The double doors at the far end of the chamber swung open with a slam. Mena and Dariel poured through the opening, one at each door, a contest they had been at for a few weeks now, testing which of them had the stronger push. Just behind them Corinn strolled through, garbed in her evening’s finery. Aliver and Thaddeus entered last, engaged in a conversation. Seeing his children rush toward him-each of them of differing sizes with varying temperaments, bits and pieces of Aleera revealed in random features and gestures-the king was flushed with joy. He tried not to think of how and why similar joy had been denied Thaddeus. He would admit it to him one day, he promised himself. One day.
He had to raise his arms above Mena’s hug, tight around his waist. He rolled his eyes at the tailor but did not dissuade her. Corinn, with paper-thin composure, kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“Father, it’s snowing!” Dariel said, his face open with childish excitement. “It’s snowing right outside! Have you seen? Can we go out in it? Come with us. Can’t you? I’ll beat you at snowball fighting.” This last he cast as something of a threat, head cocked, one finger pointed at his father in warning.
There followed the sort of exchange he so often stood in awe of, observing from the vantage point of his age, from the privilege of his position not as monarch but simply as a father. Dariel jumped as if his legs were composed of springs, calling on every persuasive tool he had mastered in nine years of life. Aliver explained that the king did not have time to play in the snow. He was the heir being mature again, instructing, bearing himself with a regal posture he must have modeled on the bust of the kings in the Great Room. Behind this Corinn snapped something about the banquet they-the adults-were about to attend. In all of this he heard her ambition, the tone of voice that set her apart from the younger children but that at the same time had something of a girlish beseeching directed at her father. And Mena stood back enough to listen to them all. She glanced through the moving mass of childish energy and smiled at him. When she did that, he saw Aleera in her, not so much in the shape of her features but in the patient, knowing mirth behind her eyes.
“Dariel is right,” Leodan said. “This is a special night. Let’s do as he asks. We will run across the rooftops and wage war with snowballs. All of us. We’ll war by torchlight. And then we will huddle together in a single room. We sleep too far away from each other, anyway. These old buildings are vast. They break us apart. Do not look like that, Aliver. You can spare a few moments for your old father. Pretend you are still my young boy. Pretend you want nothing more than my love and to be near me and to hear me tell stories late into the night. Soon you and I will speak of graver things, but let me have tonight.”
“All right,” Aliver said, speaking over Dariel’s delighted cries. “But expect no mercy from me. Before the night is over I will be crowned Snow King.”
“I will see to tonight’s banquet briefly,” Leodan said. Corinn seemed on the verge of protesting, but the king smiled at her. “Not too briefly. I will slip out after the third course is served. They will barely miss me, and then we will have our war.”
CHAPTER
Thasren Mein stood for some time in the street, feeling snowflakes light upon his skin and melt. How fine it was to feel snow kissing his upturned face. It was beautiful, righteous, and-in this land-remarkably strange to behold. The night air was just barely cold enough to snow, so very still, sounds muffled, footfalls of passersby pressing flat the moist layer of ice crystals; in all of these things this was a very different experience from a storm on the Mein Plateau. Still, the message and significance of it was easy to read: it was a blessing from home, encouragement sent by the Tunishnevre to remind him that the thing he did now he did for many. Snow fell on Acacia; so the coming change was marked by the heavens.
By the time he mounted the last staircase and approached the banquet hall across a stone courtyard, the other guests were already entering. He touched the wig with his fingers, noting the placement of the pins that fastened it in place. His garments were in order, his cloak one of the ambassador’s finest. There was a time, he knew, early in the Acacians’ rule when no one got nearer the king than a hundred paces, when the royals looked down upon social gatherings from a distance, like spectators at a play. They stayed safe behind a barricade of Marah guards, soldiers with swords drawn, each of them on one bent knee, dressed and dusted with bronze to take on the appearance of statues, ready to spring to life should a threat appear. They, he had been told, were trained as much in observation of body motions and demeanor as they were in martial arts. But that was long ago. Luxury cannot help but make a people soft, forgetful. It was a very different banquet he entered on this occasion, one that those first kings would hardly have recognized.
He nodded to the guards at the door. They greeted him by the ambassador’s name, no hint of suspicion behind their smiles. As Gurnal had told him, he had to walk through a long reception chamber to reach his goal. Both walls were hung with paintings of the early Acacians. Closer still stood statues of men he presumed to be kings. Behind the shoulders of these, soldiers shadowed them in similarly formal postures, arms tight to their bodies, hands crossed over the hilts of their swords. The soldiers were as still as the inanimate personages they protected. At the far entrance to the hall a few men congregated-the official host and his guards. Thasren walked, knowing that each stride was observed, each motion of his hands, his demeanor, his features. He had cut a slit inside his vest, a passageway to the weapon fastened there. He had to say a calming prayer to keep his fingers from twitching, so keen were they to find the hilt and puncture the first throat that voiced a complaint to him.
At the opening to the hall the chief Marah guard smiled in greeting, blocking entry in a gracious manner with two soldiers at either wing, these not inclined to smile. Beyond them, Thasren saw a room lit by hundreds of lamps, crowded with people; the air a clamor of voices and the music of stringed instruments, fragrant with the evening’s rich fare. The Marah touched him in two places, one hand on his shoulder and another on his opposite hip. He greeted Thasren by Gurnal’s name, asked him if the weather suited him, but as he did this he looked past him to the guards of the outer chamber. He spoke with his eyes, with a thrust of his chin, telling them that with the last guest inside they could seal the outside doors. He turned his attention back to the man within his embrace, who-despite what passed for calm-was coiled and ready to spring, to cut a path of chaos from this point forward if it were necessary.