The other lands

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Standing in her private chambers as her servants made her up for the Blood Moon banquet, Corinn mulled over the strange letter she had received from her sister. It pleased her to learn that Mena had been found alive and well. Corinn did not, however, care for the flippant tone of mystery in the note Mena had dispatched to Acacia via messenger bird. It said, simply, I am found, sister. All well. I'm winged! Will fly to you. Look up. What in the Known World did that mean? Perhaps Mena had suffered an injury after all, one to the head. Even if she remained of sound mind, Corinn did not like the triumphant tone of it. All well. Never, in Corinn's experience of rule, was all well. Mena might have dealt with all the foulthings, but there would be something else to occupy them soon enough. She would have to drill this into her sister when she returned.

"Please, mistress," a thin-limbed servant said, "would you lift your arms?"

The queen did so, and the servant wrapped her vest around her and fastened it in place. Technically, the gown was a version of the garment that tradition dictated her to wear at the Blood Moon banquet, which commemorated the fifth king's-Standish's-suppression of the first mine revolt in Crall. A cruel act, though one the histories praised. As with her other clothes, Corinn had had the tailors cut the dress to the contours of her body. This changed the look of the garment considerably. Corinn would hardly be able to eat or drink anything at the banquet, so snug was the fit, but that did not matter. The maroon dress displayed her breasts and the slimness of her torso and the flare of her hips all to startling effect, an unnerving combination of ancient authority and sensuous beauty.

Her sister's were not the only words written by one of her siblings that roiled around in Corinn's head. She had also spent part of the morning with several volumes open on the great wooden tables in the library. She had gone there, as she had several times before, to read in solitude about the ancients: Edifus, like a wolf fighting for dominance among a pack a snarling competitors; his son, Tinhadin, who built upon his father's shaky legacy with a mastery of god talk so complete that he came to fear he might utter it in his sleep and wake to find the world altered; Queen Rabella, four generations after Tinhadin, who rose to power and held it until her death, no king to rule her. She outlived six male consorts, but never agreed to wed. A smart woman, Corinn thought, and a documented argument against the conniving climbers who wished to bed her on their way to the throne.

She read these old texts to try to discern who her ancestors had really been, how they had succeeded, and what they could teach her. Ironic, but increasingly she reached back to those long dead for guidance while shielding her thoughts from those around her. She also read, searching for insights on the Santoth. Though she came across passages about them often, she never felt she understood them any better. They remained shadowy figures, like beings standing at the edge of her peripheral vision.

This morning, though, it had been a newer volume, one on her brother Aliver, that drew her in. Strange to read words that were supposed to be his. The transcripts of his speeches had about them a hint of the same formality that flavored the old texts. Though the book purported to be a transcription of his words, the shaping of scholarly hands was all over them. Rarely did she catch in them any hint of the brother she had known. But, of course, she had not known this adult Aliver, this warrior prince leading an army and stirring the masses to revolt.

And the content? Oh, such dreams. Such morals! He would remake the world as if it were moist clay that he could mold in his hands. Throw out the quota. Sweep away the league. Unclench the Akaran fist and let all nations rise. Free and equal. Partners in the workings of the world. How could he ever think that such idealism could survive a minute in the brawl that was life? It was folly of the highest order. The fact that so many had followed him just served as further proof of that. Fools' folly.

The Snow King, the text called him. Corinn could not help but scoff. She remembered the night Aliver had proclaimed himself that. Did the scholars in their studies and the peasants in their hovels telling tales of the Snow King not realize that Aliver had been but a boy talking about a snowball fight when he spoke those words? Though at times his idealism struck chords within her, she could not forget the reality of things long enough to fall under his spell. There was a difference, she believed, between the words in books and the manner in which the living must move through the world. She had no intention of forgetting this.

When Rhrenna approached her, clicking her tongue in praise of Corinn's appearance, the queen turned her thoughts back to the letter still in her hand. "What do you make of this?"

