The War With The Mein (8 page)

Like all the Aushenians that Aliver had thus far seen, Igguldan dressed proudly in his national garb: long leather trousers shrunk skintight to the legs, a green-sleeved shirt completed with a blue vest, a felt hat set at an angle on his head. They were simple garments really, like something worn on a hunt. This was in keeping with the national character. Aushenians loved the rolling forestland of their country and liked to think themselves still the huntsmen their ancestors had once been. From the strong, long-limbed look of him, Aliver felt perhaps they were that.

Aliver had once complained to his father that other nations should not have been allowed to maintain a royal class. What sense did it make for one king to rule over other kings? It undermined their authority, threatened to make others equal to them. Should there not be a single monarch for the empire? Leodan had answered with measured patience. No, he had said, that would not be better. All the nations of the Known World—other than Aushenia—were subservient to them in many ways, in all matters of importance. They were conquered peoples, but they were not without pride. Keeping their kings and queens, their customs and traits, allowed them to hold on to some of that pride. This was important because people without a sense of self were capable of anything. “It takes nothing from you to occasionally call another man royal,” he had said. “Let them be who they are, and let our rule over them feel as gentle as a father’s hand upon a son’s shoulder.”

It was not a full contingent of the King’s Council that met the Aushenian prince. A few senior members sent their secretaries instead—something Leodan murmured about under his breath. Thaddeus was there beside the king, along with Sire Dagon of the League of Vessels and enough others to grant the meeting the appropriate air of importance. The foreign prince was surrounded by other officials of his state, advisers and seasoned ambassadors. Aliver knew the prince to be only three years his senior, but in action he seemed a much more practiced dignitary. The older men deferred to him. Before they spoke they asked his permission with their eyes. He conversed freely with Leodan and Thaddeus, and he recited a long greeting from his father, Guldan, which sounded much like a poem in its rhythm and occasional use of rhyme. Aliver might have been put out to see a young man more comfortable than he yet was in such a role, except that Igguldan, with his open face and smiling manner, was hard not to like.

“Gentle councillors of Acacia,” Igguldan said, “in truth I have never looked upon a more beautiful island—nor more impressive palace—than this one. Yours is a blessed nation, and Acacia itself is the central jewel in the most lavish of crowns.”

For some time he spoke as if his only objective were to sing the praises of Acacian culture. How he loved each and every view the high citadels offered! How he marveled at the quality of the stonework, the functional artistry of Acacian architecture, the refined demonstration of wealth without pretense. He had never eaten a finer dish than on the previous night: swordfish grilled on an open flame right before him and drenched in the sauce of some sweet fruit he had never before imagined. Everyone he had met here had been so courteous and dignified that he would take back to his homeland a new perception of model comportment. Coming as he did from a smaller nation, one prey to nature’s shifting seasons and temperament, he stood in awe of the sublime merging of power and tranquillity that was Acacia.

He had a smooth tongue, so much so that Aliver was slow to notice at what point he shifted his focus to the true business of his visit. By the time he caught on, Igguldan was declaring that his nation took pride in its long history as a free and independent state. He knew he did not have to remind any gathered in the room about the role that Aushenia had played in securing the Acacian peace. It was the dual fronts and the combined power of Aushenia and Acacia that had defeated their common enemies years before. They might have had fractious relations on occasion since that distant time, but it was the spirit of their former relationship that his father wished their two nations to remember now.

“That is why I come bearing my father’s request that you admit Aushenia peacefully into the Acacian Empire, as a partner province on par with Candovia, Senival, or Talay. If you accept us, Guldan swears that your nation will profit from it and never regret the decision.”

There it was, Aliver thought, presented more clearly than he imagined such overtures would be. The Acacian response, however, was not similarly straightforward. The King’s Council members peppered the young man with questions. Asked whether Guldan would revoke Queen Elena’s Decree—that haughty declaration of eternal independence—Igguldan answered that her words spoke true for her time. One could not reach back into the past and change what had been. Guldan would never contradict Queen Elena, but he spoke of now, of this moment, of the days and years to come.

