Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

Yes, Corinn finally conceded to herself one afternoon as she rode horseback along the high trail that followed the serpentine ridgeline toward Haven’s Rock, Meinish women did have the potential for beauty. One just had to grow accustomed to the hard-edged angularity of their features. They had about them a similar bone structure and temperament as men of their race, but what looked chiseled, rugged, and handsome on their men was somewhat awkward on their women. Or so Corinn had thought for most of the years she had spent in their company. Only lately did she realize that she often measured herself against them. When this shift in her feelings had begun she could not say, but the rides she had lately been taking with an entourage of young Meinish women had done much to stir the feelings to the surface.

It began as an order. Hanish Mein, a messenger told her, requested that Princess Corinn spend fair afternoons with his cousin, Rhrenna, and her entourage of young noblewomen, friends, and maids. The messenger used the word requested, although they both knew commanded would have suited the reality more precisely. And he had called her princess. Everyone called her princess, though in fact she was a prisoner on the island that had once been her father’s. She was being held in a lingering purgatory by the very man who had orchestrated her father’s assassination and the ruin of the Acacian Empire and Akaran family. She walked the same hallways now as she had all her life. She took in the same views down from the palace toward the lower town and out to the sea. Many evenings she dined at the great table in the central hall. But she was no longer of the host family. Another man sat in the place that had been her father’s. The invocation over dinner was spoken in a different tongue, and it called for the blessing of a menacing collective force Corinn had no true understanding of. Her daily life was a balance between what had been and what now was, the edges of each blurred by present reality, warped by memory. It was her own particular, uncomfortable circumstance, unique to her of all people in the world.

This afternoon Rhrenna rode a chestnut mount she must have chosen to compliment her outfit: a vest of pastel blue and tan, with a split skirt that looked almost like a dress when she stood, but which split when she mounted. She was a pale, slim-boned girl composed of imperfect features that, fortunately for her, somehow combined to pleasant effect. She wore her hair long, in a braided fashion that took Corinn some time to separate from that of the men.

For the first couple of years of the occupation, few Meinish women had ventured out of Tahalian. Meinish men, it could be said, were possessive and protective of their women. The Mein were not fond of mixing their blood with other races and could think of few greater sins than one of their women giving birth to a half-breed child. It was not much better when women of the newly conquered empire began to mother children paler than themselves, gray eyed and sharp featured. Though frowned on, such miscegenation proved impossible to prevent. No matter the praise they constantly heaped on their own women, Meinish men still mixed with foreign women. They seemed to love the taste and feel and shape of the skin tones and features they claimed indifference to. Even Maeander, Hanish’s brother, was said to have fathered a small tribe of children. Gradually more and more Meinish women journeyed down to fill roles as wives and concubines, to add a greater domestic normalcy to life both in the palace and among common soldiers, most of whom were now living uncommonly luxurious lives.

Rhrenna had been in Acacia only a few months, but she seemed to have adapted to the place. One of her charms was her voice, high and gentle and better suited to the Acacian tongue than that of most of her people. “Hanish thinks you are beautiful,” she said. She wore a hat with a wide, meshed brim to protect her from the sun. She looked through the lace of it coyly. “But you must know that already. You understand men better than I, don’t you?”

“I have understood very little during my life so far,” Corinn answered. She had little interest in discussing romance or courtly intrigue. It was not her court, for one thing. But also, more piercingly, such notions reminded her only of loss. Despite this, she heard herself ask, “Why do you say Hanish finds me beautiful?”

“It’s obvious, Princess,” she said. “When you are in the room he cannot take his eyes off you. At the summer dance he barely paid attention to any partner but you.”

Another young woman, a friend of Rhrenna’s from childhood, agreed. She turned in the saddle to the four women behind them and pulled echoes of the same opinion from them.

Corinn would have none of it. “As if I impressed anyone that night! Stumbling around as I did…he had to pay attention, or else I’d have squashed his feet to pulp. Your dances make no sense to me.”

Rhrenna thought about this a moment, rocking with the easy motion of her horse’s stride, and then said, “You are a more graceful stumbler than most.”

