Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

How strange this land is, Hanish thought as he looked out from his office balcony across the tremulous shimmer of the Inner Sea. It had always seemed unnatural to him that a land should be so kind to the living. It struck him as unhealthy-in a manner of speaking-that a climate could be so healthy, so benign. Here was a land in which the fundamental struggles Hanish considered necessary to life had been removed or had never existed. One could step outside at any time of the year into mild weather, or at worst a chill or a few snowflakes. The coldest weather Acacia could offer was nothing that a Meinish child could not stand naked in through an entire night. Up on the plateau, a single supply forgotten in the wild, a single mistake made, a sudden change in the winds, a clue left for the wolf packs…There were so many forces in that world intent on harm that one could never relax. Nothing could be done halfheartedly. Acacia was something else entirely. The ease of it, the luxury…Well, perhaps there was a peril in such things. One just had to recognize that danger had a soft face as well as a harsh one.

“King Hanish Mein, it surprises me that a man in your position would stand with his back to an accessible room.”

Hanish recognized the voice behind him. He had been waiting for him, but he would have recognized the voice wherever he heard it. There was no mistaking the nasal whine, the self-satisfied air, the space in between certain words filled with a sound like purring. He prepared himself to be unnerved. He let the emotion possess him for a moment and pass through, so that none of it showed on his face. With men like Sire Dagon the ability to hide one’s true thoughts, while remaining skeptical to anything proffered by the other, was imperative.

“I am not a king,” Hanish said, turning to face Sire Dagon. “Please, I prefer to remain a chieftain. It just so happens I am now the chief chieftain of the Known World. As for my safety, not all palaces are as cutthroat as those of the league.”

“Hmmm…that’s not what I’ve heard,” the league master said. Though tall of stature, his body had about it an awkward fragility, as if there were barely enough muscle tissue to support his frame. His elongated head was hooded, but the bright light of the afternoon illumed his face with rare detail. His eyes had the bloodshot taint of a regular mist smoker. Yet they were alert, the mind behind them unclouded. Hanish had never understood their use of the drug. They had clearly harnessed it to purposes different from those of the sedated masses.

Men of the league did not touch others in greeting, so the two men simply stepped near to each other and bowed. “But anyway,” Sire Dagon continued, “I am glad it is you I meet with now as opposed to some other, to some impostor. One hears talk that you could at any day be called to that dance of yours. What do you call it?”

Hanish knew very well that Sire Dagon remembered the word. Leaguemen had encyclopedic memories. “The Maseret,” he answered.

“Yes, that’s it. The Maseret. Forgive me for suggesting that this custom should be discouraged. Your prowess is renowned, yes, but to tell any man of your race that he could have for himself all that you have earned is a mistake. Why wave such a possibility before others? This could soon stir ambitious fools to challenge you.”

Several have done just that, Hanish thought. He had danced five times since coming south to Acacia, which meant that five of his own men had died on his knife blade. Each of them desired his power. Each hoped to gain everything through a single act of murder. He knew that Sire Dagon knew this already also. No need to bring it up. “You honor me with the suggestion that it matters to the league just whom they deal with.”

“You gave your people the world they now rule. The league does not forget this, even if some others close to you do. Personally I admire your focus. And, yes, Hanish, that is a compliment. At my age few things interest me. My friend, even the acquisition of wealth has become more a force of habit than an ambition.”

Hanish doubted that even looming death could extinguish a leagueman’s ravenous ambition, but he gave no outward sign of it. Nor did he acknowledge the reference to others close to him. Was that a jibe or a warning? He motioned that they should find relief from the sun.

Inside, they sat across from each other in high-backed leather chairs, an ornate table of the Senivalian fashion between them. A band of servants entered, food and drink trays balanced on their bare arms. The two men conversed for some time. Each wore a faзade of casual comfort in the other’s presence, like old friends with nothing more pressing to discuss than the length of the growing season on Acacia, the coming migration of the swallows, the positive effects of sea air on health. Hanish welcomed the respite. It allowed him to study Sire Dagon, to weigh not just what he said but how he said it, to look for thoughts betrayed by the motion of his hands or the emphasis placed on certain words. He knew the leagueman was putting him through a similar inspection.

“So, Sire Dagon, you have returned recently from the other side of the world?”

