“You have stolen our lives from us?” Devoth whispered.
“No, you stole them from the children we sent you. Your sin was taking them inside yourself; ours was sending them to you in the first place. These last nights we worked to end both your sin and ours.”
“You stole from us,” Devoth said.
“We made you Auldek again!” Aliver said. “You don’t even remember what you used to be. Once, you were mortal. You don’t remember that, but back then—before you sold yourselves to the Lothan Aklun—you were truly Auldek. You lived and died. You married and had children. I know these things about you. Rialus Neptos told you of us; he also told us of you.”
Devoth did not glance at the thin Acacian. Sabeer did, though. She pinned him with her eyes. Without even turning, Aliver knew Rialus squirmed beneath the gaze.
“You loved life and feared death and that is what living is! Life is given to us only as a temporary thing. All of us who can think know we live on borrowed time. That’s the beauty of it. We have to live now, for it will soon be gone. You lost that, and then you forgot that you lost it. We have given it back to you. It’s a gift from us to you. I know that you intended to die back to your true soul here in the Known World. That’s part of what you came for. You would have killed or enslaved us first, but I cannot allow that. So take the gifts we have given you. Leave the rest. Leave the old crimes. Leave the new ones you would have committed. Leave it and go home. Take with you a future in which you can live true again. Your mission here will not be a failure. This is not defeat, Devoth. You came to find a way to live again. You came to become fertile. You came to end your life as slavers and become your true selves again. All that you can have. Let me show you what that future can look like.”
Aliver turned before they could respond. He shouted something back to his army, and a moment later several soldiers moved aside. The Numrek children walked through the gap left open for them. The seven figures proceeded forward cautiously. Aliver beckoned to them. “Come! Let your uncles and aunts see you. Come!”
When the children reached them, they stood awkwardly, out from the Acacians, and yet reluctant to go any nearer the Auldek. Sabeer said something to the children in Auldek. Several of them responded. She motioned them forward with her fingers. A man to one side of her squatted down and beckoned them with his arms. The children drifted closer, until near enough that the adults touched them. They began speaking rapidly to them, different adults asking different children questions. They squeezed them on the shoulders and pulled them into embraces and cupped their faces in their palms.
Allek, the Numrek who had come in his father’s place, pushed his way through his elders and called to one of the younger girls. Seeing him, she broke from the woman who was stroking her hair and ran to him. She jumped into his embrace and the young man turned away, trying to hide the heaving sobs that wracked his chest.
Aliver gave them a few moments, and then said, “I told you I would provide these children to you. Here they are. Take them. Take them home to your lands and teach them how to be Auldek. I believe that will give both you and them great joy.”
“We have not said we accept your terms,” Devoth said. He had been gazing, enraptured, in a young man’s face. He straightened, hardening his expression.
“No, but that’s because I have not told you the last aspect of my terms. I told you I would reveal it now, so I will.” Aliver lifted his chin and indicated the vast array of troops that made up Devoth’s army. “Those soldiers and slaves who fight for you—I want you to let them decide their lives from now on. They may return to Ushen Brae with you, or they are welcome among us. There will be no punishment for the fighting that came before today. You’ll tell them this. If you don’t, we will tell them that all of you Auldek are mortal.” He paused, letting the significance of that grow inside them. “You may think they love you and are loyal to you, but I think it’s more that they fear you. They think you’re invincible. That’s what keeps them standing behind you. If they knew that you were just as mortal as they, they would not look at you with slave eyes anymore. That one there. What is his name?”
Aliver picked out a Lvin slave, one who stood out before a contingent of the divine children. He stared, his chin raised almost as if he were sniffing the air. His face was white as snow, framed by the thick locks of white hair that made him seem truly half snow lion, just as regal, even more deadly.
Rialus answered, “Menteus Nemré.”
“What do you think that one would do if he knew one blow of his sword could end you? I suspect I know the answer, but should we ask him? We could call him over and hear what he thinks.”
“We gave him a good life,” Devoth said. The old certainty, which had already slipped out of him along with his souls, had escaped him now entirely. He spoke, but he did not even seem to believe himself. “You don’t know how much we gave him.”
“You did not give him freedom,” Aliver said. He stared at Menteus Nemré. The man had noticed. He stared back. “You did not give him the respect an equal deserves. I suspect he would like that more than anything else. I suspect they would all want that. I may be wrong, Devoth, but I believe that if I shouted the truth of your mortality to them right now, you would not have one army facing you. You would find two surrounding you. I suspect that your own army would slaughter you with more relish than anyone standing behind me.”
Aliver brought his eyes back to Devoth and asked, “Should I ask them?”
Later that day, after Devoth said no, he did not want Aliver to ask Menteus Nemré or any of the divine children that question, after he had conferred with the rest of the Auldek and brought back the answer Aliver had longed to hear, after he had listened to all the oaths to peace that he could and when he believed it had really, truly been achieved, with protection for any Acacians remaining in Ushen Brae as well, Aliver asked if Mena would accept the rest. There was still a long line of Auldek waiting to accept the peace. It would take some time.
