The thought of her siblings nagged at her. She would have to decide what to do about them. Neither seemed to fully understand the dangers of a sober populace. Sometimes she feared that they did not understand their responsibilities. The people could not be trusted! They would forever find fault, make mistakes, and give in to petty jealousies and shortsighted thinking. They would destroy themselves if they were allowed to. That was what Tinhadin had realized; that was why he had grasped all power in his hands and ruled with an iron will.
She would do so as well, and yet she would improve on his model. She would rule with her brain, not her emotions. She would use all the tools she could. She would make the world safe. Nobody would lie to her anymore. Nobody would betray her, steal from her, or abandon her. Nobody would die without her permission. The world would be as she wished it to be. And then she would know peace as well.
Yes, she thought, then I will know peace. If Mena and Dariel could not understand this, she would have to act for them. She loved them dearly, of course. That was why, she knew, they might have to drink the vintage as well. She was not sure yet, but that might be for the best.
Rhrenna returned, lit the incense as Corinn asked, and talked through the remaining matters of business. There was always more. This time it was the merchants of Bocoum who harried her. Their drought had grown dire. Northern Talay-and all the food production and trade it drove-was at the brink of collapse. "Your Majesty," Rhrenna said, "they have really become quite insistent. They beseech you to come and see their plight. They say you will truly understand it only when you see it with your own eyes."
"Fine. I've had enough of these offices anyway. Tell them I will come to them within the fortnight. Tell Aaden as well. He'll be happy for a trip, even a short one."
CHAPTER NINE
Kelis received the messenger outside his tent. The youth was barefoot and lean, his musculature barely adolescent, though he was likely older than he looked. The light of the setting sun caught twinkles in the dust that coated him, the result of the miles of travel that had brought him to Halaly. Kelis, hearing his message and the coded language he used to demonstrate its authenticity, stood a moment, unsure how to answer. He knew a summons when he heard it. There was no other word for it. Sangae Umae, his chieftain, demanded his presence. Though he was loyal to the Akarans and to Mena's unfinished work, he could not ignore the order. Delay, perhaps, but not ignore.
Speaking Talayan, Kelis said, "Tell Sangae that when I am done here I will come to him in Umae. Tell him I have arrived here with Princess Mena only a week ago. We are to attack the foulthing in the lake, but we still have much to prepare. Once we have killed it, I will meet him in Umae." He began to turn away, but the messenger made a clicking sound with his tongue. Apparently, he was not finished.
The boy's left arm was stunted, half the size of the other. Perhaps this was part of why he was a messenger instead of warrior runner. He did not seem ashamed of it, though, and used the small limb to illustrate his words. "Not Umae," he said. "Sangae awaits you in Bocoum. He is there now and prays your feet do not grow hot on the sand before you reach him."
Bocoum? The bustling city of Bocoum was Talayan controlled, yes, but Sangae rarely visited there. He was a village chieftain, not a merchant prince. Respected as he was for having been Aliver's surrogate father, Sangae had as little use for the rich men of Bocoum as they had for him.
"He is at the coast?"
"Even now," the youth said, one corner of his mouth slightly crooked, as if Kelis were a disappointment for not knowing this already. "He stays in the care of Sinper of the family Ou. Sangae wishes me to take you there. I promised to return with you, as quickly as you can run."
The boy had an attitude of playful condescension. He thought too much of his authority as a messenger-which was no authority at all, really. Kelis decided to ignore this show of self-importance for now. He held to a long silence as he thought. Sinper Ou was his host? That made little sense. The Ous were the most ambitious of the city's merchant families. They were wealthy by any standard, and in the strange way of it, they earned their fortune without ever breaking a sweat. They owned the bulk of the rafts the floating merchants leased and took a considerable percentage of their profits. They also owned great swaths of the coastal farmlands, properties they had acquired piece by piece over the generations and now charged for the use of. They controlled more docks than any other family and imposed tariffs on all the goods that crossed them-both those grown on their land and those transported on their rafts. The Ous were not the type of company Sangae usually kept. None of this sounded right.
"Do you know why he summons me?" Kelis's eyes inadvertently lingered on the youth's stunted arm. "Why he sent you?"
"No, I don't know why he wants you," the youth answered, "but he sent me because I am fast. This arm does not slow my legs. It cuts the wind for me."
"I am sure it does-"
"You will have to work to keep up with me," the boy said.
Kelis smiled but said nothing. The boy had heart, at least. He told the messenger where to find food and drink and shelter for the evening, and he promised that he would run with him as soon as he had helped the princess. If she consented to let him go, that was.
Alone later on the hard pallet on which he slept, Kelis could not stop himself from longing for all the possibilities ended by the point of Maeander's blade. Even without outward reminders, being near Mena meant that memories of Aliver were always close. They lay like objects beneath a thin skin of water, sometimes standing out clearly, other times stirred by the current, shaded by clouds, or reflecting the world above like a moving mirror. Aliver's death had never yet felt real to him. He often daydreamed of the boy he had grown strong with, the man he had loved in his quiet way. He contained within himself images and expressions and bits of recalled conversations that seemed more real than the years separating him from those joyful moments. And in his dreams Aliver lived. He stood before him, ironic, aware that he had escaped death and somehow embarrassed to have done so, beautiful in a way that no other person had ever been in Kelis's eyes.
He always awoke from these dreams confounded. As a boy he had been a dreamer, one of the few who could predict the weather and turns of fortune and make sense of signs brought to him while he slept. His father had despised this gift, for it meant his firstborn son would not be a warrior and would therefore not secure the family's council seat. Kelis's father had managed to beat it out of the young man, jabbing him awake from sleep, making dreaming akin to pain, belittling him as if the gift were a slight to his manhood. Kelis had finally broken when his father adopted another youth to be his firstborn. To his father's delight, Kelis killed the boy, reclaimed his position, and replaced his vision dreams with images of the way he had thrust his spear into his brother's belly and twisted the organs around the point. That is what he had relived for years while sleeping: a nightly punishment.
After Aliver's death, his dreams stopped for a time. He could not remember the moment of the prince's death, either when awake or asleep. It was a blank spot into which he could not see, an emptiness he was reminded of every night, regardless of how filled with life and labor his days were. And when he did begin to dream again-a few months ago-it was of Aliver returned to life. What could that mean? Was there a sign in it that he needed to learn how to read? Might he now become the dreamer that his father-now also dead-had tried to extinguish? Surely, the prince should not be dead. He couldn't be dead! There had been some mistake made, some Meinish treachery that everyone else had been foolish enough to accept.