Aaden sighed. “Will she get Mother?”
“No, your mother has gone to Teh. She was angry at all the Numrek, not just the guards who hurt you and Devlyn. I believe she went to punish them.”
“Good. There’s no excuse for such behavior. What is she going to do to them?”
Aliver ran his hand over the boy’s hair. “What would you have her do to them?”
“I don’t know,” Aaden said. “They killed Devlyn. He was my friend.”
“That was wrong of them.”
Aaden pressed his lips together, nodded. “Why did they do that? He didn’t do anything except be my friend.” All of sudden, as if the grief of it had just exploded in him, Aaden crumpled forward, falling against Aliver. “He was my only friend.”
Aliver held the boy to his chest as he cried, stroking his hair. So Aaden had not inherited his great- grandfather’s gift of being loved by all his peers. Gridulan was the last Acacian monarch to have a band of brothers with him always, loyal and adoring if the stories of them were to be believed. Leodan had only his traitorous chancellor Thaddeus Clegg. Aliver himself might have had Melio as a close companion, but he had been too foolish to accept the youth’s overtures with the sincerity with which they were offered. At least Aaden knew to call a friend a friend.
“Your mother will take care of them,” he said. “She told me she would treat them fairly.”
“Good,” Aaden said, a bitter edge cutting through his grief. “She should kill them all.”
This drew Aliver up. Kill them all? Was that the boy’s idea of fairness? Or was it his mother’s? He knew the answer immediately, and with it came a greater understanding of the ruler his sister must have become. And the sort of mother as well. He could not decide how to respond, so he held the boy until his sorrow spent itself. As he did, his horror at the boy’s wish for vengeance lost its acute shape and blurred at the edges. He found it hard to grasp.
Eventually, Aaden pulled away from him, looking exhausted in addition to miserable. “I think I’m tired.” The boy lay down, resting his head on his pillow in the indentation already pressed into it. “When I get up, we have to go find Elya.”
“Elya?”
“You don’t know Elya? She saved me. She is a dragon. Well… of sorts. A dragon. A lizard. A bird. All of them together. I’m not sure what to call her other than a dragon, though. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Aliver admitted. “I haven’t thought much about dragons. I heard an Aushenian tale about dragons before. I think it was a scaly creature that Kralith, their white crane god, fought against for some reason. I never thought there really was a white crane god, so I never gave much thought to dragons either.”
“You will. She’s wonderful. She flies. Mena found her and brought her here. Where is Mena?”
Where was Mena? Just framing the question did something inside him. He did not have the answer immediately, but having put the query in words he felt it leave him and hook into the fabric of the world. He did not know, but he felt he could know. He could if he waited for it. Just as he had learned his way around the palace simply by remembering it. Just as he had known where Aaden slept simply because he had wondered it and felt the answer as accessible as the air around. He could not touch it. Not grasp it. But he could inhale it. The answers to things were there for him if he breathed them in.
“She is north of here,” Aliver said, “in the cold. She’s gone to make war. She’s taken the King’s Trust.”
Aaden squinted at him. “You just said you didn’t know where she was. A few moments ago you said that. Now you know?”
“I’m not as I was before.”
“You were dead before.”
“Exactly.”
“And now you’re not.”
“Just so.”
Aaden pursed his lips, considered, decided. “I like you better alive.”
Aliver smiled.
“What else do you know?”
“I can hear the maid returning,” Aliver said, “with reinforcements.”
The next moment Rhrenna rushed into the room, followed by a jumble of others-servants and physicians and officials. The room fell instantly into chaos.
CHAPTER SIX
Kelis of Umae feared that the Santoth would be so conspicuous that they would announce their presence to all Talay. As he, Shen, Benabe, Naamen, and Leeka marched up from the Far South, the silent, hooded figures trailed behind them. They blurred when they moved and had faces only at a distance. Near at hand they became less distinct, not more. Though he spent days near them, Kelis was never sure how many there were. He tried counting them, but he got lost, found them blending together, realized he could not remember if he had counted that individual or not. Their silence was more unnerving than anything. It was not simply the absence of noise; it was as if they absorbed the sound around them. Because of this his head often snapped up, seeking them, feeling as if something had been stolen from the fullness of the world in the area they occupied.
Was he wrong for not trusting them? He could not say. Shen treated them like an escort of loved uncles. Aliver had spent time among these same phantoms. They had welcomed him, loved him, mourned him, and even avenged his death. No matter how horrible their violence in battle against Hanish Mein’s forces, they had fought for Aliver. For the Akarans. They had saved countless Talayan and Acacian lives. That counted for a great deal. Kelis just wished they didn’t make his skin crawl.
When they crossed the shallow river that marked the boundary of the Far South, Kelis tried his best to weave through the loose netting of small villages and herding communities without making human contact. Shen looked at him skeptically at times; Benabe did the same at others. He directed them without explaining. When they could not help but thread a rocky band of hills via a valley that spilled down into the Halaly town of Bida, Kelis took Naamen off from the others and conferred with him.
“I don’t know what will happen when we pass through the town. Be ready for anything.”
The young man touched his sheathed dagger with his strong arm. “I am.”
“Shen thinks nothing of meeting other people, but even the Halaly have eyes to see. I don’t know what they will make of the Santoth, or what the Santoth will do in return. If the people fear them, they may allow us to pass. Or not.”
“Should we speak to the old man about this?”
“Leeka Alain is of two worlds now. He doesn’t understand this one fully anymore. I would not share too much with him. Just be prepared to meet whatever happens. We’re guardians. We don’t make Shen’s decisions; we just protect her as best we can, yes?”
Naamen said, “I can’t remember when I had any other purpose.”
Surprisingly, neither could Kelis.
The townspeople of Bida built their houses out of volcanic stone, irregular shapes that they secured together with a concrete made from ash-white sand. From a distance, the town looked like a herd of spotted ruminants grazing among the acacia trees. As they descended toward it Kelis and Naamen led the way, with Shen, Benabe, and Leeka a little distance behind. The shifting wake that were the Santoth was behind them all.
The first villagers they passed were herdsmen driving long-horned bulls. They had full, round Halaly faces, dark in a way different from the Talayans. Their expressionless stares offered neither hospitality nor aggression. They let their eyes flick back to the mother and daughter. And then they looked beyond them. One said something to the other in what must have been a local dialect. They carried on, switching at the bulls to keep them on course. Kelis turned to watch, amazed to see the three men and their bulls walk straight through the gathered host of sorcerers. The Santoth flowed forward without pause, allowing a pathway among them to open so that the villagers passed without even noticing them.
A little farther on, near the entrance to the town proper, a man peeled away from the defensive wall and
