“This thing has been done for generations,” Gridulan said, speaking close to his son’s face. “Tinhadin himself agreed to it. Who are you to doubt his wisdom? If that is not enough for you, consider that I do not command the army. In name, yes, but in truth the various portions of the army answer first to their governors. The governors, in turn, bow to the wishes of the league. And the league would never allow the Quota to be repealed. Instead they would connive behind our backs. They would arrange to destroy us and place somebody else upon the throne, understand? Then we would have nothing, and you would find yourself pining for the time lived blessed by this abomination. You might be sold as a slave yourself. There are many in Alecia who would welcome the irony of that.”
“Does it mean nothing to be a king, then?” Leodan asked, bracing himself for another blow.
Gridulan did not strike him again, though. His answer had more the quality of sadness to it than anger. “Of course I am a powerful man, but I am powerful because I am well placed in the dance of empire. I know the rules and step accordingly. But the dance is bigger than me, Leodan. It is a bigger thing than you. Perhaps this is too large a thing for you to understand yet. You want peace and fairness and justice for all, but your way would lead to none of these things.”
The king straightened, stretched his legs, and hefted his sword loosely in his hand. Before he turned back to his fencing partner he said, “Really, Leodan, you must study for years more yet before you challenge me. Do not speak of this again in public, even before my trusted men.”
Leodan, sitting on the sill of one of the large windows of his library, wondered if his father had at that point hardened his heart enough to become the murderer the coming years would prove him to be. He shook off the thought. He was spending too much time in the past, he knew. It was hard not to, especially on an evening like this, when the air seemed hushed with melancholy.
Though Acacia sat in a temperate zone well placed between the arid bushlands of Talay and the frigid expanse of the Mein, on occasion the island was visited by weather cold enough to allow snowfall. Usually this was no more than a dusting or two throughout a winter. A true accumulation came once every four or five years. This evening-the night of the Aushenian banquet-happened to be one of these, a late storm that ended a run of mild weather.
Snow had started with a few forlorn flakes twirling down through the dull light of late afternoon. By the early evening the clouds floated so low as to brush the spire points of the palace’s highest towers. They let loose a bombardment of white, puffy balls that fell in perfectly straight lines, pulled down by an appearance of weight at odds with their fragile nature.
In the short period of solitude after his afternoon meetings and before he had to prepare for the banquet, Leodan sought the seclusion of the library. It was a temporary reprieve, and already he felt it drawing to a close. He walked the deserted chamber with his eyes tilted up at the books, so many thousands of volumes. There was a book here that was supposed to be written in the language the Giver had used to create the world. As ever when he was alone here, he felt himself drawn to it.
He looked around a moment, verifying that he was truly by himself, and then he found the book. He ran his finger up the spine of an ancient volume, unmarked by anything but age. He had known where it was since his manhood ceremony, when his father had showed it to him. Inside it, Gridulan claimed, was knowledge of everything that made the world run. Inside it was the language of creation, and of destruction. Inside it were the tools Tinhadin had used to conquer the Known World. Terrible knowledge, Gridulan said. That was why Tinhadin had banished all who had ever read the book. He also had forbade his descendants to read it, although he charged them with remaining the custodians of the volume. He had hidden it in plain sight; they carried on the custom ever since.
As an adolescent Leodan had spent countless hours imagining himself wielding divine power, creating with words that left his tongue and reshaped the fabric of reality. He had never opened the book, though. He never entirely believed the story behind it, but he had been frightened enough to let the book rest. At times he had considered pulling the book from the shelf and leafing through it or tearing it apart or burning it or simply laughing at it; he never knew which he would most like to do. But he had never opened its covers before and would not do so now. He had largely stopped thinking about it some time ago. Stopped believing in such tales of magic. There was so little evidence of it in actual life, after all.
He set his finger atop the next book over, a volume of The Two Brothers. He tilted it free. He walked back to his alcove, thinking he might find inspiration to continue his tale for Mena and Dariel that evening. How he loved that he could still tell them stories; how he dreaded the inevitable moment he would watch them slip away from him, put childish things behind them, and shoulder themselves into the company of their peers. Part of him wanted his children safely happy, near at hand, content in the simplest ways, remnants of his love for his deceased wife that he could continue to watch grow.
But he also wished that they would fling themselves out across the world and tighten the strings of friendship around the whole empire. Although he did not like to travel himself, this was not an indication of disdain for the outside world. He had loved travel in his youth and had made many fast friends in distant lands. At least, he had believed them to be friends, although in truth he knew little of friendship. He had never been close to his peers like his father had been with his. Something about the mantle of kingship had made it difficult for him to find ease with men his age. Only in foreign courts-with translators speaking between him and others, with hand gestures and laughter a necessary feature of conversation, with the differences in culture a source of amusement and mutual interest-had he found the ease with others that he believed was friendship. This had been one of the joys of his youth.
Since Aleera’s death the world had seemed a different place. Perhaps all there was to it was that Aleera’s ashes had been scattered from atop Haven’s Rock on a day with a northerly wind that blew her remains all over the island. She was spread out across every square inch of the island. There was a piece of her in every handful of soil, in every item grown here, in the nutrients that fed the acacia trees, in the air he inhaled. He felt her touch daily. He thought of her each time a breeze buffeted him, whenever he turned his head and caught a scent in the air that reminded him of her. He even thought of her when he ran his fingers through dust gathered in some remote corner of the library. This was why he now feared leaving Acacia. He feared leaving her. Their lives had not been long enough together, but at least if his ashes were spread the same way, blown by the same sort of northerly breeze, they might share the long silence of death together. Other than the happiness and well-being of his children that was all Leodan wanted now. Who could assure this if he died in some foreign land? Who could guarantee that he would not spend eternity just as racked by sorrow as he had spent the years since Aleera left him?
Leodan looked up from the book. Such thoughts did not help matters. He was a king; there was a world around him that he could affect, perhaps for the better. There was one course that offered him the greatest chance of finding meaning in the rest of his life. One struggle worthy enough that if he triumphed he could stand a complete man before the memory of his wife and before his children. If he could break Tinhadin’s contract with the Lothan Aklun…if he managed it, he could die with some hope that the future held a noble legacy for the children. It was difficult to face the prospect directly and allow it to take form, but since the meeting with the Aushenian prince he had felt the renewed stirrings of possibility.