in any way I can. Just ask me.”

“You are already helping. Carry on with organizing the army and training a new class of Elite. We will need superb warriors, ones with nobility and skill. Who better than you to instruct them?” Corinn smiled, thin lipped and curt. “I hear the storytellers are already spinning a legend about you. They talk of how you did battle with a goddess and tossed her down from her mountain perch. Those who wish to reopen the academy come to me promising that they will teach your swordsmanship methods as their highest Form. You, my little sister, are as much a legend as Aliver.”

“It was just a tree, actually,” Mena said, “that the eagle nested in—not a mountain. And I did nothing more than manage to survive against it.”

Corinn studied her a moment, amused, her eyebrows ridged like two identical peaks. “The storytellers never get it right, do they? In any event, I am glad that your gallantry was not the death of you.”

Suspecting Corinn was about to break away, Mena asked another thing that had been troubling her. “Sister, what did you offer the Numrek for their allegiance? I still don’t understand it.”

“They may govern a large portion of Talay as they see fit.”

Mena thought a moment. “Yes, but that doesn’t seem like enough.”

“So you say.” Corinn looked away, seeming to have lost interest. “Enough speaking, though. We are here to honor two men. Let us do so without distraction.”

In many ways it was wonderful to look upon the polyglot diversity of the company that gathered beside the cliffs. They all stood rooted to the earth, trying not to grimace at the bird stink that roared up on the wind ascending the cliff, cold and damp from the sea below. Candovians stood touching shoulders with Senivalians, who, in turn, stood next to Aushenians, brilliant in their white garments. Outer Isles raiders mixed among Acacian aristocrats. Sangae, Aliver’s surrogate father, stood among a group of Talayans, beside a band of Halaly, and another of Balbara. Vumuans had tied eagle feathers into their hair. The Bethunis wore pale paint on their faces.

In keeping with tradition, two honored persons not family members lifted the urns from the wagon. Dark-skinned Kelis, healed from the wound that almost took his life on the same day as his friend’s, carried Aliver’s urn; Melio, with his long brown hair whipped about by the wind, held Leodan’s remains: the two of them beautiful in the manner distinctive to their peoples. So young, Mena thought, youthful and strong, full of life. This was all as Aliver would have had it.

She wondered, though, what he would have made of the more dubious guests, like Rialus Neptos, who hovered at the edges of the company, red faced and sniffling, the collar of his cloak pulled up around his ears. Sire Dagon and several other leaguemen also attended, each of them seated on stools carried out for them by servants. What place had those men here—men who had abandoned Leodan, who had for years hunted and tried to destroy Dariel? They watched the proceedings with their chins tilted, their eyes often drifting up into the cloud-heavy sky, as if their minds were already elsewhere.

And Calrach and his Numrek contingent stood in a place of honor. Mena found it hard not to stare at them, almost more so because of the gentility of their demeanor, the neat clothing they wore, and the way each of them had his hair swept back from his face and fastened in a braided tail that hung down his back. Their faces were not actually that different than those of other races. Mena was not sure, however, if she thought they now looked more like other humans than before, or if she had come to feel that other humans resembled the Numrek more than she had acknowledged before.

The ceremony was a simple one. They were gathered together as witnesses. There was no eulogy. No last rites. No words spoken in commemoration of the deceased. No music to play on the watchers’ emotions. All of these things had been dealt with previously, in the days leading up to this one. Here, at Haven’s Rock, the two dead men were to be released as had all Acacian kings. Corinn made it clear that she considered her brother to have been a king, even if the crown had never officially been placed upon his head.

Once everyone was in place and watching, Corinn took the urn from Melio’s hands. She spoke her father’s name and wished him peace in returning to the substance of the earth and joy in finding his wife again and becoming one with her. From the moment the stopper was pulled free of the urn, fleeting streams of ashes escaped. When she tipped it down the plume sped away on the wind like smoke, flowing back over the assembled group, back over the island. A moment later, she released Aliver’s ashes the same way, thanking him for the feats of heroism he would always be remembered for. Corinn bowed her head and, in so doing, asked them all to hold to silence in remembrance of the dead.

Mena tilted her head but did not close her eyes. She watched her sister, standing with one arm cradling her belly, fingers moving back and forth in small motions to a rhythm kept inside her head. She held still against the wind, as if better to cut through it with the sharp lines of her features. She looked untroubled by emotion. Impatient, yes, but detached in some fundamental way.

The questions that had plagued Mena since Aliver’s death came to her again, disturbing what should have been a tranquil moment. She wondered if Aliver had made a mistake that morning when he had agreed to duel Maeander. Had he known that he would lose, or had he been so twisted with the desire for revenge that his judgment suffered? She hoped the latter was not true. She wanted to believe that somehow he had done just what he wished to, and that even this was all as he would have wanted it to be. She wanted to believe that her father, all those years before, had set in motion exactly the chain of events he chose to. She wanted to believe that this was all his doing. But, unlike her sister, Mena found it impossible to find solace in absolutes.

Once the ashes were dispersed, Corinn turned and studied the doleful faces watching her. She seemed to have little patience for the emotions she read on them. “You here,” she said, having to speak loudly to be heard over the wind, “represent all the peoples of the Known World. Do so with pride, with hope for what is to come. These kings of Acacia…they are free, as is our nation. We have now the possibility of creating the world these two dreamers wished for.” Her gaze fell on Mena for a moment and then passed on. “So, my people, wipe the mourning from your faces and let us turn into the coming days as Leodan and Aliver would have wanted us to. Let us meet them together, with strength in our hearts, with confidence in everything we do.”

A few moments later, Corinn stepped away from the cliff. She stopped beside Mena, leaned in close, and asked, “Do you really want to know what I offered the Numrek? There is one thing they want above all else—to return to their homeland and revenge themselves on the Lothan Aklun, who chased them up into the ice years before. This is a war I believe we must participate in, for our own reasons. When the time is right we will begin to prepare. We and the Numrek and the league will launch a fleet into the Gray Slopes against the Lothan Aklun. Once we defeat them, we will control the trade with the Other Lands. Then I will have enough power to change the world for the better.” Corinn drew back so that she could see her sister’s eyes. “Our battles are not over, Mena. We will not be safe until the whole world bows to us. Now you know what I intend.”

With that she moved away, leaving Mena standing as the procession issued around her. She felt a person beside her and knew it to be Melio when he slipped his hand into hers and asked if she was well. Mena was not sure how to respond. Watching Corinn’s back as she receded, she realized that she had not fully acknowledged the world as it was now to be and who was to rule it. She understood for the first time just who her sister really was. She had heard the title before, but now it came to her like words engraved in the air before her. It stunned her. There before her, receding down the hill through the windswept light of dusk, went the Queen of Acacia, with her forearms cupped around her heir and her entourage close behind her, the future hers to shape.

The End