Thaddeus asked what misfortune had befallen Aushenia that after all this time she finally begged a place at the table.

“No great misfortune, sir, but we have lived long enough outside the trading circles of the empire. There is a new spirit among my people that chooses to look toward the future with fresh eyes. We see now opportunities that we did not before. My father acknowledges this foremost among us.”

“Umhmm,” Thaddeus said, unimpressed. “So your situation is that dire?”

There was an edge to the prince’s voice as he rebuffed this, just the slightest hint of aggravation. Aushenia, he said, was a modest nation, but it had never been poor. They were rich in amber, a valued gem known throughout the world. Their enormous pines were the best for sea vessels in the Known World. And their trees produced an oil that through a secret process they made into a pitch that sealed the hulls of ships against water and salt damage and worm damage. This, he knew, would be a boon to any nation that sailed the deep ocean.

Igguldan seemed primed to continue, but Sire Dagon cleared his throat to speak. Thus far he had sat silent and still at one end of the table, but Aliver had sensed the power of his presence the entire time. The League of Vessels. His father had once muttered that there was no more formidable force in the entire empire. “You think I rule the world?” he had asked, sardonic and cryptic at the same time. The league limped out of the chaos before Edifus’s time as a ragtag shipping union, a loose band of pirates, really. Under Tinhadin’s rule they won the contract to ship the new trade with the Lothan Aklun. With this legitimacy came such wealth that they evolved into a monopoly controlling all waterborne commerce. Before long, they were a diversified entity with influential fingers in every sector of the Known World. Once they won effective control over Acacia’s naval might—a deal brokered when the seventh Akaran monarch disbanded his troublesome navy and looked to the league as an efficient alternative—they made themselves a military power, complete with a private military, the Ishtat Inspectorate, which they claimed was a security force to protect their interests.

Sire Dagon was as strange looking as any of the leaguemen. His comportment was more that of a priest of some ancient sect than of a merchant. His skull had been bound so tightly in childhood it was squeezed into an elongated shape, the rear crown of it like the narrow point of an egg. His neck was unusually long and thin, an effect they managed by wearing a series of rings around it while they slept, their number increased slowly over a lifetime. His voice was just loud enough to be heard, strangely flat of tone, as if each word sought to deny that it was even being spoken. “Yours is a nation of how many persons?”

The Aushenian prince nodded at his aide and let the older man answer. Of free citizens they numbered thirty thousand men, forty thousand women, almost thirty thousand children, and an insubstantial number of elders, as Aushenians most often chose to end their lives once they felt themselves unproductive. They had a large population of foreign merchants within their borders, numbers unknown, and they kept a small servant class of perhaps ten to fifteen thousand souls.

When the man finished, Igguldan said, “But you know this. We have known for some time that we were being watched by league agents.”

“I am sure you are mistaken,” Sire Dagon said, although he did not clarify on which aspect the prince was in error. “In the past your people voiced objections to our system of trade. Are we to believe that has changed? Your father would fulfill all of our requirements as suits a position within the empire? You know what product the empire trades in and what we receive in return for it?”

In the pause before Igguldan answered Aliver looked from his face to the other council members, to his father and over to the leagueman. He felt his pulse quicken with a tendril of danger and could see the signs of the same on other faces, but nowhere did he see the sort of confusion he himself felt. What product did Sire Dagon refer to? Minerals from the mines, coal from Senival, trade goods and precious stones from Talay, exotic produce from the Vumu Archipelago: these were the products of international trade. The goods Igguldan had mentioned would find buyers also. But if these were what he referred to, why did he speak with such ominous import?

Igguldan answered the leagueman with a reluctant nod.

Pleased, Sire Dagon folded one long-fingered hand over the other and rested them on the tabletop. The jewel on one large finger reflected fractured shards of light for a moment. “With time and reasoned thought, all peoples have found our system agreeable. All have seen the benefits of what we offer. But because of that we must protect what we already have established. We have achieved an equilibrium. We would not want to upset this. Because of this, new parties are not entirely welcome at this moment. I am sure I speak for the king in mentioning this.” Sire Dagon nodded to Leodan without ever looking fully at him. Then he seemed to change tack. “On the other hand…Tell me, are your women fertile?”

