The Sacred Band

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Once he drew near enough to see that something was amiss, Sire Lethel asked, “What, exactly, is going on here?”

Dariel had never met this particular leagueman, nor had he seen any leagueman in person since the massacre that Sire Neen had dragged him into. Lethel looked just as strange as any of them ever did. His cone-shaped head had been wrapped for this occasion with a silken red fabric. His shoulders were narrow, chest birdlike, and arms so thin it surprised Dariel they carried enough muscle to animate them. The two jagged lines of his eyebrows gave him an expression of almost explosive surprise. Quite a contrast to the grim pucker his lips made.

I know things about your kind that you may not even know yourself, Dariel thought. He had seen a vision of them up in the Sky Mount. Nearly dead. Diseased and insane. Did Lethel even know that it was the Lothan Aklun who had first bound his head and fed him a diet of mist? Probably not. Not with, surely, the clarity of vision that Dariel had: both from what Na Gamen had shown him and because he actually carried some of the Sky Watcher within him. Yes, he was tranquil enough that he let the heat of his resentment for the league roil up just that little bit more. Controlled, calm, satisfying.

Lethel had arrived as scheduled for his meeting with the Anet leader, Dukish. Lethel and his Ishtat strolled into the open-air courtyard quite at ease this time. Lethel approached, his eyes drifting around so casually that they did not settle on Dukish until he was but a few strides from him. At that point, he stuttered to a halt, only then noticing that Dukish was not simply relaxing in the chair, as was his wont. He had been gagged, bound at the wrists and ankles, and set on a stool, not looking relaxed at all. Instead of his trusted Anet and Antok ruffians surrounding him, Mor, Tunnel, Birke, Anira, and Dariel flanked Dukish. Judging by the way Lethel’s eyes scanned them all, he was only noticing this just now.

“The situation in Avina has changed somewhat since last you spoke with Dukish,” Mor said. Her voice was clipped, official. There was a tension in it, but it was the tension of the control she was keeping over her voice.

Dariel realized how hard this must be for them. All of them had been but children when a leagueman just like this one stripped them of all they knew and changed their lives forever.

“Not more infighting and discord,” Lethel said. “Dukish, you assured me you had a firm grasp on Avina. I’m disappointed.” Perhaps he was. He tutted at Dukish’s misfortune, already putting any sign of surprise behind him. His gaze drifted up and down Mor’s lean figure, as appraising as a wealthy customer at a brothel. “You are rather lovely! Do tell me you’re the one in charge now. That’s an improvement I can acknowledge right away. What do they call you?”

“I am Mor of the Free People. As you were told, Dukish did not-”

“Mor of the Free People!” Lethel exclaimed. He glanced at the Ishtat next him. “We know that name, don’t we? The bird woman said something about Mor before we shot her.” Turning back to Mor, he added, “How is she faring, by the way? It looked to be a nasty wound. In the chest, wasn’t it? We would have looked after her, but your lot bundled her away.”

Mor held her anger. She had not introduced herself as Skylene’s lover but as Mor of the Free People. She held the dignity of that in her jaw and neck when she said, “As you were told last time, Dukish did not speak for us. He has been deposed, stripped of authority. The disunity he tried to sow in Avina is a thing of the past. We are here only to tell you that Ushen Brae is not a place for you. This is the home of the Free People. We have earned this place, and we will never be slaves again.”

Lethel tilted his head back, squinting a little as he took her in. “Oh, I don’t know that I would say ‘never.’ That’s rather a long time. Who can say such a thing for certain?”

Glancing around, Lethel seemed to only then realize that a chair had not been set out for him. He motioned an Ishtat closer, whispered something, and then waited as the man stepped forward, hands raised to indicate his harmlessness. He moved to the side of Dukish, which brought him close to the stretch of Tunnel’s bare gray chest. He made a visible effort not to look. Instead, he put his hands against Dukish’s shoulder and shoved him from the stool. Dukish landed hard on his side, groaning and struggling on the paving stones.

Dariel could not help laughing, though he half hid it behind his hand.

The man lifted the stool and set it down for Lethel to occupy.

“Now, let’s get past the bluster, shall we? Is it really you I’m to negotiate with?” he said to Mor. “If so, I’d much rather do it back on my soul vessel. I’d zip you right off the barrier isles. We could talk there. In the baths, perhaps?”

Amusement gone again, Dariel was starting to find Lethel’s lecherous remarks aggravating. He inched forward a little bit, itching to enter the conversation.

“There is nothing to negotiate,” Mor said.

“There’s always something to negotiate. You just haven’t thought about it yet. Listen, let’s do this. Let’s leave Dukish in the past. He’s yesterday. I’ve nothing against dealing with the Free People, especially if-as you say-you really do speak for the whole lot of you here in Avina. How about that?”