Rhrenna took the document and scanned it, though she had read it already. "She sounds pleased with herself. It makes me wonder-"

"Mistress, lean forward please."

Corinn did as instructed. Funny that a hairdressing servant at times commanded her in ways that generals and senators and soldiers never could.

"Makes you wonder what?" Corinn asked.

Rhrenna pressed her thin lips together. "I don't know if we should credit it, but Sinper Ou sent a message saying he'd heard Mena had captured the last foulthing instead of killing it."

It took Corinn a moment to answer. She waited for the hairdresser to finish the braid work around her forehead. It was painfully elaborate, but Corinn liked a certain amount of discomfort while at official functions. It kept her from relaxing, which was useful. "Why would she do that?" she asked, once her head was her own again.

Rhrenna shrugged. "I don't know. As I said, there's no reason to credit it. The people like to make up tales about your sister. Given the slightest opportunity, they embellish."

Corinn snorted in agreement. "Maeben on earth, she is."

"Yes, well… I came to tell you that King Grae has just arrived."

"Has he?"

"Surprise visit, apparently. He's asked to attend the banquet. Just as an observer, he says. He's content to stand to the side and watch."

"Why has he come?"

"He didn't say. To show off his freckles, perhaps, and the dimple in his chin." Rhrenna grinned. "He's not hard to look at."

Corinn did not recall. She had seen him a few times since she ascended to the throne but had been content to keep him at a distance. She did recall that he favored his brother Igguldan, and something about this had displeased her. "He may attend," she said, "but keep him at a far table. Even a king should provide us fair warning of his arrival."

"As you wish," Rhrenna said, "although I might need to wander over to the far tables myself." Smiling, she nudged aside the servant who had just lifted Corinn's slim crown. She slipped it in place herself. Made of white gold shaped like delicately thorned branches, it had a ruby at the center that was so dark it appeared black. Acacian royals wore crowns on occasion, though they could just as easily demonstrate their rank with necklaces, earrings, or bracelets, even with garments of a style made only for them for centuries now. But Corinn had taken to this piece since the jeweler first presented it to her. There was a rough texture to the gold, and the stone itself seemed to hide secrets within its depths.

"There," Rhrenna said, backing up and studying Corinn as if she had worked the transformation herself. "You're cruel, Corinn. You'll have the men sweaty with lust and the women sick with envy. Most of them, at least. A few might go sick with lust as well."

When Corinn arrived at the crowded outdoor courtyard in which the banquet was already in full swing, she remembered vaguely that she had once thrived on adolescent courtly intrigue. In her early teen years she had cared about nothing so much as the jockeying for status and favor among her peers. Handsome boys, rival girls, older men's lingering gazes and solicitous flattery; who bested whom on the training grounds; who wore the finest garments and how-it had all, for a time, been the very stuff of life. How foreign that girl was to Corinn now. How maddening that her father had let her live in that illusion for as long as he had.

Although what am I truly doing differently? the queen wondered, as she nodded and smiled and accepted the lips pressed to her hand. Again I walk through a maze of illusion, one of my own making. Perhaps some evening just like this one, some raving lunatic from the fringes will strike me down, just as befell my father. Much as befell Aliver. It's a fool's game, but what choice have I? Should I lock Aaden and myself up in the palace or in Calfa Ven? The latter was an appealing idea, but it would not do. Such a course was perhaps more dangerous anyway. No, she thought, better that I see where the snakes lie than that I find myself stepping on them. At least this way I can weed them out.

She moved through the gathered people with a cool detachment, guided by a bevy of maidens who flanked her as persistently as her Numrek guards. Unlike the taciturn guards-who, she noted, had grown more somber in recent weeks, almost as if they were displeased with their work-her maidens were all mirth. The court was a galaxy of many constellations. Corinn was master of them all, but before her floated representatives from around the empire-royal children, rich younger brothers and sisters, tribal princes and princesses-each the sun of some ally's heart, each surrounded by his or her own attendants. And through this patrolled the ambitious and the arrogant: senators and nobles, Agnates and landowners, shipbuilders and leaguemen, mistresses and lovers, guards and escorts. Sycophants all. Liars most. Some loved her, but these she suspected of their own sort of weakness.

