The other lands

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

When Rhrenna first brought her the missive, Corinn waved her away. Delivegu had been useful. He would be again, perhaps. And he had a carnal sensuality that parts of her-despite the fact that her intentionally cold facade showed no sign of it-had responded to. But that was before Grae had stepped in and so completely replaced the other man. Grae, with his square-jawed nobility and all the legitimately pleasing possibilities his nuptial overtures offered, a gentleman of noble birth who had proven himself of her class each day of his stay in the palace. Since, Delivegu had seemed even more like an anxious puppy. She had stopped reading his notes. For several weeks now Rhrenna had been discarding them without troubling the queen. If he did not desist, Corinn had decided, his yapping would have to be silenced more forcefully.

Rhrenna needed only to see the queen's expression to know her thoughts. In answer, she said, "Yes, I know. But you should read it just the same. I won't be the one who didn't deliver this to you."

Tiny threads of annoyance flared out from the corners of Corinn's eyes, one of the few places the passing years had begun to stake a claim. She took the note, snapped it open. She remarked at how brief it was, which was unusual for the Candovian. Your Majesty, I have captured your foe. I have Barad the Lesser and will deliver him to you shortly. Your loyal servant, D.

She let the note drop from her fingers, blowing air through her teeth. How bold-faced of him! She found no reason to believe such a claim. What was he playing at? Last she had heard, Delivegu had been sulking about the lower town's brothels, digging for secrets and doing whatever else pleasured him. Barad the Lesser, on the other hand, had eluded the empire for years, leaving scarcely any leads, a sort of phantom whom she might have doubted altogether if word of him had not been so consistent.

"Delivegu is a fool," Corinn said.

Rhrenna pressed her thin lips together, stern for a just a second, before laughing. "We both know that's not true, Your Majesty. He's many things, but a fool is not first among them."

"You credit this, then?"

"Doesn't matter if I do. I'm patient enough to wait until tomorrow morning." She held another folded letter, much the same as the first. "He sent me another, you see. A private message." She displayed both sides of it, as if thinking something through. She was not actually doing so, which was clear from the humor in her eyes. Shrugging, she tossed the note onto the queen's table. "But what's mine is yours, of course. Read it, if it pleases you."

She's gone as giddy as Mena with her lizard bird, Corinn thought. As giddy as me with my suitor…

She glanced down, but didn't reach for the letter. Was she growing lax? It had only been a few weeks since Mena and Grae both dropped into her court, but she already suspected she had missed things she would not have before. She had failed to note down a few slights, decided to ignore a suspicion or two so that they did not interfere with her mood. Was that foolish? Or was it time to take some joy in life again?

Joy, she thought, might not be the weakness I've believed it to be.

Being with Grae warmed her, and that made her inclined to gentle rule. She found herself flirting with him without the controlled guise that had become part of almost every interaction. That lowering of her guard had loosened the bands of tension that had so long clamped her skull. That was not a bad thing, was it? Grae had taken her hand once as they were sitting on a bench in the high courtyard of the monument to Edifus's first defensive towers. She did not think he knew that his brother Igguldan had once fallen to his knees in awe of the ancients in this spot. Nor did she mention it, for Grae was less and less his brother's shadow, more his own man every day. It was good that she saw him that way, for he was a fine king of his people and might yet be a fit monarch for the Known World.

Once, two days before, she had even set free a small work of sorcery in the gardens: insects of a sort not seen before. Antlike beings with large, diaphanous wings, they seemed to want nothing more than to flit above the onlookers' delighted heads. They seemed almost to sing, as if the flapping of their sparkling wings made music with the air. She was aware that she did this as much to impress Grae as to delight Aaden and his friends, but for once she allowed herself the indulgence. She looked forward to doing so again. Let the people fear her sorcery; let them love it as well.

