“Nor am I.”
“We could try to remove Corinn. We’ve done such things in the past. I myself helped shorten Gridulan’s life. That old bastard. I’ve come to feel we must kill her. And her brother as well.” Grau made an expression as if he had burped and found the taste unpleasant. For the first time since they had begun, Grau’s eyes fixed on Dagon’s. “We are in agreement on that?”
There was something about the directness of Grau’s eyes that unnerved Dagon. “Yes,” he said, “we are in agreement.”
Grau held him pinned to his yellowish eyes for a little longer, then relaxed again. He puckered his lips and made a kissing sound. Dagon might have been unnerved yet again, had not the pipe-holding servant peeled away from the wall in answer. He brought the delicate instrument to his master. He lit it by snapping the flame strips glued to his thumb and forefinger. It took him several tries to get the resulting tiny burst of flame to catch the threads in the bowl. Once they did, the young man darted away. He returned a moment later and lit a second pipe for Dagon, who did not refuse this time.
Grau held the tubing of the mouthpiece and smelled the pungent scent a moment. The threads were potent, pure, as the rich aroma of them attested to. “Dagon, I wish to send you back to Acacia with a charge, one outside the unsatisfactory proceedings of the last council. Council Speaker Sire Faleen should be here, but he isn’t. Sire El should be here, but he isn’t. Many others should be here, but they aren’t. It falls to us to take action when the council cannot. Are you prepared to do that?” Before Dagon could answer, Grau added, “Soon I will step down from all council matters. I am ready for Rapture.”
Of course you are, Dagon thought. It made perfect sense, and it perplexed him that he had not anticipated it. Grau was old. His body no longer took the physical pleasure in living that it once had. Why wouldn’t he be ready to join his predecessors in perpetual bliss? That was what awaited every leagueman who lived long enough-and who earned enough for the league over that long life. Rapture. It was the Tunishnevre in reverse. Instead of undead, ageless suffering, Rapture offered continuous life, unending bliss through a process that drained one’s body of blood, replacing it, very gradually, with the purest distillation of mist. It was a process that took the better part of a long life to prepare, and then several years of slow transition. Dagon had been tithing toward his own Rapture for decades, but it was still a faraway goal. Such a gift was incredibly expensive. Grau must have finally paid his dues.
“You have served many years,” Dagon said, realizing he had not responded yet.
“When I am gone, I would like to believe Sire Faleen won’t hold the reins of power. He may be council speaker, but I’d be remiss if I left it up to him to appoint his successor. I want a bold man in the position, one who will keep the league powerful forever. What use is going to Rapture if it all comes crashing down in a few years?”
Dagon nodded.
“I see several prospects for this role. I’m sure you know those I mean.”
Of course he did. Bold-or at least ambitious-leaguemen were as numerous as pimples, and as hard to scrub away. Sire Nathos with his vintage. Sire El creating his Ishtat army. Even the upstart Sire Lethel had the scent of blood in his nose. Dagon had damned them all more than once in moments of ill temper, but he said, “There are none like you, but many worthy men who aspire to be.”
“Well… there are one or two individuals that I would rather not see ascend. Lethel, if you must know.”
Dagon almost spilled his drink. Had Grau just-just… spoken ill of another leagueman?
“I am going to take you into my confidence. The next council speaker could well be you, Dagon. Why not? You’ve served us right from within the wolves’ den all these years. You’ve done a great deal more than you’ve received credit for, haven’t you?”
Answering that in the affirmative felt like a trap. Dagon tried his diagonal head-shake/nod combination again.
“Now comes the time when you can truly earn it.” The old leagueman studied him a moment, lips squinched together in a contemplative pucker. “I have in mind a coronation of death.” He pointed with his jaw. “Take the pipe. Ease yourself and we will discuss it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
On the morning she was to depart for the coronation, Mena left Elya in the care of gentle handlers and went to say good-bye to her troops. She paused in the hallway just outside an open doorway in the Calathrock. The chamber was still musty, damp, stained with the mold and decay. It would take more than a few weeks to undo the years of neglect. But it had been a corpse before. Now, soldiers’ feet pounded its floor. The air clanged with the clash of weapons and shouts of orders, and it smelled of men and women training. Volleys of arrows flew like single-minded birds. Once a dead ruin of a defeated people, now the building lived and breathed.
She had worked as hard as anyone to bring about the transformation. She had lifted new timbers with her own hands, pulled on the rusty-toothed saw to cut them, and leaned her weight to push them up into place, shoulder to shoulder with her soldiers. She had filled buckets with snow and brought them inside to melt, and then scrubbed the floor clean like a servant. She had held the safety ropes as climbers scrabbled into the chamber’s higher reaches, shoring up the ancient beams and repairing broken panes of glass. And she was among the first on the scene when a blockage in the vents caused an explosion that killed three and steamed the skin half off several more.
It was hasty work, done mostly so the chamber could function once more for its most basic purpose: to train an army sheltered from the winter that raged above it. This, too, she did in among her troops. She walked the Calathrock as Perrin shouted the soldiers through drills. None of them had fought more recently against the Numrek than she. So she taught what she knew. She lectured as she sparred with the strongest, tallest, and most skilled of her warriors, hoping that things learned from fighting Numrek would apply to the Auldek as well.
She was there to correct missteps, adjust weapons. Her eyes on the young men and women pushed them harder than they would have worked otherwise. She knew she had this effect on them. She used it not for herself but so they would become stronger, faster, more skillful than they thought themselves capable of. Perhaps one or two of them would learn just the extra bit he or she would need to survive the Auldek.
“Much has changed, hasn’t it?” Perrin’s shoulder brushed hers as he came to stand beside her. “Just a few weeks, but you’d barely recognize the place. It’s you who did that.”
“They did it,” Mena corrected. “One person can do little. Only together-”
“I know. Only together is great work accomplished. But I don’t know where we’d be without you. You, Mena, kept us marching and working and training. I’ve never known anyone more suited to lead others. You’re…”
She glanced at him.
The easy confidence on his face fell away. He went suddenly shy, as if the touch of her eyes was a rebuke. “I was going to say that you’re an inspiration, but that doesn’t sound like something a soldier should say to the princess he serves.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I should probably quit while I’m ahead.”
“I think so, Captain.” Looking back into the Calathrock, Mena smiled. Despite the interest she had always seen in Perrin’s eyes, she thought Melio would like him. I’d love to see them spar together. Melio would win, but this young man would give him a good contest. She stepped through the portal and into the massive chamber.
A visiting dignitary or senator from Alecia would not have recognized her, dressed as she was in simple garments meant for function, mobility, and warmth. Her soldiers recognized her; they were what mattered. Their survival in the face of the coming onslaught mattered. That was the main thing she hated about command-that the one thing she wanted to spare them from was the exact thing she was sending them toward. Aliver had warned her that leadership was like this.