Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

Hanish’s secretary returned to the chieftain’s offices in a whirl of motion, a sheaf of papers pressed to his chest, the royal stamp and wax sticks prickling from the fingers of his hand. He did not even acknowledge the man waiting for his return until this person cleared his throat. He paused, set the papers down, and sighed, as if Rialus Neptos had sorely tested his patience just by semivocalizing his presence.

“He cannot see you now,” the secretary said. “You arrived a day too late, Neptos. He sent a message, though. He departs today for the Mainland on business that cannot be postponed. He will be happy to meet with you, or with Calrach himself, on his return. A week’s time, perhaps. Maybe a fortnight. In the meantime he counts on Numrek support through the coming conflict. The Numrek are his strong right arm, his battle-ax, and he won’t forget to reward them once Aliver is squashed. Calrach should answer to Maeander, as he will be in charge of the Meinish forces. All other details he’ll specify in due course. That’s the message.”

The ambassador knew that he would regret anything he said in answer to this, but he could not help himself. “But Calrach himself asked me to put a proposal-”

The young Mein partitioned the air with a motion of his fingers, as if he were spreading out a fan between himself and the ambassador. “I said everything Hanish asked me to. You may leave now.”

The arrogant twit, Rialus thought. The twit! Don’t direct me out with a raised arm! Don’t you lay a hand on me and don’t you dare shut the door when I’ve not yet agreed to leave! He said none of this, of course, and the man did direct him out with a raised arm, did touch him at the elbow, and did shut the door firmly behind him.

A moment later he stood in the hallway outside the office in the company of a brutish guard who looked down on him from beneath a cornice of golden eyebrows. The man unnerved him slightly, but Rialus did not move away. Besides the guard the hall was deserted, nothing but a few life-sized statues that somehow made the space seem that much more desolate. Rialus, not knowing what else to do, just stood there.

Well, Rialus thought, that was a complete failure, one that was sure to cause him grief. Calrach had not just sent him to Hanish on a mundane assignment, or to clarify the details of how and where the Numrek would fight. He had charged the ambassador with broaching the subject of the Numrek receiving Quota payments. As far as Rialus was concerned, this was an absurd idea. The Numrek lived as freely as they wished. They regularly hunted the hill people who lived in the Teh Mountains. They used the captured peasants for the same purposes they would use Quota slaves. So what was the use of demanding yet more from Hanish, who had already been, to Rialus’s mind, quite generous to them?

But there was no reasoning with Calrach. He had gotten the idea into his head and none of Rialus’s subtle attempts to dissuade him from it had worked. Now, however, the relief he might have felt about not having to speak to Hanish about this filled him with dread. He’d have to return with nothing for Calrach. Maybe he could pretend that he had spoken to Hanish. The chieftain was thinking it over, he could say. He’d have an answer when he returned, something like that. But that was a dangerous deception. For all he knew Hanish would summon Calrach personally, instead of going through Rialus. He’d done so before. They would meet and in the first few seconds the Numrek chieftain would know he’d lied. If that happened, he would not put much value on his own skin. Why did it seem that every situation in his life sat squarely at a convergence of several dilemmas? Always had, he thought, and perhaps always would.

He stood there for a few minutes more-trying to remember a time when this had not been his fate-before he realized he was being watched. One of the shapes standing down the hall was not one of the life-sized statues he had assumed it was. It was a woman’s form. When she peeled away from the wall and motioned to him, he knew exactly who it was.

“Princess Corinn?” he asked, walking toward her.

She did not answer. She turned and led him down the hall, off into a side corridor, and through a small door. It all happened quickly, and it took Rialus a moment to recognize the large, jumbled chamber they had entered. It was the library, rank with book smell, lit by floor-to-ceiling windows. Judging by the silence and stillness of the air, it was empty.

Corinn led him across the room to one of the window bays. There she turned and faced him. “Nobody comes here at this time of day. The other doors are locked, so we’re quite safe. If anybody starts to enter we’ll hear them and can slip away.” She said all of this with cool assurance, but as he began to question her she stepped toward him. “Rialus,” she asked, her body close to his, “will you be truthful with me?”

Rialus inhaled the citrus scent of her breath. He had not actually spent very much time in her presence. He could not even have said for certain that she knew his name. The fact that she did and the perfection of her features stunned him. Each shape and proportion and shading was flawless, just as it was supposed to be. He stammered that of course he would be truthful.

