But she was pleased that she had. Nine years after the tragedies of the war, she had found an order to life, a position that made sense, and a partner to share it with. Their liaison was fresh and newly created, and yet it was so much a part of her that she could not imagine any other way of being. They were together as much as the circumstances of Hanish’s office would allow. They shared the same bed each night. She was so absolutely hungry for him, insatiably and embarrassingly so.
One evening she made him wait for her in bed. When she entered the room she did so from the far side. She wore only a diaphanous shift, so short it was really just a shirt. Walking toward him, feeling his eyes on her, knowing the candlelight would highlight the contours of her hips and abdomen and breasts, she hummed with nervous excitement. It was the strangest of feelings. She felt tawdry and jaded, her lips moistened with oil, eyes shadowed like a courtesan’s. But she also tingled with innocence, as if she were a child again, girlish, walking in the glow of an appraising eye that seemed somehow fatherly. Very strange, she thought, but also decidedly to her liking.
She continued to accompany Hanish on state trips, and in the space of just a few weeks she made herself indispensable in social matters. She stood at his side when Hanish met Candovian tribal leaders at a summit near Elos. At Alyth she tutored the taciturn leagueman Sire Dagon in archery. She won compliments from him by the end of the day, both on her skill with a bow and on her entrancing character. She served as hostess on a pleasure barge that embarked from Alecia and traced a large circle back to port hours later. She was perfectly suited, it seemed, to serve as an intermediary between the rich merchants-many of whom were Acacian-and the ruling Meinish aristocracy.
All of this was much to the chagrin of the ambitious hangers-on that made up the chieftain’s court. They had been happy enough to have Corinn around when she was a pincushion to receive Hanish’s barbed witticisms, but now that she was elevated it was another matter. She never heard any of them speak a word against her, but she could imagine their thoughts well enough. They hated her. She knew it. She could feel it. Sometimes she even thought she could see physical manifestations of their loathing wriggling beneath their skin. She was, after all, a lowly Acacian, of a conquered race. Her beauty was of a rich-toned ideal that was not supposed to win Meinish men. In their minds she should never be anything more than an entertaining mascot. Even Rhrenna, who had once seemed the truest friend she was likely to make, spoke to her no more than she had to, with no particular kindness when she did.
There were more somber moments in their relationship as well, as when she and Hanish stood side by side on the viewing platforms of the Kidnaban mines. They looked down on a crater whose scale denied plausibility. Hanish pointed out the Akaran flags that still flew from the platforms. “Akarans created this,” he’d said. “How did your people ever conceive of such things? Where did they get the gall to imagine they could harness the labor of millions?”
She had felt just enough insult in these questions to consider one or two sarcastic responses, but she said nothing. They would not have been true on her tongue. He was right. The scale of the injustice was incredible. He might be the driving force behind it now, but he had not been the one to conceive of it in the first place. She wondered how she had lived so many years at the heart of an empire without knowing by whose labor her prosperity had been assured.
At the mines she decided she would never be so ignorant again. It was a simple enough thought, but thinking it changed something in her. From that day on she seemed to more readily remember specific details of things. It felt like she learned more each day, more of history and lore and political wrangling, more about the dispersion of power and the strings that hummed and shifted behind the visible workings of the world. She even felt an increasing capacity to tap records held in remote portions of her consciousness. She could recall things she could not remember that she had ever learned. She felt the gears of her understanding interlocking and an order to the workings of the world settling into place. This, too, buoyed her spirits and fed her feeling of well-being.
How she hated it, then, when she began to hear sour notes. It was a small thing, barely consequential, but it really quite annoyed her to learn that Hanish had received a serious proposal of marriage. The woman was a third cousin of Hanish’s, of the familial line that claimed ownership of Hauchmeinish’s relics. Whatever those were, Corinn thought. A bag of bones and rags, undoubtedly. But this woman-barely more than a girl, really-had the type of pedigree the Meins favored. She was reported to be the ideal of Meinish beauty, pale and thin, straw haired, with features sharpened to crystalline points. She had never been down from the plateau and thus had not felt strong sun on her skin. Corinn never saw her likeness except in her own mind, where the girl lived, breathed, and threatened.
As the summer heated up, she sensed a murmuring tension growing in the palace, something being discussed just out of earshot. She tried to believe that it was only excitement at the approach of the Tunishnevre, but she could not help wondering if she was not somehow at the center of the talk. What if Hanish did marry somebody else? What if it was all being planned behind her back? What if she was thrust once again into the role of mascot? That was what all of the Meinish aristocracy hoped and prayed for. Her only comfort came from the fact that Hanish himself had told her about the marriage offer. He had laughed at it. He had no need for marriage as long as he had her, he said. He did not take such proposals-and this was far from the first-seriously. Why, he asked, should she? If he was aware of the insult buried in his declaration, he did not betray it in the slightest. Why, Corinn almost asked, did it not occur to him to consider her as a bride? But she could not bear to hear the answer.
One morning she rose late from bed. It was her second rising that morning. Earlier, Hanish had crept over to her in the predawn light and whispered in her ear, blown the hair from her face, and nibbled at her jawline. She had felt the firmness of his body. She loved his body, so lean and smooth. It did not take much for him to convince her to make love, even though she feared her breath was not fresh. If he noticed this, Hanish did not seem to mind.
Afterward she had fallen asleep in his arms. By the time she roused again, Hanish was gone. The sun cast golden geometries of light through the windows. She did not like rising late, hated that the servants might think her indolent. She spoke to her maids with a crispness that suggested they were somehow responsible for her tardy start. She could not help it. She felt uneasy at her center, off balance and queasy in a way that reminded her of being at sea on a small vessel.
She got up and dressed. Once this was complete, however, she was not sure just what to do. She had nothing planned. Before long she found herself wandering the palace. There was a hush about the place, corridors and courtyards empty, doors to occupied rooms shut, while those that were ajar opened onto hollow spaces. It was unnerving, both because such stillness was unusual and because she was quite sure there was a bustling motion occurring just out of view. It seemed that something was going on, but whatever it was happened in places where Corinn was not.
Whether she intended to arrive at Hanish’s council room she would not have been able to say. At some point it was just there before her. A servant had entered recently bearing a tray of lime water. He left the door open behind him and was working his way around the table, refilling glasses. Corinn moved forward slowly, watching Hanish lecture the others, all of whom sat around a massive table. She could not see the ends of it or everyone in the room, but she recognized several senior generals by the backs of their heads and profiles. Whatever was happening it was an unusually large gathering of officers.