Aliver did not seem to doubt the man’s sincerity, but he had rebelled against the plan with more anger than Mena had ever seen him display before. He had shouted about the coming battle, saying it was his duty to lead the army. He was the king! The responsibility was his, even if he died in the effort! It took all of Thaddeus’s persuasive efforts just to soothe Aliver down to a normal volume. Thaddeus invoked his powers as sitting chancellor with interim responsibilities. He chastised Aliver, claiming the orders came directly from Leodan himself, saying that they were both honor bound to abide by them. In the end, though, it was not persuasion but force that got the prince onto the boat. He was escorted, along with the other children, by disguised Marah guards who made it clear they had to follow the king’s orders as handed to them by the chancellor. It was all Aliver could do to temporarily accept his exile, though he fumed and reddened at the perceived insult of it.
Late on the first day at sea they came in sight of the Cape of Fallon. It was a shoreline of crumbly cliffs, above which lay a landscape of gentle undulations, tall with grasses, splashed here and there with the colors of winter wildflowers. Dariel sat beside Mena near the stern of the ship. The two of them shared a spread of spiced sardines on crackers. Dariel picked at the fish more than he ate them, trying with the point of a knife to separate the soft bones from the flesh, collecting them in a pile that he occasionally scooped up on the blade and flicked overboard. Something about this filled her with love for the boy. The feeling swelled in her with the power of nostalgia for something lost, as if she were not sitting beside him at that very moment, still every bit his sister, as he was every bit her brother. She wondered why she looked at him with emotion that suggested this was no longer so.
Aliver strolled toward them, conspicuously wearing the ancient sword of Edifus, the King’s Trust. It looked too big on him, a strange appendage more cumbersome than useful. He was doing his best to shake off his sulky anger and to regain an appearance of control. Mena wanted to hug him for it, but she knew that would not please him. “We are coming up on the mines,” he said, gesturing with a nod of his head. “They are worked by criminals, as punishment. There is an even bigger one on Kidnaban and a chain of them in Senival.”
Mena craned her head to see over the railing. As they rounded a promontory, the low sun cast the landscape in enough shadow and highlight that it took her a moment to configure the scene. The great shadows in the land were actually a series of enormous pits. They were open to the sky, how deep she could not guess as she could only see the exposed far wall, which was crisscrossed with cuts and lines. Beacons flared up here and there, large fires encased in glass that fractured and amplified the light, sending bright shards into the sky. By the look of them, the work would not end with the dying day. She wondered how it was possible that there were so many criminals, so many foolish people who would steal from or harm others. Perhaps when she was of age she would do something about it. She would travel in her father’s name and demand that they do better with the opportunities offered them and not waste the long peace in petty actions.
They spent that night in the shelter between Kidnaban and the mainland. The following afternoon the vessel nudged into the harbor of Crall on Kidnaban’s northern coast. That evening, in the modest comfort of the chairman’s compound on the hill looking down on the town, they met Crenshal Vadal. He was not much to look at. Below his lower lip his face ended quite abruptly. It slid back toward his neck in a sheer diagonal. He spoke with a rigid formality, but at the same time he seemed to be wishing himself someplace else entirely, as if his entire body wanted to slide backward and slip around a corner. She noticed that some minutes passed before the man expressed sorrow for Leodan’s fate, and she suspected that one of his aides had reminded him to do this with a facial gesture.
As they ate dinner, Crenshal gave them more specifics of their fate. They were, quite simply, to seclude themselves in a portion of the chairman’s compound. That was all. They were there to wait. They would receive no visitors, because nobody was to know where they were. Thaddeus would send regular messages as to any changes or developments. They would send or receive no other correspondence. They would have to manage without luxuries, fine food, or entertainments, without any extravagances that might attract attention. Nor would it be wise for them to roam the lower town. It would be a simple existence, far from the aged opulence of Acacia. All Crenshal could offer were the somewhat drafty rooms of a facility meant to house the administrative and managerial staff of the mines, simple meals, and the pleasure of his company. He said this last in jest but with such incomplete vigor that it fell flat.
Aliver added that he wished to be kept apprised of all developments. His tone was haughty, as if he spoke from a position of authority different from his siblings. Mena glanced around, wondering if the others noticed his poorly disguised uncertainty. He feared that he was being shuttled to outside the flow of events and kept out of decision making. He was in a position of limbo: more than the prince he had been a few weeks ago but certainly not the king he hoped to become. To Mena’s eyes he had yet to come to terms with his situation.
He did lighten his tone when he asked, “Have you horses we can borrow? We should get out and explore the island. It will do us all good to get some air in our lungs.”
Dariel was well into an enthusiastic endorsement of this suggestion when the chairman broke in. “I’m afraid you cannot tour the island. It’s…well, it is your safety that matters most, Prince. Pleasures like riding will have to be forsaken for the time being. Surely the chancellor explained all of this to you.”
“And what of the mines?” Aliver asked. “I’d like to inspect them. We do not need to make a show of it or-”
“Inspect them?” Crenshal had apparently never heard these two words before. “But…young prince, this is also impossible. The mines are teeming with degenerates. They hold nothing of interest for you anyway. We will find entertainments for you within the compound. You will not be bored, young ones. I promise you that.”
Over the next few days, however, this proved quite false. They saw little of the chairman. He ate with them each evening, but other than that he was absent all day and left the children with few opportunities for distraction. The officials and managers usually housed in the compound had been relocated, leaving the simple halls and rooms echoingly empty. Mena had never even seen any of these phantom people, though in her room she found telltale signs that someone had left the place hastily: a half-empty bottle of scented oil by the basin, a single sock stuffed under her bedding, a toenail on the floor beside the dresser.
Board games helped them through the first few afternoons. Books from the former chairman’s collection-Crenshal himself had no interest in literature-provided some diversion the third day, when Dariel persuaded Aliver to read aloud to the group from a collection of epic poems. The boy was entranced, but Mena could not help but think of her father. Corinn might have experienced something similar. She rose abruptly and stalked away, giving no explanation. Corinn had barely said anything since leaving Acacia. When she did, she spoke in flat, matter-of-fact tones, as if she acknowledged nothing unusual in their circumstances.
The closest they came to having a meaningful exchange was on the third afternoon. Corinn entered the common room they passed most of the day in and glanced around with heavy-lidded eyes. Mena was surprised when Corinn drifted over toward her, plopped down on the couch near her, and exhaled a bored breath.