Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

Corinn knew she had only one chance to speak to the leagueman. He had arrived in Acacia secretly the night before. She learned of this because she had coerced several of her servants-none of whom were Meins, of course-into feeding her bits of intelligence. Before her shocking discovery that Hanish would offer her as a blood sacrifice to his ancestors, she would never have looked to servants for such information. It would have seemed inappropriate, like lowering herself, demonstrating weakness. But she had decided that there was no weaker outcome than her ending up dead on some altar, nothing more pathetic than being led to her own slaughter in the throes of doe-eyed love. She had no intention of exiting life quietly. Indeed, she had no intention of exiting at all.

After learning what she had that strange night, all her old assumptions had to be revised. Her servants had once been faceless, nameless beings at the periphery of her vision. But from that first morning she saw them differently. She could not help but study their faces, wondering what they knew that she didn’t. What did they think of her? To whom did they owe loyalty? She took to watching them, observing their demeanor in various situations. She tried to gauge which of them were more disposed to her than others, which wore resentment barely disguised, and which looked like they could be manipulated. And then she had begun to cultivate them accordingly.

It had paid off. The servants were not as loyal to the Meins as she had assumed. It almost seemed as if they had been waiting for her to wake up and conspire with them. She learned that many of them believed Aliver’s return was fated. A male servant had told her that Rialus Neptos was in the palace. Another had informed her of Larken’s death. When a girl named Gillian brought her word of Sire Dagon’s arrival on the island, Corinn thanked her with an embrace and a peck on her cheek. Apparently the leagueman had asked to have a messenger bird readied for dispatch as soon as possible. He himself was scheduled to depart first thing in the morning, so Corinn wasted no time.

She left her quarters in the gray light of predawn, working her way through the palace silently, by memory, carrying no torch or candle. She had dressed carefully even earlier. She wore a light blue dress of a silken material, one that framed her collarbones and neck to flattering effect. Leaguemen were men, after all.

She had come to understand that the palace was a sort of prison for her now. Neither Hanish nor anybody had ever said this, but she had not been off the island for several weeks. The few times she had mentioned possible trips, Hanish had brushed her off. Recently, Meinish guards’ eyes followed her with a different sort of attentiveness than before. She watched their demeanor as she approached the edges of the royal grounds or when she ventured near the council chambers. She never pushed it far enough that any guard had impeded her, but she became quite sure Hanish had put her under surveillance. There was an invisible boundary thrown up around her. Her skin crawled with awareness of it.

The area of the lower palace reserved for the league, however, was largely a privately run compound. She passed into it without drawing attention to herself. Presumably, Hanish had never considered that she would have any desire to communicate with the league. Once through its gates, she did not have to contend with Meinish guards at all. She did, however, have some difficulty convincing the Ishtat officers to send her request for an audience to Sire Dagon. In the end she managed it only by threatening them with Hanish’s anger, pointedly suggesting that it was the chieftain himself who had sent her to see the leagueman. This won her a meeting, although only a few minutes were promised.

Entering Sire Dagon’s office, she found him already shuffling through papers with his long fingers. He glanced at her with a distracted air, as yet giving her only half his attention. “My dear princess,” he said, “what can I do for you? Please be brief with me, as my time is regretfully short. You have some…communication from Hanish?”

The princess was not as nervous as she had imagined she would be at this moment. She knew that the grip of her dilemma should be enough to paralyze her with fear. At times she had found herself standing still, staring off into nothing. She often thought back to the past, to her father, to her mother, to her short-lived exile on Kidnaban. But she was not the same now as she had been as a child. She felt increasingly disconnected from her old way of being. She could affect the world, she believed. She could have a say in her fate. Perhaps the thought of Aliver still living and breathing gave her strength. If this were true, though, it was an irony. The agenda she worked for was only partially in line with what she imagined Aliver’s to be.

“You can tell me why you have returned,” Corinn said. “What news do you have?”

The leagueman’s eyes rolled up and fixed on her. “Am I to believe that Hanish requests this information?”

“If you wish. But you are not Hanish’s pawn. I know that, even if he doesn’t. If possible, let this be between you and me. You would not have stopped in here and requested a messenger bird without news of some import. I have reason to be curious.”

“That I can believe. You may not like what I have to tell, however. Why ask about things you cannot change?”

Corinn shrugged. She wanted to know, she said, for the sake of the knowledge itself.

Sire Dagon mimicked her shrug. He pressed his thin lips together derisively but relaxed them the next moment. “If you must…I returned to dispatch a message to the Inspectorate. It seems one of our patrols spotted a…well, a fleet, I guess you could say, of fishing and merchant and trading vessels sailing into the Inner Sea. They’re Vumuans. For a number of reasons, we’ve concluded that they are on a mission to rescue your sister.”