Corinn tried several times to deflect Rhrenna’s praise, but the young woman always found a way to turn back her protests with glowing phrases. Corinn eventually fell silent, defeated at devaluing herself. And what should this admiration mean to her? She had been admired in the years before the war by women and men more refined than any of these girls. She understood her situation better than they did and was never entirely sure if they were aware of the falseness that tainted everything that passed between them. She knew that she was a trophy put on display for the pleasure of the Mein and for the edification of the new king’s subjects. Here, her presence said, is incontrovertible proof that the empire that came before the Mein has been defeated. See how this Akaran sits at our table. See her manners, her beauty, her refinement. See her and remember how mighty the Akarans were and how completely they have been whipped, tamed, and domesticated. That was the point that Corinn’s presence daily reinforced. What a misery it was! Her life had little physical hardship in it, no toil, all the luxuries and most of the privileges she had ever known. And yet she felt constantly set apart, possessed, owned-even by these young women who so claimed to adore her.

They were near enough to Haven’s Rock that the bird-dung stench of the place swept past them on a gust of the breeze. One of the maids commented on it, holding her hand to her nose and querying whether they really had to go closer. Corinn rode on, tight-lipped, aware that she took offense at any slight given to her father’s island, even one directed at the habits of seabirds. She did not have to feign adoration of the landscape around her. The island was at the height of its summer colors. The grass blanketing the hills had crisped to a flaming, metallic yellow. The only things missing were the green crowns of acacia trees. They had all been cut down during the first year after Hanish’s victory: an act of symbolic spite and another thing Corinn would never forgive him for.

Soon the dry season fires would flare up, sending up clouds of black smoke and attracting scavenging birds to pick through the charred streaks lashed across the hillsides like wounds. Corinn mentioned as much to her party, saying that they would soon have to choose the days they ventured out carefully. People had been caught in the quick-moving blazes before and incinerated where they stood. The young women heard this in silence, awed at the thought of a fire spontaneously combusting. It must have been a hellish thought to a people accustomed to nine-month winters and summers-as Igguldan had said-never free of the possibility of a sudden snowstorm. It pleased Corinn that they feared aspects of the island that she had known all her life, though she also felt the bite of remembrance that so often came with such thoughts. Igguldan. She could not bear thinking of him. What torture that she had come so near a great love, only to have it snatched from her by the callous actions of madmen.

The wind picked up as they approached the cliffs of Haven’s Rock. By the time they reached the edge, Rhrenna and her countrywomen were all clutching at the crowns of their hats to keep them from flying free. Corinn, not needing the protection since her skin warmed and browned under the sun’s touch instead of blistering and turning red, sat hatless and as composed as ever. Her amusement at this was short-lived, however.

One of the maids said, “Look, Larken is back from Talay. See his ship, there.”

It took Corinn only a moment to spot the vessel. It ran a crimson mainsail embossed with a short-handled pickax. It was Larken’s sign, bestowed on him by Hanish for his services during the war. The sight of that billow of red speeding toward them across a sea of shimmering, luminous hyacinth filled her with instant rancor.

Larken. The thought of him always reminded her of the time before her captivity. It was he who had knocked on the door to her room in Kidnaban nine years earlier. He had stood before her, tall and wolfishly handsome in his Marah robes. He had spoken so earnestly, with a calm at his center that conveyed strength such as she had not seen in some time. He had come from Thaddeus Clegg, he’d said. He was to take her to safety, just her. Other guardians would deal with her siblings as they were to head to separate destinations. It was not wise that they all be together in a single place. Thaddeus and her father had made arrangements for them. He produced documents to this effect, with all the seals and signatures in order, blessed with an imprint she knew to be Thaddeus’s ring.

“Come,” Larken had said. “You can believe in me. I live only to protect you.”

She must have wanted to believe him so very badly. How, she wondered now, could she have consented to go with him without first speaking with her siblings? She had tried to, but he had been so convincing and earnest. Hanish Mein’s agents were closing on them, he had said. Betrayers were rife now throughout the empire. Even their host at the mines, Crenshal, could no longer be trusted, and that was why they had to fly. Speed was everything. Her brothers and her sister had already embarked on their journeys. If she came now she could feel confident she would see them again soon. It was the only way.

