Telling himself to keep his calm, Delivegu shifted the subject. “So, have they been safe in your care? No more unfortunate accidents?”
“Yes, we haven’t lost a one of them since the queen sent them here. The ones who were killed were not slaughtered in Aushenia. That happened in Aos. Here they’ve been taken good care of. All of them.”
“How many are there?”
“Seven.”
“Seven?”
“I know. Not many to be an entire generation of a race,” Grae said. “The queen makes for a… challenging adversary. How is she? I’ve heard all manner of dire things.”
“She is the queen,” Delivegu said.
“Yes,” Grae guffawed, “I’m sure she’s that. Off to sort out the Santoth while the rest of us do the same with the Auldek. I suspect we’ve got the bloodier end of that bargain.”
You weren’t there. You didn’t see them. But he did not want to give Grae anything, so he said, “Is this it?”
On a rise of land coming into view before them stood a squat stone-block building. It was large enough to be a castle, but it was, in truth, a prison.
“Yes, that’s our keep,” Grae said, straightening to take in the view. “I’m sure you understand the various reasons we did not want to house them in the city. It wasn’t one of the queen’s stipulations. She asked this of me, and I obliged. They’ve been perfectly safe here. Safer than they deserve.”
“Do they speak Acacian?”
“I suppose. I’ve not been stopping in to chat with them.”
Delivegu noted the edge in the monarch’s voice. He rather liked finding it. Beneath his regal demeanor, Grae did chafe at being told to care for these creatures. Feeling a bit like a wet nurse, are you, Your Majesty? “No, I wouldn’t imagine you’d have much to say to them. Or they to you.”
Once they had both dismounted and had their horses taken from them, Grae led them into the keep on foot. “What are you to do with them?”
“Take them to King Aliver, as instructed.”
The Aushenian pondered that for a moment. “I meant what is he going to do with them, but I don’t suppose it’s your place to know that. King Aliver back from the dead… By the Giver, the world seems to have turned upside down overnight. You’ll have to dine with me this evening. I have many questions for you.”
“That’s not possible,” Delivegu said. “I carry on tonight. I have to see to the details of transporting them.”
“Surely, you have an evening to-”
“No, I don’t.” Delivegu turned toward him, meeting those blue eyes. “As I said, I’m on the king’s business. I choose to be prompt.”
Grae studied him for a long moment. “You don’t seem like the same man I met in Acacia just months ago. You’re… tamed. Obedient. Fine, don’t dine with me. I have no interest in your people anymore. I would say I wish you all the best with your war, but the words would stick on my tongue.”
“It may prove to be your war as well,” Delivegu pointed out.
“I know more about the Numrek and their kind than you, errand boy. Aushenia took the brunt of the first invasion, or have your people forgotten that? Have they written Aushenguk Fell out of the histories? No matter. We remember. We remember that we fought the Numrek first, with no aid from Acacia. We remember that the Numrek overran our lands while Acacians looked after their own interests. This time, Aushenia will defend its own borders fiercely if need be, but we won’t fight your war for you.”
They had walked through the keep’s main gate, beneath the fortifications, through a second wall and a gate that was cranked up only once they had reached it. As they stepped through, it immediately began to descend again.
“There,” Grae said, “they’re out at play. We let them spar with wooden swords. What’s the harm in it?”
Delivegu saw them then. On the far side of the large enclosure, sparring, just as the king said. Just seven of them. Seven Numrek children of various ages. The only ones still alive after Corinn’s massacre of their parents at the Thumb.
“They’re yours now,” Grae said. “Take them.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Dariel did his best to explain that he had reconsidered how to proceed. Now that he was about to set off, he worried about taking others into danger on a fool’s errand. He should go alone. He could handle a small skiff himself. He knew the way to Lithram Len already. If he succeeded at what he had planned, it would not be because he fought his way in. If a league clipper spotted him, it would not matter how many friends he had sitting on the seat beside him. Stealth was what mattered. That he could best achieve alone. This was his mission, after all. If he was wrong or failed at it, they would need each and every able body perched on the walls of Avina.
He might as well have been a youngest child arguing for something before a unified front of older, skeptical siblings. He had felt this way before. They would have none of it. They had discussed Dariel’s plan only within a small circle, but Mor still insisted they be cautious. Considering the magnitude of what hinged on Dariel’s success, they could not chance some malicious clansman of Dukish’s alerting the league somehow.
“Tunnel is with you, Rhuin Fa,” the big man said. He tugged on a golden tusk. “That’s the way it is. Stop scratching at it.”
“And us,” Geena said. “You’re not going alone in some skiff. Not when we have a right lovely, sleek, fast clipper with your name on it.”
“Face it, Dariel,” Clytus added. “We’re brigands. You can’t expect us to stand on a city wall flashing our asses and such. I mean, that’s all right for Melio, being Marah and all that, but us? No, not when there’s a bit of piracy to get up to.”
Even Skylene asked him to see sense. The very fact that she could ask him was miraculous. She woke the evening he breathed life into her. Sometime that night her fever broke, and the next morning she sat up, her skin cool and filled with color. The first thing she did was ask for lentils. Red lentils in a creamy cheese sauce, with long strips of fried onion in it. She ate and ate, and laughed, and asked a thousand questions about the things that she had missed. And here she was, just a couple of days from the edge of death, standing, thin but vibrant, in the late light of the day, holding Mor’s arm and asking Dariel to see sense. He had not told her what he had done, and figured he never would. He told no one.
When Birke showed his canines and shrugged, as if to say that he, surely, would not try to say no to Skylene, Dariel did not. He acquiesced without a word more of protest. Tunnel had hefted up his mallets. Clytus tied back his long hair with a band across his forehead, set his hands on his hips, and danced for a few merry moments, preternaturally light on his feet. Kartholome patted the throwing stars flat against his waist. Geena smiled and batted her eyelashes.
Dariel, loving the buoyancy of the moment, prayed that he knew what he was doing, that he was not leading his friends to certain death and placing the Free People at the mercy of the league.
I think it’s safe to say the invasion has begun,” Clytus said.
None of the soul vessels churning the waters from the barrier isles toward Avina paid the slightest attention to the single, now terribly old-fashioned clipper moving the other way, propelled only by the power of a favorable breeze. The league had been won over by the wonders that were the soul vessels. And why not? Those vessels cut right into that wind, sleek and glistening, unerringly aimed at their target. Dariel remembered the intoxicating power of having his hands on the steering wheel of one of those ships. It was a hard wheel to let go of. He had counted on that being the case for the leaguemen.
We’re right about that, at least, Dariel thought. Of course, if he was wrong about the rest of it, that would be a moot point.
While most of the barge transports would be coming down from Eigg, where the newly arrived army had landed, two of them had sailed for Lithram Len. All on board the Slipfin gathered by the bridge to stare at
