The Sacred Band

CHAPTER TEN

Corinn started awake. She lashed out, sure that Hanish Mein was attached to her face and devouring her. It took a moment for the panic to fade and for the solidity of the world to materialize around her. A small, comfortable cabin. Windows open to salt-tinged air, seabirds calling. A flap of sail and a slow sensation of motion. She remembered. She was aboard her transport, heading back to Acacia. The terror had just been a dream. Just the nightmare she had suffered through since she destroyed the Numrek.

“You fool girl,” she whispered. “You almost killed yourself.”

She realized this first on waking in a villa along the Teh coast that had once belonged to Calrach. She had been unconscious for days. Feverish. Helpless. With no memory of being lifted and handled and transported. Touched by unknown hands. The acts of magic she unleashed upon the Numrek had nearly ended her. The same brutality that ripped them apart could either have left her so spent she just ceased to be, or it could have exploded inside her. In the future, she would have to be much more careful. She could only do so much at once. If she misjudged what and how to sing, she could lose everything in the space of a single mistaken note. Why was that so obvious after the fact, but so easy to forget during the moment-when all she felt was power?

She kicked off the blanket covering her. She stood and studied herself in the mirror on the back of the cabin door. For a horrible moment, she could have been looking at her mother in the throes of her illness. Gaunt in the face. Her eyes large and sad. Her body a decaying framework upon which her old beauty hung in tatters.

“Why so morbid, Corinn?” the image asked. “Afraid of your dreams? That’s silly. You’re not silly, Corinn. Don’t act as if you are. Who is that man anyway?”

Corinn stepped closer to the mirror, touched the frame and slid her hand down it, across the glass lightly. She studied the wrinkled face looking back at her, loving it, comforted by it, no matter that it frightened her. “He is nobody. He is dead. He’s the one who tried to kill me, Mother. I am not afraid of him when I’m awake, but in my dreams he has power over me.”

Changing angle, moving to the other side of the mirror, the image said, “Only because you let him. Don’t do that. Don’t give in to weakness in your time of triumph. Remember what you did!”

Corinn did remember. She saw in her mind image after image of the horrors she had unleashed. She saw more in her imaginings than she had seen in the few moments the horrors actually took. It was as if each individual death had been stored within her, whether she had actually seen it with her eyes or not. She watched them all now. The stomach-churning revulsion of it matched the raw, teeth-grinding pleasure of it. That power! She could rip apart the fabric of life like nobody else walking the earth could. She had to be careful, yes, to plan better, to foresee even more. But she had the power of a new Tinhadin.

“And what of that worm beneath the sea?” her mother asked. “Do you still dream of it?”

Whatever that vague, writhing, wormlike enormity had been, it no longer troubled her. She had managed to push it out of her mind, to stop seeing those strange images of it. She had been so worried, in fear for Aaden’s life. That worm must have been an internal manifestation of that, another creature of nightmare that she had allowed into her waking mind. Her actions recently had beaten the beast back. When it tried to push into her mind-waking or asleep-she had the power to push it back.

“It’s gone. Gone, gone.”

Not only that. So many things she had fit into their proper places recently. Aaden was back on Acacia, awake and waiting for her. She had received news of this a few nights back. Aliver walked and talked and made himself at home in the palace once again. Word of that was spreading, too. She knew her song danced over his skin, binding him to her, making him the combination of his mind and her will. What a partner he would make in the struggles to come. Elya’s eggs were maturing. Even from a distance she felt them growing. They were hers already and would soon stun the world in her name. And Delivegu should have taken care of the small thing she asked of him by now. Another threat to Aaden removed.

There were many reasons to feel confident. For the time being, it did not even matter that Mena had deviated from her orders and gone to Mein Tahalian. It sounded crazy to Corinn, but she must have her reasons. Corinn would soon ask her directly.

“Are you proud of me?” Corinn asked the reflection in the mirror, and then answered, “Yes, of course. You are strong in ways others are not. You are the queen. You are-”

A noise from the other side of the door caused Corinn to start. She moved quickly away from it. She turned, drew herself up with a breath, straightened her posture, and lifted her chin. There, she thought, seeing herself returned in the image in the mirror, no doubt at all who she was anymore, is the Corinn the world knows. Let it always be so.

The image slipped away as the door opened, a servant timid behind it, peeking in to announce the approach of a skiff carrying the head vintner of Prios. For a moment, Corinn could not remember who the head vintner of Prios was, or what he would wish to talk about. She could not ask anyone but Rhrenna such a question. Instead she called for documents pertinent to the meeting. From them, she refreshed her memory.

An hour later, Paddel entered the transport’s conference room sweating, his gait a rolling waddle. He patted his forehead and scalp with a handkerchief. The action did little to clear away the moisture but much to highlight that his scalp had been tattooed in imitation of hair. It looked like he wore some tight rubber cap on his head. The man seemed entirely oblivious to this effect.

The queen sat at the far end of an oval table, the room’s central feature. Wearing her light chain mail once again, she looked the picture of royal composure. There was a martial edge to the slant of her head and position of her arm, which was crooked to one side in a masculine manner. She modeled the posture after a remembered image of Maeander Mein, but she made it her own now.