Igguldan guffawed, but then caught himself as nobody else followed his lead. He glanced around and then back to Sire Dagon. His face showed the recognition that whatever bawdy joke he thought the leagueman was making had been a misunderstanding. There followed a discussion that Igguldan clearly found as strange to listen to as Aliver did. The Aushenian aides had come prepared for the question. They quoted statistics on the ages at which Aushenian women mature sexually, on the frequency of their pregnancies, and the rate of mortality of their young.

For a moment Aliver thought he saw amusement lift the corners of Sire Dagon’s mouth, but then he was not sure if that was the right interpretation of the expression at all. The leagueman held back whatever response he might have made and simply withdrew once more into hooded silence. The meeting proceeded without another word from the league’s representative.

Leodan seemed happy to take the conversation in a different direction. “I hear your conviction, Prince, and I admire it. But also I have long admired your nation’s independence. You are the last in the Known World to stand alone; for some of us your people have been…well, an inspiration.”

“My lord,” Igguldan said, “one does not feed and clothe and provide for a nation simply through inspiration. We Aushenians have nothing to be ashamed of, but it is clear to us that the world has moved away from the model which we so long wished for.”

“Which is what?” Thaddeus asked. “Refresh our memories.”

“Aushenia has on occasion been ruled by women of stature and wisdom. Our Queen Elena, in her decrees, proposed that the Known World be composed of a federation of free and independent nations, none subservient to another, all trading the goods they best produced, each keeping to ways true to their national character, honoring old traditions and religions while extending the hand of friendship to others. This is what she proposed to Tinhadin.”

A council member remarked that such a system might work at a subsistence level—each nation might make do and stay largely on equal terms—but none would achieve the wealth and stability and productivity the Acacian hegemony had created with the aid of league-managed commerce. They would have remained squabbling islands of national fervor, just as they had been before the Wars of Distribution.

Igguldan did not try to dispute this. He nodded and gestured that the palace around them was testament to the truth of that argument. “The queen would have answered you by saying that the grandest is not always the best, especially not when the wealth is held by few, fueled by the toil of the many.” Igguldan ducked his head and ran a hand through his hair. “But this is not what I came to speak about. Elena is of the past; we look to the future.”

“At times I can still envision the world your queen wished for,” Leodan said.

“I can as well,” the prince said, “but only with my eyes closed. With open eyes the world is something very different.”

After the meeting adjourned an hour or so later, the king took tea with Aliver and his chancellor. The two older men spoke for some time, letting the conversation drift from one aspect of the meeting to another. Aliver was surprised when his father asked, “What do you think of all this? Speak your mind.”

“I? I think…the prince seems a reasonable sort. I can speak no ill of him yet. If he represents his people truly, this is good for us, yes? Only, if they hold us in such high regard why haven’t they joined us sooner?”

“To join us means a good many things,” Leodan said. “They are right to have hesitated, but for some time now they have made it clear they would be our friends if we would be theirs as well.”

Thaddeus motioned with his hand that it was not as simple as that. “As ever, your father is generous with his words.”

“No, what I say is the way it is. They have held a hand out to us in friendship for years now. We simply have not grasped it.”

“And it is well we did not. Our patience has paid off.” The chancellor spoke as if he were addressing the king, but his eyes touched on Aliver long enough to indicate that he was drawing out the issues more completely for his benefit. “What the prince did not admit is that Aushenia must be suffering greatly. I marvel that they remained outside the empire for so long without collapsing under the financial burden of it. They have some mineral wealth, yes, harvestable forestlands and several fine ports and the amber and pitch Igguldan spoke of, but without the league to trade with, they have been able to do little with it. They are a proud people, but they have been forced to sell their goods on the black market, to traffic with pirates. This does not sit well beside all that idealism. They are making this overture so directly because they need us more than we need them. If we accept them, it will be a delicate matter working out their status within our empire. There are many burdens placed upon a new Vedel, a conquered member of the lowest rank. They must accept this without insult, although in truth a Vedel suffers much insult.”