“I have returned from the other side of the world, yes.”

As he had tried before on many occasions, Hanish wanted to probe this leagueman for information of the foreigners, the Lothan Aklun. Who were these people who shaped so much of the destiny of the Known World? They had, in a way, been his allies in fighting against Leodan Akaran, but he had never set eyes on one of them and knew nothing of their customs or history. He had never so much as heard one of them given an individual name. They resided on a chain of barrier islands that ran the length of the continent known as the Other Lands. They had no wish to interact with the Known World, being content with the riches the Quota provided them. As far as Hanish knew, none of them had ever ventured across the Gray Slopes themselves; the league did that for them.

During his first years in power he had demanded to know whom he was dealing with. League representatives had promised to pass on his “request,” but nothing ever came of it. He had even peppered Calrach of the Numrek with questions about them. His people came from that side of the world, but they offered him little that made sense. Calrach had referred to the Lothan Aklun as “unimportant.” They were no more than traders, he claimed.

Nine years in power and the Lothan Aklun were real to Hanish only because of their ravenous appetite for child slaves and because they produced the drug that had helped him soothe his tumultuous empire. Leaguemen assured him that was as it had to be, and he knew Sire Dagon would provide no new answers to his questions now. He chose not to raise the subject again.

“By the way,” Sire Dagon said, “the Lothan are pleased that you have made progress with the antoks. They presented them to you in the belief that you would find a way to harness their ravenous appetites. It pleases them that you have done so.”

Hanish nodded. He had actually had little to do with these antoks. They were strange beasts that he had laid eyes on only once. They were enormous creatures, like living versions of the giants whose bones were sometimes found in the ground. He could scarcely describe them. They were a mixture of the worst swinish and canine traits, unfeeling, brutal, ravenous. He eventually conceived of a practical way he might use them in battle, but he had left it to Maeander to handle the creatures in a remote compound in Senival. The less he heard about the beasts, the better.

Sire Dagon did not linger on them long. “I trust you will be pleased by the news I bring,” he said. “The Lothan Aklun are anxious to increase their trade with you. They have been patient these many years, as you know. The scant tribute you have sent them thus far…you understand that they consider it a kindness done to you that they have accepted it without complaint and that they have supplied the empire with mist on credit, as it were. It was a necessary period of adjustment, but now it is concluded.”

He paused, raised and lowered a single eyebrow. Hanish simply motioned with his fingers that he should continue.

“We have pledged that we will deliver a full shipment of Quota slaves to them before the winter. It will be double the amount the Akarans offered, but this is no more than what you agreed to before the war. From each province they request five thousand bodies, evenly distributed between the sexes, no more or less of any one race. The age range may need to be larger than before, but they have no issue with this. In return, they will increase the mist by a third. This may not seem much, but the drug has been refined. It is no longer as incapacitating as before, and it is more addictive. The body adjusts to it in a manner that means when deprived of it the user experiences significant distress-hallucinations, fever, pain. Most will do anything just to ensure their supply. This is all detailed in documents supporting the revised treaty. And that, Hanish Mein, is all there is to it. You’ll be glad to hear that they demand nothing more from you than this.”

Hanish glanced away, thinking that they demand nothing more than the world itself. Generous of them. His gaze settled on a golden monkey that had perched on the banister of the balcony, its yellow-orange hair aflame in the sunlight. Hanish did not like the creatures. Never had. They had about them a noisy, knowing air, as if this whole palace was actually theirs and he was just an interloper. Early in his stay on Acacia he had introduced another variety of primate, a stout thing with long snow-white hair and a brilliant blue face. But these had proved unruly and belligerent. They hunted down the goldens and left bloody, half-eaten corpses strewn around the grounds. They seemed to take pleasure in tossing severed limbs at groups of women. Hanish had eventually ordered them slaughtered; the goldens, however, won favor with the noblewomen. They remained.

“I have brought the revised treaty with me,” Sire Dagon said. “You and your people may peruse it at leisure. And that, largely, will be that. You can then get on with enjoying your hard-won empire. There is only one new aspect of the treaty for you to consider.” The leagueman seemed to remember the food all at once and stretched to study the trays. He let that last statement sit a moment, but Hanish waited. “As our commission for negotiating it, the league asks for…well, we request no change in our percentage, no monetary bonus-nothing like that. We would simply like to take a burden from your shoulders and place it on ours instead.”