She had even refused to meet with Sire Nathos, who had come to the island with Paddel, the vintner. Both of them clamored to begin distribution of the new Prios vintage, the mist-infused wine that would glaze the eyes of the populace once more. It was not that she had truly decided against employing it, but she did wonder if it was possible to rule without it. She was loved-or could be. As many tales were spun about her powers and gifts as had been spun about Mena's warrior prowess. Talay was bursting into life again. So much seemed right. But Paddel and Nathos certainly believed in the dangers posed by this Barad. He was the main reason cited to explain the need for the new drug.

"Meet him, then," Corinn told Rhrenna, still without picking up the note. "See for yourself. If what Delivegu says is true, I'll receive him before meeting his prisoner myself. If he's lying, arrange for his death."

The next morning dawned as usual during the Acacian summer: warm but breezy, the sun alone in a blue-white sky, the sea turquoise nearby and a rich blue in the depths. It was almost ridiculous how unrelentingly perfect the weather was on the island. Sitting beside Aaden, Corinn felt a pang of nostalgia for Calfa Ven. They would have to go there again soon, up into the high, damp air, where the nights were chill and mornings mist shrouded and the air always haunted by some animal call, whether it be a wolver-bear's roar, a loon's piping, or a stag's trumpeting. Perhaps she would invite Grae along with them. Surely he would love it. She almost asked Aaden if he would like that also, but she was with him for a reason. Best that it be attended to first.

The mother and son sat on stools placed for them to look down through slanting panes of tinted glass. Below them an empty room, one chair at its center. Skylights lit the room brightly, while the viewing area was shaded from the sun by an awning. They could look down without being observed. So placed, they awaited the prisoner's arrival.

"If this man is who my agent claims he is," Corinn said, "he is one of my greatest enemies."

"I know about him," Aaden said, swiping the gold-touched hair back from his forehead. "But how can he be a threat? He doesn't even have an army. My tutor said he goes about riling up the common folk, but that none of them have yet done anything, for all his talk. They're tradesmen and blacksmiths and farmers."

"You think tradesmen and blacksmiths and farmers are no threat to me? Singly they aren't, of course, but Barad makes the many into one. That's dangerous. We rule because the people allow us to rule. They believe we have power, but their belief is the delusion that grants it to us. Don't ever forget that. Nothing you can do with your sword, or with your army, is nearly as important as what you must do with your mind, with your words-"

There was motion in the chamber below them. Four Marah guards entered the room, each with their hands crossed and holding the hilt of both short and long swords, ready to draw. They squared off around the empty chair, facing it. A moment later a giant of a man entered. Hands secured behind his back, he had to dip his head beneath the door frame. He paused just inside the room and stood for a moment taking measure of the space. His clothes hung ragged about him, soiled. One sleeve had torn at the shoulder. After looking around the room for a moment, he raised his head and glanced straight up at the glass through which the mother and son watched.

Corinn spoke a bit hurriedly and perhaps to reassure herself as much as Aaden. "He cannot see us."

The boy said, "He looks like a peasant. A big one, but still a peasant."

Another guard blocked the doorway behind the prisoner. He shoved him forward with a free hand, the other on the hilt of his short sword. The guard directed him to sit in the chair, and then walked around before him and said something the watchers could not hear.

"So, if we assume that this man is a danger to us, what do we do with him?"

Aaden sat silently thinking for a long time. Corinn thought for the millionth time how much she loved this boy. How was it possible to love so completely and to remember it again and again every day?

"Doesn't that depend on how he is a danger? What he is threatening to do and how?" Aaden finally said.

"Yes, those are things to consider. He is a danger because he has a gift for oratory. He is one of the people; and when he speaks to them, he makes them believe that all their grievances are caused by us. They're not, of course. We expect much from our subjects. In return we give them the stability of a prosperous nation. Commoners rarely understand that, and they forget it when a man like this comes into their midst. So his danger is that he blends together a host of grievances and directs it at one target-the Akaran line. At you, Aaden. What is he threatening to do? Destroy us. He believes his peasants could do better at governing the world than we. Or he believes that he will be empowered by our downfall. I'm not sure which. Either way, he would see me deposed. Likely killed after some mockery of a trial. So what do we do with him?"

"We stop him from talking?"

"Perhaps, but that would not undo the things he has said and the emotions he has stirred. What is better than silencing him?"