Her mind only really engaged when she felt a need to calculate, study, observe particular others to see what they might betray in unguarded moments. She sat in the chair prepared for her, a throne on a dais, a low table laden with food in front of her, a few chairs on either side for the chosen ones fortunate enough to spend some of the evening near her.

As a Vadayan priest mumbled at her ear, Corinn took in the room. It sometimes surprised even her that her understanding of what was really going on around her was so at odds with the appearance of things. On the surface she sat above a party of people, sumptuously dressed, smiling and gay. Torches lit the place. They were sheathed in tall glass tubes that funneled the smoke up above the revelers and cast blue and red and green and yellow light, depending on the tint of the glass. Musicians lined the walls and the railings that hemmed the space, playing tunes that danced from one portion of the courtyard to another, like a chorus of birds at play. Everywhere there were smiling faces, laughter, conversation, flirtation; between them servants wove with food and drink liberally belched up from the kitchens. In one small area performers enticed the guests to dance. She spotted Aaden at play with his friends. They were like silver fish swimming amid the adults in some complicated game of tag. And above it all the night sky, mild and clear, stars twinkling into being as the sun slipped over the western horizon.

As if all of that were not enough, Corinn had woven a spell from The Song of Elenet, a small work of her own creation that would enchant a few hours before fading. It was a mild euphoria let loose in the air of the courtyard, circling unseen, just the thing to make the revelers feel themselves especially attractive, to make jokes sure to succeed, to make the light sparkle a bit brighter, and to make food and drink taste even better than it was. So it was another festive evening in Acacia; what could be more pleasant? It never took her long to spot the things slithering beneath the surface, parasites at work despite the evening's pleasures.

Delivegu was a reminder of it. She spotted him conversing with the party from the Prios Mines. How he had gotten in and what those men thought he was she had no idea, but in a strange way she was glad to have him near at hand. Eyes that lit with smiles when she made contact with them were misleading. She could sense the same eyes go malevolent when she was not looking. She could tell when conversation was amiable, and when the whispered words where unkind to her. She noted small things to examine further later. Senator Saden, while haranguing the woman beside him about something, avoided making eye contact with the newly enriched land speculator from Alyth. The man who passed beside him might have uttered something, but Saden did not acknowledge him until the two were some distance apart. Then he looked back and exchanged a knowing glance. Some petty treachery in the works between them? Likely. She would have Rhrenna look into it later.

Corinn's eyes drifted away from Saden to settle on a young man who stood at the far side of the courtyard, nearly atop the staircase that led to the lower terraces. He was flanked by several men with the firm-jawed look of trained guards. The man's reddish-blond hair was tousled as if an older brother had just mussed it up, yet his face-which Corinn sensed to be handsome even at a distance-took in the crowd with a confident composure.

"Who is that?" Corinn asked, gesturing with her chin.

Her maid answered that this was King Grae of Aushenia. The woman continued to explain that he would have been announced more formally, but he had arrived just a few hours earlier and asked to be in attendance this evening, even if just to watch the court from the-

"I know," she said. "Summon him." She glanced at the priest, smiling. "I'm sure the Vadayan will offer his seat to foreign royalty."

As she sat watching the messenger sent by the maid make his way through the crowd, Corinn wondered why she had done that. The words just came out of her mouth. She had claimed indifference to Grae to Rhrenna earlier; now she called him to her after a glance. The Meinish woman would find ways to poke fun at her for this, she was sure. It was done now, so she sat straight backed and waited, making a point of not watching the messenger interact with the king.

