"What a sight you are, Dariel!" she exclaimed. "You come to poke fun at me. Is that it? Look at you!"
"You sent me out to work among the people like a slave," Dariel said, raising his arms and spinning so that she could take his clothing in, "and so I return to you looking the part."
"Aaden is desperate to see you, you know? But if you walked in like that, he'd likely draw his sword and challenge you." She moved forward, stepped into the embrace of his uplifted arms, and hugged him briefly. Pulling back, she studied him. "Let us sit and talk."
A moment later, the two reclined in soft leather chairs, sitting across from each other, a carved stone table between them. In the center of it a small fire glowed, giving off considerable heat. A servant set two tumblers of mulled wine on the table and then retired.
"Tell me," Corinn said, taking up a tumbler and warming her hands around it. "Did you accomplish what you wished?"
He nodded. He had his own question to ask and felt it should be dealt with first. "What word from Mena?"
"Mena is well. She has nearly completed the work I asked of her. Melio is well also, and Kelis. They have performed admirably at their tasks. I know part of you wished to be with them, hunting the foulthings, perhaps protecting your sister-but Mena needs no protection. You were right when you brought this charity work proposal to me. Now tell me of it."
Dariel reached for the wine, inhaled the spicy scent, and fell into a detailed response to her query. For the past year he had found a sort of joy in daily labor that he had never known before. It came about because he was so very fatigued with war, with piracy, with violence, with seeing his loved ones die. For several years after the war with Hanish Mein, Dariel had led forces to hunt down the surviving Mein-the ones still in any sort of rebellion, at least. And he had squashed the flare-ups of rebellion all over the empire, each people trying to find some way to grab more of the Known World's map before things settled again. It had amazed him that the peace seemed just as violent as the war. It was always this way after wars, advisers told him, but still it troubled him. This hadn't been just any war. It was Aliver's war! The war to set the world to rights so that there need be no future wars. Everyone said they believed this; few, it seemed to him, also acted as if they did.
When the peace was finally established, he found himself just as ill at ease. He did not want the throne, though he could have claimed it as the male heir. That sort of power did not appeal to him. He had no desire to loaf about the palace courting noblewomen, as Corinn seemed to wish him to do. Nor could he return to the Outer Isles and again sail those gray slopes of water. The isles had been handed over entirely to the league in a deal Corinn had struck with it on her own authority. The league owned them now, their own separate state within the empire. It was recompense, Corinn made it clear, for Dariel's stunt on the League Platforms. He did not understand until later, but she was actually quite angry with him when she fully understood his role in the attack. It had crippled the league's capacity to trade across the Gray Slopes. It had cost them thousands of quota lives and hundreds of their own kind. It was such a monstrous success that Corinn had to acquiesce to giving them more than she would have liked. And, she hinted, she had needed to give away even more to get them to promise that Dariel would not end up dead in some mysterious way: poison or accident or mysterious disappearance. The fact that she clearly considered them capable of all these things had set his skin crawling.
Also, as soon as the quiet settled upon him, he began to have dreams-nightmares, really-about the day Aliver was killed. At first Dariel thought it was some belated way of mourning his brother, but as the dreams grew more intense he realized it was not just that. He dreamed more and more of the aftermath of the duel, more and more about his murder of Maeander Mein. He had ordered it, even though Aliver had granted Maeander protection and agreed to the particulars of the duel. Dariel could not be sure that his blade had even touched the man, but he had whispered for his death and made all his people accomplices to the murder. It was a foul way to stain the sacred moments after his brother's passing. The shame of it grew within him as time passed. More and more fervently, he wanted to find a way to live without regret, to do enough with the life he still had before him so that he would feel he had been a force for good in the world.
It was Wren who suggested he again find work to occupy him. Not murderous work, though, not military. "Why not build?" she had asked. "Likely, you'd be as good at that as you were at piracy and sabotage." She actually had to suggest it several times before the seed split within him and took root. Wonderful, quiet Wren, sharp as a razor in more ways than one.
When he took the proposal of rebuilding to Corinn, he found her amiable enough. With her blessing, he set out on the work that had occupied him body and soul. As Wren had suggested, he built. He arrived in Killintich with a small army of surveyors, engineers, architects, historians, and laborers. Once proud, the capital of Aushenia had suffered neglect and abuse since the Numrek invasion. Dariel set about rebuilding that damaged city brick by brick. He worked right beside laborers, digging ditches, slopping through canals, hefting loads on his back. It was toil unlike any he had known before, and he loved it. The work may have been nothing more than an attempt to busy himself, but he hoped it was more and that he was doing good for the right reasons. It was important to him that this be true.
He described for Corinn the small moments he felt he would never forget. How he enjoyed sitting at fires with villagers and eating stew from wooden bowls, talking about such things as the weather and the growth of crops. He welcomed the fatigue with which he lay down each night, pleased that he had stolen nothing, killed no one, planned no destruction. He loved sleeping on straw mattresses and watching barn cats hunt mice and listening-as he once had in a village near the Gradthic Range-to two owls converse through the night. On the road outside Careven a blond-haired boy had presented him with a crown woven of grass. At a commemorative ceremony at Aushenguk Fell an old woman had approached him silently from behind. Without a word, she pressed her flat chest against his back and wrapped her stick arms around his torso and clung there. "She had no weight at all," he said, "light as a bird." She never said a thing, but he was sure the gesture was one of thanks.
"As it should be," Corinn said. "I don't know that there was any similar venture done by an Akaran in all our generations of rule. Word is, you've done us a great service. The people speak well of you. I've learned from you, brother."
Dariel took a long draft of wine, enough to wash down the first thoughts he had on hearing this. She always thought foremost of rule and reputation and of the empire's fortunes. Perhaps she had to, as queen, but he wanted to remember the good he did for the people he served, not for the Akaran name.
"There is still so much to do," he said. "I barely know what to attend to next. There must be some way we can fight the drought in Talay. And I know it will seem a strange idea, but we must convince the Mainlanders to begin planting new trees to replace the ones they cut from the Eilavan Woodlands. I passed along the edge of it on the way to Aos and I saw miles of stumps and bracken, hardly a forest at all anymore." He paused, for no reason other than something in the patient way Corinn watched him indicated that she was humoring him, that she had something to say but was letting him ramble on first. "What?"
"I heard something that doesn't please me, Dariel. You have been critical of my policies."