David Durham - Acacia,War with the Mein

When the servant returned, Corinn took the tray from her and said she still did not wish to be disturbed for any reason. She watched the young woman, an Acacian, depart, closing the door behind her. Corinn set the tray down. She slipped her fingers into her belt and pulled out the folded paper bird. With a tap of her finger it took on its swanlike shape. She squeezed the ends of it between her fingers, tilted, and watched as a fine powder fell sparkling into the tea. She hoped it was as odorless and tasteless as the league chemists claimed. She realized that in some portion of her consciousness she had already planned on using this poison on Hanish. As she watched the tiny grains dissolve, she put that from her mind. She would find another way to deal with him. How fortuitous that the package arrived today, just before the chancellor stepped out of the wall. Another sign this was meant to be, meant to happen this way.

She picked up a silver spoon and stirred the liquid in slow circles. She felt no anger at him. The betrayal that he seemed so troubled by did not even register in her thoughts. No, it was not an emotional decision at all. It was simple. Thaddeus had brought her the very thing she had been searching for, without her ever knowing that she had been searching for it. She knew, as if from some ancestral memory newly discovered and stirred to life, that she was meant to have that book. She was meant to. That was why Thaddeus had brought it to her instead of taking it to Aliver. He did not know this, but it was clear to her. She was the one-not Aliver-who would come to understand the way the world worked. Aliver was a dreamer, naпve and idealistic; the world, she believed, would always play such men for fools. She was the one who knew how to use power. She was the one who understood beyond any doubt that she could rely on nobody but herself. And the Song. The knowledge in that book was for her to use. Perhaps she would allow Aliver to use it also, she told herself. Yes, she would. When the time came, once she had come to know him and made sure he was not a fool driven by philosophical fervor.

When she walked back into the room she carried nothing but the mug of steaming tea. The former chancellor was sleeping. He sat upright in the chair, but his head canted over at an unpleasant angle, his mouth agape and his breathing a nasal rasp. She watched him a moment, struck with a feeling of nostalgia that never quite congealed into a specific memory. She told herself that what she was about to do was a good thing. Some would die; some would suffer. But when all of this was over, she would help create a world different from anything that had come before. She would do so because she loved her family, because she wanted to assure their success, wanted to make sure they did not fall prey to the fatal errors their rhetoric suggested they were prone to. What she was about to do was not done against them; it was done for them.

She moved forward slowly. She approached with the stealth of an angel, carrying the mug of tea before her, the heat of it like molten lead cradled in her palms.

The horror of massed warfare was beyond anything Dariel had experienced in his years as a raider. Fortunately, he held a serenity at his center that helped him through it all. Ever since reuniting with Aliver and Mena he had become a younger, happier, more buoyant version of himself. He knew they were engaged in a life-and-death struggle, but he was not alone in it. He had seen his sister lead an army into battle with her sword stretching from her hand as if it were part of her. He had watched his brother stand naked before a nightmare of a beast without blinking and then watched him cut it down like a hero out of legend. Incredible that these two were his siblings. He was not an orphan after all. He had a family. Soon they would have control and then everything-all the death and suffering, all the years in exile, all the injustice that made the world foul-would be set right.

Such conviction helped him function in the aftermath of the battle with the antoks. He was up before dawn the following morning, having slept just over two hours. He strode from his tent still caked in blood, grit beneath his fingernails and in the creases of his forehead and neck. He was eager to do what he could for the injured, the dying, and the dead. He took just a moment to splash water on his face and to scrub some of the filth from his arms, and he paused this long only because Mena ordered him to. She had checked him for injuries, queried him about how much he had rested and if he had eaten or drank. She was his older sister, after all. She was one of the few in the world who could demand that he do such things; he loved her for it. When this was all over he would sit with her in tranquillity and explain everything he felt for her. He would give her gifts and admit that he had always remembered how kind she had been to him when he was a child. Thinking such things helped him deal with the pain and suffering the beasts had inflicted on so many good people. He wrapped that feeling of familial connection around him like a cloak. It helped him through the morning, as he checked and bandaged wounds, spoke words of praise and encouragement, lifted water gourds to parched lips. He whispered in the ears of the departing. He told them how much they were loved and how well they would be remembered and honored by future generations.

He passed a couple of hours at this before the news reached him. The shouted words blew past him at first, as quick as a gust of wind that snatched away his protective cloak. It took him a moment to understand what he had just heard. He did not believe it entirely until he stood beside his brother and sister, stunned and staring at the small company of the enemy in their midst.

There were just ten of them, tall and blond, long-haired and fierce, armed only with daggers. They projected complete ease, assurance with themselves and indifference to the thousands of hate-filled eyes fixed on them. Maeander Mein. Dariel could not imagine what he wanted, but from the moment he saw him, a knot tightened at his center.

While one of the Meinish officers formally announced him to Aliver, Maeander looked around with a thin-lipped grin on his face, studying Aliver and others as if he had never seen a company quite as amusing before. He had a loose-limbed power to him. He was perfectly proportioned, muscled but not overbulky, his torso tight and slim, as if he carried much of his strength at his core and down in his thighs. Dariel imagined him to be fast and found it easy enough to believe his reputation as a skilled killer. But his arrogance heated Dariel’s blood.

“Prince Aliver Akaran,” Maeander began, once the formalities were concluded. “Or do you prefer to be called the Snow King? I must say that’s a strange appellation. I see no sign of snow. Should a flake fall on this scorched earth, it would sizzle and be gone just like that.”

Aliver responded calmly. “We don’t choose what others call us or decide how history will know us.”

“That is very true,” Maeander said. “We can strive for greatness, but who can know? I am sure your father never imagined that one of his offspring would lead a ragtag army up from the deserts of Talay. Or that another would be mistress to his conqueror, another the symbol of a Vumu religious sect, and the last a common raider of the seas. No matter how hard we try to make it otherwise, our lives are always surprises, aren’t they?”

As he spoke his gaze left Aliver and settled on Mena. It lingered on her face, then slid down her body as if he were sizing up a courtesan. Before he looked away, though, he nodded to her. It was a deferential, almost respectful gesture that seemed distinctly different in character from what Dariel had expected. Finding Maeander’s gaze on him the next moment, Dariel felt like smacking the smirk off his face. But he was not at all sure that he would be able to if he tried, such was Maeander’s dangerous ease.