She inhaled, ran her hand over her face, and changed her demeanor. With warmer, more complacent tones in her voice, she said, "It's fine that you have already given so much and that you wish to continue with such work. Father would have been proud. Aliver would have been proud. The delay between now and when you may return to such work will be a small thing, I'm sure." She set down her tumbler, untasted as far as he could tell, and leaned forward in her seat. "I am proud of you, too, Brother, but I have an important assignment for you. There has been a mishap in the Other Lands. I will need your help to mend it."
As he listened, Dariel teetered between dread and excitement. The league had been in contact with the Auldek, those mystery people to whom so many children had been sent. It had not gone well, and now the league needed help. It was hard for him to fathom.
Corinn was telling him he would travel across the Gray Slopes! He would ride waves as large as mountains-if the tales were true-and see the massive schools of sea wolves, the dreaded creatures that only the league had found a way to evade. He would set his eyes on the Other Lands. Amazing, something no known Acacian had ever done.
"You will be my ambassador," Corinn said, smiling as if there were something more ironic about this than he knew. "You will represent me and carry all my authority with you. You, Dariel, are charged with the most important mission I've yet asked of anyone. The collapse of this foreign trade is a greater threat to us than Hanish Mein ever was. I don't exaggerate. Hanish could be killed outright and moved beyond. Easy. But if we don't resume the mist trade-"
"You don't mean to start that again?"
"I do. Stop! I know what you think about it. I know what Aliver promised. But he's not here. We cannot go on indefinitely trading quota for gems and metals and trinkets. The trade has been pathetic, unsustainable. We need a return to the stability that kept this nation together for twenty-two generations."
Dariel started to protest, but she spoke over him.
"And I mean that in two different ways. One, we have partners-the league, the Lothan Aklun, even the Auldek-who expect things of us, are invested in us, have so much in place. Do you want them all as enemies?"
Again, Dariel would have spoken, but Corinn did not pause.
"No, of course not. Two, the people of the provinces are growing disgruntled. Tell me you don't know this is true. They gripe and plot and scheme to cause mischief. It's only a matter of time, Dariel, until they rebel. And that would do no one any good. It would be chaos. Suffering."
This time she did give him leave to speak. Words failed him, though. She was not wrong. There was discontent out there. He had felt it thinly veiled behind men's eyes. Even as he worked to help the people, he knew they did not accept him or his work as completely as he wished.
"And know this," the queen said. "I will not drug them as we did before. It won't be the same, Dariel. I promise that."
Do you promise it won't be worse? Dariel thought. In new ways?
Corinn stood up, smoothed her gown, and waited for Dariel to rise. When he did, she extended her arms, palms down but fingers reaching to clasp his. "Go to them, brother, and do not fail to assuage them and negotiate a continuation of the peace. Without it, we are truly in jeopardy. We are blameless. All you have to do is convince them of that and then charm them."
Dariel took a moment to respond. Part of him wanted to refuse her, but that was not easily done. And surely he could be a better emissary than anyone else she might send. Perhaps, in seeing the Lothan Aklun and Auldek in the flesh, he would learn things about them and find ways to alter the nature of their trade. She wished him to go for her reasons, but perhaps he could find a way to trade in something other than quota and mist. She wouldn't fault him for that-not if he brought a new arrangement to her that would replace the old. Perhaps this was a first step toward that. He tried to believe he heard these possibilities behind her words, but something kept him from mentioning them directly.
"When will I leave?" he asked, surprised that the first thing he uttered indicated acceptance of the mission.
"You sail with Sire Neen in two days' time. He began preparations as soon as he knew of your safe arrival here. Take no distractions with you. Understand? Wren does not go with you." Dariel must have registered his disappointment on his face, though he was not aware of doing so. "Very little of what falls on us as leaders is easy. You know that. Much of it challenges us. I've no doubt you won't love your time with Sire Neen, but for now we have no choice but to stay allied with the league."
For a moment, Dariel felt himself a boy again, as confused and helpless as when his guardian spirited him from Kidnaban and into years of hiding. This, in turn, made him think of Val, his protector during those years, as much his father as Leodan. "Is this the real Corinn?" he asked, measuring his voice to keep it even. "You'll send me off again before I've even caught my breath? You're a hard taskmaster, Sister."
Corinn found something about this amusing. A smile played across her lips and vanished only when she spoke. "I have to be, Brother. I am queen."
"And what of my work?"
"Oh, it will go on. I'll see to it myself."
Dariel, despite his disquiet, laughed. "You, Sister, will do charity work among the common people?"
"I will," Corinn said, releasing on him the full radiance of her smile. "Not in quite the same way as you. But I have things planned. I have to. As I said, I am the queen."
A little later, Dariel padded barefoot through his chambers. The rooms were fragrant with the heavy incense Wren favored. The lamps burned low flames, not actually lighting the room at all but just allowing the outlines for him to navigate toward the inner rooms. He felt a deep need to talk with her, to explain what had been presented to him and to plot ways that she could come with him, even though he knew she couldn't. Wren was not a talker, not sentimental either, but that did not stop him from trying to talk to her, from wanting to wring emotion out of her to match with his.
He found her sitting on the bed, waiting for him. He cleared his throat to announce himself and she looked up. Wren stood. She wore a satin robe, long and intricately embroidered. As she walked toward him, he prepared several phrases of greeting, but the sensuous placement of her feet and the rocking of her hips took the words from his mouth. She loosened her belt and shrugged the robe from her shoulders and continued forward, slim and marvelously formed. She smiled, and Dariel did, too. Neither spoke.
CHAPTER FOUR
The man had spent too many years working in the mines of Kidnaban to easily stand straight now. Knowing he had a few moments more of solitude, he did not try. He leaned against the warehouse wall, hearing the muffled discussion going on beyond it. He had been tall even as a boy, a head above almost anyone he had ever stood near since adolescence. But that was when he stood upright at full height. He had few opportunities to do that during the years he worked in the mines. He had either crouched low as he shuffled down subterranean corridors or had strained beneath backbreaking loads he had to balance on his shoulders as he climbed the countless ladders that crept from the depths to the surface. After twenty years of that, his spine crooked in places it had not done in his youth. He was comfortable only in one position, curled on his side in the moments before sleep found him. Other than that, his physical life was measured in degrees of discomfort. He told himself it was better that way; this way he would never forget why his work mattered to him above all other things.