And just like that, before she knew it, a maid announced the monarch with a whisper in her ear. Corinn looked down the steps leading up to the dais and there he was, head bowed. His turbulent hair sported no crown, but that was a reasonable deference here in the heart of the empire. It wasn't that he really looked like Igguldan had, years before when Corinn first met him, but the sight of Grae came bearing more import than she had expected. First love, she thought. That's what it was. Foolishness. So thinking, she cursed herself for asking him over. What emotions would show on her face if she thought of such things here, with all the court's eyes on her? But she could do nothing now but go forward, composed.

The Aushenian straightened. Tall then. His shoulders broad and his form slim beneath them. He wore the loose-fitting shirt his nation favored, open at the collar, partially revealing the lean muscle beneath his coppery chest hairs. "Your Majesty," he said, smiling. "I am honored. I did not wish to disturb you, only to watch this wonderful occasion from the fringes."

Ah, that Aushenian accent. She had heard it often over the years, but it still had a strange effect on her. Its bold tones and clipped edges had poetry in their very nature. She felt her cheeks threatening to flush, but quelled it. "It wouldn't do to have a king sit among the merchant class. There are so few kings of note these days. I couldn't help but ask you to sit beside me. Please do."

"I'm honored." He pressed his lips to the rings of her proffered hand and then took the seat recently vacated by the priest. Grae's face was dangerously reminiscent of Igguldan's, though of slightly more masculine cut, just a little bit heavier in the jaw and bolder in the cheekbones. Even his freckles contributed, as if they had been splashed there playfully, intentionally. He was handsome. Corinn admitted Rhrenna was right about that.

He passed a few moments spouting the usual expressions of respect, and then sat grinning at the gathering before them. "Your Majesty," he said, "I'm ever amazed at the spectacle that is an Acacian banquet. The food alone is amazing. The music entrancing. The guests both dignified and courteous. The women are the most beautiful I've yet discovered in the world."

"Have you made a thorough survey of beauty in the world?"

"I have traveled, and I have eyes."

Certainly you do, Corinn thought. The kind of blue eyes that adolescent girls swoon over. "Detail your findings for me, then."

Grae laughed and moved to dismiss the subject with a motion of his fingers.

"No, I mean it, sir. Tell me."

She held him to the point until he began an awkward description of the empire's races and descriptions of their women's qualities. He fumbled at first, but picking up on Corinn's projected good humor he soon made a game of it. Halfway through his discourse, Corinn joked that he seemed to have found beauty everywhere he looked. He did not dispute it, but by the end he circled back to where he had begun. He concluded that Acacian beauty is superior because it contained so much of the world within it. "All the virtues of the races, none of the flaws. Your beauty, my queen, is that of the center point of the world."

Corinn's brow wrinkled with skepticism. "Indeed." She took a wineglass offered her by a servant. Grae did the same. "Where's your brother?" she asked. "I heard you two travel together frequently."

"We do," Grae said, "but he's off studying agricultural techniques on the Mainland. He likes to be industrious, my little brother."

"I know the type. You were close to him when you were young?"

They were, Grae agreed. At Corinn's prompting, he told her several tales of their youth, hiding in the far north of Aushenia. Such a wild country, he made it seem, though that might have been because he still imagined it with a frightened child's eyes. She could picture those mountains and thick forests and white bears and snowstorms and swarms of insects as thick as flocks of migrating birds.

"We could not hide forever, though," Grae said. "So I did eventually come back into the world. Only it was a world in which my father and older brother no longer lived. It was a world in which my nation was overrun with foreigners, carved up, a playground for the Numrek. Dire times. Better that they are behind us now."

"You didn't fight for my brother, did you?"

"For Aliver?" Grae looked uneasy, but then regained his composure and answered with what appeared to be simple honesty. "No, I didn't, but I would have. Proudly, I would have. When he was massing to press his battle against Maeander in Talay, I was fighting for the life of my nation. I fought the remnants of the Numrek still on my soil, and I expelled the Mein and closed the Gradthic Gap. It was bloody, and… Well, I would argue that Aliver and I were fighting common enemies, even if we did not do so together."

