Kelis said, “Father, forgive the night its darkness.”
The old man took a moment to respond. “I do, for the night air is cool. Kelis?”
“Me.”
Sangae pushed himself up to sitting and received Kelis’s embrace. He squeezed him tight for a moment and then pulled back. He ran his fingers over the younger man’s features. “You are living?”
“I am. We all are. Shen as well.”
“Light a lamp so we can see,” Sangae whispered, motioning toward a tea lamp on the floor beside him. “Keep it low. There is danger here. No, let’s move farther inside first.”
A few minutes later, the two men sat facing each other on low stools in the compound’s storage shed. The lamp cast a yellow glow that etched their features from below; around them were the large vases, shelves of household goods, and stacks of grain sacks. Sangae had called softly for his dogs and tethered them to guard the shed.
Kelis told of their strange journey to the Far South. Sangae listened, brewing a tiny pot of tea above the lamp as he did so. Kelis found words pouring out of him. He had not realized he had held so much in. Running from the laryx pack with Shen strapped to his back. Mountains that moved around them, as if the land were sliding under their feet instead of they moving over it. Flocks of birds that flew above them like thrown darts, only to crash down and die. The way the peaks just ended one morning, and the famous general, Leeka Alain, stood waiting for them, alone in a desert. Walking still farther south, until the Santoth appeared, stones whirling into sand and taking Shen with them for a time, then bringing her back and announcing that they would all march to confront the queen.
“That was wise,” the old man said, when Kelis explained that he had left the rest of the party in hiding well away from the village. “Sinper Ou has spies everywhere. Even here, I fear. He never trusted you. Ioma even less so. Do you know he began sending spies across the plains just after you left? It ate at him that he had let the girl go. He only let me come home because he thought he would catch me at something.”
Sangae poured a small saucer of bush tea and offered it to Kelis. The man took it and sipped. “Ou has many friends, Kelis. And many more wish to be his friend. Money such as his has bought many eyes.”
“Shen has friends of her own. The Santoth, I mean. They have come with us. They want to stop Corinn from doing harm with her magic. They feel it, Shen told me, and know she is opening rips in the world or something.”
Sangae worked his mouth, but found nothing to say.
“I doubt any could take Shen from them against their will. I don’t know what the Santoth are. I don’t know what they really want. I have been with them weeks now, but they don’t reveal themselves. Shen trusts them, though, but-”
“Then you must, too.”
“I don’t,” he heard himself say. “I’ve tried, but I can’t trust them.”
“Why?”
Kelis clicked his tongue off the roof of his mouth. “I don’t know. They feel… wrong. They never speak a word.”
“Because their tongues are dangerous. You know that. Perhaps the time has come for them to rejoin the world. If Corinn could teach them… she might become incredibly powerful. Another Tinhadin. That would have frightened me before, but, listen, there is something else.” Sangae placed his old, coarse hand over Kelis’s and squeezed. “Forgive me for not saying this first. I wanted to hear your words before clouding your mind with this. It may not be true, but many believe it. People are saying that Aliver lives. They say Corinn brought him back to life using the song. Word came just last week. Anywhere north of here has heard already. Pilgrims are rushing to Acacia.”
So was a portion of Kelis’s mind. His thoughts flew out of him in such a rush that his body was left momentarily empty.
“There is no better time to take Shen and the Santoth to Acacia. It may resolve everything. Sinper Ou is still a danger, but if you get Shen to her father, he will be no threat. You must take her, just as they asked you to. Stay in your small group. Keep the Santoth hidden. Join the pilgrims converging on Acacia and announce Shen directly to Aliver.”
“And if he has not really returned?”
Sangae worked his fingers into the wrinkled skin of his forehead. “Pray to the Giver that he has. I feel that the fate of the world depends on him once more.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Standing before a gathering of Bocoum’s merchants, Barad the Lesser knew exactly what he wanted to say. He had rehearsed the words inside his head both waking and in his dreams. He would tell them this: “The Akaran dynasty was founded on acts of evil. Deep in the cushion of the royal chairs is the blood of two brothers slain by another brother’s hand. It’s a nation built on the split between old friends, one that sent the other into exile. It’s the product of a man driven so mad by the power of his sorcery that he banished his companions from the land to punish them for raising him up. A people has but two choices when faced with such dreadful truth: deny it and live sucking at the tit of the lie like infants or face it with the open eyes of adults. And if you face it, what then? Only one possibility. You must dismantle the lie. You must tear down all the things built on it, for they are corrupted and will bring you down ere you look away.”
The merchants listened, applauded him, praised the queen, and thanked him for his words.
Days later, speaking to the rich of Manil, he decided to say this: “You may ask me, ‘Why must I change what has worked so well? Why must I cast my wealth and pride and history onto the ground?’ I say to you that you have no wealth. You have no pride. You have no true understanding of history. These things you cling to are vapors in guise of truth. A man cannot eat vapor. A woman cannot wrap vapor around herself and find warmth. A child cannot wake in the night and rush to vapor for solace. And you may say to me, ‘My mother lived and died like this. My grandfather lived and died like this. The world thinks my nation is supreme. What madness that you want me to turn from that.’ How do I rebut those words? With a certainty. That certainty is that each and every crime and lie and falsehood will be returned to you with interest. You may say, ‘Prove it.’ I have only to point north to do so. That is what treads toward us across the ice. Not foreign invaders. Not the whim of fate. Not horrors set against us without reason. What treads toward us are the living forms of our years and years of folly and injustice.”
The rich of Manil offered him toasts in his honor.
Before a meeting of the Acacian Senate in Alecia-called into session specifically to hear him-he intended to roar, and did: “There is but one thing to do! We must tear apart the lies. We must shred the swaddling clothes we were born into, pull back from the delusion, stand naked and afraid for just long enough to reorder the world as it rightly should be. It will be hard. It will be painful. It will be a trial like none we have faced. But we will emerge closer to the true beings we all wish to be. We will be Kindred.”
Among the jubilant faces that applauded him as he exited the chamber, Barad saw Hunt, the Kindred representative from Aos. He was still, close-lipped, and grave. Barad wanted to rush to him, but instead he walked by, turning his face away as he neared. Why did I do that? he wondered, even as his feet moved him away.
When he was done with each of these speeches, when he had no more words and his bass voice went silent, when he dropped his animated gestures and looked through his stone eyes at the faces his words had worked miracles on… he knew that he had not said any of the things he had intended to. Instead, he had praised the queen. He had sung her praises and reinforced the empire’s shackles. Somehow, she controlled each word spoken through his mouth. Each destination she had chosen. Each time he turned his strides in a specific direction it was following a path she had laid out.