“Surely it’s not that hot outside, Paddel.” She had no problem using his name. She remembered him quite well now, and his little project.

“No, no, not at all. It’s just that sea travel doesn’t agree with me. Turns my legs to jelly and my guts to… Oh, but you don’t want to hear my troubles. Your Majesty, I’m overjoyed to see you well. These past few weeks we’ve been so worried about you.”

“As you can see I’m fine,” Corinn said.

“Yes, you are. May I just say that you are a wonder! The talk of the entire empire. News of your triumph in Teh competes with word that Aliver has risen from the dead.”

As always with this man, Corinn decided on brevity. She cut off his babbling before he could work up momentum. “It’s all true. We won’t discuss it now, though. You brought a sample?”

The one virtue Paddel had was that he did not seem to mind being cut off. “I did,” he said, and began a fumbling search of his silken robes. He produced a small blue vial, delicate like something used for perfume. “This, Your Majesty, is the vintage. Pure. A drop of it in a goblet of wine, and the drinker is never the same again.”

Corinn gestured toward a carafe of wine on the table. Paddel, taking the suggestion, uncorked and poured a glass. Then, making sure the queen could see his actions, he let a single drop of the clear liquid land in the wine, lost instantly in its rich maroon. He swirled. “And that’s it.”

“And that’s it.” Corinn studied the liquid as it slipped around the glass. “Paddel, you have heard what I did to the Numrek. It was a demonstration of my power, and I know that word of it is flying about the empire as quick as a thousand wagging tongues. Now, that could be good, or that could be bad. In relation to power, people can choose to bow in adoration to it, or they can choose to fear it. I prefer one reaction instead of the other, understand?”

Paddel nodded, unsure.

When he said nothing, Corinn added, “I would have the people adore me.”

The vintner’s jowly face jumped with relief. “That’s exactly what the masses do. The vintage is already going down throats across the empire. Everyone thinks your acts are wonders, works of beauty, magnificent! They’ll rally behind you more than ever. They’ll go to battle-if that’s called for-with even more confidence. I promise you that.”

“Good,” Corinn said. She held up her hand for the glass. Paddel came around the table and handed it to her. Bringing it close to her nose, she inhaled the scent of it. Paddel looked like he had a word pinched between his lips, something dangerous that he wished to release. I’m not going to drink it, fool, Corinn thought. But I would know the smell of it. It wouldn’t do for me to be poisoned with it, would it?

When she was confident that she knew the scent and could build her sensitivity to it with the help of The Song, she set the glass down. “You know that I want none of this consumed in the palace.”

“Understood. Completely and utterly. Each cask and bottle carries a label marking it. I briefed your secretary on it. Gave her all the information. As I understand it, she will pass the knowledge on to those who will keep the palace free of it. You and family will remain quite untouched by it.”

“What of the question I put to you when we last met? About the effects when one who is addicted is then deprived. I told you to bring me a report on that.”

“Ah… yes, of course.” Paddel’s scalp bloomed with a new coating of sweat. “I hope that you’ll forgive us. We’ve been so very busy with distribution, with getting it out fast behind the news that you’ve abolished the quota. In all the confusion the results have been inconclusive.”

“Which means what?”

“We just don’t know for sure.”

Corinn stared at him. “Are you lying to me?”

“I would never, Your Majesty! I would die before a lie escaped my lips in your presence.” He made the Mainland gesture for death, a quick motion of mimicking plucking out one of his eyes and tossing it over his shoulder. “But it’s all a bit confused. The league tabulated the data, and they were not clear with us on wh-what they found.”

Corinn’s brow grew more and more creased as the vintner talked. “You should have told me this before.”

“A thousand pardons, please, Your Majesty. If we’d had the time, we surely would have seen it all through. But even now I assure you this changes nothing. They assured me the vintage is fine, and I assure you the same!”

Corinn snatched up the vial and stood. “This displeases me, Paddel. I asked you to do something, and you handed the job to another. That is not an action of a loyal servant. I’ve come to doubt you.” Pocketing the vial at her waist, she paused and smiled at the look of utter dismay on Paddel’s face. “But since you are confident, I propose you drink in celebration.” She pointed to the glass on the table. “Do so. Drink.”

O nce on Acacia, Corinn disembarked into the pleasantly cool air. Acacian winter at last, just chilly enough to require long sleeves and a lace scarf. She had just taken the reins and prepared to step up onto her mount, when a buzz of noise followed by a sudden hush drew her attention. She paused, stepped back, opened her fingers, and let the leather reins slip from them.

Aliver walked hand in hand with Aaden. They were talking, both to themselves and saying things to passersby. They waved and touched peoples’ hands or the crowns of the heads of those who were kneeling. They quietly beamed. Corinn had never seen a finer sight. As she rushed toward them through a sudden blur of tears, nothing mattered more in the world. Aliver smiled and Aaden lit up at the sight of her. When the boy pressed himself against her belly, and when she remembered in that moment the first time his baby arms had hugged her, and when Aliver slipped his arm around them both… in those few moments she knew joy more completely than ever before. Here was life, and it was a fine thing, free of fear, radiant.