Larken was courteous and deferential, and also efficient and forceful and decisive all at once. He knew each thing that needed to be done and managed it all smoothly. She simply had to follow his instructions. Doing so, she watched the world slip by around them. Out of the compound and down to the worker’s town of Crall they went, through the streets and back alleys to the docks, into a sloop that Larken cast into the wind single-handedly, with the skill of a lifelong sailor. By the time the sun was fully up they had rounded a cape and were out of sight of Crall. He named each landmark they passed on Kidnaban and explained just what he intended when they cut away from the island and aimed at the Cape of Fallon. By the time they crept into the quiet, sleeping town of Danos late that night, she had placed her fatigued person entirely into his hands.

Larken had explained that they were to meet a magistrate at a predetermined time and place. He was the only one who knew how they were to proceed from that point on, and he could be trusted entirely. The man was exactly where Larken said he would be. He greeted Corinn so effusively that it embarrassed her, something that had never happened before.

“We are safe here,” the magistrate spoke as they walked. “This meeting was kept entirely secret. No one but myself read the orders from the chancellor. The preparations for each stage of your safekeeping have been made separately, so that no one but myself understands the situation fully. This was all as Thaddeus ordered, and I’ve followed him to the letter. Trust me, Princess Corinn, the worst is behind you now.”

“Nobody knows of our arrival?” Larken had asked. “You are certain of this?”

The man answered that he was certain. He would swear to it on his life and that of his children. He had all the documents the two of them would need to proceed, with written instructions on whom to contact and the secret words to invoke to win their trust. They were, believe it or not, destined for Candovia. There were people there loyal to the Akarans who would shelter Corinn in such perfect hiding that Hanish Mein would never find her, even if he searched a hundred years.

All of this seemed to satisfy Larken. He said nothing more, and for a time they walked on. The magistrate chattered without pause, bemoaning the situation in the empire, lamenting Leodan’s death, and providing fragmented details of what she should expect in the coming days, promises that everything would soon be righted. Corinn half wished he would shut up and half welcomed his talkativeness, wanting to grasp onto him and hold tight until the order of the world stabilized again. She had never felt a greater need to cling to other people. She already felt herself slipping from Larken’s care into the magistrate’s.

This, in part, was why what had happened next stunned Corinn so completely. For some time the actions her eyes witnessed did not register meaningfully in her consciousness. As they passed around a corner and into a short section shaded from the moonlight, Larken whispered something. The magistrate turned toward him, as if reacting to a warning. Thus he was staring clear-eyed at Larken when he swept toward him. Larken lifted something above his head and slammed it down into the magistrate’s forehead. The man stood pinned to the spot that connected them, his body seeming to hang from Larken’s fist. Larken yanked his arm back, and the other dropped. His form, in silhouette against the moonlit courtyard, betrayed the weapon: a small ax Larken had worn at his waist. Corinn had noticed it before without thinking twice about it.

Larken took her by the elbow. “Do not make a sound. I’ll not kill you, but if you call out I’ll silence you in a way that will pain you greatly.” He led her forward a few steps, to the edge of the shadow. His face was close to hers, his breath hot against her skin. “That had to be done, Princess. Do not blame me or him. We are all players in a drama greater than ourselves. Come, our journey is not yet complete.”

“What-what are you doing?” Corinn gasped at the pressure of his grip on her wrist. “Where are you taking me?”

For the first time Larken ignored her queries. No polite response. No thorough but efficient explanation. He just dragged her on. Into hiding, yes, but not the hiding her father had planned for her. Larken, it turned out, was neither a loyal Marah nor an overt traitor. He simply held Corinn captive in an old monk’s cabin and waited to sell her to whichever power emerged victorious from the war. It was inland from Danos, well into the rugged hills, along a portion of the riverbank so steep and boulder strewn that few humans found reason to venture there. They passed the days in long silences, broken occasionally by conversation Corinn hated herself for allowing. He fed and cared for her. He bound her every few days and ventured back into Danos to gather news. So Corinn heard the progress of the war from his reports. Beyond this Larken had a great deal to tell her, incredible things she did not believe at the time but which were impossible to deny now.

She emerged from the cabin a different person than she had been on entering. She had shed all vestiges of innocence, all inklings that she could ever again find solace in hopeful, naпve belief. She would never be caught unprepared again, she swore to herself. She would never trust. Never love. Never put faith in other human beings again. She would learn all she could of the shape and substance of the world, and she would find a way to survive in it.

A full six weeks after he had abducted her, Larken presented Corinn to Hanish Mein. In so doing, Larken bought himself a place of privilege in the new chieftain’s empire. For her part, Corinn found herself thrust into the strange purgatory in which she still lived, nine years later.

