No woman before Corinn Akaran had thrust herself so deeply into every conscious moment of his existence. Since that night at Calfa Ven she was never truly out of his mind. He refused to put a word to the emotion he felt for her, but this did not mean he didn’t sense the word-vague and sentimental as it was-lurking in the air between them. She had been shy that first night, unsure of herself, coy with her body and all the more attractive for it. Her reticence was short-lived, though. It seemed that if she was going to give herself, she wanted to do so completely, with abandon. Her mouth in kissing him was driven by a hunger that stunned him, her lips and tongue and teeth all devouring him at once. It almost felt like she had conquered him, instead of the other way around. A disquieting thought.
It was remarkable how much it elated him to have her near. When she was not near, he either actively thought of her or moved around nagged by a feeling of unease. He was neglecting his companions. He knew that they felt slighted. Considering their fragile egos, he should not go long without finding ways to praise and acknowledge them, but the very thought of it seemed tiresome. Nobody else seemed as interesting as Corinn. No other face gave him such a feeling of well-being to look upon. No one listened to him as she did. With nobody else did such mundane pastimes as archery, which they spent hours at, become sure pleasures. She was so much better at it than he was. For some reason this fact tickled him like a joke of his own devising.
What had he been thinking when he began this? He’d said he would keep the princess close, to watch over her and make sure she was there if the Tunishnevre needed her. So when did that effort become this swirl of emotion? It was dangerous; he knew that. His thoughts were not focused and clear as they had always been before. Just the day previous, he had been stunned to realize he’d been asked a question that he had not heard at all. A circle of faces stared at him, concern and surprise on their features. He was not fully himself, right down to the fact that he would not and could not do away with the thing that weakened him. He should shove her back into her place. He should cut the affection between them with public, bladed wit. Corinn was, after all, easy to insult. She was quick to rile. A few comments poking fun at her now would send her into flaming anger, which would be a better thing than the situation he now found himself in.
But he simply could not. Why should he have to? Consider all the things he’d accomplished in his life. All the gains he’d won for his people. He’d conquered the Known World! Even now the Tunishnevre wound down from the Methalian Rim, only weeks away from their deliverance. It was his successes that made it possible for Maeander to push his search for the other Akaran girl out to Vumu. If he found her, they’d have the blood they needed from a second source. Corinn need not bleed, need not die. Considering all these things, why should he deny himself love?
Oh. There was that word! The very fact that he formed such a sentence in his head prompted him to rise. He peeled himself away from the princess, really not wanting to wake her now, not wishing to have to speak. It took ages to pull his arm, clammy with their mingled moisture, from under her neck.
Dressed a little later, straight backed in a thalba and looking perfectly at home within his icy composure, Hanish read the letters his secretaries brought him in his office. The first was from the log Haleeven kept. He was meticulous in his entries, detailed and rigorous and honest. Because he received such correspondence at least twice a week, Hanish had followed every step of the Tunishnevre transport. Not one of those steps had been easy. Just getting them out of their burial slots had been an ordeal. The chamber had been built to house them indefinitely. The original architects had not considered that the ancestors might someday be removed. They were crammed in close together, stacked high in honeycombed alcoves.
Haleeven had all manner of ramps and pulleys set up. It was an awkward business in the small space. It would not have been easy in the best of circumstances to wring from the workers the necessary level of care and precision, but it was especially hard with the lot of them nervous about the seething, incorporeal presence all around them. One night nearly fifty of the conscripted laborers fled from their makeshift camp outside the gates of Tahalian. Each and every one of them had to be hunted down. They were then punished in ways that served as considerable deterrents to any others with similar notions.
Keeping the workers in line; wrapping, housing, and transporting the ancestors; flattering the priests; maintaining roads softened to mush by the spring thaw; driving forward through swarms of ravenous insects; negotiating the steep descent from the Rim down to the Eilavan Woodlands: each task provided myriad challenges to Haleeven’s abilities. Now, at last, they were making their way through the woodlands and into the farmlands that would lead them to the coast. The hardest portion was behind them, although in his dispatch Haleeven cautioned that the going would be slow. They were on paved roads now, but they could hardly move any faster for fear of the jarring effects on the ancestors. Their frailty required gentle handling, as much so now as ever.
There were several other pieces of correspondence as well. One was from the warden who looked after the island land outside the palace and lower town. He claimed that the acacia trees, which he had faithfully sawed close to the roots, were managing to sprout anew. They were hardier trees than they’d thought. They’d never really died, apparently, and it would be an ongoing effort on his part if he was to keep the trees from returning.
Another missive was marked with Sire Dagon’s seal. He requested an audience. Request, was how it was written, and yet the leagueman named the time later that day with such an air of finality that it was more like a demand. Fine, Hanish thought. It was about time the League of Vessels reported to him. Whether that was Sire Dagon’s intention for the meeting or not, Hanish decided he would make it the focus.
Hanish was always surprised by the look of leaguemen. The fact that they were so thin and fragile looking sat uneasily beside their demeanor of complete calm, unchallengeable control. Sire Dagon wore a head cap ringed with bands of gold. His gaunt features were as pallid as ever. His neck seemed longer than it had been the last time they met, but Hanish assumed this was a trick of his own eyes.
They bowed to each other, and Sire Dagon took a seat. He collapsed his body into it and exhaled a fatigued breath. He slipped a hand inside his robe and drew it out, holding a short length of a mist pipe. It looked to be of blue glass, with a small bowl and the thinnest tendril of a mouthpiece. He flipped the lid from the bowl with one of his long fingernails and checked the packed material. It smoldered instantly, as if it had either been lit already or had sparked to life as the latch opened. He said, “I would offer you a smoke, but I doubt you could handle this purity.”
Hanish cocked his head and straightened it, mouth wrinkling enough to convey his respectful disdain for the drug. “I know too little of how the league is responding to the attack on the platforms. You must fill me in.”
The leagueman waited long enough before speaking to demonstrate that he did so at his leisure, not at Hanish’s command. He began by reiterating in vague terms that the losses on the platforms were manifold, creating problems both now and for well into the future. Those further problems the league would deal with as appropriate. For today there was the immediate issue that they had been made late in delivering a shipment of quota to the Lothan Aklun. It was not just time that was at issue, however. The blasts and subsequent fires on the platforms had burned the warehouses in which the quota was stored before transport. The area for this was quite a large complex of buildings, a miniature metropolis, really. During the resulting chaos, the product-as he referred to the slave children-rioted. They swarmed to other sections of the platforms. They began spreading the fires with them, running through the lanes with torches smeared in pitch. The Ishtat Inspectorate squelched the uprising, but not before the entire platform verged on destruction. In the end they had to cut loose the warehouse unit and drag it away to burn itself out. All the product was destroyed. An entire shipment.