Corinn did not comment on the later statement. "Tell me, when you say that you fought, what does that mean exactly? I mean, I fought Hanish himself, right here in Acacia, but that doesn't mean I actually drew his blood with my own blade. My sister does that sort of thing, not me. But you, when you fight, do you fight yourself, or do you instruct others to fight in your name?"

"My sword is no virgin blade," Grae said. Corinn noted a flare of arrogance held back. "I never sent men into battle. I led them into battle. I will not brag to you, Your Majesty. That would be unseemly. But I invite you to ask others of my character. I think you will find my reputation is sound."

No doubt, Corinn thought. He did look the part of a leader of men. She could imagine him in armor, sword in hand, inspiring others to acts of bravery. Outwardly, he was the type of man both men and women would follow. She made a note mentally to look into his reputation, as he himself had suggested.

Beneath them the banquet continued. At some point, Wren entered. Corinn followed her with her eyes for some time, believing she could just see the first signs of her pregnancy at her waist, not enough that others would notice, but it was there. Lady Wren, secretly carrying Dariel's child. What did she intend? Delivegu had learned that she planned to announce the child once the prince had returned. Doesn't trust me to react with joy to the news, is that it? Corinn wondered. You may be shrewder than I credit. I'll figure out what to do with you yet.

Different courses came and went from the tables. The musicians played. On several occasions Corinn and Grae had to pause to acknowledge some toast or to chat briefly with those who had the temerity to approach the dais. Once a storyteller told of how King Standish put down the revolt and kept peace in the world, an elaborate tale that Corinn knew had little truth in it. She had enough of the early king's private journals to know how much the official record differed from the confessions of the monarch behind the myth.

She was not listening much, for Grae made for diverting company. Praise for her horse culture plans rolled off his tongue. Aushenians, he said, considered their equine traditions part of what had nurtured their independent spirit. To imagine such a connection with noble beasts near the heart of mighty empire like Acacia excited him greatly. He offered his countrymen's expertise, if Acacia had use for it. Corinn said she likely did, half forgetting that she had started the whole business just to keep her ambitious councillors busy.

Grae was almost too diverting. She sensed something held back in him, an arrogance that hid beneath his genial facade. It wasn't exactly unattractive-especially as he controlled it-but it did make her wonder.

Perhaps she had absorbed too many breaths of her own spell, for she asked, "King Grae, just what is it you're really after?"

Grae jerked his glass of wine away from his lips in midsip, spilling a bit. "My lady?"

Feeling as playful about it as she appeared, she leaned close and, knowing the posture pressed her breasts together and that Grae had to keep his eyes from straying to them, asked, "No man comes to me without wanting something-not even a king. What is it you want?"

"I won't try to hide the truth from you," Grae said, losing his relaxed demeanor for a moment. "I'd fail if I did. I'm an admirer. I always have been, but… perhaps I've matured enough to understand it."

"And become brave enough to voice it, at least vaguely."

Grae dipped his head, but kept his eyes on her. "I'll happily get more specific if you-"

"Would like? Well, I would. Indulge me." She stretched out the last sentence, using her lips and the tilt of her head to add allure. She still did not know quite what had gotten into her. When was the last time she had flirted with a man? Ages. Since Hanish, but what sort of flirting was that? Mostly, she had attacked him with her sharp tongue. Strange method of courting. No, she had not batted her eyes at a man since adolescence, since Igguldan. But whereas that had seemed a memory too painful to approach before, Grae seemed a version of the same things she had admired in his brother-a living version, sitting beside her.

"You really wish to know?" he asked. "For me to say it outright? That's not Aushenian style. Normally, I'd have to compose a poem-"

"Which would be very entertaining, I'm sure. Do compose one and recite it for me later. At present, though, be direct."

