"How is it even possible?"
Skylene smiled. "Tattoos are tattoos. We do much of that ourselves. There were some chosen by the Auldek to make other changes to, but anything truly difficult was done by the Lothan Aklun. Tunnel's tusks. They are metal, but they are also part of him, fused right into the bones of his skull. The Lothan Aklun can-or could-do many strange things.
"No, what I referred to were greater corruptions. There have been two clans punished for unpardonable perversions. The first, the white-eyed snake clan, is called the Fumel. Their crime? Guess it."
Dariel stared at her, his face blank. He had no idea, and it seemed a waste of time to even try to guess.
"The Fumel broke the first restriction. They started to raise the humans as their own children. They pretended they were their own blood. Some among them tried to make their slaves look like Fumel! Imagine that. They had these slaves in Fumel guise subjugate the other slaves.
"When the other Auldek heard of it, they punished the Fumel, demanding that they turn over all the altered children to be exterminated. They would not. The other clans united to attack them, but the Fumel fought. By the time it was over too few of them were left, and upon those, the crimes done against the other clans were too great. The Fumel were wiped out. If you journey to the south to what used to be their lands you may someday see the Bleeding Road. It's where the Fumel corpses still adorn the stakes they were impaled upon. They once had a city built on a hill surrounded by a network of shallow canals. When the other clans were done there, the hill was a hole in the earth, filled with water. The Bleeding Road leads for miles across their lands and ends at that lake. It's symbolic, you see?"
I imagine so, Dariel thought. It sounded like the kind of punishment Tinhadin might have meted out.
"That was three hundred years ago. Since then, Auldek have not killed one another. There was another clan more recently that did another forbidden thing." She paused. She glanced at Tunnel, then at the silent scribe who sat listening.
"What did they do?" Dariel asked.
As if she needed the prompting, Skylene sighed and said, "They ate them. It may have been a madness that took hold of them. It may have been because they believed it was the easiest way to acquire their souls. It may have been, as some argue, that they believed by eating young flesh they would become fertile again. They may have done other things as well. We don't know all of it. We know that it was disgusting. The other Auldek took all this clan's slaves and put them to death."
"The slaves?"
"There is no prohibition on killing the People, just on eating them or adopting them. This time, the Auldek didn't kill the clan as well. After the Fumel, they vowed they would not do that again. Their lives-even if they were tainted by crimes-were too valuable to waste now that there were so few Auldek left. Instead, the clan was banished. Sent from Ushen Brae and cursed never to return."
"The Numrek," Dariel whispered.
"Exactly right," Skylene said. "Your traveling companions. The other Auldek killed the souls within them, so that they had but their one mortal life, and then drove them into the north. During that time they were not heard from. Exile meant death in all likelihood, but not as a certainty. That distinction was enough for the Auldek to accept it as just punishment."
"The Numrek ate people in the Known World, too," he said. "Mostly when they had just arrived, but at other times as well. Corinn forbade it when she took them into her service. I've not heard that they ate human flesh since then."
"They would not," Skylene said, "not if they had their sights set on returning to Ushen Brae."
Dariel's head swam with questions. "What does it mean… that they've come back? It's all with a purpose?"
"A purpose, yes." Skylene hooked her foot around a stool and pulled it out from under the table. She sat and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. Not for the first time, Dariel noticed how slimly athletic she was, feminine, but in a way that had a coiled physical danger to it. She said, "Think about what's happened. The Auldek didn't punish them when they returned. By their own decree, they should cut off Calrach's head and set it beside that leagueman's. They didn't. And they haven't banished them again. To put it plainly, they've been talking with them. Your friend Calrach returned with an offer. They have been discussing it ever since. They haven't been this excited for centuries."
"What offer?"
"That I don't have permission to tell you."
"You'll tell me half a thing?"
Skylene smiled. "When does anybody tell all of a thing? I've told you what I can."
Her words had finality, but her posture-leaning toward him, knees apart, face close to his-sent different signals. He wasn't sure how to read them.
"Ask me something else," she said.
Heat rushed across Dariel's cheeks. He very much wished that Tunnel and the scribe weren't in the room. He felt a sudden urge to reach across and touch her sky-blue skin. It was not an entirely new desire. Alone so often, his thoughts of Wren had grown increasingly blurred, intermingled with Skylene's sharp avian features and Mor's feline grace. More than once, he had woken from dreams of coupling in ways he had never imagined in life. But such thoughts had no place here. He pushed them away.
"Why don't you revolt?" Dariel asked. "The People. With their skills and their numbers they could slaughter the Auldek."
Skylene mulled the question over, something that was both a smile and an expression of grief residing on her features. "The league, the Lothan Aklun, and the Auldek have had hundreds of years to perfect their institutions. They know our minds. When we first arrived, the Lothan Aklun kept us on an isle called Lithram Len. They tested us there, asked us things, watched us; and for a time they let us struggle among ourselves. They observed who shared; who fought; who showed compassion; and who was cold inside, calculating, greedy, savage. They learned our individual weaknesses and strengths, though they saw both as traits to be exploited. Eventually, they sent us to the role that suited each best. The meek went to their work. The savage to theirs. The devious to theirs. Those with the most rebellion in them become spirit children."
"The ones who get eaten?"
Skylene nodded.
"But still, you all know where you came from. You're more the same than different. Obviously, you haven't forgotten-"
"Dariel, our lives here have many faces." She placed one of her fine-boned hands on his knee, her fingers light. "There are many who work in the fields to harvest mist. The generous seeds they are called. They labor. They don't know they're laboring, because the oil from the leaves of the plants numbs their minds. They walk dazed, seeing a world different from ours. They're only in this world enough to be sent to work, to follow instructions."
Dariel asked, "Mist comes from a plant? Harvested in a field?"
"Yes. The very thing that helps buy the children from your land is worked by slaves in this one. That is the system the Lothan Aklun and the Auldek set up. It perpetuates itself while they live mostly at ease." She let this sit with him a moment. "But not everyone is drugged like that. We can't all be. There are many who work the myriad tasks that sustain the Auldek. Every job imaginable is done, somewhere, by the People, but not necessarily by Free People. Some hate us. Ones called the golden eyes handle commerce. They trade and live lives of some plenty, though they are not free. Others, like the divine children… kill. They are warriors almost to match the Auldek. They thrive in palaces, with slaves of their own. They live like nobles until the moment the Auldek call for them to fight, and then they do that with joy as well. Some even forget that they are not free, forget that their individual desires could be any different from the orders given to them. That Lvin you saw in the arena a few days back-he was chosen because the Lothan Aklun knew what he might become. I don't know how, but they see things in us that we don't see ourselves."