The other lands

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Sire Dagon met the others of the League Council in a darkened chamber of the league compound in Alecia. A light distillation of green mist clouded the air, moving in ghostly swirls on the air currents. The first rank of leaguemen sat in a tight circle, each of them leaning back in an intricate reclining chair. Beyond the first ring there was a second, and a third, and beyond that the nonspeakers huddled close, listening. At meetings like this only the first three circles could speak freely, and they all did so without really seeing the others. It could take a long time between the asking of a question and an answer, especially as the group's mist-drenched state meant that they shared a certain linkage of thought. Their minds hummed like tuning forks that spread the same note among them. They had separate minds, yes, but it was-in the council chamber-impossible for any of them to deceive the others.

"Events did not proceed as we expected," Sire Dagon admitted. "Our intelligence about the Auldek was… partial. Flawed, I'm afraid."

An answering rumble of voices reverberated in the dim chamber of the League Council.

"You speak in understatement." Sire Grau's voice had an unusual clarity to it, a cadence untroubled by the tremulous effects of his advanced years. Dagon recognized what powered it: flames of anger stirred up from the slow embers that usually fueled him. "Neen saw what he wished to see, not the actual truth! He acted on what he wanted to believe, driven by emotion, blind to the flaws of his actions. Rarely has a leagueman made such grave mistakes."

Sire Grau sat beside Dagon in the first circle. Neither man looked at the other. Usually, the mist had a calming effect, enough so that they conducted all council business-no matter how fractious-with heavy-lidded calm. On this occasion Dagon felt an increased level of clarity in his own mind, calmed not at all by the unease surging through the chamber in waves. It had been many, many years since they met to discuss so many events not entirely in their control. For the younger among them, this marked the first such time.

Sire Faleen, though below Grau in authority, calmed them. As the Council Speaker, it fell to him to shape the direction of the meeting. Dagon did not mind at all that he turned it first toward Sire Neen's fiasco in Ushen Brae. He shared among them all he knew of what had happened, which was a great deal. They had probed the minds of the few Ishtat to return alive from the meeting with Devoth. No leagueman had made it out of that butcher's chamber, but the Ishtat minds housed images of the gore and at least fragments of the conversation preceding Neen's abrupt beheading. All agreed that he should have seen that coming. Devoth had betrayed his intentions by the way he moved his body and in the way his eyes darted about. Neen had been too flushed with dubious victory over the Lothan Aklun to see, too sure he held the world's wealth in his hand.

"Fool," more than one voice declared.

Faleen did not dispute the label. "Sire Neen made grave mistakes. He cost us dearly."

"Awkward the way he mishandled things," a voice in the second row said. "Should he be forgotten?"

A murmur of approval greeted this suggestion. "Yes. Yes. Let him be forgotten," several voices said at once.

The greatest enthusiasm was in the outer rows. Neen's demise would allow one of them quicker access to the inner circle. Dagon craned his head around just slightly and let his eyes cant farther from there, searching for the man who had proposed the forgetting. He spotted him. Lean faced, although with wide-set eyes that tilted downward at the outer edges. His name? Lethel. Sire Lethel. He was Neen's second cousin. So much for familial loyalty. Among the league, though, none would fault him for it. In truth, they all shared similar blood.

Sire El said, "He may be forgotten, but his errors should not be."

Grunts of affirmation. "Forget the man; remember the folly so as not to repeat it."

Dagon was not entirely sure how one could repeat the specifics of Neen's folly, but he let a low rumble build in his throat, his consent to the proposal.

"He is forgotten, then," Faleen said some time later, once it was clear that nobody objected.

That small measure passed quickly. What to do with Ushen Brae now that so much had changed took somewhat longer to work through. They turned the issue over for some time, exploring the possibilities, the problems, the likelihood of salvaging something of the once so very prosperous trade. The Auldek were abandoning Ushen Brae as they spoke. They would leave the continent peopled with many of their former-and infertile-slaves. Do they find a way to return to the old order? Or must they create a new one? Let the quota in Ushen Brae die out? Or offer them trade instead? Perhaps they would like slaves of their own. So many questions.