The king sat a minute looking like a perplexed child, and then he shrugged and regained his charm. "As you wish, Your Majesty. The truth is, I've come in the hope that I might court you, and that if the signs seemed favorable I might offer myself for marriage. With all the respect due your elevated position."

Ah… So there it is. At least he speaks plainly. "You want to make me your wife?"

"I'd be content for you to make me your husband, Your Majesty." He leaned toward her. "Look, I am a proud man, content to fight for my honor, to rebuff any insult. And Aushenia is a proud nation. But I'm also a reasonable man. You, Queen Corinn, are a woman-and ruler-of both grace and immense power. You can't be surprised that I'd wish us and our nations joined. I trust this doesn't offend you. You did ask for me-"

"To be straightforward. No, no, I'm not so easily offended. Certainly not by such reasonable flattery. You do catch me off guard, though. I had no idea my marital status was so much on the mind of Aushenia."

"Oh, it is, believe me. At least in so far as I am Aushenia."

Corinn remembered then that she once professed no fondness for blue eyes. Who wants to look into water? she had teased Rhrenna. She would hardly be able to say that now, with Grae's eyes so intent on her, so refreshing. That's what they were: the promise of a cool drink of water to a thirsty mouth. She almost laughed outright at the metaphor. It was the Aushenians who gamed at poetry. She should leave it to them.

"You know that no such union would be on equal terms," she said, straightening and speaking with the hint of royal detachment. "We would swallow you. I don't say there aren't advantages to that, but we've trod near this path before."

"I know," Grae said, responding with a similarly aloof tone. "And I know you won my brother's heart before mine. But that was not to be. We who remain, however, still have our lives to live. My father and brother both wanted an Acacian-Aushenian union. It is usually the case that great ideas are delayed. The early prophets are slain or maligned. Often we see the full wisdom of visionaries only in retrospect."

"And the retrospective view of your queen Elena? She would not bless this union you propose, would she?"

Corinn did not get the chance to hear his answer. Someone shouted, a rough bark that had no place at a banquet. A second later a scream-high-pitched and feminine-cut through the revelry and left silence in its place. That did not last long, as people began to point and murmur and exclaim.

"What is that about?" Grae asked. He followed the pointing fingers-there were more each moment-and Corinn did the same.

For a few long seconds she did not believe what she saw. And then when she believed that her eyes did see the thing she wondered if it was not some elaborate hoax. And then she knew it was not, just as the crowd knew it and erupted in chaos. What she saw was a winged creature, its wings enormous, lit from underneath by the torchlight and bright against the screen of the night sky behind it, descending toward them. Its body was sinewy and curved, its head that of a reptilian beast, its tail whipping audibly beneath it. Hind legs lashed the air, and for a moment Corinn was certain the monster was going to fall on her.

"A dragon," she whispered, and knew in that instant how quickly death could fall from the sky.

"Archers!" Grae called, on his feet now, shielding Corinn.

There were no archers, though. There never were at banquets. Guests were forbidden weapons, and the only arms allowed inside were those of high-ranked Marah and of her Numrek bodyguards. Both forces peeled away from the walls and pushed toward her, drawing their weapons and shouting for the crowd to make way. They surrounded her, shoving Grae aside. They formed a bristling buttress with their swords pointed skyward. The creature circled a few times above them. In one turn Corinn thought she saw-But that couldn't be.

And then the creature landed. Its feet settled on the courtyard stones with a surprising lightness. With a strange rolling of its shoulders and quick clicking sound, it drew its wings in. Blinking its large, round eyes, it took in the cowering people and the sudden disarray it had caused. The creature held its two thin upper arms delicately before it, claw tips touching and eyes darting about with the nervous energy of a child who suspects she has done something either wonderful or punishable but awaits confirmation of which it is.

In that stillness, Corinn saw the figure on the creature's back. Mena. Her sister had ridden the beast. Now she slid down and hit the stones merrily. She grinned ear to ear and, fixing her eyes on her older sister, asked, as if it were the most natural question in the world, "Did you get my letter?"