She did not speak at all as the group of women rode back toward the palace. They arrived at one of the back gates. Blond-haired guards called down to them playfully, pretending that they must provide a code word to win entry. Corinn had no patience with the game. Nor was she happy to find a messenger awaiting her when the gate did swing open. Hanish Mein wished to see her that afternoon, at a given hour. She groaned inwardly and almost answered that she was ill and could not see him. But she felt the eyes of the other women on her, admiring and envious and curious all at once. Not sure how she wished to react, she accepted the message without comment, apparently nonplussed by it.

As she stood in the hallway outside his chambers-the very ones that had been her father’s-she found it took effort to keep a flush from her face, to slow the beating of her heart, and to keep her features stony. Hanish had an effect on her that she struggled to resist. She remembered, as she always tried to before speaking with him, the way he had laughed at her at their first meeting. She had invoked Igguldan’s name, promising that he would not stand for her imprisonment. Hanish had parted his lips and laughed and said, “Igguldan? The Aushenian whelp? It’s he you think of now? Fine, I understand that he was a handsome lad, a poet, they tell me. Perhaps you would think differently of him if you knew that he led his army to his nation’s greatest defeat. It’s true. They all died…quite horribly, really. His name, dear princess, will be noted only in ignominy. But if it heartens you, you may remember him as you wish. You Acacians are good at that.”

Corinn had never hated a person more than she hated Hanish at that moment. He had seemed to her the height of callous arrogance, cruel, repulsive, and irredeemable. It frustrated her to no end that she had to try so hard to remember this about him. Too often, she knew, she stole glances at him with a very different emotion than she wished.

“Corinn?” Hanish’s voice called to her. “Princess, I can hear you breathing out there. Come in and let us talk a moment. I’ve learned something that might interest you.”

That was another annoyance! Hanish really did seem to have unnaturally well-tuned senses. She stepped across the threshold to find him leaning back on her father’s desk, a fan of papers in one hand. He tugged at one of his lengths of braided hair, the one, she knew, that indicated the number of men he had killed in the Maseret dance the Mein were so fond of. He looked up at her and grinned, and she hated him for the way motion sparked the beauty of his eyes to life. What eyes he had! They drew her gaze to them unerringly. It seemed he was lit from the inside, his face a lantern in human form and his eyes the outlets for the gray glow within him. There was peace in them. They affected her as would looking upon the turquoise water of one of the white sand beaches near Aos. Some things are just meant to be beheld. Hanish Mein’s eyes-his entire face for that matter-were such things. It took considerable effort for Corinn to form her features into the suitable mask of cold disregard she always wore before him.

“The sun suits you so very well, Corinn,” Hanish said. He spoke Acacian, as he almost always did to her. “Such an even complexion, so well suited to the brilliant summer days down here. By the way, I am pleased that you have been riding with my cousin and her circle.”

“It is not a service I do willingly,” Corinn said. “It was, you will remember, a command you yourself gave me.”

Hanish smiled as if she had said something quite pleasing. “It is no easy task teaching Meinish women the ways of an imperial court. They are as ill prepared for it as our men were. I know, though, that they value your example to learn from.”

Corinn had nothing to say to this. Hanish set the papers down on the desk, turned more fully toward her, and said, “I have news you might be interested in. Larken just returned from Talay. He brought back information on your brother.” He waited a moment, studying Corinn for a reaction. “We have not found him, not yet at least. But I have no doubt we will. He is somewhere in Talay, in the interior. Larken believes he just missed him. He raided a village on a tip from one of the natives, but the Acacian who had been hiding there slipped away just ahead of him. Your brother Aliver has proven quite elusive.”

“How do you know it is Aliver and not Dariel?”

Hanish shrugged. “I thought you might clarify that for me. Is it Aliver? Is it Talay that he was sent to?”

“Would it help you to know?”

“Yes, I admit it would.”

Corinn stared straight into his eyes and answered honestly. “I have not the slightest idea.”