“My sister?”

“They’ve come to join the battle, which invariably means they are not on the Meinish side. It is my intent to send a messenger bird to the Inspectorate, who will then crush the fleet before they ever reach Talay. They’ll be like a child’s toy boats bobbing on a pond compared to our warships.”

Corinn heard him, but she had not yet fully swallowed the mention of…“Did you say that Mena is alive?”

Sire Dagon chuckled. “I thought that would interest you. Your sister is a goddess.” He said the last word with feigned reverence. “A goddess…Tribal peoples always amaze me. It may be that she’s not a goddess at all but is actually a goddess slayer. I’m not sure which it is, really. My information on this is vague as to the particulars. I can tell you, however, that she was captured by Maeander and Larken. She didn’t stay captured long, though. She stabbed Larken in the heart with his own sword. She killed two Punisari and injured several others, and then commandeered the vessel and convinced the crew to sail her to Talay. By the end of the voyage, it seems, she had convinced most of the sailors to join your brother’s cause. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Little Mena, a sword-wielding deity slayer, a match for one of the craftiest Marahs I have ever set eyes on.”

The leagueman had been shuffling through his papers as he relayed most of this. He paused, looked up, and studied Corinn a moment. “My dear, this does tug at your allegiances, doesn’t it? Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you. I always heard you were of fragile temperament. It must be very strange to be Princess Corinn Akaran. It might surprise you, but I find these developments with your siblings quite interesting. Consider what they have become: one of them leads an army that is loyal to him; one is called a deity by people who are fanatically devoted to her; another is a raider, a sea captain who also has followers that would die for-or at least with-him. Not what your father would have planned, I’m sure, but at least they have made something interesting of their lives. Pity that you weren’t allowed to become anything but your conqueror’s mistress.”

Corinn had been about to express shock and confusion at the strange news of her sister. She had pursed her lips, about to ask for a chair to sit in. She might even have looked to Sire Dagon for guidance, for help. But all these possibilities vanished the moment he expressed pity for her. She did not want pity. She would not accept pity. Nor would she allow the suggestion that her life added up to nothing of interest or worth to stand.

“You are mistaken,” she said. She stepped around his desk and drew close to him. She felt the invisible barrier between them, the point that marked the perimeter of what Sire Dagon considered to be his private domain. She pressed against it and felt it resist, felt it bow back against her. The leagueman’s face showed no outward sign of consternation, and yet she could tell that he was fighting the desire to step back. Something about this pleased her, gave her confidence. “You, as a member of the league, know that appearances are one thing. The substance beneath is another. Isn’t that right?”

“You have already answered your own question.”

“So it may be that you don’t know yet what lies beneath this faзade. You think nothing does, but you should know better. The league, after all, claims to have no hidden interests. But that’s absurd. It’s not just wealth you want, is it?”

“We want only to continue as we have,” Sire Dagon said. “We serve the world’s powers. We bring nations together to nurture trade and mutual prosperity-”

“Please, Dagon,” Corinn said. “Don’t insult me. You have a different objective. I can feel it behind your mask.”

“I wear no mask, lady.”

“Of course you do.” She moved a half step closer, cocked her head as if she were searching for something minute along his hairline. “As a child they sewed it to your face with hair-thin thread. Perhaps you have gotten so used to it that even you don’t recognize your own deceit. But the stitch is still visible, Sire Dagon. It is right here…” She lifted a hand, fingers pinched as if to tweeze the thread in question.

The leagueman batted at her hand. He twirled away, the fabric of his gown brushing her hip, stiff, heavy fabric that felt almost like a plate of pliable armor. “Your arrogance knows no bounds.”

“I hope not, but I don’t as yet know. I have only just discovered arrogance and taken it to heart. You, however, thrive on it. You want to control the workings of the world. You want to know that you are godlike, that you pull the strings that make nations dance. Isn’t that what you want?”

“As I said, we want only to preserve what we already have.”

“And what is it that you have?”

Standing at a distance again, Sire Dagon regained his composure. He grinned. The question pleased him. “Now you ask something of substance. What do we have already? What do we want to preserve? Consider this…If we don’t transport water to the Kidnaban mines, the workers die of thirst. There is little water on the island, and they cannot get off because we control the seas. So if we say that they die by drought, they die by drought. Consider that only the league makes pitch now. Even the Numrek cannot be bothered to produce it. Why should they when we do the work and give it to them? So we-the league-hold the secret of how to toss down flaming meteors from the heavens. Only we do business with the Lothan Aklun. Only we know the full extent of the power they serve. We are the ones that keep the Other Lands at bay so that the Known World can continue to believe itself a complete world. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Add these things up and add more things than I can even begin to detail to you, and what is the result? I will tell you. We don’t want to become like gods. We already are gods. We don’t want to pull the strings attached to every soul in the Known World. We already do. Had you the eyes to see them, you would realize a million tiny threads stretch out from each of my fingers. This is the truth. The Giver left the world to us, and the Known World has felt the hand of no deity but us ever since. Not Akarans. Not Meins.”