"If he must talk… we should have him say what we want him to, instead of what we don't."

A smile slowly bloomed on Corinn's face. The answer did not surprise her-she had thought of it herself already-but it did please her. She reached out and mussed his hair and said, "Clever boy."

Aaden accepted the praise with a shrug.

"You may go now," Corinn said. "I'll tell you later what this criminal had to say for himself."

But Aaden had more on his mind. "Grae said he would go riding with me tomorrow, all the way out to Haven's Rock. He claims he has a fishing line long enough to reach the water from the top. There's no way that's possible. He must be joking! I can go, can't I?"

"You like Grae, don't you?" Corinn asked, trying to make the question sound light and casual. "You've spent even more time with him than I have."

"He fenced with me. Not like the others but steel to steel. I could've gotten cut." The prospect of this seemed to delight the boy.

"Is that so?" Corinn raised an eyebrow. This was not actually news to her. Very little that Aaden did went unreported to her. For that matter, very little that Grae did during the last few weeks escaped her either. She knew what Aaden did not mention about this sparring: that the blades they used were light, with no edge at all. Grae could certainly have hurt him nonetheless, but ten pairs of Marah eyes had been pinned to him the entire time, ready to repay any injury with a quick death. Corinn asked, "Don't you think that's dangerous?"

"No. Not really. He said I was quicker than him. Quicker than he ever was, he said." Almost as an afterthought, he added, "He wouldn't hurt me, anyway. He likes me."

"Of course he wouldn't," Corinn said. "And of course he does."

Aaden's delay in leaving meant that he was still in the hallway when Rhrenna led Delivegu into the viewing area. After the formalities of greeting the queen were seen to, the Candovian said, "Your son looks more like Hanish Mein every day." He motioned toward the corridor to explain the comment's origins.

Corinn eyed him a moment, deciding how severe to be with him. At a glance he was just as elaborately garbed as ever, his shirt brilliantly white, his black breeches tight enough that they seemed to have shrunk to fit his form. The hoops of his gold earrings sparkled, and he wore bracelets on one wrist that clanged together as he moved. But for all the gaudy finery, his face did not betray his usual arrogance. Perhaps his time out of favor had mellowed him.

"You knew Hanish Mein?" Corinn asked.

"To look at, yes. Only to look at. He didn't know me, but he was hard to miss when he had the reins of power. I liked his style." As an afterthought, he added, "Then, I guess you did, too."

Or perhaps it had not mellowed him, Corinn thought. She was unsure as yet. She ordered him to explain his claim and document the identity of the man sitting in the room below them. Delivegu did so readily enough. He explained that he had gained intelligence that led him to a certain commoner's message service. There he had intercepted a message meant for the rascal. He hurriedly transported himself to the message's destination. It was a gamble, a considerable personal expense, but it paid off. He did spot the man. He spied on him long enough to satisfy himself of his identity, and then he decided on a way to capture him.

"How did you do that?"

Delivegu shrugged and looked the closest he could to sheepish. "I'm not proud when it comes to such matters. I came up behind him when he was fumbling with the keys to unlock his rented room. I hit his head with a club."

"Without warning?"

"Of course. How better to do it? And lucky I did, for he didn't go down from that one blow. He turned and reached for me. I needed to hit him twice more before he dropped to his knees. Then he was easier to deal with. A bit, at least."

"How did you know it was Barad?"

"Before I approached him, I questioned an acquaintance of his. A young man with, I daresay, insufficient resilience to resist me."

"This initial information you gained-that which took you to the message service-how was that come by?"

Delivegu cleared his throat. "I have something to report that you may find disturbing." He paused, brow furrowed in an expression of consternation that looked odd. "I wished you to know the other details first, but this part cannot be avoided. You're right to ask. Hear me through, please, before you respond."