“No,” Mor said.

Lethel rolled his eyes. “Must you make this difficult? Life would be very much harder for you without us. I mean, honestly, in half a year you could be running your own estates, with staffs of new slaves doing all the work.”

“Slavery has no future here.”

“You’re still not understanding. The league has no desire to enslave you. We’ll enrich you. You won’t be slaves! Nothing of the sort. You’ll be masters.” He said this last sentence with a flourish and a grin that showed he believed he had won the point.

“You’re the one who’s thick,” Mor said, her voice snapping. “Inside your head, at least. Listen. Ushen Brae is a land of free people now. We are the rightful inhabitants of Avina, and of Ushen Brae. Both the mainland and the barrier isles. The league must leave. If you don’t, you’ll end as badly as your Sire Neen did.”

“Sire Neen? Don’t talk about Neen with me. He was a fool. I’m not. Do you know, Dukish made me a gift of Neen’s ashes. Thank you for that, Dukish. I smoked them mixed with the water of my mist pipe. Neen was smoother than I would have imagined. Slightly nutty, with a tar undertone that was not entirely pleasant, but soft on the palate despite that. I blew little particles of my uncle out into the world with each exhalation. That’s what I think of Neen.”

“You have a month to withdraw,” Mor said.

One of the Ishtat behind Lethel tried to get his attention, but the leagueman ignored him. “A moon cycle, you say? What happens after that?”

Edging her words with something like longing, Mor said, “You will find yourself at war with us.”

“Do you know how absurd this all sounds?” Lethel looked around as if for support from another, but finding none he came back to himself. “ ‘Rightful inhabitants…’ Quite absurd, I assure you. Mor of the Free People, this is going nowhere. You’ll want to back away from talk of war. Right now, already, just out there on the barrier isles, we have several thousand Ishtat Inspectorate soldiers. Two, three thousand. Something like that.” A guard bent and whispered to him. “Three thousand four hundred and ninety nine, I’m told. One unfortunate got knocked in the head-some dock accident. They die much harder on the battlefield. In addition to that-and this you wouldn’t know anything about-we have four thousand more troops just recently arrived, all of them trained since birth to kill when we say kill. We have soul vessel transports enough to move all of them, anytime we want, against the tides or winds, with complete control. We could deposit all of them at the wall of Avina at exactly the same moment, if we wished. Consider that before you declare war.” He began to cross his arms as if he would give them time to think it through, but then he snapped them out before the gesture was complete. “What makes you think you can wage war on the league? Nobody wages war on the league!”

“I have,” Dariel said. He stepped forward, coming around Tunnel’s bulk into better view of the leagueman.

Lethel glanced at him, and then away, dismissive. Then back. The thin line of one of his plucked eyebrows expressed his skepticism that the answer to the question was of consequence, but he asked, “Who are you?”

“We’ve never met,” Dariel said, “but I imagine you’ve cursed my name many times already. I plan to give you reason to do so again.”

The eyebrows did not drop, but the face beneath them sobered. “You’re not-”

“Prince Dariel Akaran. Hello, Lethel. I know, I’ve gone a bit native. Tattoos and such. And this-” He gestured at the rune on his forehead. “You would need to have been there to understand. I’m pleased to learn that you weren’t on Sire Fen’s warship when I dropped a pill in it. Or on the platforms when I blew them up. Or in the soul catcher when I destroyed that. Or on that soul vessel that I set alight down near Sumerled. Why does that please me? Because you’re still alive to be killed. I may be afloat in Ushen Brae, but, Lethel”-Dariel bent a little closer; the Ishtat bristled in response-“I still loathe the league. More now than ever.”

For the first time, Lethel’s face went blank. No readable emotion on it. Neither mirth nor arrogance, nor anything like fear. He said, “I could have my crossbowmen kill you right here and now.”

“You probably could,” Dariel agreed, “but you wouldn’t make it from here alive yourself. You are outnumbered.” He nodded that Lethel should take note of all the people who poured into the courtyard as they spoke. “Your Ishtat tried to mention it to you, but you were distracted.”

His eyes on the prince, Lethel spoke to Mor. “This man is one of you?”

Mor did not hesitate. “Yes.”

“This changes everything.” Lethel looked away from Dariel. His cheek twitched, and it was clearly with some effort that he kept emotion from his face. “This man is an enemy of the league. He’s a war criminal. A brigand. A murderer. Mor, here are the new terms I offer you. You give me Dariel Akaran. That’s it. If you don’t, I’ll bring armies down upon you. You have no-”

“You can’t have Dariel,” Mor said. “He’s one of us.”