“Not the Lothan Aklun?”

“They are a separate matter.”

“I know they are,” Corinn said, again drawing nearer to him as she spoke. “They are not the power you have always led people to believe, are they? Hanish told me what you told him. You do business with them because doing so is a lesser evil than being without the trade they facilitate. They are rich. Richer than you, and you covet their wealth, don’t you? You call them a great power because of their riches, because that is all that matters to you. But you hate it that you must share the trade with them, as an unequal partner. Sometimes at night you dream of having their palaces as your own. That is what arouses you more than anything else in the world. Am I right?”

Sire Dagon backed away, his face soured. “First I lecture you; then you attempt to lecture me. I’ve no time for this. I’ll give you one last opportunity to tell me what brought you here.”

Corinn, feeling strangely at ease with being prompted and with the lie she was about to utter, said, “I come with a message from my brother. He wants you to stop aiding Hanish. If you do, he’ll make it greatly worth your while.”

“He wants us to stop aiding Hanish?” he repeated, his eyebrows wrinkled and dismissive. “Did I not just explain that neither Meins nor Akarans control the world?”

“But neither do you, not alone, at least. Not without winning the consent of the masses. That’s what my brother can bring you, even more completely than Hanish.”

“Your brother! He angers me as much as he amuses me. Do you know that he’s somehow convinced people to come off mist? It’s most disruptive.”

Corinn had not known anything about people coming off mist, but she took it in without showing surprise on her face. “That is exactly why you should wish him victory. He frees them to help him win this war. Once won, however, the situation afterward will be very different. We can make it one that will please us both. Aliver isn’t my father, nor am I. Tell me that in truth you don’t think a new Akaran dynasty would benefit us both. Think of all we accomplished together before. Hanish Mein was but a necessary awakening for us. But, believe me, we are now fully alert.”

Sire Dagon focused his narrow-set eyes on her and stared with an intensity that would have withered Corinn only a few days ago. Even now, it was hard to meet. “Let us say that I take you at your word,” he said. “I’ve heard nothing that would merit such a change of policy. Your brother is not going to win this contest, Corinn. Trust me. I have access to information you do not. As that is so, why would I align myself with a losing cause, especially one that espouses a desire to hurt my interests? Answer that question convincingly and we will talk further. Fail to, and I will take my leave, Princess.”

Struggling not to look away, Corinn tried to prepare the entirety of what she had to say. There was a great deal to sort through, and it all swirled in her head as she met the leagueman’s gaze. Part of her wanted to release a whole litany of confessions, to lay it all before him and be judged, understood, sentenced. But she was not here for that. She would not tell him how she had loved Hanish and how it twisted her with misery to find their relationship all false. She was not going to admit that she hated her own weaknesses, that she realized she had been a fool all her life, a lamb being led to slaughter. Nor did she intend to tell him how much pain she carried within her; that she still ached from longing for the life she might have had with her siblings; that she sometimes thought of Igguldan, the prince who had fallen to his knees loving her; and that she still raged against having her father taken from her and against losing her mother while she was but a girl. She held all these things eddying in her mind, but she plucked her message from among them.

Soon the words she would speak fell into place. She would repeat that the league must-for their own preservation-distance themselves from Hanish. They must pull back the navy supporting Maeander, disregard that fleet of Vumuan ships. They must wait. That was all they need do, for now. Not act against Hanish-just not act for him either. Just as they had not aided or hindered either side in the first war. If Hanish prevailed, the league’s inactions would not have caused him that much harm. They would be chided but forgiven. What else could Hanish do? Really, they would lose nothing by drawing back. But if the league continued to aid the Meins and they lost…then Aliver would be without mercy upon them. He would abolish the trade completely. He would turn the rage of the world squarely on them and fight with all his power to destroy them. And if none of that convinced him, she had yet another promise to make, one that she doubted he would easily ignore.

It was a lot to ask, but on the tenth flare of the leagueman’s nostrils she opened her mouth. “Sire Dagon, I can tell you on my brother’s behalf that he has no desire to hurt your interests. Just the opposite, he-and I-believe that a partnership between the league and the Akarans can be even more profitable than ever before.”

With this opening, she had the leagueman’s interest. Sire Dagon nodded that she should continue, that his attention was hers, for one last time, at least.