“Then tell me,” Corinn asked, “do you ever look back with longing?”

“With longing, Princess?”

She studied him a moment. He had the feeling she was sizing him up, measuring whether or not she could say what she wished to. Despite himself, he hoped she would find him to her liking. “I mean,” she said, “do you regret the fall of the Acacian Empire? You turned on your own people, Rialus.”

“I had reason to,” he said defensively. “You have no idea what-”

Corinn stopped his words by brushing her fingertips over his lips. “Don’t be harsh with me. I know, Rialus, that you felt slighted. I know you aspired to greater things than living up in that Meinish wasteland. I believe, though, that you blamed my father wrongly. Do you know that he spoke of you once that I remember? He did. He was saddened by one of your letters to him. He said that of course this Rialus Neptos was a good man; it was the council that exiled you to Cathgergen, not my father. He said he’d have to force the council to relieve you of your post and bring you back to a worthy position in Alecia. He would have done that, Ambassador, except you did not give him enough time.”

Words failed Rialus, but he managed to shake his head. He did not understand what she was trying to do, but what she was saying could not-could not-be true.

“You don’t believe me?” she asked. “How would I know of the letters you sent him? How would I know you were unhappy in the north? I was close to my father, Rialus. I loved him very much and he loved me. He often spoke to me of the things that troubled him, including you. And I’ll tell you this-there is a reason I remembered your name. It is because just a few weeks later you were decried as a traitor. I thought, No, that cannot be. Not the Rialus my father spoke so highly of. But it was you. You did betray him, and here you stand because of it. What I want to understand is whether you feel you chose well. Is your life now all you dreamed it would be?”

Rialus could not figure out just how to respond. Her words were insulting. He should lash out at her for them. He certainly had more than enough to say about how he had been slighted. But there was no condemnation in her tone or in her gestures or in her face, which seemed all openness and curiosity. He had expected her rancor, but he felt none coming from her. What he did feel was…well, it was something he had not felt from another person in a very long time. He was not even sure he remembered the word for it. At least not until Corinn reminded him of it.

“I’m not asking because I wish to judge you. Truthfully, I empathize with you. I’ve betrayed ones I love also. I understand what it’s like to make honest mistakes, ones that you regret and wish, wish, wish you could make amends for. I thought perhaps you were the same, Rialus.”

Empathy. That was the word. She empathized with him. It was too much to comprehend-both the emotion itself and the possibilities it suggested. In defense, he fell back to an old refrain. “We are hardly the same, Princess. I’m an ambassador. It’s a position of authority and importance-”

Corinn indicated that she had heard enough. “Fine. Life is exactly as you’d wish it to be. I don’t believe that, of course, but I’ll not argue the point with you. Tell me this, then-what do you think of my brother’s return?”

Tell her about Aliver? He almost asked her why she wanted to know. The reasons were obvious-although they were also contradictory. He’s my brother and I love him, she could say. But that was not what he wanted to hear for a variety of reasons. He was a threat to Hanish, she could say. But that, despite the safety it suggested in respect to his current allegiances, wasn’t quite what he wanted to hear either. So he tried to keep his answer neutral. “He remains a mystery, Princess. I cannot-”

“Don’t lie to me. You don’t have to and I wouldn’t lie to you. The truth is, Rialus, that I don’t have a single friend in this palace. Not a single person cares what becomes of me. Hanish is not my friend, understand? He can never know that we’ve spoken or learn even a word that passes between us. Swear to me that you understand that.”

He nodded, though he did so in a hesitant way that was meant to indicate he was not agreeing to the entirety of whatever deception she might be proposing.

If Corinn noticed the vague caveat he intended she gave no sign of it.

“Rialus,” she said, “I very dearly need a friend-a powerful friend. That’s why I’m speaking to you now. Do you, Rialus, also want a friend?”

He answered before he had time to censor himself. “Yes, very much.”

“Then I will be your friend. We will give each other things, as friends do. First, tell me of my brother. Hanish tries to keep me ignorant, but he’s just cruel. It does you no damage to tell me things everybody else knows already. Just help me understand what’s happening in the world.”

He could do that, he thought. She needed him. She had said so herself. What would it hurt to tell her things that everybody else knew anyway? He was not ready to accept her empathy, but he could do this.