Hanish touched the scar on his nose with his thumb, just a passing motion that he did not linger on. Wryly, he said, “I can barely contain my curiosity.”

“We would like to take the Outer Isles off your hands. We would like to own them outright.”

“Those islands are thronging with pirates.”

Sire Dagon smiled. “We have considered that. They are not a problem. We have examined every aspect of how they function, and we are confident we can pacify them.”

“They are hardly the type to accept passivity of any sort.”

“They have been a problem to you, haven’t they?” Sire Dagon asked. “So many problems you’ve taken on your shoulders. Perhaps you did not think that the peace would be more challenging than the war. This is a lesson only learned by error and trial. It is why the league chooses to always be at peace, even if our friends choose to make war on one another.”

Hanish could not dispute that there was wisdom in such an approach. Who would have thought that winning the military battles would prove to be easy compared to managing the empire? One and then another and then another crisis sprouted. Some of the trouble was of his own making. The fever was more virulent than he had imagined, for example. He had not fully reckoned with how far it would spread and how quickly it would outstrip his military objectives. It simply killed too many, leaving a weakened fragment of the former population to rebuild after the war.

Also, the Numrek outlived their usefulness, and their welcome. They had not returned across the Ice Fields as they had first promised they would, though Hanish had paid them lavishly for their services. In the turmoil after the war, as the fever still raged through the south, they entrenched themselves in Aushenia, claiming the entire region as their own, taking over the towns and villages and the royal estates, enslaving the humans unlucky enough to get captured. Even worse, they had started colonies along the western edge of the Talayan coast. Creatures of the frozen north, indeed! As it turned out they loved nothing better than baking beneath a furious sun and swimming in the limpid waters.

There were other problems he had no hand in creating. The people-perhaps because the war disrupted the flow of the mist-got all sorts of ideas in their heads. They became unruly, conniving, flaring into rebellion, staging acts of sabotage, as when they set fire to the grain stores on the Mainland, halving the supply there and causing a near famine year. They spun stories of holy prophecies, said that Hanish and his plague were the harbingers of the Giver’s return. They developed a liking for martyrs, recalcitrant bastards upon whom torture and execution were but a blessing. Talay had never been fully pacified; the Outer Isles were lousy with pirates; his troops were pestered by assassins in the guise of loyal subjects.

And the revolts at the mines were most frustrating. Just when Hanish was poised to restart the engine of the world’s commerce, the miners took it into their heads to grasp control of their own lives. They refused to work. Some fool among them rose to prominence by suggesting that the miners deserved a share of their profits from their labor. A silver-tongued, ranting prophet of a man, Barack the Lesser, had caused no end of trouble. He had even claimed to have seen the future return of Aliver Akaran. How very annoying. His efforts achieved nothing but misery for all involved. The strike had to be put down through a siege that Hanish could scarcely afford to prosecute. So many of them died. Such a waste of manpower; all for nothing.

The Numrek, the league, and the Lothan Aklun: how had be become so miserably indebted to all of them? In frozen Cathgergen, so far from power and privilege, each partnership had made complete sense. Why not buy an army and pay them with treasure from lands they themselves conquered? Why not promise great sums to merchants who would help to enrich him? What better partner in business than the suppliers to a ravenous market never looked upon or dealt with directly? No sum had seemed too great if paying them helped him achieve his goals. He felt different now, on every count.

Not least of his worries was that he had managed to catch only one of the four Akaran children. Corinn went unharmed and lived comfortably in Acacia. She knew nothing of the fate that still awaited her. Her presence should have been a comfort, one less thing to worry about. Instead, she shot him through with a sort of torment. What would he do with her? What did he want to do with her?

Sire Dagon pressed his teeth against a plum. He broke the skin of it, paused, and relished the moisture. He did not swallow the fruit. Apparently, the juice on his lips was all he wanted. “Anyway, these brigands, all their raiding up and down the coast-you need not trouble yourself with them. Even we have had some difficulty with them, but we have yet to crack down. We will do so now, and they will fall to us by next summer. The Ishtat will prevail where you struggled; we’re confident of this. When we are done, we will quietly take possession of the islands; you will bask in pride at having secured the coastline from brigands.”

