“Before you make up your minds, there’s something else…”
He hesitated again. A man cannot become a boy again, and yet that was what this felt like, like stepping back into a child’s fearful existence, an act of faith in a world that offered little proof that faith was merited. If he said what he wanted to, he would be admitting to being the child who had been left shivering and tearful and alone in a broken-down hut in the mountains. Powerless. Abandoned. Staring through the cracks at a massive world that didn’t give a damn about him. And who would save him this time?
“Spratling, we’re not inside your head, man,” Nineas said, cantankerous as usual. “Whatever you’re thinking, spit it out so we can hear it.”
“What I’m asking is that you not call me Spratling anymore.” There, he’d said the first part. It wasn’t so bad. The faces watching him did not seem surprised or judgmental or disdainful. He saw no mirth in their eyes. “That was a name for a boy in hiding. I’m thankful for it, but I’m not in hiding anymore. If you call me anything from now on, call me Dariel. Dariel Akaran. That’s who I am.”
He hated the moments of silence this was met with. Where was his confidence? Where the surety he felt when in command of battle? Something about the simple act of being asked to be called by his true name humbled him so completely that he wanted to fold back into himself. But he did not regret it. His leadership of these fighting men and women meant nothing if they did not acknowledge who he was. The battle against Hanish Mein wasn’t theirs to take on if they did not want it, and the least he could do was level with them.
A voice said, “If you are a prince, then all of us around you are members of your court. That right?”
“I always knew I had nobility in my blood,” Geena piped, wrinkling her eyes in what passed for her expression of mirth.
Clytus stood up, smiling, and stepped toward Dariel. “Don’t look so surprised, Prince Dariel Akaran. You’ll get no argument from any of us. Most of us have always known who you were. We always believed it. Dovian made sure of it.”
The mention of Dovian-of Val, now that he was Dariel again-nearly brought him to tears. He hid it by taking on a swagger. He asked which of them, then, had the balls to take war to Hanish Mein. Wren’s was the first voice to answer, followed by many others.
That was how this journey had started, with glib enthusiasm and camaraderie. Dariel was thankful for the memory of it. He did not for one moment take his crew’s loyalty for granted. Nor did he hold himself apart from them. He was their captain, right enough. They all knew that. But this “prince” business did not change a thing between them. He took on no airs, and they offered no new degree of reverence. So things were exactly the way he wished.
Coming around the curve of Talay and finally heading north again, the Ballan passed right by a league trader heading south. The vessel racked its crossbowmen and showed every sign that they would welcome a skirmish. But the raiders had the wind behind them, and they blew past without so much as a nod of acknowledgment. Dariel had the ship’s flag hoisted. Let them know who we are and wonder what we’re up to, he thought.
They were a week ripping north into the warming seas. For another few days they nosed along the coastline south of Teh, debating where to dock. On Leeka’s council, Dariel did not sail around the cape. Teh itself was populated by hordes of sun-loving Numreks. And beyond it the Inner Sea bustled with far too many ships. So the Ballan came to dock at a trading town called Falik, a Balbara port that served as a conduit from eastern Talay into the interior.
From the moment he stepped onto the pier and began negotiating docking fees, there was no doubt he was at the edge of a great, populous, and distinctly different culture. Dariel felt the palpable foreignness of the place all around him. He was no stranger to cultures other than his Acacian ancestry. His crew was a mixed-raced bunch, with origins and customs they held to with a sort of immigrant pride. But he had mostly faced diversity on a small scale, among a handful of people bound by common inclinations. In Falik a wall of dark faces punched him in the eye no matter where he looked. Scents of foods strange to him followed his nose, competing one against the other to distract him, confuse him. He could not quite be sure if the speech that bombarded his ears was of a single tongue or many languages thrown together. Either way, he had never heard such an unintelligible confusion of human speech.
As wide-eyed and staring as he was, the Balbara showed little interest in him. They went about their business as if he were but a vapor of a man, meriting no more attention than their brief exchange required. He felt sadly pale in comparison, a glass of weak tea floating in a sea of black coffee. It was not even that the population was entirely Balbara or even homogeneously Talayan. There were many other races among the throng. Perhaps four out of ten persons showed their distant origins in some way. But the Balbara were so forceful in their presence-with the solid impact of their skin color and the breadth of their features and the muscular bulk of their bodies-that they always seemed more populous than their actual numbers.
Dariel left most of the crew with the Ballan. With a small company, including Leeka and Wren and Clytus, he set out for the village his brother was supposed to have called home all these years. On the first day of his arrival at Palishdock, Leeka had named the village of Umae as Aliver’s hiding place. Thaddeus, the old soldier claimed, had known all along where Aliver was. He had ordered Leeka to bring Dariel to him when the young man was ready. Now, it seemed, Dariel was ready, though he did not entirely feel like it.
Leaving Falik, they fell into the flow of caravans heading inland, dusty travelers who likewise covered the miles on foot, some tugging camels and horses and mules laden with all manner of goods. For the sake of anonymity, it felt good to move within the traffic of people, just one of many beating the hard-packed path across a coppered landscape of shrub and acacia. Dariel expected the numbers to dissipate once away from the port, individuals turning toward their differing destinations. Three, four days in, there was no sign of this happening. He had no way of gauging what the normal flow of pilgrims and merchants might have been in the region, but he soon realized that the migration in which he flowed was not a normal thing. Their numbers were increasing. On waking each morning he found more tents had sprouted around him during the night. People, he came to understand, were speaking of revolt, of change, of war. They were heading toward the same conflagration Dariel was.
Leeka walked beside him at greater ease than ever before. Now that they were in motion, the man seemed to relax. His long work of convincing Dariel to confront his fate was behind him. This, it appeared, was something of a pleasure jaunt. His stern features mellowed. For the first time Dariel wondered if the man had been a father. Had he been married? He could be a grandfather now, and he might, from the look of him, have been a pleasant one.
He once said, “You look rather pleased with yourself.”
“I am pleased with the world,” was Leeka’s response.
Late on the fifth day Dariel asked him if they were approaching a great city or trading outpost. He thought there would be only small villages all the way to Umae, which was a small village itself. Leeka answered that this route connected the dots from village to village. But no, he said, there was no great city on the horizon.
Dariel studied the distance as if he doubted this, as if through looking hard enough he would see buildings rising from between the spaced acacia crowns. “Maybe we should cut away from the main route and travel alone,” he said. He did not offer a reason for this. He was not sure he had one. He felt safe enough. It was just that throughout his life as a raider Dariel had always been among small bands of people. They had lived scattered throughout the island chains. It was beginning to unnerve him to have so much humanity around him, especially when they were supposed to be navigating the wilds of the Talayan bush country.