“Rhuin Fa!” Tunnel said it first, but others echoed it, both in their group and around the wider circle.

“You’ve disappointed me,” Lethel said, shaking his head. “All of you have, but so be it.” He stood and drew himself up. Chin raised, he pronounced, “You leave me no other choice. On behalf of the league, I declare the inhabitants of Ushen Brae enemies. We will settle this through clash of arms. Will you impede us as we depart?”

After glancing at Dariel, Mor said, “No. Go safely. We’ll kill you later.”

Turning, Lethel said, “You want war? You have it.”

“I’ve never heard sweeter words from a leagueman’s mouth,” Dariel said.

“He makes good talk sometimes,” Tunnel said, watching the group exit. Turning to Dariel, he asked, “Now what? You have a plan, yes?”

D ariel waited until he knew Mor would be away for several hours. She stayed amazingly busy-especially in making their preparations for the league invasion-but she came and went from her chores to check on Skylene so often that he chose his moment carefully. She was crazy with grief. She hid it well, but all who knew her saw it. Skylene was dying, and she was taking Mor’s heart with her.

When she went off to the north of the city to oversee the fortifications being built there, he risked it. He went to her dying lover, hoping he would have enough time to accomplish what he had come to believe he could.

Skylene lay as she had when he had first seen her on his return. Odd that a face already tattooed to sky-blue hue could still look so sickly pale. Or perhaps it was stranger that Dariel no longer saw anything unusual about that color or about a nose altered to resemble an avian beak or about a hairline that included living feathers that sprang right out of her scalp. None of that was strange. It was all Skylene. It was this face that had looked on him with kindness in his first days as a captive here. Skylene, more than anybody, talked him out of ignorance and into a new understanding of the world. She had waked him from childhood and opened his eyes. It was a much gentler maturation than the quota children received, gentler than anyone bearing his family name deserved.

This made it all the more heart wrenching to see how drained she was of life. Her skin sagged into the cavities of her skull, her forehead was slick with perspiration. Even the lids of her closed eyes looked wrong, as if they were too thin and the orbs beneath them too large for the face in which they set. She smelled of death, not just in the festering wound in her chest. The scent seeped from the pores of her skin.

Dariel had closed the door behind him, leaving himself alone with her, and asked her caregivers to allow him some time in solitude with her. Had anyone else been in the room, they would have thought Dariel silent. He wasn’t. It’s just that the one-sided conversation he carried on with himself went on inside him. Can we do this? he asked. I feel that you’re part of me, but I don’t know where I begin or end. I don’t even know why I believe I can do this. That’s why I think it’s you telling me that we can do this. Am I right?

No answer came, but he had not expected it to. Na Gamen was not an active consciousness inside him, not a voice he heard or anything like that. It was more like the life force that had been Na Gamen had been absorbed into Dariel, body and mind and soul. To hear or understand Na Gamen, Dariel needed to listen to himself. The two were one now. And we always will be.

“Skylene,” he said, and then was not sure what to say. “Skylene, I want to help you. Can I?”

She stirred, but only with discomfort and only for a moment. She had not been awake or conscious for several days. If she were awake, he could have asked for her permission for what he proposed. But if she were awake, she would not have been as gravely ill, and if she were awake, she might give him an answer he did not want to hear. After all, she abhorred the trafficking in spirit energy that the Lothan Aklun had mastered. What he intended was a cousin of that, possible only because part of Na Gamen lived inside him. He had more than a single person’s life force inside him. Not much more. His two knife wounds in the gut had depleted him, but Na Gamen’s spirit was strong, ancient. It was thicker than other human souls and not so easily depleted.

The taking of souls was a corruption, the most horrible of crimes. That he believed without doubt. Nothing good could come of the theft of life. Not even the soul vessels justified it. But what about giving life, not taking it? That was not a crime. It was an offering he wanted to make. Na Gamen wanted it, too. If he did not, Dariel would never have known such an offering was even possible.

Skylene would not willingly accept even a sliver of Lothan Aklun life force into herself. “But I’m not talking about giving you any of Na Gamen,” Dariel said. “Only me. You wouldn’t turn that away. You don’t find me so repulsive. I hope not, at least.”

Another thought followed this-that when Mor loved Skylene in the future she would be loving a little bit of him as well. It made him blush. He brushed it aside. This was not about that. It really wasn’t. It was about giving what he could to Skylene. To Mor as well, true enough. But he was giving, not taking.

He lay one hand on Skylene’s hot, moist forehead. He smoothed his fingers back over the plumes of the feathers that were now a part of her hair, and then he set his hand back on her skin. Leaning close, he set his lips just beside hers.

Forgive me, he thought, but I wish you to live. Please live.

He kissed her. With the kiss, he exhaled life out of himself and into her.