There it was, Aliver thought, presented more clearly than he imagined such overtures would be. The Acacian response, however, was not similarly straightforward. The King’s Council members peppered the young man with questions. Asked whether Guldan would revoke Queen Elena’s Decree-that haughty declaration of eternal independence-Igguldan answered that her words spoke true for her time. One could not reach back into the past and change what had been. Guldan would never contradict Queen Elena, but he spoke of now, of this moment, of the days and years to come.
Thaddeus asked what misfortune had befallen Aushenia that after all this time she finally begged a place at the table.
“No great misfortune, sir, but we have lived long enough outside the trading circles of the empire. There is a new spirit among my people that chooses to look toward the future with fresh eyes. We see now opportunities that we did not before. My father acknowledges this foremost among us.”
“Umhmm,” Thaddeus said, unimpressed. “So your situation is that dire?”
There was an edge to the prince’s voice as he rebuffed this, just the slightest hint of aggravation. Aushenia, he said, was a modest nation, but it had never been poor. They were rich in amber, a valued gem known throughout the world. Their enormous pines were the best for sea vessels in the Known World. And their trees produced an oil that through a secret process they made into a pitch that sealed the hulls of ships against water and salt damage and worm damage. This, he knew, would be a boon to any nation that sailed the deep ocean.
Igguldan seemed primed to continue, but Sire Dagon cleared his throat to speak. Thus far he had sat silent and still at one end of the table, but Aliver had sensed the power of his presence the entire time. The League of Vessels. His father had once muttered that there was no more formidable force in the entire empire. “You think I rule the world?” he had asked, sardonic and cryptic at the same time. The league limped out of the chaos before Edifus’s time as a ragtag shipping union, a loose band of pirates, really. Under Tinhadin’s rule they won the contract to ship the new trade with the Lothan Aklun. With this legitimacy came such wealth that they evolved into a monopoly controlling all waterborne commerce. Before long, they were a diversified entity with influential fingers in every sector of the Known World. Once they won effective control over Acacia’s naval might-a deal brokered when the seventh Akaran monarch disbanded his troublesome navy and looked to the league as an efficient alternative-they made themselves a military power, complete with a private military, the Ishtat Inspectorate, which they claimed was a security force to protect their interests.
Sire Dagon was as strange looking as any of the leaguemen. His comportment was more that of a priest of some ancient sect than of a merchant. His skull had been bound so tightly in childhood it was squeezed into an elongated shape, the rear crown of it like the narrow point of an egg. His neck was unusually long and thin, an effect they managed by wearing a series of rings around it while they slept, their number increased slowly over a lifetime. His voice was just loud enough to be heard, strangely flat of tone, as if each word sought to deny that it was even being spoken. “Yours is a nation of how many persons?”
The Aushenian prince nodded at his aide and let the older man answer. Of free citizens they numbered thirty thousand men, forty thousand women, almost thirty thousand children, and an insubstantial number of elders, as Aushenians most often chose to end their lives once they felt themselves unproductive. They had a large population of foreign merchants within their borders, numbers unknown, and they kept a small servant class of perhaps ten to fifteen thousand souls.
When the man finished, Igguldan said, “But you know this. We have known for some time that we were being watched by league agents.”
“I am sure you are mistaken,” Sire Dagon said, although he did not clarify on which aspect the prince was in error. “In the past your people voiced objections to our system of trade. Are we to believe that has changed? Your father would fulfill all of our requirements as suits a position within the empire? You know what product the empire trades in and what we receive in return for it?”
In the pause before Igguldan answered Aliver looked from his face to the other council members, to his father and over to the leagueman. He felt his pulse quicken with a tendril of danger and could see the signs of the same on other faces, but nowhere did he see the sort of confusion he himself felt. What product did Sire Dagon refer to? Minerals from the mines, coal from Senival, trade goods and precious stones from Talay, exotic produce from the Vumu Archipelago: these were the products of international trade. The goods Igguldan had mentioned would find buyers also. But if these were what he referred to, why did he speak with such ominous import?
Igguldan answered the leagueman with a reluctant nod.
Pleased, Sire Dagon folded one long-fingered hand over the other and rested them on the tabletop. The jewel on one large finger reflected fractured shards of light for a moment. “With time and reasoned thought, all peoples have found our system agreeable. All have seen the benefits of what we offer. But because of that we must protect what we already have established. We have achieved an equilibrium. We would not want to upset this. Because of this, new parties are not entirely welcome at this moment. I am sure I speak for the king in mentioning this.” Sire Dagon nodded to Leodan without ever looking fully at him. Then he seemed to change tack. “On the other hand…Tell me, are your women fertile?”
Igguldan guffawed, but then caught himself as nobody else followed his lead. He glanced around and then back to Sire Dagon. His face showed the recognition that whatever bawdy joke he thought the leagueman was making had been a misunderstanding. There followed a discussion that Igguldan clearly found as strange to listen to as Aliver did. The Aushenian aides had come prepared for the question. They quoted statistics on the ages at which Aushenian women mature sexually, on the frequency of their pregnancies, and the rate of mortality of their young.
For a moment Aliver thought he saw amusement lift the corners of Sire Dagon’s mouth, but then he was not sure if that was the right interpretation of the expression at all. The leagueman held back whatever response he might have made and simply withdrew once more into hooded silence. The meeting proceeded without another word from the league’s representative.
Leodan seemed happy to take the conversation in a different direction. “I hear your conviction, Prince, and I admire it. But also I have long admired your nation’s independence. You are the last in the Known World to stand alone; for some of us your people have been…well, an inspiration.”
“My lord,” Igguldan said, “one does not feed and clothe and provide for a nation simply through inspiration. We Aushenians have nothing to be ashamed of, but it is clear to us that the world has moved away from the model which we so long wished for.”
“Which is what?” Thaddeus asked. “Refresh our memories.”
“Aushenia has on occasion been ruled by women of stature and wisdom. Our Queen Elena, in her decrees, proposed that the Known World be composed of a federation of free and independent nations, none subservient to another, all trading the goods they best produced, each keeping to ways true to their national character, honoring old traditions and religions while extending the hand of friendship to others. This is what she proposed to Tinhadin.”
A council member remarked that such a system might work at a subsistence level-each nation might make do and stay largely on equal terms-but none would achieve the wealth and stability and productivity the Acacian hegemony had created with the aid of league-managed commerce. They would have remained squabbling islands of national fervor, just as they had been before the Wars of Distribution.