He spent the next half hour filling her in on everything he knew. He found his voice surprisingly nimble as he detailed Aliver’s movements, his troop strength and makeup. He told of the myths swirling around him, rumors of sorcery and such. Little of this impressed Hanish, however. The chieftain was annoyed by the timing of Aliver’s return. He would have much preferred to see the Tunishnevre’s move completed. Hanish had drawn in all the troops he could from the provinces and concentrated them around Bocoum. The Numrek had not joined them yet, but they were ready to march and planned to do so the moment he returned. The war, he said, was only days away from beginning.

He was surprised by the manner in which Corinn questioned him. Again and again she asked for details, specifics, and explanations. He gave them as best he could. When she asked him what posed the greatest threat to Aliver’s army, Rialus answered, “Why, the Numrek, of course. The very ones to whom I’m ambassador.”

“Yes, the undefeatable Numrek…Are they truly so fierce?”

Rialus spent a few moments singing their praises as regards martial matters. He was aware of the irony of this-considering how much he hated them-but the more Corinn asked of him, the more he was compelled to offer.

“If the entire world turned against them, of course they’d be defeated,” he concluded, “but not without doing a great deal of damage. I’m sure Hanish Mein considered moving against them. But that was before. Now he’s quite happy to call them allies again.”

“So he needs them?”

“Very much so. Hanish may have tricks up his sleeve, but he most definitely needs and relies upon my wards.”

Corinn’s face went troubled, hesitant, and unsure. She seemed to forget Rialus for a moment. She placed a hand upon the windowsill in a way that highlighted the curve of her breast. Reaching out seemed almost a measure to keep her from fainting. Her eyes stared through the window in a way that suggested she was thinking hard enough that she was not actually seeing. She chewed the corner of her lower lip.

“Rialus, what do you want most in the world?” She turned toward him. The resolve on her face and in her voice indicated that she had settled whatever had been bothering her and was ready to move forward. “I think I know. You want to be respected. You want to be rewarded. You want Hanish to acknowledge that you helped him and Maeander triumph against my father. You want the sort of spoils men like Larken received. You want to never have to wake without a beauty beside you, one who’ll do exactly your bidding. These are some of the things you want. Why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t any ambitious man crave such things? I’m right, aren’t I?”

Rialus opened his mouth, but Corinn did not wait for his answer.

“Hanish will never give you any of those things. He laughs at you. He thinks you’re a fool, a coward, an idiot. He once joked that if he didn’t make you ambassador to the Numrek-a job he considers most foul-he’d have made you a court comedian. You wouldn’t even have to practice your act, he said. You’d only have to be yourself. That’s what he thinks of you.”

“I-”

“You know I’m telling you the truth. You’ve always known it, and you hate Hanish for it, don’t you?”

“Ha-ha-hate is not the word I’d use,” Rialus said. “Princess, I was under the-the impression that you quite loved Hanish. That you-”

Corinn threw back her head and laughed. She opened her mouth so widely he saw straight to the back of her throat. Most disconcerting.

“You are a funny man,” she said, once she had gotten control of herself again. “I don’t love Hanish. Do you?”

Rialus was relieved that she did not pause for him to answer that question.

“Of course you don’t. You’re like me.” She pressed the wedge of her hand between her breasts, somehow a belligerent, not sensuous, gesture. “You and I are done with love. I’ll never give this heart to a man again. Not even to you, Rialus, charmer though you are. You may think whatever thoughts of me you like. I cannot get them out of your head and I don’t care what you fantasize. But you’ll never have my love; nor do you want it, do you? You’d like the shell of me, but not what’s inside. Anyway, there will be others for you, many others. Others more beautiful and vacuous than I. Understand?”

He nodded. He did understand. She was not, as she pointed out, the empty beauty that he had imagined her to be. There was much behind her face that he’d not been aware of before. She was, he realized, something he’d never considered her to be. Dangerous. That’s what she was. He did not know exactly how, could not imagine what power she wielded, and yet he now believed she was not a woman to be crossed.

As if answering this thought, Corinn said, “Hanish betrayed me in ways that I can never forgive. In ways I won’t forget. Not this time. Rialus, I hope you’ll be truer than he. I have a message for you to take to Calrach. I have an offer to make him. I’ve looked into getting off the island myself, but I can see no way to do it. I’m a prisoner here, Rialus. But with your help…If we succeed in pulling off what I have in mind, you’ll be a very lucky man. You’ll be rewarded after the war with everything you’ve ever felt you deserved. I, and my brother, will make sure you have it.”