She said she would complete the work. She took his hand as he rose and held it a time, as if she were rehearsing the words she would say to him. In the end, she only repeated, “I will complete this.”
Aliver parted with her casually, as if he just wished to go outside and walk among the troops. He did that. There was much rejoicing among them, and he wanted to feel some of it. But when he felt the fingers of death brush his shoulder, he did not run from them. They had been near for a long time, and he could not possibly begrudge them their due now, not after the day they had just allowed him to complete. His time had come. He hoped that Mena would not be angry with him for not saying a more formal good-bye, but he thought she would know that he had been doing that with every action he took since being freed from Corinn’s spell. Better that she take over from him, as that was what the future held for her anyway.
He walked for as long as he could, greeting soldiers and touching hands, until he managed to slip down a quiet lane of tents. He lay down on a cot under a shelter. And then, on second thought, he rose and pulled the cot out underneath the sky. He watched the heavy blanket of clouds, so near to them in the darkening sky. When the first snowflakes began to fall, he closed his eyes and felt their cold, delicate kisses on his cheeks. On his eyelids and lips.
He opened his eyes once more, stirred by a commotion near at hand. He heard Po’s roar come down from up above. He saw the dragon’s dark shadow pass above, and then heard the answering calls from his siblings. His eyes almost fluttered closed, but then a man yelled. There came the crash of something being knocked over, and then a series of snaps, the clink of metal rings and grunts of agitation.
Aliver understood what was happening before he knew why he understood. Po flew riderless above, calling on his kin to join him. The other three were tearing off their harnesses. He heard their wings unfurl, that loud concussion of clicking that was like nothing else in the world, and then swoosh as those great wings grabbed the air and lifted them upward. He heard the panic in
people’s voices, but he did not feel it. Corinn had written, As long as I live they will be true to us. After that, she said, they would be different. Listening to them chatter to one another as they rose into the snow-heavy night, Aliver knew that change had begun, and he knew that his sister had gone before him to the afterdeath.
“Corinn …” He had been so consumed by his own work, that he had almost forgotten her battle with the Santoth. He remembered it now, and knew that she had been triumphant.
Eyes closed again, he lay there a long time, feeling the snow build a blanket atop him, thanking his sister. It was not just her saving the world from the Santoth that he was grateful for. He thanked her for himself, for allowing him to know, in the end, that she was wonderful, that he loved her completely, without reservation. As a brother should.
A little later he stopped feeling the snow. He stopped feeling anything. He had a thought that would have made him laugh, except he no longer had the lips to laugh with. Aliver Akaran, he thought, look what you’ve done. You’ve made it so that they’re going to start calling you the Snow King again. He did not really mind. He had always liked the ring of the name. Before, he just had not deserved it. Now, perhaps he had earned it.
CHAPTER
SEVENTY-THREE
The flutes played the noon hour. They started high in Acacia, at the top of the palace, and then the tune cascaded down toward the lower town. Beautiful. A sound that Mena had never really believed she would hear again. She stood on the balcony of Corinn’s offices, amazed at the view of the island in the brilliance of the spring light. How was it even possible that a sound so wonderful lived in this world, in the same one that had just been filled with the din of war, with arctic winds howling and men and women crying in pain and rage? It did not seem possible that the images that had comprised her life the last half year could be real if this was real; or that the view out across the spires and down toward the glistening sea could be anything but a dream if that other version of life was a reality. She would need to spend a great deal of time coming to terms with this and finding a way to face it alone.
She was home, but Aliver was not. Corinn never would be. Dariel and Melio had gone out of the Known World and nobody could say a word about their fate. She was alone. At least Aliver’s body worked its slow way home, escorted by the army that loved him. His body, encased in a simple casket, took one last meandering trip around the Mainland. Mena hoped Aliver would have welcomed that. She thought he would. She thought he would like it very much that his body was being carried the entire way on the shoulders of former slaves who had just weeks before stood in the army that opposed him. So many of them had chosen to stay and had begged for the honor of bearing Aliver home to Acacia. There was a rightness to that, a closing of very old wrongs.
Yes, she thought. He would have liked that very much.
Hearing someone enter, Mena stepped back into the room. Rhrenna, her sister’s former secretary, stood at attention, a collection of papers held to her chest. She bowed her blond head. “I have news,” she said, “from Alecia.”
Of course she did. Rhrenna had nothing if not news. Since Mena’s return to the island a few days before, the Meinish woman had acted as if she were Mena’s personal assistant. She had been a great help, really, leading the princess through her own palace as if she were a visitor new to it. Perhaps she was. Perhaps she had not come back the same and would never feel the same. Or perhaps, with Aliver and Corinn both gone, Acacia itself was not the same.
“I would rather you had news from the Other Lands,” Mena said. “One fair word about Dariel or Melio would be all the news I need for some time.”
“Still nothing from there, I’m afraid. This news, though … Your Majesty, perhaps you should sit down.”
Rhrenna had been nothing but courteous to her. She had not called her Majesty before, though.
