Words failed Rialus, but he managed to shake his head. He did not understand what she was trying to do, but what she was saying could not-could not-be true.
“You don’t believe me?” she asked. “How would I know of the letters you sent him? How would I know you were unhappy in the north? I was close to my father, Rialus. I loved him very much and he loved me. He often spoke to me of the things that troubled him, including you. And I’ll tell you this-there is a reason I remembered your name. It is because just a few weeks later you were decried as a traitor. I thought, No, that cannot be. Not the Rialus my father spoke so highly of. But it was you. You did betray him, and here you stand because of it. What I want to understand is whether you feel you chose well. Is your life now all you dreamed it would be?”
Rialus could not figure out just how to respond. Her words were insulting. He should lash out at her for them. He certainly had more than enough to say about how he had been slighted. But there was no condemnation in her tone or in her gestures or in her face, which seemed all openness and curiosity. He had expected her rancor, but he felt none coming from her. What he did feel was…well, it was something he had not felt from another person in a very long time. He was not even sure he remembered the word for it. At least not until Corinn reminded him of it.
“I’m not asking because I wish to judge you. Truthfully, I empathize with you. I’ve betrayed ones I love also. I understand what it’s like to make honest mistakes, ones that you regret and wish, wish, wish you could make amends for. I thought perhaps you were the same, Rialus.”
Empathy. That was the word. She empathized with him. It was too much to comprehend-both the emotion itself and the possibilities it suggested. In defense, he fell back to an old refrain. “We are hardly the same, Princess. I’m an ambassador. It’s a position of authority and importance-”
Corinn indicated that she had heard enough. “Fine. Life is exactly as you’d wish it to be. I don’t believe that, of course, but I’ll not argue the point with you. Tell me this, then-what do you think of my brother’s return?”
Tell her about Aliver? He almost asked her why she wanted to know. The reasons were obvious-although they were also contradictory. He’s my brother and I love him, she could say. But that was not what he wanted to hear for a variety of reasons. He was a threat to Hanish, she could say. But that, despite the safety it suggested in respect to his current allegiances, wasn’t quite what he wanted to hear either. So he tried to keep his answer neutral. “He remains a mystery, Princess. I cannot-”
“Don’t lie to me. You don’t have to and I wouldn’t lie to you. The truth is, Rialus, that I don’t have a single friend in this palace. Not a single person cares what becomes of me. Hanish is not my friend, understand? He can never know that we’ve spoken or learn even a word that passes between us. Swear to me that you understand that.”
He nodded, though he did so in a hesitant way that was meant to indicate he was not agreeing to the entirety of whatever deception she might be proposing.
If Corinn noticed the vague caveat he intended she gave no sign of it.
“Rialus,” she said, “I very dearly need a friend-a powerful friend. That’s why I’m speaking to you now. Do you, Rialus, also want a friend?”
He answered before he had time to censor himself. “Yes, very much.”
“Then I will be your friend. We will give each other things, as friends do. First, tell me of my brother. Hanish tries to keep me ignorant, but he’s just cruel. It does you no damage to tell me things everybody else knows already. Just help me understand what’s happening in the world.”
He could do that, he thought. She needed him. She had said so herself. What would it hurt to tell her things that everybody else knew anyway? He was not ready to accept her empathy, but he could do this.
He spent the next half hour filling her in on everything he knew. He found his voice surprisingly nimble as he detailed Aliver’s movements, his troop strength and makeup. He told of the myths swirling around him, rumors of sorcery and such. Little of this impressed Hanish, however. The chieftain was annoyed by the timing of Aliver’s return. He would have much preferred to see the Tunishnevre’s move completed. Hanish had drawn in all the troops he could from the provinces and concentrated them around Bocoum. The Numrek had not joined them yet, but they were ready to march and planned to do so the moment he returned. The war, he said, was only days away from beginning.
He was surprised by the manner in which Corinn questioned him. Again and again she asked for details, specifics, and explanations. He gave them as best he could. When she asked him what posed the greatest threat to Aliver’s army, Rialus answered, “Why, the Numrek, of course. The very ones to whom I’m ambassador.”
“Yes, the undefeatable Numrek…Are they truly so fierce?”
Rialus spent a few moments singing their praises as regards martial matters. He was aware of the irony of this-considering how much he hated them-but the more Corinn asked of him, the more he was compelled to offer.
“If the entire world turned against them, of course they’d be defeated,” he concluded, “but not without doing a great deal of damage. I’m sure Hanish Mein considered moving against them. But that was before. Now he’s quite happy to call them allies again.”
“So he needs them?”
“Very much so. Hanish may have tricks up his sleeve, but he most definitely needs and relies upon my wards.”
Corinn’s face went troubled, hesitant, and unsure. She seemed to forget Rialus for a moment. She placed a hand upon the windowsill in a way that highlighted the curve of her breast. Reaching out seemed almost a measure to keep her from fainting. Her eyes stared through the window in a way that suggested she was thinking hard enough that she was not actually seeing. She chewed the corner of her lower lip.
“Rialus, what do you want most in the world?” She turned toward him. The resolve on her face and in her voice indicated that she had settled whatever had been bothering her and was ready to move forward. “I think I know. You want to be respected. You want to be rewarded. You want Hanish to acknowledge that you helped him and Maeander triumph against my father. You want the sort of spoils men like Larken received. You want to never have to wake without a beauty beside you, one who’ll do exactly your bidding. These are some of the things you want. Why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t any ambitious man crave such things? I’m right, aren’t I?”
Rialus opened his mouth, but Corinn did not wait for his answer.
“Hanish will never give you any of those things. He laughs at you. He thinks you’re a fool, a coward, an idiot. He once joked that if he didn’t make you ambassador to the Numrek-a job he considers most foul-he’d have made you a court comedian. You wouldn’t even have to practice your act, he said. You’d only have to be yourself. That’s what he thinks of you.”
“I-”
“You know I’m telling you the truth. You’ve always known it, and you hate Hanish for it, don’t you?”
“Ha-ha-hate is not the word I’d use,” Rialus said. “Princess, I was under the-the impression that you quite loved Hanish. That you-”
Corinn threw back her head and laughed. She opened her mouth so widely he saw straight to the back of her throat. Most disconcerting.
“You are a funny man,” she said, once she had gotten control of herself again. “I don’t love Hanish. Do you?”
Rialus was relieved that she did not pause for him to answer that question.
“Of course you don’t. You’re like me.” She pressed the wedge of her hand between her breasts, somehow a belligerent, not sensuous, gesture. “You and I are done with love. I’ll never give this heart to a man again. Not even to you, Rialus, charmer though you are. You may think whatever thoughts of me you like. I cannot get them out of your head and I don’t care what you fantasize. But you’ll never have my love; nor do you want it, do you? You’d like the shell of me, but not what’s inside. Anyway, there will be others for you, many others. Others more beautiful and vacuous than I. Understand?”