“Why do you want those islands so?” Hanish asked.

Sire Dagon contemplated him for a moment. He touched the corner of his lips to wipe the fruit juice away. “Before I tell you, remember that the doubled quota will make you richer than Acacia ever was-”

“How can they want more?” Hanish interrupted, unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice. “What do they do with all these slaves? They could scarcely ask for more if they ate them for meat.”

Sire Dagon frowned and twisted his head to the side, indicating that both the question and the inference were in terribly bad taste. “One need not ask such things. They do whatever it is they do; let us both be glad for it. Remember that one of the original tenets of the Quota contract was that the league would serve as the only intermediary between Acacia and Lothan Aklun. As part of this, we have never betrayed the secrets of one side to the other. Nor will I do so now. As I was saying, the Lothan Aklun swear never to amend this agreement, not now, not ever. Nor will we overreach the quota in the provinces. This is something that sometimes happened during the last reign, but it will not happen again. Once we have normalized the increased quota, we will pacify the Outer Isles. We will clear them, make them arable, and we will begin production.”

“Production of what?”

“Of the only thing the Lothan Aklun want from us.”

The answer came to Hanish like an amorphous shape rising from the depths of his imagination. “You will breed slaves there.”

Sire Dagon showed no surprise, no satisfaction at Hanish’s pronouncement. He just plucked up a grape and spoke casually. “I do not recognize that word slaves. But if you mean that we will breed our product there, you are correct. It will be a most efficient means of production. We’ve made plans already. The island of Gillet Major, in particular, will make for a lovely plantation.”

After the leagueman left, Hanish leaned against his desk and gazed through the thin curtains, rippling as they did with the afternoon’s breeze. The world could be so calm at moments, he thought, so oblivious. His brother and his uncle entered, and he had to summon his energy just to erase the disquiet from his demeanor.

“I passed that weird one in the courtyard,” Haleeven said. “I have no love for those creatures, Hanish. No love at all.” His face testified to the turbulence of the passing years. Peacetime, it seemed, had been particularly hard on the older man. The climate-though he never complained-did not suit him. He seemed ever ill at ease within his skin, flushed as if coming in from exercise, confused by something in the air that he could not quite put his finger on.

Maeander had no such problems. He was as cocky as ever, confident in his body. He had gained muscle bulk in the arms and chest, and he had taken a tan better than most men of the Mein. The peeling skin on his nose testified to his continued passion for outdoor pursuits.

“What?” Maeander asked, gazing at his brother. “You don’t look well, Hanish. Queasy, that’s the word. Do you feel as queasy as you look?”

“We need more power,” Hanish said.

“I’ve said that all along,” answered Maeander.

“I am pulled and pushed by a thousand hands, each with a finger in my pocket and the threat of a knife in the other hand.”

“I hear you, brother. Haven’t I always said, ‘We need more power.’ I have that thought every morning on waking. I heft myself up out of the tangle of nubile bodies and the first thing I think is, Power! I need more…”

“Be serious,” Haleeven snapped. “Hanish isn’t clowning.”

Maeander rolled his eyes. He sat down in the chair the leagueman had used and plucked up an orange. He inhaled, his nose touching the skin of the fruit. “We need to move the Tunishnevre and complete the ceremony.”

“You know we cannot do that yet,” Haleeven said.

“They are impatient. We have no choice in this matter, Hanish. They speak to me also, and they’ve made it very clear. They want to be moved. They want to journey here. They want to rest their bodies on the scene of the crime done to them, and then they want a few drops of living Akaran blood. They want to be free, brother, and you can offer them that. The chamber here is nearly ready for them. There is no reason not to begin.”

“What of the other three?” Haleeven asked.

“Exactly,” Hanish said. “Without them the Tunishnevre cannot rise. At least they are safe now, their condition constant. This climate could destroy them, put them beyond our power to release.”

Unmoved, Maeander said, “That is not necessarily true. One may be enough. Especially if the others are dead. If Corinn is the last of the royal line, then her blood is all they need. She can free them. Imagine, Hanish, how powerful we will be! All these petty problems that trouble you so: they’ll be gone like that.” He raised a hand, fingertips touching until the moment he snapped his hand open, releasing whatever was held there into the air, invisible, inconsequential. “This is what the ancestors placed in me. They put this truth in me.”