Corinn kept her eyes fixed on him as he proceeded. She kept them pinned to his features, focused first on his face as a whole and then on its smaller components: the crook of his nose, the motion of lips, the black hairs of his beard. The focus was necessary, for otherwise she feared she would betray the fact that her heart pounded at twice the rate it had a moment before. She would not even look at Rhrenna, who was hearing the news with her. She knew her face had flushed red, but her expression remained unchanged. Alleys and spying. Following a servant… What he was telling her was-

"As you can imagine, I had to be quite rough with Barad. He's a big man, you see, so I had to be careful. Anyway, he was a little bit out of it, and he asked me, 'Did he betray me to her?' I had explained to him that I was in your employ. When he asked, I almost asked him, 'Who?' The word was on my tongue, but I snipped it." Delivegu demonstrated just how precisely he did so by making scissors of his fingers. "Instead, I said, 'Of course, he betrayed you. He's royalty after all. Why would he side with commoners?' I said this to provoke confusion or disagreement or something. But he responded with none of those. He simply accepted it sadly.

"So…" Delivegu inhaled a long breath, then said plainly, "There can really be no doubt, Your Majesty. Barad, your enemy among the people, was in a partnership with King Grae. As I traveled with Barad I returned to this subject several times. He didn't give much, so I told him how it was. How King Grae had come to you speaking of a plot they had concocted together. How you and he worked to find a way to capture him. I even said that you and the Aushenian were secretly engaged. It's a skill I have, finding the truth even when the one I'm interrogating doesn't say a thing. There's no question, though. He was in league with Grae, and now he believes Grae betrayed him. I deliver him to you in the hope that you will mete out justice as is right."

Inside Corinn's head a hundred different thoughts assailed her. On her face she made sure that nothing could be read. Despite the internal turmoil, she heard herself say calmly, "We'll see about all this soon enough. I will speak with him now."

Delivegu straightened like an obedient servant, eager to please and seemingly happy at her reaction-or lack of reaction. Corinn paused at the door and let Delivegu advance ahead of her. Leaning close to Rhrenna, she whispered, "While I am with him, bring Grae to the upper terrace. Let him see to whom I'm speaking. Watch his face. Tell me if he shows signs of recognizing him."

Time must have passed, but she lost track of it. Why it was so hard to concentrate she could not say. Her mind felt sluggish but also touched with a panic that might spread if she were not careful. It was not just thinking of Grae, not just the disbelief that she might have read him so wrongly, not just the gasping knowledge that he had held steel and fenced with Aaden, not even realizing how very close she had come to folly.

In addition to all this, emotions she had not allowed within herself for years rushed in. Memories of her father, of Igguldan, of Hanish: the men who had betrayed her, each in his own way. Was Grae another of these? Was she still the fool she had been at sixteen? More, images of her mother during her illness, the memory of crying and crying and crying on her bedspread as the woman-she who was dying-tried to comfort her. More, there came a bone-deep longing, which she almost never acknowledged, to sit and speak with Aliver, right now, as adults, both of them living.

And then she was striding through the doorway behind Delivegu. She walked into the room and circled around to the front of the chair. The guards followed her with their eyes, and she watched as the prisoner's square profile came into view and then changed as it filled out. She pulled in her attention, blocked out the noise, and concentrated all her being on the exchange she was about to have. It felt necessary to focus her eyes on a single point, while the rest of the world blurred. The man's eyes were brown, spaced wide. Rolling toward her, they looked heavy, as if just moving them would be a monumental task, as if they were stone. She could almost hear the grinding rumble as they shifted.

She said, "Lower your eyes." The man stared at her a moment longer and then obeyed. "How could you think the monarch of one kingdom would betray the monarch of another… for peasants? Don't you see how foolish that is? How impossible? And they told me you were bright. Devious. Cunning. Instead, you're none of these things."

Had she really gotten all that out without a hitch or quaver of emotion? She had. The man's steady attention confirmed it. He stared at her feet but said nothing.

"You may speak freely to me," Corinn said, trusting her voice a little more now. "I am not easy to offend. Nor do you frighten me. If your language is coarse, so be it. I have some rough about me as well."

One corner of the man's mouth crooked upward. It looked like a tic, a jerk of his cheek muscles, but the expression held. A lopsided smile.

