She was in her old room, where she sometimes spent the night when Hanish was away. It provided her greater privacy, and she had begun to need solitude more and more of late as she sought to master the swirl of thoughts inside her. She had awoken that morning believing that the next few days were going to change the course of her life completely. This swan message reinforced this belief. It was a small, silent, potent confirmation that forces at play in the world were moving in league with her. Knowing better than to handle it too much, she pressed the bird’s wings flat and slipped it under her belt.
She turned and walked back toward her dressing area, where she had been before noticing the swan. She sat on the stool at her makeup table, an array of mirrors reflecting variations of her image back at her. She intended to plan out the events to come, but she paused for a moment, looking into the mirrors. As she did often lately, she felt queasy. Each of the views of her face showed a different character. Depending on the angle, she looked miserable or stunning, delicate or agitated or self-assured or…wicked. Yes, viewed in near profile, from the left, she could not help but acknowledge a previously unnoticed cruelness in the tilt of her eyes and her mouth and in the manner with which she held her chin, as if it were a weapon protruding in warning. She hated what she saw there. Or sometimes she did. At other times she hated what she saw from the other angles instead. Which of these faces should she present to Hanish on his return?
Hanish was scheduled to arrive the next day. He would be sailing at the vanguard of a fleet of vessels bringing his fabled ancestors to the island. He had sent her a letter just the day before, filled with his enthusiasm, alluding to his plans for getting the ancestors into the newly constructed chamber as quickly as possible. He spoke of his joy at seeing ships loaded with the sarcophagi. What a wondrous sight, he had written. As if she would feel the same! He reminded her how much he hoped she would stay true to her promise to help him free them to their eternal rest. Once she did so, the rift that had scarred the Known World for centuries would finally be mended. Meins and Acacians would have a new chance to assuage their old animosities. The land, he promised, could finally start to heal. This was what his war had always been about. It was a long battle, an epic journey, but the end was near. He wrote: You, Corinn, will help to make it all possible. My people and yours will both revere you for it. And I will revere you for it.
“He knows nothing of what’s inside me,” Corinn said to the silent room around her. There was a time when the truth of this statement would have pained her. Now, however, everything she had planned hinged on it. Hanish thought he could play her for the world’s greatest fool; she, however, was resolved never to let that happen. “He knows nothing of what’s inside me.”
“No,” a voice said gently in answer, “no man does. No man ever could.”
Corinn snapped to her feet, spun around, and searched for the source of the voice. She saw nothing at first. The room was empty, crowded only with her family objects, safe beneath the pastoral murals on the ceiling, the walls softened by hangings dyed various colors. A man split the border between two wall tapestries and stepped into view. He was but a few strides away. His nearness, the concreteness of his presence was so shocking, her breath caught in her throat.
“Have no fear,” the man said. “Please, Princess, don’t call out. I’m here to help you. I serve your brother, and I serve you.”
She recognized him after only a few words. Thaddeus, the chancellor. Her father’s closest friend. His betrayer. By the Giver, he was old! His face was creviced, his cheeks sunken, his frame stooped. He looked so very fatigued, bags beneath his eyes, unsteady on his feet, swaying slightly, carrying a book cradled against his chest. Somehow she managed to speak through her surprise, asking the first thing that came to mind. “How did you get in here?”
Thaddeus asked if he could sit. He spoke softly, casting his words with a deadened lack of inflection. “I will happily tell you everything, Princess Cor-”
“You are in my room?” Corinn asked, growing more incredulous as the impossibility of it took hold of her. “How can you possibly be in my room?”
“Please, may I sit? If I don’t, I may well collapse. And…please, can you make sure we will not be disturbed? I cannot be discovered. I’ll explain why.”
Corinn stared at him. She knew she had to think quickly. Visitations such as this had an import she could not mistake. She could not stumble, for whatever brought this man out of the past and into her room simply could not be ignored or squandered. And he certainly did not look to be any physical threat to her. However he got here and whatever brought him and no matter how she was going to deal with it, she should listen to him, and she should do so alone. She whispered, “Wait here.”
She stepped into the hall and informed her servants that she did not wish to be disturbed for any reason. She had guards placed at the outer doors to her chambers, and she moved Thaddeus into the sheltered alcove just inside the balcony. There she had him sit in a high-backed chair as she paced in front of him. He told her everything. He explained how he had gotten into the palace and how he navigated the secret passages inside the walls. It took him hours upon hours to get into her room, but he had eventually found a low tunnel that opened in the corner behind her bed. She would be amazed to know that it was there all along, hidden by a simple trick in the architecture. But he was not starting at the beginning…
Aliver had sent him, he said, and then he launched into a breathless, earnest description of the man her brother had matured into. How he’d grown to fulfill, to exceed, anything Leodan might have imagined for him! He had a grand vision. He had a gift for moving masses. He was fired with urgency and purpose. He spoke of Mena and Dariel also, the sword-wielding priestess and the daring sea raider. Together they were engaged in a battle they could not lose. Aliver had inflamed the people with a belief that their fates were in their hands. He, when victorious, would not rule over them. He’d rule for them. By their permission and only in their interests. He’d wipe away all the hidden foulness that drove the Known World and find new ways to prosper. He’d build trust among nations, ennoble the downtrodden, break the spine of the league, do away with the Quota, abolish conscripted labor.
The old chancellor went on and on. Corinn listened, realizing that she was supposed to be suffused with relief, with joy, with anticipation. She tried to feel these things. The more he spoke, though, the more it all seemed to Corinn like mad ranting. Pure fancy. The stuff of children’s tales. A fantasy in which she did not feel she had any part. How could he believe any of these things could come to pass? She had heard some of this story before, from Rhrenna and Rialus. She had gleaned still more from overheard conversations. But it seemed less believable than ever now that this man actually sat before her in his aging flesh. He spoke like a newly converted disciple, worshipping a prophet of-of what? Equality? Liberation? It sounded like Aliver planned on building an empire in the sky, some idyllic kingdom that would float on clouds. Such a thing would vanish like the clouds, she wanted to say, blown away by the first strong breeze. She flared inside with a surprising degree of bitterness, but she made sure not to show it.
A golden monkey appeared on the balcony. It must have jumped from someplace high above, and it seemed startled to find them in the shaded alcove. It called out in a high, birdlike chirp. It was brilliantly colored against the blue background of the sky. Corinn turned her back to it.
“Hanish is returning tomorrow. He is bringing the Tunishnevre with him. He wants me to help him perform the ceremony that will end the curse. He says when this is done, much of the rift between Meins and Acacians will be healed. It will be history, he says. Not the present or the future anymore. What do you think of that?”