And his downpour of fire? It poured down, rightly enough, but it had even less impact than in the days before. One tower, directly hit, buckled beneath the impact, flared into flame, and then…well, then the blaze went out, as if a breath of wind had extinguished it. Even as Maeander stared, the structure seemed to regain its footing, to rise back into shape. It smoldered, blackened, but it survived. By the time he called the day closed he felt he was fighting at a standstill. Instead of reveling in victory he felt himself floundering. He was not winning at all. And if the trend continued, the following day would see his troops driven backward.
The first day had confused him slightly. The second confounded him. The third worried him. He entertained the thought for the first time that perhaps Aliver had been blessed by some form of sorcery. He had thought all such things long dead, but what other explanation could there be? Nothing else made any more sense. With this realization came the first tingling of doubt. It appeared like an itch at his elbow, a nagging sensation that he just could not get rid of. If he scratched it with reason, it vanished, but only until he pulled his fingernails away. Then the itch crept across his skin again. He didn’t like it at all.
The Numrek had not arrived. Where were they? What game were they playing? The league was still readily available, but it would be four days before they could resupply the pitch orbs. His men were starting to look worried around the eyes. A messenger from Hanish arrived, demanding news. He had the man sequestered in a tent, guarded.
That evening he came to a decision. He was going to try something Hanish had cautioned should be used only as a last resort. They had a weapon they had not yet revealed to anybody. It had been a gift from their allies across the Gray Slopes. Not a disease this time but another thing unheard-of in the Known World. He did not like revealing their secrets if it was at all possible not to. But the situation they faced, Maeander’s gut told him, was just that sort of dire circumstance.
He sent a messenger to Aliver, proposing a two-day break in the fighting. Let the morrow be a day spent clearing the field, tending the wounded, and let another follow to honor the dead. Aliver agreed. With the delay in place, Maeander next contacted the vessels that carried the secret cargo, docked, as they were, in the harbor of Bocoum. He needed the antoks, he said. Bring them to shore and ready them.
CHAPTER
Corinn knew she had only one chance to speak to the leagueman. He had arrived in Acacia secretly the night before. She learned of this because she had coerced several of her servants-none of whom were Meins, of course-into feeding her bits of intelligence. Before her shocking discovery that Hanish would offer her as a blood sacrifice to his ancestors, she would never have looked to servants for such information. It would have seemed inappropriate, like lowering herself, demonstrating weakness. But she had decided that there was no weaker outcome than her ending up dead on some altar, nothing more pathetic than being led to her own slaughter in the throes of doe-eyed love. She had no intention of exiting life quietly. Indeed, she had no intention of exiting at all.
After learning what she had that strange night, all her old assumptions had to be revised. Her servants had once been faceless, nameless beings at the periphery of her vision. But from that first morning she saw them differently. She could not help but study their faces, wondering what they knew that she didn’t. What did they think of her? To whom did they owe loyalty? She took to watching them, observing their demeanor in various situations. She tried to gauge which of them were more disposed to her than others, which wore resentment barely disguised, and which looked like they could be manipulated. And then she had begun to cultivate them accordingly.
It had paid off. The servants were not as loyal to the Meins as she had assumed. It almost seemed as if they had been waiting for her to wake up and conspire with them. She learned that many of them believed Aliver’s return was fated. A male servant had told her that Rialus Neptos was in the palace. Another had informed her of Larken’s death. When a girl named Gillian brought her word of Sire Dagon’s arrival on the island, Corinn thanked her with an embrace and a peck on her cheek. Apparently the leagueman had asked to have a messenger bird readied for dispatch as soon as possible. He himself was scheduled to depart first thing in the morning, so Corinn wasted no time.
She left her quarters in the gray light of predawn, working her way through the palace silently, by memory, carrying no torch or candle. She had dressed carefully even earlier. She wore a light blue dress of a silken material, one that framed her collarbones and neck to flattering effect. Leaguemen were men, after all.
She had come to understand that the palace was a sort of prison for her now. Neither Hanish nor anybody had ever said this, but she had not been off the island for several weeks. The few times she had mentioned possible trips, Hanish had brushed her off. Recently, Meinish guards’ eyes followed her with a different sort of attentiveness than before. She watched their demeanor as she approached the edges of the royal grounds or when she ventured near the council chambers. She never pushed it far enough that any guard had impeded her, but she became quite sure Hanish had put her under surveillance. There was an invisible boundary thrown up around her. Her skin crawled with awareness of it.
The area of the lower palace reserved for the league, however, was largely a privately run compound. She passed into it without drawing attention to herself. Presumably, Hanish had never considered that she would have any desire to communicate with the league. Once through its gates, she did not have to contend with Meinish guards at all. She did, however, have some difficulty convincing the Ishtat officers to send her request for an audience to Sire Dagon. In the end she managed it only by threatening them with Hanish’s anger, pointedly suggesting that it was the chieftain himself who had sent her to see the leagueman. This won her a meeting, although only a few minutes were promised.
Entering Sire Dagon’s office, she found him already shuffling through papers with his long fingers. He glanced at her with a distracted air, as yet giving her only half his attention. “My dear princess,” he said, “what can I do for you? Please be brief with me, as my time is regretfully short. You have some…communication from Hanish?”
The princess was not as nervous as she had imagined she would be at this moment. She knew that the grip of her dilemma should be enough to paralyze her with fear. At times she had found herself standing still, staring off into nothing. She often thought back to the past, to her father, to her mother, to her short-lived exile on Kidnaban. But she was not the same now as she had been as a child. She felt increasingly disconnected from her old way of being. She could affect the world, she believed. She could have a say in her fate. Perhaps the thought of Aliver still living and breathing gave her strength. If this were true, though, it was an irony. The agenda she worked for was only partially in line with what she imagined Aliver’s to be.
“You can tell me why you have returned,” Corinn said. “What news do you have?”
The leagueman’s eyes rolled up and fixed on her. “Am I to believe that Hanish requests this information?”
“If you wish. But you are not Hanish’s pawn. I know that, even if he doesn’t. If possible, let this be between you and me. You would not have stopped in here and requested a messenger bird without news of some import. I have reason to be curious.”