“They said nothing to me about needing only Corinn.”

“They fear you may be compromised somehow, led astray by this place. I swore to them that they were wrong. They accepted my word. You are their beloved, but they can only wait so long. They taste release, Hanish. They have scant patience when they feel they are being denied.” Speaking through a mouthful of orange pulp, he added, “By the gods, the fruit down here is wonderful!”

Hanish ignored the last comment, but he thought for a long moment about Maeander communing with the Tunishnevre. He had known his brother was doing this for some time. It was unprecedented for anyone but the chieftain and a few of the higher priests to interact with them. Hanish had allowed it because he owed Maeander so much. He had always been a perfect weapon, a hound ready to bite whomever he was directed toward. Hanish knew the ancestors adored him for the strength he walked so casually with. But for them to speak to Maeander about him, about Hanish himself…For them to express doubts about their living chieftain was a grave thing. There was message after message to read here, threat inside threat. And he could not acknowledge any of it until he understood it better.

“We are ahead of ourselves,” Haleeven said. “You have not told us what news the weird one brought you.”

So Hanish did tell them. He had never kept such things from these two, even if he held back certain things when meeting with the Board of Councillors, that new body of prominent Meins that resided, ironically, in Alecia. It disturbed Hanish to note how much of the Acacian way of being they had taken on already. If he could see a way to do it differently he would, but on one and then another topic he found the Acacian template the only reasonable, achievable answer.

Once Hanish had told them everything, Haleeven said, “I hate it that we must bow to the Lothan Aklun. I’ve never even set eyes on one of them. The league may have made them up, for all we know. I’ve said this before, but we should brush the league aside and deal with the Aklun directly, if they exist.”

“I feel the same,” Maeander said, “but it is not for us to argue with the ancestors. They blessed the arrangements we made, and it is they who want to be freed and freed now. Remember that your brother’s voice speaks through them, Haleeven, and our father’s, Hanish.”

Hanish hesitated a moment but evaded the thought that troubled him and kept his composure right through it, enough so that Maeander would not notice the pause for what it was. He said, “I’ll speak with the ancestors tonight. If they agree, we will send word to Tahalian. We will tell them it is time to begin the transport. Haleeven, you will initiate the move.”

“That’s not as we discussed,” Maeander said. “Hanish, come now, you know I should go. You have an empire to rule; I am but a tool to aid you. You cannot possibly expect me to mismanage such an important task! Haleeven will come with me, if that reassures you, but when have we ever failed you?”

“You never have. Not once. It is just that this must be done right, exactly right.”

Maeander put on a look of mock affront.

“What I mean,” Hanish said, “is that we have more than just the move to take care of. We must redouble our efforts to find the Akarans. If they live, we must have them. This is what I need you for, Maeander. You have no other assignment now-just that you find them and bring them here.” He said this with finality, consciously avoiding meeting his brother’s gaze, not wanting to see rebellion in his face. “I should have put you in charge of hunting for them in the first place. For my part, I will make sure that Corinn remains safe, close to me and guarded.”

He moved around his desk, dug a key from his breast pocket, and bent to unlock a drawer. “Uncle, read over these,” he said, hefting a leather case of documents and plopping them on the table. “You will have to see to this exactly. Exactly. Do everything word for word as the early ones tell us. The Tunishnevre has not been moved in twenty generations. If you make an error…”

Haleeven gathered the case and sat down with it. He ran his fingers over the reindeer leather, flipped the simple latch open, and seemed to sit a moment in awe, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled the dry scent of the sheaves. “I will make no errors,” he said. “Thank you for this. The plateau in summer…I have longed to see it again.”

“You will,” Hanish said, smiling, genuinely pleased for the older man. “Perhaps you will even find time for a hunt. The reindeer must be fat by now, lax because you have been away so long. Do the work well, and be revived by it also.” He might have said more, but he felt Maeander’s eyes on him, tugging at him. He turned and looked at him.

“I cannot argue with you, brother,” Maeander said. “If the Akarans live, I’ll find them and drag them to you by their hair. When I do, I trust you will give me the honor of cutting their throats myself.”