A group of soldiers strode by. They bowed their heads to Aliver as they passed. Barad watched them until they began to climb the gangplank to the transport. “I don’t know where I would go or what I would say. I have my tongue back, but I am tired, Aliver. I don’t have it in me to harangue the masses anymore, not after the speeches I made for your sister. If I were younger, I would go with you. I’d listen to you speak.”
“I have a different idea,” Aliver said, nervous now as he approached the second question he wanted to ask Barad. “If you want to serve the nation without having to shout above masses or wield a sword… how about having a smaller group of pupils? You could stay here with Aaden and Shen.”
Barad pulled his head back, studying Aliver as if he needed to adjust his angle to see him clearly. “Aliver…”
“Educate them. Speak your mind and tell them every wise thing you know. Explain to them the world as you understand it, so that they can be rulers with their eyes open-and with their hearts and their consciences at the centers of their beings always. Or help them learn to be something other than rulers, if it comes to that.”
“Do you mean this?” Barad said after a moment.
“Teach them to think differently. Help them make a better future for themselves and Acacia.”
“Shouldn’t you do this yourself?”
With all my heart I want that, but I am dead and cannot do it. “If I had the time, I would love to, but I may not have that time. If I don’t, will you do it? I have already written a testament giving you complete power over their education.”
“And what of the mothers of these children? What would they think of their children being educated by a commoner, a mine worker, a rabble-rousing rebel, a man of-”
“They both approved. Corinn did before she left. Benabe you can ask yourself. Mena, I will tell with my own lips. And Dariel, he may not be of this world anymore. He would approve of this, though. You see? Nobody will stop what you begin.”
The man’s gaze drifted from Aliver. It seemed to lose itself somewhere in the middle distance of the green depths at their feet. “Corinn approved?” he asked, but Aliver knew it was not so much a question as a statement, one he needed to test out loud to believe. His eyes ground back to the prince’s. “I would not lie to them. Not about anything. If I teach, I will teach them that there is a better way than that of monarch and subject. I never believed in that system, Aliver. I still don’t.”
“I know,” Aliver said. “I know what you think about such things. Much of it we are of one mind about.”
Barad shook his head. He spoke with an almost angry edge to his voice, almost as if he had not heard Aliver. “You cannot ask this of me and then tie my tongue. I would swallow it first. If I am their tutor, I will dive with them into the royal records. I will show them what your line has done and how. There will be no secrets. If we find horrors, I will hold their hands and face those horrors with them, but I will not lie to them.”
“I know.”
“Do not tell me that they are only children. War happens to children. Slavery happens to children. The ravages of corruption happen to-”
“I know better than most that children deserve the truth of the world, explained as they can handle it, and reexamined as they grow. I would do the same with them myself. I swear I would. But our history is not all horrors. It’s still being written. If you show them what we have done, make sure to show them the things that will make them proud. Let them have that as well. And be kind to them. I know you will, but there is nothing harder for a monarch than to be asked to give back what he thought was his. This new world that you and I want so much, if it comes, it will not be easy for them. I had thought once that I would oversee changes myself. Now I see my work was not about me. It was about helping set the stage for them. I haven’t done it all that well, but I’m still trying. Here, please take this for me. Keep it safe.” He pulled a chain from around his neck and held it for Barad to take. A key dangled from it. “Keep it for the children, for Mena. When the time comes to offer it to them, you’ll know it.”
Barad closed his large hand over the chain. His expression deepened. It grew lined and grave even though his stone eyes remained still at the center of it. “You… you are not coming back. Aliver, there is a pall around you. Since the coronation, it’s been on you and the queen both. I thought it was just sadness, but it’s…”
“It’s the pall of war,” Aliver said. He forced his smile to look genuine. “I may as well be cautious. That’s all. I may as well leave the children in the hands of a tutor like you. That way, I know they will not face the future blind. You will do it?”
The instant he had the man’s affirmation, Aliver bid him farewell. He could look not a moment longer into Barad’s stone eyes. Aliver turned away as if his mind had moved on. It hadn’t, though. Moments later, though he was aboard the transport, talking with Kelis, shaking hands and patting backs and speaking to the crowd, he fought to contain the emotion of the arrangement he had just made.
And then, back on the pier, he took to the saddle on Kohl’s back and looked across at Ilabo on Tij, and at Dram on Thais a little farther away. Outfitted for war, they looked like characters of living myth. The dragons wore plates of armor kept in place by a snug lacework of cords. They went laden with packs and supplies, with swords and crossbows strapped into place. The riders wore chain mail tunics like Aliver. As a final touch they pulled snug helmets fashioned to replicate the heads of the mounts they rode. Aliver tugged on a black helm that flared behind his ears in imitation of Kohl’s crest feathers.
They all rose into the air at the same moment, propelled upward on the cheers of the onlookers. Kohl roared and Tij answered. Thais corkscrewed just above the heads of the crowd, a move that spurred them to even greater applause. For a few moments Aliver forgot the weight of responsibility and loss on him. The scene was too glorious not to fill him with pride. Surging into the air above a beauty of an island, climbing up the terraced levels of the city. Everywhere people waving and shouting for them. Over the palace itself, he saw Shen and Aaden at the balcony of the upper terraces, Rhrenna just behind them. He swooped past them with Kohl tilted to one side so that Aliver hung toward them in the saddle, one arm outstretched as if he were touching them over the distance.
For the first time in his second life, Prince Aliver Akaran went to war.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Breaking camp after the first battle had been a terrible task for Mena’s army. They worked through the night, taking no rest, laboring in clothes and armor still smeared with gore. They tended the injured as they went, piling them-the living, the dying, and the dead-on sledges that they dragged toward the broken mangle of shore ice. The Scav had scouted and improved a half-submerged route that proved much more efficient than climbing up and down over the slabs and crevices. Trusting them with a completeness that would have been unimaginable a fortnight earlier, the Acacians followed their lead. They did not stop until they were all out on the frozen ground once more.
Even then the Scav did not rest. They went back into the labyrinth of ice to destroy the route and to set their traps. It was fortunate that they did. Watching from a distance as that Auldek station plunged into the water filled Mena with exhilaration. If only they could have dropped all of them into the depths, let the water and ice cover them, and forget about them. If only they would vanish like the phantoms of a nightmare.