The thought filled him with despondency. Fast behind this came an old memory from when he was eleven years old and Hanish had just turned thirteen. Their father was still alive then, vocally proud of them both. In honor of Hanish’s birthday, Heberen had arranged for them to dance a Maseret before a revered group of veterans in the Calathrock. It was to be one of Hanish’s last duels as a novice-the last time it would not be a fight to the death. They used real knives, but they wore their thalbas over chain-mail vests. Spots on their chests marked their heart points. This was the target they were each to aim for to end the contest.
They were both lithe and strong, their bodies growing in exuberant bursts. Maeander was nearly Hanish’s height and strength and had suspected for some time that his skills at the dance surpassed his brother’s. On this occasion, before the roomful of elders, he could not help but push Hanish to the edge. He had not planned to do it. It just happened. Pride billowed in him and drove his actions. He moved faster than he had previously, with unexpected shifts in tempo. He marveled at how composed his brother’s face remained; even more impressive and annoying because Maeander felt the strain he was causing him. He did not attempt to win the duel. That would have been too overt an insult. But he did want to make sure the elders saw him, and so he drew Hanish’s blood. He nicked his left nostril with a backhanded maneuver, looking up at the crowd as he did so. A few moves later he let Hanish touch his heart point. He left the arena satisfied with himself. A face cut was not considered important in the rules of the dance nor was it a serious injury. But it would leave a lasting scar. He was pleased about this.
That night, however, he was yanked from his dreams. He awoke to instant fear. He felt a living weight pressed down against his back. Someone clenched his hair and wrenched back his head. The flat edge of a knife blade touched his skin, angled just enough that he could sense the edge of it tasting his flesh.
And then Hanish’s voice spoke from close to his ear, cold and precise. One way or another, he said, Maeander would never humiliate him again. “Don’t deny that you didn’t mean to! Everybody with eyes saw it. I felt it. You would have me know that you are my better. You wish me to fear you, don’t you? But I don’t fear you. It’s my knife at your neck, brother. It always has been and always will be. I could kill you right here, right now, if I wished to.”
Maeander did not doubt him. His brother might have spoken with the Giver’s voice, so complete was his assurance. Hanish told him that he had a choice to make. He could die right there-with no accomplishments to his name-or he could agree to help him change the world. “Swear to the ancestors that you’ll never work against me. Swear that you’ll always obey me. Swear it to them and I’ll let you live. Otherwise you die right here, right now. Nobody will question me for it. You know that.”
The answer poured out of Maeander to his lasting shame. Perhaps the one thing that had kept him true to the oath he swore that night was how much it shamed him. Faced with death, he balked. He lay there paralyzed with fear, horrified that he might miss out on the life of glory he so vividly imagined. It was, he knew, a moment of unforgivable weakness. Hanish had pressed him up against the only real thing a Meinish male could be made to fear-a death before having achieved greatness. Ironically, by the Meinish code, he should still have hissed defiance back at Hanish. He should have accepted that worst of fates with smiling indifference. He did not.
That fact would have been an unbearable disgrace, except for what Hanish did next. Having heard the pledge muttered, Hanish’s weight went limp on top of him. His breathing came in gasps. After a few mystified moments, Maeander realized his older brother was crying, bawling from someplace so deep within him that each sob wrenched upward from his gut. Maeander did not move, did not even mention that Hanish still held the blade to his throat. They had never spoken of that night since, though Maeander remembered it almost every day.
And now…now Hanish was on the verge of his greatest triumph. Maeander, by comparison, had failed. That was what it amounted to. He had failed. It did not mean defeat for his people. Nothing Aliver could do would stop Hanish from completing the ceremony to release the Tunishnevre. When the ancestors walked the earth again, they would be an invincible force. All the tricks and ploys and strategies he and his brother had devised would be nothing compared to the fury they would unleash. So by holding Aliver’s army in northern Talay he had aided his brother’s complete victory. That was fine enough. But that was not the point. The point was that Maeander Mein would have no true place of glory in the story anymore. Who would remember him? Who would sing of Maeander after Hanish accomplished the one thing his people had yearned for for more than twenty-two generations? It felt as if Hanish had never removed the blade from his throat.
Facing this, Maeander decided that there was only one honorable way left for him to redeem himself. He sent messengers to his generals, informing them that they would be launching a delayed assault in the morning. He had something in mind to open the day. He would not live through it, but that did not matter. If he joined the Tunishnevre now he would be unleashed with them in the days to come. He would be one of the Tunishnevre, one of the ancestors his brother must revere. Anyway, he had been too long without looking the enemy in the face. Even Hanish had never done that. And if he accomplished what he hoped to, Hanish would never be able to take it from him.
None of what he thought or planned was even remotely evident on his face or in his demeanor the next morning. He set out from camp at the vanguard of his personal force, just a handful of Punisari striding through the slant of the rising sun, all of them taller than the norm, their burned faces like stonework chiseled to match their musculature and bearing. Each of them had straw-blond hair down below their shoulders; a few wore the traditional knotted locks to remind them of the years their ancestors roamed the wilds in exile; all knew to what work they went and none showed the slightest sign of hesitation. Maeander had drawn together each of the three braids that, with their weave of colored ribbons, numbered the men he had killed with his own blade. His torso was wrapped in a gray thalba. The only weapon on his person was the Ilhach dagger secured horizontally across his abdomen.
So accompanied and armed, Maeander approached the Acacian camp across the scarred desolation that was the previous days’ battlefield. He carried a banner that indicated the desire to parlay, and he wore a faзade of composed, smiling humility.
CHAPTER
The paper swan was waiting just inside the portal. Somebody must have shoved it underneath the door. Just how this was accomplished was not clear, considering the object’s placement, the way it stood upright several inches from the crack beneath the door, a space not as tall as the stylized, geometric creature that must have passed beneath it. Also, there was a note beside it. Just a ribbon of paper so thin it was hard to pick up. Corinn did so carefully, pinching it between two fingernails. Accept this gift, she read, in the event that you need it.
It was unsigned, but Corinn knew who had sent it. How Sire Dagon’s agents had gotten past the outer guards she could not guess, and the feeling that perhaps they had actually been inside her room while she slept made her skin tingle. She held the swan to her nose and sniffed, carefully. No scent at all. Squeezing the paper between her fingers, she could feel the coarse texture of crystals inside it. She knew that the grains were distilled from the roots of a wildflower by a process known only to the league. They made from it a lethal poison, one that could not be tasted or smelled or detected afterward. She thought to look at the note again, but it had crumbled and flaked away. Nothing remained of it but a residue on her fingers and a few traces on the floor. The breath of air underneath the door was dispersing these already.