The same in regard to the Known World. Would the Auldek conquer? Likely so. Many of them walked with a hundred souls beneath their skin. A hundred deaths at their disposal. How could weak Acacians stand before them? The fragile coalition of the Akaran Empire would shatter when such a threat approached.

"The bitch with her plan to end the quota," Sire Revek said. "Does she really mean it?"

There were moments that Dagon disliked the shared communion of the council. One could not lie. The others could even have measured the beating of his heart or felt the sweat on his palms if they wished. They would sense that he did not like calling Queen Corinn "the bitch," but they would also forgive him. After all, he did the work few of them did, out among the peasants, so much of his life in service to them all. Considering that leaguemen never told peasants the truth about anything, their complete openness with one another had an ironic quality.

"Yes, Chairman, she likely does mean it at the moment," Dagon answered. "She is an Akaran, after all. She remains victim of notions of glory and benevolence, especially during times of stress. Not the substance of benevolence, of course-the show. That's what pumps her blood. She may abolish the quota now, resume it later. She may see that the trade is simply no longer viable. In a great many ways she is right about that."

"She has no creativity," a voice in the third row said. "There is always a way to exploit for gain."

"We see that, yes," Grau said. "The peasant folk rarely do."

Many voices climbed over one another in anxious agreement with the chief elder.

"But the bitch has finally consented to release the vintage," Revek said. "Within a few weeks the entire Known World will be addicted to it. Will that not unite them?"

"It will. It will," Sire Nathos said, speaking about his area of expertise, "but I don't think that it matters. United they may just fall faster. Let them line up to get cut down. Better that than that they splinter and hide in the various provinces. Either way, I would not bet on their chances. And we need not. If the Auldek prevail, who is to say we can't do business with them? When the Known World is populated with Auldek and their newborn children-babies for the first time in hundreds of years-what will the Auldek wish for?"

"Peace."

"Stability."

Nathos nodded. "They'll begin to fear death again. They'll want sedate, docile servants with no rebellion in them. They'll want to grow rich as they dream of their children's lives. We will have them in our power just as much as we had the Acacians."

Faleen asked, "And if, by some strange turn of events, the bitch beats them back?"

"I rather hope she doesn't," Nathos admitted. "That seems… boring. But if that happens, she'll have a newly addicted, certainly battered, nation to rebuild. She has no idea how completely we own her."

"And she still does not know what happens when one stops drinking the vintage?"

"No. No, she let that go untested."

Sire Grau chuckled. "So we have them forever. Oh, my brothers, isn't commerce wonderful? My mood is rising. What else have we to consider?"

Sire El reiterated an idea he had proposed before. Perhaps the time when they need fear their own military might was behind them. They should enlarge the Ishtat Inspectorate. If they could not sell quota slaves as regularly, they could train them instead. They were already doing this on a small scale, and the first young soldiers bred on the Outer Isles had successfully joined the ranks of the Ishtat, without mishap.

Several from the inner circle, including Faleen, grumbled against this. "We should be wary lest we make ourselves like the peasants," Faleen said. "I want no army to rebel against us, no kings or queens or senators."

"I did not propose kings or queens or senators," El snapped. "I propose that we make use of a means of production we have gone to great expense to establish. The plantations exist. They produce souls, bodies. We must find something to do with the product, lest it all go to rot."

"Either the bitch or the Auldek or the quota slaves in Ushen Brae may one day turn against us," Sire Lethel said, speaking with unusual boldness from the second circle. "Who knows what the future holds? It may be that we don't just need to protect our products and wealth. Who is to say we won't need to fight for our very existence?"