The mood held through to that evening. They dined on the back terraces of Corinn’s gardens. Servants brought up standing torches that ringed the diners and fought back the evening’s chill. They ate braised eel in a ginger sauce, served over sticky rice that Aaden insisted on forming into balls with his fingers. Corinn let him. They were not on display this evening, not even among the court. They were alone, all the family she could have near at hand. When Aliver pinged Aaden with a long bean, Corinn laughed as loudly as anyone. When Rhrenna toasted the queen’s victory in Teh, Corinn sent a charm snaking up her arm and into all the glasses as they clinked together, just a further lightening of the mood, a feeling like bubbles floating in the air around them, popping in gentle kisses on their skin.

They talked of nothing pressing. Aaden peppered his uncle with questions about his youth. Aliver responded with tales of his boyhood, of his journey into Talay in exile, of growing to manhood there. After dinner, he acted out his laryx hunt with a spear fetched from one of the statues in his hallway. He made the whole thing seem deathly frightening and hilarious at the same time. By the time he finished, Corinn’s stomach ached from laughing. That was a pleasant pain she had not felt for many years.

“Is it just me, or does the harbor seem busier than usual?” Aliver asked a little later, as they sat on the crescent balcony that offered a dizzying view out over the harbor.

Corinn thought of the ridged back of some beast that she had seen cutting through the water earlier, but that was not what he meant. Since nobody else had seen it, she knew it was an imagining for her alone. She was almost used to seeing things that were not real. It was a small price to pay for having the song coursing through her.

What Aliver referred to were the hundreds of very real ships that bobbed on the sea. They choked the harbor and spread out into the open water itself. Black shapes and white and red sails rode the swells, many of them torchlit like an aquatic constellation.

Rhrenna licked lime cream off a tiny dessert spoon. “It appears that we’re being flooded by pilgrims.”

“Pilgrims?”

“Most are from Talay, but not just there. They come to praise Corinn. To pray for Aaden. To spot Elya on the wing. But mostly because of you.”

“Rumors of you have spread far and wide already,” Corinn said to Aliver. “Considering that you strolled through the lower town this morning in broad daylight, we’ll soon be flooded with many more than what you see here.”

“I should go down to greet them,” Aliver said, setting aside his porcelain bowl and spoon as if he would do so at that moment.

“You will,” Corinn said, “but let them talk a bit longer. Let them all talk, from here to the Senate and the league great ships and beyond. Let them talk you into a god. Then we’ll show you to the world for real, and they’ll be all the more amazed. We’ll soon announce your coronation. It will be abrupt, but we’ll already have half the empire floating around us.”

Just then a servant girl dashed into the courtyard. She drew up and stared at the group with frightened eyes. “Your Majesty, pardon me, the-the eggs, Your Majesty, they are cracking. Hatching, I mean.”

Corinn would have chosen to witness this alone, but there was no keeping Aaden and the others from dashing through the hallways with her. Aliver made a show of racing Aaden. Rhrenna asked who would get to name the young. Aaden himself was too giddy with excitement to do anything other than run.

They rushed onto the terrace balcony that had served as Elya’s private hatchery. The creature snapped around. For a moment there was something fierce in the glare of her eyes and the way her head slipped low on her subtle neck. It only lasted a moment, though, and then she was gentle again. When Aaden threw himself around her neck, burying his face in her plumage, Corinn’s fine mood flooded back. She approached carefully, touching first her son’s shoulder and then Elya’s soft back. She leaned forward and gazed into the basin.

And there they were. Elya’s babies. Two of them were completely free of their shells. They squirmed at the edge of the basin, clawing at the fabric that lined it as if they wanted to climb right out and face life. One still stretched and struggled with its shell, and the fourth was but a small snout protruding from a crack in its egg. They were tiny versions of Elya in many ways, plumed with a sleek coat, with serpentine necks and delicate claws. The feathers around their heads were a bristling confusion, though, and they were variously colored. One was crimson at the head and fading to black, while another displayed yellow stripes across a brown back. The one kicking free of shell was sky blue, and the last, from the look of his protruding snout, was all black.

Corinn said, “Look at them. Little beauties.”

At the sound of her voice, all three of the exposed heads turned toward her. They blinked. One’s nostrils flared. The red one cocked its head. The one in the shell thrust its head through in one great effort. It, too, set its gaze on Corinn. My smart babies, she thought. My little dragons. She extended a hand toward them. All four of them followed it with their yellow eyes. When she was near enough, the red one slammed the crown of her head into Corinn’s fingers like an affectionate cat. The others clamored over one another to do the same.

Elya shifted sideways. She touched her shoulder to Corinn’s side and pressed her back. When Aaden tried to stroke the young as well, Elya slipped her own head in before him, pushing against his chest so that he had to step back. She exhaled an impatient breath.

“All right, Elya, care for your children,” Corinn said, pulling back. “Raise them strong for me and for the empire.”