“You should have told me this before,” Hanish said.
Sire Dagon drew on the pipe. He exhaled a cloud of powdery-blue smoke and said with a detached air, “We don’t consider league affairs to be your concern.”
“It’s all my concern. When have our interests not been aligned?”
The leagueman fixed a stare on Hanish that might have been angry, though it was hard to read emotion on the emaciated configuration of his features. “The league is a commercial venture. To us, everyone is an adversary, no one more so than our rich clients. I am surprised you haven’t realized this by now.”
Hanish had realized such things long ago. The league had weathered the war on calm waters and emerged at the far end of it in a better position than ever, with little apparent concern about the fate of the Akarans, with whom they had dealt for twenty-two generations. This had once seemed a clever boon for his own interests. Now their lack of loyalty troubled him. Better not to show it, though. Instead, he mused, “I don’t suppose the raiders intended such an outcome. The common lore is that they’re fighting against organized tyranny. They wish to free slaves, not incinerate them.”
“Such are the unconsidered consequences of violent action masked by ideology. The innocent take the brunt of it. It’s always been that way and always will be that way.” He scowled at the nuisance of such things. “We will deal with the raiders soon enough. No force is better suited to deal with this than the Ishtat Inspectorate. When we find the raiders, we’ll squash them for good.”
Hanish motioned with his finger that he wished to pose a question. “When you find them? I thought you had spies on every rock rising out of the Gray Slopes.”
“We do, but since their attack on the platforms the group led by Spratling has vanished.”
“Is that so?”
Sire Dagon glanced at Hanish, checking the tone of the question against his facial expression. He placed his thin lips on his pipe, inhaled, and held the vapors in his chest a moment. “What the league needs now is to immediately replenish what we’ve lost. To that end we have devised a plan to take the units from the coastal city of Luana, north of Candovia. We’ll recoup the loss in a single action.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’ll take the units from Luana. We’ll arrive under cover of night, subdue the place, and leave with the product we need.”
“The children you need,” Hanish clarified. “Which is how many?”
Sire Dagon answered flatly, “Two thousand.” Before Hanish could respond, he continued, explaining that there was a festival in the region that brought the population together. Children, in particular, gathered in the city to celebrate the return of spring. It pulled them in from all the neighboring villages and towns. It would not be a perfect venture. It would be hard to find children up to their normal standards. Perhaps they would have to accept some out of the optimal age range. But they believed it was the preferred remedy to the problem.
When he was finished, Hanish sat staring at him. Two thousand? Among those people such a number would mean almost every child in the region. He felt like bridging the space between them and smacking Dagon’s bony face for such a number. Two thousand? It went against everything the established quota system guaranteed. It unmasked the barbarity of the whole thing in a way they might not recover from.
For a time he sat massaging his temples. He thought of Corinn. He would tell her all about this later. He would look in her face and listen to her response and gain some measure by which to weigh his own feelings. That would be good. It grew harder and harder to gauge the effect his decisions had on the world. She would help.
“You know,” he said, speaking through an exhaled breath, “some have argued that the league has outlived its usefulness. Some say you take too much and give too little.”
Sire Dagon sneered. “What learned adviser whispered that in your ear?”
Hanish ignored the question. “You expect me to allow you to take an entire generation from those people? I cannot. I will not. The provinces are tense enough already. What nation in the Known World won’t see such an action as a threat to them? They’d be outraged. It could be the spark that ignites all manner of unrest. No, you must find some other way. The world still needs to be repopulated, not harvested.”
Sire Dagon flipped his pipe closed and stuffed it away. After contemplating the chieftain for a moment, he said, “I’ve not been clear on something, Hanish. The orders have already been given. The raid, in all likelihood, occurred yesterday. I am here as a courtesy, so that you need not be surprised when the news reaches you. Scowl at me all you like, Hanish. Threaten me. Fume at me. Reach across the space between us and throttle my neck if you want to. Stab me with the blade at your waist. I’m entirely at your mercy. Just know that if you do so you’re like the ant that bites a man’s little toe. You bite one moment, the next you’re squashed. You rule the Known World at the pleasure of the League of Vessels. Haven’t you realized that yet? And the revolt you fear has already begun. It didn’t take our actions to start it. Look to the provinces, Hanish. Look to Talay and put your ear to the ground and hear the name those people are murmuring with more and more urgency. You’ll see you have enough problems to attend to. Leave us to our business. And know that whatever revolt is coming is nothing compared to the risk of angering the Other Lands.”
“So you do fear someone,” Hanish said. “You insult me, put me in the place you believe I should occupy, but the Lothan Aklun you fear.”
Sire Dagon had risen to his feet, ready to depart, but something in what Hanish said softened him. The look he fixed on the chieftain was almost kind. “You understand so little of the way the world works. It’s not the Lothan Aklun we fear. The Lothan Aklun are not so different from us of the league except that their wealth surpasses ours. The ones we have reason to fear live just beyond the Lothan Aklun. It’s they that the Lothan trade with, just as you trade with us.”
The last few moments had introduced too much information for Hanish to grasp at once. He was not sure which thing to question first, and he felt an almost adolescent need not to show his surprise. He cast his voice with a tone of disinterest, as if the question were not particularly important to him. “What are these people called?”
“The Auldek,” Sire Dagon said, after weighing for a moment whether he should answer. “You’ve never set eyes on one of them and you never need to. Knowing too much about them would only keep you awake at night. Yes, even you, Chieftain. But believe me, Hanish, on the day that they decide it’s worth their effort to set their sights on us-to punish, to reap the products themselves, even out of simple curiosity-on that day the world you love ends forever. Only the League of Vessels keeps the world in balance.”
Hanish stopped the leagueman from departing. “Don’t go,” he said. He bit down his pride. “I…thank you for telling me about Luana. I understand that the league must act decisively in these tumultuous times. I won’t fault you for it. It would be easier, though, if you sat with me a little longer and told me more about the things I don’t know. Better that you share with me than that I work against you. Don’t you agree?”