"Do you believe he speaks truly?"
With more bitterness than she intended, Mor said, "I don't know what truth means to Acacians."
Yoen's eyes stared at her. Waited.
"He seems to believe himself. He is earnest, but that doesn't mean he's truthful. He may just be foolish."
"We must be careful with him," Yoen's voice said, after considering this for a long moment. "If he is the living prophecy, he must be allowed to find it himself. We cannot thrust it upon him. We can, however, take certain steps. This is what you will do: test him further. Find a true test."
Mor's eyes widened. A true test meant a task to be accomplished in the real world, with real danger. "And if he dies?"
"Then he is not the Rhuin Fa. Mor, my dearest, go with the-"
"Wait," Mor interrupted what she knew to be the beginning of a farewell. "Yoen, how do we know that we don't err by forcing a role upon him? You yourself once told me that the prophecy of the Rhuin Fa might be nothing more than a tale to keep our hopes alive. Perhaps we are giving this Akaran an importance he shouldn't have, putting our faith in someone who may not deserve it."
Though he only had his eyes to express emotion, Mor was sure she could see the look of fatigued love Yoen had so often showered upon her. "Dearest, how do you know that's not how prophecy works?"
That question was still circling through Mor's mind half an hour later, after she had parted with Yoen, bade the vessel farewell, and worked her way back down under Avina. Tunnel led the way. Dariel's cell was changed so often, and she was so distracted with managing the People's myriad concerns, that it was comforting having Tunnel's broad gray back to follow. They arrived at Dariel's new room before she knew it. Tunnel turned and studied her, concern on his face. She had hardly said a word to him as they walked. She realized he had no idea what Yoen had said to her. Considering his obvious affection for Dariel, it was insensitive to hold to her silence.
"It's all right," she said, reaching out and touching the brawny bulk of his forearm. "I have no orders to harm him. He will just be tested further."
Tunnel lifted his chin, a gesture that seemed to have a variety of meanings for him. This time, she thought it indicated relief, acknowledgment of reason, and a slight hint of "See, I told you."
"Yes, Tunnel knows." She touched her palm to his muscled chest, pulled it back quickly. "Go in. Let Skylene know she may proceed as we discussed. She can answer his questions. I will listen from here for a time."
Once she was alone in the cramped passageway, Mor leaned against the stone wall next to the door. As in all these abandoned regions, the door was old and half rotten. It sat slightly ajar, tugging at hinges that probably would not hold much longer. There was enough space that Mor could listen, knowing she was hidden from the speakers inside.
Tunnel's entry stopped whatever they had been talking about. He greeted the prince merrily, like an old friend. He even audibly slapped him on the back. They spoke foolishness for a few minutes, although within it Mor recognized that Tunnel was conveying her permission to finally educate the Akaran. It was time, as she had already discussed with Skylene, to tell him the truth of things.
Mor noted that Skylene and Dariel spoke with an alarming level of familiarity. She did not like it. Were they all so infatuated with the Akaran? Even Skylene, her lover? The thought of it almost drove her into the room, but she was not ready yet, and did not want to enter until she knew what she would say and could do it without hesitation. Anyway, she had agreed that Skylene would be kind to him in ways that she was not willing to be. Perhaps that was all she was doing-playing a role a little too well.
Dariel spoke easily enough. The topic now-his naval battles with the league during the war with Hanish Mein-seemed to fire his oratory. He wants us to think him a hero, Mor thought, and because of it she wanted to doubt his version of events. Still, it was easy to listen to him, easy to forget her skepticism as he told of ships smashing together, of nighttime raids, hidden raider camps, and the great work of sabotage that destroyed much of the league's platforms. Mor remembered that place well, and it was stunning to imagine the scene he described. Flames roaring up into the sky…
"Why did you hate them so?" Skylene asked, the scratch of a scribe's stylus right behind her words. "Your family did-and does-partner with them. You came here with them-"
"It was personal back then. There I was, a prince of an overthrown empire, hiding among brigands, fighting the league because they made life hard for the criminals who were my new family… Yet I came here, allied with them, more aware than ever of their crimes, but was then betrayed by them to the people who enslave you. And now I'm in your hands. All very amusing." He laughed. "How can I live day after day, trying to make decisions, and yet feel that I've not had one moment of control of any of it?"
"At least you laugh," Tunnel said.
"At some point, what else can I do?"
"You control more than you acknowledge," Skylene's voice said. "I would have loved to have seen the platforms destroyed."
"That didn't come without a price."
"What was the price?"
Dariel took a moment to respond. "I lost a person dear to me, the man who was my second father."
A second father. Mor recalled Yoen's eyes embedded in the vessel's face, but then pushed the image away. It was not the same. Whatever the Akaran had experienced, his loss was nothing compared to what each of the People suffered.
Dariel continued, "And I came to understand later that my actions killed many quota children. I wish that weren't so. It was children like you who died there."
Mor felt like clearing her throat and spitting, or bursting into the room and slapping him again. What right did he have to make those deaths a weight on his conscience? It was an indulgence he didn't deserve. She was pleased by what Skylene said in reply.
"You Akarans dwell on past failures too much. I'm beginning to think that's what made your line so tyrannicaclass="underline" guilt, and hiding it."
"Yes," Dariel said, no indication in his voice that he took offense. Mor imagined him grinning as he propped a leg up on a stool. "But enough of me talking. You give me something now. You said you would."
This was met with a moment of silence, then Skylene cleared her throat. Mor imagined the tight face she was making, the way she would dip her head and sweep her left hand from her forehead up lightly across her plumage. "What do you want to know?" she asked.
"Everything."
"That's a bit too much to tell at one sitting."
"Tell me about the Auldek, then."
And she did. Mor pressed her ear even closer to the gap, for Skylene began speaking softly. Good, she thought. Yes, do give the Akaran truth. Let it be a punishment to that weak side of him that embraces guilt.
Skylene spoke with her usual conciseness, laying out the details in a dispassionate manner that Mor herself could not have pulled off. It was hard to know truth from myth, but some among the divine children had been entrusted with keeping the Auldek's oral history. They passed on what they had learned to the People. The clans of Ushen Brae had once been much more numerous. Theirs had been a warrior culture, rooted for millennia in intertribal strife, a culture in which men lived to die in battle, risking everything to earn a place in the warrior halls of the afterworld. They worshipped a god of war, Bahine, and a pantheon of lesser animal deities, warriors all.
"If they had stayed such," Skylene said, "there would never have been a quota trade."