"Well, speak. That's what you like to do, isn't it? Make up speeches. Exhort. Rant to the masses! Try it on an audience of one."

The man bowed his head, moving that smile out of her view. She watched him gather himself with a series of inhaled breaths. She could have him beaten, she thought. Mutilated. Killed. She could-right now, right here-order his tongue cut out. No more speeches then. And, she realized, part of what was jumbling her mind was the song. It was high in her, roiling about the curve of her skull like liquid flame mixed with sound, hungry to get out. She did not even need to order another to act for her. She could open her mouth and sing him into oblivion.

"You have betrayed your brother's dreams."

She saw the words on his lips, and then she heard them, and then put the two together and understood them.

"Have I? And did my brother detail his dreams to you?"

Barad took a few breaths before answering, but his voice was sure when he did, no hint of deceit or hesitation in it. "Yes. Many nights he spoke to me in dreams." He looked up. "I make up no speeches, Corinn Akaran. I simply recite what I remember, what Aliver wished me to say to the world. You would do well to listen yourself. It is not too late to save yourself from ruin."

Corinn was quicker even than the Marah in responding to this insult. She said nothing. She only opened her mouth slightly and let out the ribbon of song already waiting. It slipped through the air on a whisper, and the thing she had but thought was done. The eyes that had dared to look up at her were eyes no longer. They were stone replicas, frozen in place. Delivegu gasped. One of the guards whispered a curse of amazement. Barad himself did not move at all. His stone eyes stared at her, his expression otherwise unchanged.

She spun away.

In her offices an hour later she recalled the dream she had just that morning. In it, she had arranged to meet Grae in her chambers. She had not explained why, but when he arrived, the room was lit with low lamps, heavy with incense. A single musician in a hidden closet piped a faint tune on a bone whistle. And she stood in a thin shift, a diaphanous garment.

His eyes had widened into two blue saucers when he saw her.

She was naked beneath the dress. She could see by the nervous difficulty Grae had controlling his eyes that he had noticed this. The light from the candle beside her, she knew, would be languid around her curves, and the thought of the power she had just standing there pressed her nipples erect against the thin fabric. He noticed that as well.

"I am no virgin," she had said. "I am no blushing maiden. I have no desire to be in love again. Such things are of my past. I come to you as I am. A queen. A mother. A woman. Those three things may be too much for you to handle, but if you think yourself monarch enough for it, I will have you as a husband. This is me. Consider."

With that, Corinn had slipped loose the knot at her waist and shrugged the silken shift from her shoulders. Corinn let Grae take her in from head to toe. It pleased her to have his eyes adoring her-that prodded her to cut his examination short.

"I'll have your answer now, by the way."

His answer, in the dream, had been to rise and walk toward her, swaying oddly as he did, raising first one arm and then the other. It was a strange ballet that she understood as a custom of his people, a dance of the cranes or some such. She had thought it lovely, and began to return it.

But that was just a dream. In real life, she had not worn that shift. She had not made that offer. Sitting in her office after her encounter with Barad, she checked these facts several times to be sure of them. No, she had shown the Aushenian nothing but gracious hospitality. She had been more generous with her time than normal, perhaps had smiled too readily and spoke to him with unguarded familiarity. But nothing more than that. She was so grateful for this fact that she pressed the tips of her fingernails to her forehead and squeezed, thanking the Giver for her having had at least that much reserve.

When Rhrenna entered, her face as pale and distorted as beeswax grown soft in the sun, Corinn already knew what she would report. The secretary confirmed as much tersely. Grae had nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw Barad. Though Rhrenna spoke to him innocently about what was happening-betraying no suspicion of him-Grae had stammered and even trembled a bit. Sweat had appeared in instant droplets along his forehead, and his attempts at looking casual were clearly forced.

"I cannot believe it was all an act," Rhrenna said, "but there it is. He scorned you-"

"This is not about being scorned," Corinn cut in. The words came before she knew she was to say them, but they were true. Scorn was for lesser people than she. "It's about ruling an empire," she said, and then gave new orders.