They lay pondering this for a time, and then slowly, one by one, they gave their consent. The conversation continued. Eventually, as the entire group slowed with shared fatigue, Faleen, with Grau's approval, recounted the consensus. Sire El could build his army. On one of the small isles, another leagueman would oversee the production of concubines, quality ones who would be as much spies and assassins as they were lovers. Still others would follow the Auldek's progress, corresponding with them just enough to let them understand the league might yet be their friend.

And finally they came to where they began. The confusion that was Ushen Brae. Sire Faleen himself would journey across to oversee the exploitation of the Aklun relics, which some were already searching for. Another should venture farther, right across to the mainland itself. The slaves being abandoned there could not be allowed to run amok.

"Who will take up this responsibility?"

The response was immediate, uncharacteristically swift. "I will." Again, that voice from the second row.

"Sire Lethel?" Faleen asked. "These are affairs of the real world, you understand? Among the peasants. There is risk-"

"And there is joy in taking risk," Lethel said. "My cousin enjoyed risk. I do as well."

"Will you err as your cousin did?"

"No," Lethel said. "I will not. I believe he should be forgotten, but I would not have my family forgotten. I will succeed where he did not. I swear it. If I cannot, I will arrange to have my own head set rolling."

"Do any object?" Faleen asked.

For a time a murmur of discussion swept around the rings, but it was not true objection. Few would want the task, Dagon knew. Why should they? Few of these men are like me, Dagon thought, or like Neen. Perhaps this Lethel is a person of promise. He let these thoughts slip away almost as quickly as he formed them.

Still, it alarmed him when El spoke his name. "Dagon, you must return swiftly."

Reminded of it, fatigue wrung his body anew. He had arrived just an hour before the meeting. Now, likely, they would turn him back toward Acacia in the morn. He felt a hard elbow of annoyance press his ribs, but he breathed through it and asked, "Have we any particular message for the queen?"

Grau cleared his throat harshly, as if he had something caught in it that he wished to expel. His voice calmed when he spoke. "Use whatever words you like. Just make her know the league understands that the changing situation means we must all adapt. Let her know the league has only ever wished to facilitate trade that was in the best interests of the empire. This is no time to trade in quota. Tell her she has our full support and no malice whatsoever."

"You mean lie on every count?"

"Of course," Faleen said. "What other way is there to do business?"

"None that I have yet found to be better than our own methods," Dagon said. Despite his fatigue, he felt rather better now than he had when he began. He should have known that would be the case. The future always looked brighter when joined with the hazy wisdom of this peers.

Grau must have picked up his thoughts. He said, "On some things we change with the situations of the world. But in other ways we stay true to the fundamentals that have always served us. Yes?" The answering affirmation filled the chamber with echoing, raucous enthusiasm-muted, of course, by the mist, but thunderous by Council terms.

Once it quieted down, the chief elder added, infusing his words with the certainty they all craved, "The League of Vessels will ride out this storm as ever we have. This is what has always made us great. It's why we will prosper now, just as we prospered during Hanish Mein's short rule, and as we thrived all the years since Tinhadin's foolish actions. Who but our ancestors would have had the vision to partner with the Lothan Aklun, sorcerer fugitives from Tinhadin's wrath, blood relatives to that madman? Who but we would grab the opportunity to help them punish the Known World year after year? We grew to hate them, but it was a beneficial partnership. Who but we could so long keep it secret that the trade that fueled the world was a product of old hatreds between kinsmen?"

Grau chuckled. "Before long, the seas will calm. The sun will burn away the clouds. And we will yet be masters of the world. Masters of whom is yet to be seen, trading what it is yet to be determined, but it hardly matters. We have many options. So, what we have is a change of everything and a change of nothing at all. On all counts we will profit. And don't forget, brothers, our people are yet searching for this soul catcher we have heard so much about. When they find it-and other Lothan Aklun relics-I'm inclined to believe our losses will be no worse than pinpricks on a rhino's hide. Don't you agree?"

They did.