“Why, do I look so ill as that?” Mena glanced down at the dress she wore, and nearly started. A dress! A garment of light cotton that flowed all the way to the stone floor, pressed and clean, embroidered with gold thread. This will take some getting used to, she thought. It had been a good thing for her to return directly to Acacia on Elya. She needed time to remember how not to be at war, how to wear a dress and wake in a mild clime and not think constantly about the lives that depended on each decision she made.
“You look very well,” Rhrenna said. “It’s just … the decrees were opened and read before the Senate. They … may surprise you.”
The secretary had her attention now. Not knowing how to read her face, Mena felt a tingling of fear, familiar trepidation. “What’s happened?”
“It’s not anything that you expected.” Rhrenna looked around the empty room. “I feel like somebody should be here with us when I say this.”
“Just speak it.”
“Aliver and Corinn … have made you queen.”
Mena stared at her.
“They both conceded that their children, being illegitimate, should not inherit the throne. That’s how they explained it, at least. You are the only direct, legitimate heir. Only you are married, with the potential to produce a legal heir.” Rhrenna paused, searching Mena to see if she acknowledged that logic. “The Senate agreed. They’ve reratified the decrees already. They had no choice. They had already accepted the decrees Aliver gave them in a locked box. Remember I told you about that? He did that before he flew to meet you. And now, considering the way the people love the Snow King, nobody disputes his and Corinn’s wishes. You are to be queen of Acacia. Nobody opposes it.”
And what if I oppose it? Mena thought.
“There’s more.”
Of course there is.
“You should read it yourself.”
The secretary offered it, but Mena made no move to accept it. After a moment, Rhrenna continued. “Aliver and Corinn have called for an alliance of nations, not an empire. They called it the Sacred Band.” She stopped again. “Do you really want me to—”
“Rhrenna, just tell me, please!”
“It’s a plan to be implemented over time,” Rhrenna said, skimming the pages. “Right now, you are to be queen of the empire. You are to oversee the five provinces as they each form governments. In ten years—or after ten of peace, calm, if all is going well—they gain self-governance. They’ll still be within the empire, I think. But after twenty years the nations are to become truly independent. There are details. More to it than that, but that’s the thrust of it. Eventually, Acacia will be one nation among others. Among equals.” She set the papers down on the desk. “Now that I think about it, I can see why the senators wouldn’t want to interfere with this. Self-rule. You know how many new kings that will make?”
What a grand confusion that will be, Mena thought. But even as she thought it she felt lifted on a tide of relief. It was right. A confusion, but confusion that would no longer rest on a single pair of shoulders. Hers. They trapped me and freed me at the same time. Aliver, you did say you were going to ask a lot of me. Now I understand. Or, I’m starting to.
Later that afternoon, Mena gathered Aaden and Shen from their lesson with Barad. They took it up at the same open-air classroom in which she and her siblings had received lessons from Jason. Mena ushered them away quickly, thanking Barad but not wanting to stay too long with the memories of the place, or with him. Not that she could escape memories in the palace. Barad’s eyes, though, saw into one. Yet another thing she would have to get accustomed to. Another topic on which she would need to slowly come to trust her older siblings’ wisdom.
The children were unusually quiet as they walked. Only when they reached Elya’s terrace and heard the creature chirrup a greeting did they find voice to ask about what Barad must have told them.
“Is it true?” Aaden asked.
“Many things are true. Which one are you asking about?”
“You’re to be the queen,” Shen answered. She did that sometimes, and Aaden did the same for her, finishing each other’s thoughts as
they shared them.
Like twins, Mena thought, looking at them. A pale-skinned boy with light eyes; a brown-skinned girl with dark ones. So different, and yet not. Not for the first time since joining them, she wondered what her child by Melio would have looked like. It was too difficult a thought, though. She pushed it away, knowing that she faced a lifetime of wishing she had had that child with him when she had the chance.
“That’s what I’ve been told,” Mena said. “I never planned that. I don’t … know what it means, really. I don’t know.” She looked at the two of them helplessly. “I’m sorry, but it’s too new. I just don’t know.”
“Melio will be king,” Aaden said, “when he comes back.”
Mena had not had time to consider that. Melio Sharratt, a king. Love him as she did, that was rather hard to imagine. “Let’s pray he comes back, then.”
“I always do,” Aaden said. “Every morning, I ask the Giver to let Dariel and Melio return.”
The boy turned his face away. He watched Elya preen, pretending to be fascinated. Mena knew better. She heard the emotion trying to crawl over his last words. She almost said that she said the same prayers herself. She wanted Melio back beside her so much she walked with a perpetual emptiness inside. It had been there throughout the war, but she noticed it much more acutely now that she was home. Finding Wren here on Acacia when she returned, with a wee babe whom she had named Corinn in her arms, made things both better and worse. Mena was so pleased to be an aunt a third time, so pleased to know that Dariel lived on in the child, and that Corinn would be honored by her as well. What a father Dariel would have been! She could not imagine anyone better suited to it. Instead, though, it was the likes of Rialus Neptos who would soon be arriving back to meet his daughter for the first time. Maybe he would make a good father, too. Mena could not say. Despite the animus she might always feel for him, he had played a part in saving the nation.
The Sacred Band: Book Three of the Acacia Trilogy Page 67