Hanish did not look quite so pleased with her anymore. He looked like he might push free of the desk and close on her, but instead he crossed his arms and spoke in Meinish. “You have changed a great deal, haven’t you, from the girl who stood before me nine years ago? Remember how we nursed you through the fever? The Numrek curse. Believe me, Princess, without our knowledge of the illness, you would have suffered much more greatly. Perhaps your siblings felt the full brunt of it, with no one to explain to them that it would likely pass. They will have changed also. It may be that you would not recognize them. Perhaps they would not recognize you. Maybe, Corinn, you are more one of us now than one of them.”

Corinn’s eyes snapped up, fixed on him, clear in their scorn for such a suggestion.

“Princess, where are your siblings?” Hanish pressed, speaking Acacian once more.

“You have asked me that before.”

“And I will ask you again and again and again. It may be that you speak truthfully, but I would happily ask you the question five times a day for the next twenty years if it would help.”

“After that would you stop?”

“After that I would ask you ten times a day for the next forty years, should I stay apart from the Tunishnevre that long. Corinn, you have lived nine years in my house, as a guest in the palace that was once yours. Have I harmed you? Have I cut a hair from your head or forced you in any way? Then help me find your siblings. As I have told you before, I want only that they return to your father’s palace and live in peace, as you have done. Why do you prefer that they live in exile, in hiding in some corner of the provinces?”

“Wherever they are they are free,” Corinn said. “I would not change that for the world. Neither would they.”

“You’re so sure of that, are you?” When Corinn did not answer, Hanish scowled. “All right, fine. It doesn’t matter. We will find them. I have the time and the power. They have few friends and fewer resources. We almost captured one of your brothers. I am sure of it. This means he’s on the run, apt to make mistakes, to trust someone he shouldn’t… Believe me, Corinn, they are not living the life of luxury that you are here. I am sorry we have spent so little time together. Years have passed, but still you are largely unknown to me. I would like to change this. I will not be traveling as much as I have been. You and I will spend more time together. I am confident that when you know me better you will like me more. Perhaps then we will be able to figure out what you and I are meant to be to each other. How does this sound to you?”

“May I go?” she asked, framing the question defiantly.

“You may always come and go as you please, Corinn. When will you acknowledge this?”

She turned without answering and put her back to him. She knew his eyes would follow her out of sight, fixed on her figure. This made it difficult to walk casually, but she managed it. She passed from one area of the chambers into another, and then turned a corner so that Hanish was soon far behind her. She had just exhaled a pent-up breath and started to let her face relax when she realized she was not yet free from observation.

Maeander stood in the passageway she would need to go through. He had just stepped in, and was saying something to somebody in the hallway. He noticed her, paused. Larken stepped in from behind him and took a few steps into the room before seeing the princess. He looked instantly amused. Though he was an Acacian, he spoke only Meinish now. Standing near Maeander the two of them were tall, slim, sculpted testaments to all things manly in their respective races.

Corinn kept moving toward them. She looked past them into the corridor, as if her eyes could latch on to something out there and pull her through them. She brushed past Larken without incident. As she reached Maeander, however, he shot his arm across the door, barring her way. She did not look at his face, but stared at the soft spot at the inner elbow of his muscled limb, covered in long golden hairs. An artery pulsed like a worm caught beneath his skin. She knew his eyes were on her, peering out from the shadows beneath the cornice of his brow. The touch of them was familiar. It seemed she had felt them ever since he first laid eyes on her, throughout each day that followed, in her dreams. She would sometimes awake looking sharply around the room, feeling that up until the moment of her awakening she had not been alone. This man, more than any other, had made her father’s home into a menacing place, while barely uttering more than a few words to her.

As if recognizing this thought and considering it, Maeander did not speak now. He leaned toward her and touched the finger of his free hand to her chin. After studying her a few moments, he brought his face beside hers. The coarse hairs of his bristling beard brushed against her cheek. He turned and pressed his wet tongue against her temple, licked her with the warm flat of it.

Corinn yanked her head away. She slammed the blade of her hand into the joint of his arm and fled out into the hall. She heard Larken ask, “Does she taste sweet or sour? I’ve always wondered.” She did not catch the answer. Later, she was not sure if she had actually heard Maeander’s laughter following her, but it would seem so. It seemed to follow her everywhere. Hanish Mein could say whatever golden words he wished. Maeander was the truth behind the Mein faзade. She would never trust them. She had stopped trusting men long ago. She was not about to start now. She had not a clue in the world as to where her brothers and sister had fled. She was sure, however, that they must have landed in situations preferable to hers.