“Stop it!” Corinn snapped. Her eyes fixed on her, wide and fierce. “Father will not die. Stop wishing he would! Don’t even say that he might!”
Mena was aghast. She had started all wrong. “I-I did not say that. I don’t wish that. It’s all so frightening. That’s what-what…”
For a moment it seemed Corinn might strike her, but instead she stepped forward and pulled her younger sister into her arms. There Mena experienced the first inkling of comfort since the banquet. It was a sad thing, really, but there was something soothing in the awareness that the two of them felt at least the same fear and sorrow with a shared clarity reflected in no other aspect of their relationship.
CHAPTER
From a distance the bird looked much like the smaller variety of pigeon from which it had been bred. When seen near at hand the creature’s form took on a different substance. It was the size of a young sea eagle and muscled accordingly, with a predatory beak and eyes that scanned the world with far-reaching acuity. It wore leather gloves of a sort over its talons, with sharpened steel barbs at the tip of each toe that early training had taught it the use of. There was a tube fastened to its ankle into which rolled notes could be inserted. It was a messenger bird, a pigeon in name, perhaps, but a creature with a fierceness to match its dedication in flight. It almost never fell prey to other avian predators. Thus it was the bird of choice for the most urgent of dispatches, like the one sent late on the night Thasren Mein struck King Leodan.
The pigeon stepped off its keeper’s arm in the district of Acacia reserved for foreign dignitaries. Its wings beat down the salt-tinged air and lifted it into the night sky. It flew at first through the cascade of snowflakes, the world grayed and soft edged. Somewhere over the mainland west of Alecia the skies cleared. The bird kept on through the dark hours, its wings seldom pausing to glide.
It reached another keeper at a seaside village along the coast outside Aos at dawn the next morning. It glided in with a glimmering vermilion sky at its back. The message fastened to its leg was removed and attached-unread-to another bird. This one flew the stretch to lower Aushenia that day, rising and falling with the contours of the slab-broken prairie lands. Another carried on through the Gradthic Gap and arrived at Cathgergen about an hour before sunrise two days after the journey began. This time the message was slipped from its container and hurried through the chill corridors of the place and delivered to the expansive quarters which temporarily housed Hanish Mein’s younger brother, Maeander, and his entourage.
Maeander woke to the awareness that his name had been called. The caller remained outside his door, softly singing the coded prayer that both asks forgiveness for interruption and promises that the disturbance speaks to a matter of importance. He rose naked from the warmth of his nest and stood looking down on the puzzle of bodies and pillows and fur blankets amid which he slept. His bed was in fact the greater portion of the padded floor. It was heated from below by the vent system that distributed the earth’s steam through the fortress. Bits and pieces of smooth-limbed women peeked out here and there, a spray of flaxen hair, a length of leg, an arm wrapped over the naked back of another, fingers entwined in the soft mat of white fox fur. Five, six, seven of them: looking on such a mйlange one could not be sure. When Maeander took lovers he took them in quantity, and he wished them to look so similar that one faded into the next without a singular identity. Standing upright, the chilly air of the room pimpled his flesh. He liked it best when sensations fluctuated between extremes, from hot and cold, from delight to pain, from the soft contours of concubines in one moment to the hard edges and clipped formality of his military life the next.
By the time he snapped open the door and shot out his hand for the missive he was fully awake. He closed the door and read the note. Once, twice, and then again, brief as it was. It seemed he had waited a lifetime for the news it detailed. His heart reminded him of all those years by beating furiously, as if it would count out all the many days in as short a time as possible.
“Thank you, Fathers,” he said. “Praise you, Brother. You will not be forgotten. You’ve earned the honor you wished from life.”
As he walked back toward the center of the room, he heard a stirring among the furs and blankets. Somebody yawned audibly, rolled over, exposing the full curve of a hip. Maeander felt the stir of desire low in his body. He thought for a moment of the pleasure he could take in waking the women with shouts of excitement, coupling with them to announce his joy at the things about to happen, sharing it among so many vessels that would reflect his elation toward him. But he knew he could not allow himself such diversions now that the dispatch had announced the beginning of everything. Such a course would be as inappropriate as bemoaning his brother’s death. He cut away from the bed toward the next room. There was another way he could enjoy the day. Better that he saw to it without delay.
Thus, by the time Rialus Neptos walked in to find him reclined on a couch in the governor’s office Maeander had already set his work into motion. He had dispatched another pigeon out into the frigid wind blowing down from the north. He had also sent a rider thickly clad against the weather toward another northern destination. He had seen to it that the soldiers accompanying him made their way one by one into place inside the fortress as unobtrusively as possible, moving only singly or in pairs so as to draw little attention. His horses and sleds had been readied for his coming departure. He had only to speak to the governor to conclude his work in Cathgergen.
The governor entered preoccupied, mumbling something under his breath, his elbows tucked close to his body and shoulders hunched against the chill in the room. Seeing Maeander, he stopped so abruptly that he tilted free a splash of the steaming drink he had been carrying in a careful, two-handed grip. “Maeander? What brings you here so early?”
Maeander pulled a face of exaggerated insult. “What sort of greeting is that? One would think you take no joy in starting the day with me.”
Rialus was immediately caught off balance. He explained that he meant no slight at all. He was just surprised. Actually, he was on his way to the baths. He had just stopped in for a moment. He might not even have come to his office, in which case he would have left Maeander waiting. He rattled on without any sign that he was likely to abate soon.
“Enough!” Maeander dropped the sole of one black-booted foot to the floor with an audible impact. “I have a number of things to tell you. You may want to sit down.”
Rialus did not initially seem inclined to do so, but Maeander waited, eyes hard on him, until he changed his mind.
“Leodan Akaran,” Maeander said, “has been removed from his throne. Don’t interrupt me. I will tell you everything you need to know. My brother Thasren has sacrificed himself to end the king’s rule. I have received word that all but confirms he has achieved this. I expect in a day or two you will learn the Akaran has passed from this world. Have care for your coffee.”
Rialus, so stunned by Maeander’s words, had let his saucer tip to one side. “By his action Thasren has announced that the people no longer honor the Akaran line. He has declared war, and it is my intention to fully rally behind the cause he died for. I leave with a small contingent of my men in a few hours’ time. Do not look relieved; I am not finished yet. Now, Rialus, what I am about to spell out for you may send you into a fit of sputtering confusion, but do try to keep a hold of yourself. You have several important responsibilities today. The first has to do with the baths.”