“Did you meet any of your former conspirators? Any of the Kindred, as you called them?”
“In Manil, yes,” he heard himself answer. “Hunt came down from Aos.”
“And?”
“He thought me insane,” Barad said.
Rhrenna smiled, an expression that pressed her pale blue eyes nearly closed. “Yes, but for an insane man you speak such wisdom. I’m sure that’s what affronted him.”
“What affronted him,” Barad said, “is that the Kindred has crumbled. He blames me. Word of my support for the queen spreads beyond me like a disease.”
“More like a cure, a contagious cure.” Rhrenna folded her hands on her writing board and studied the sky. Thin strips of cloud scalloped the blue. The air had a touch of cold in it, the chill that passed for autumn on the island. “The queen will be pleased with you when she returns.”
Barad noticed that one of the slivers of hard charcoal Rhrenna wrote with had fallen to the bench. While she still looked up, he placed his large hand over it. “When will she return?”
“A week or two at most. Her campaign was a complete success. I got a bird last night. She is recovering from her exertions and will soon be on her way back. She would have been back sooner had she not fallen ill after destroying the Numrek. It was quite taxing on her. You should hear the things people are saying about her now. She destroys whole armies. None can stand against her.”
“Is that true? Can none stand against her?”
Rhrenna wrinkled her sharp, small nose before answering. “None that I know of.”
She massacred your people, he thought. He knew better than to try and say it, so he just held on to the thought and stared his stone gaze. He tightened his hand around the charcoal until he held it in his fist.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Rhrenna said. “You’re not the first person to have to bend to her will. We all do. You should find peace with it. I have. Barad, we live in truly wondrous times.” Rhrenna set her parchments to the side and stood. “You may not love our queen, but if anyone is capable of leading us now, she is. Look, we have princely visitors.”
Aliver and Aaden entered the gardens. Barad had not yet seen Aliver, but he knew him instantly. Uncle and nephew walked side by side, talking softly, with the winged creature a few steps behind them. The princes saw them, waved, and quickened their pace. The creature hung back, moving off along the edge of the canals, peering into the water as she stepped gently, like some benevolent hunter. Barad knew she was a wonder spoken of all around the empire, but it was the risen prince that truly fascinated him.
He looked just as Barad had imagined him. Young. Slim and leanly muscled, his posture upright and his motions casually regal. He wore the same face Barad had seen breaking through his mist dreams years ago, as the rebellion against Hanish Mein grew in power. He knew that when he spoke it would be with a voice he already knew, the same one that had encouraged him with the power of the truth. If any man had ever been his king, this one had.
Barad did what he did then without even knowing he was about to. Barad the Lesser, he who had spoken for years of the fallacy of monarchal rule, fell forward. He landed hard upon his knees and bent farther still, until he pressed his face against Aliver’s thin boots. He heard the prince bid him rise. “That’s not necessary,” he said. “Really, Barad, you have no need to bow to me.”
“He should too bow,” the young prince, Aaden, said. “He was my mother’s enemy. We could have killed him!”
“ Was,” Rhrenna stressed. “He was our enemy but is not anymore.”
“No,” Aliver said. He touched Barad on the shoulder, worked his fingers under him, and pulled him to stand. “He was never an enemy. Not truly.”
Barad looked up at the prince’s face. He wanted to tell him that he had heard his voice in his dreams many times. Years ago, his voice had saved him, had given him purpose, had spurred him to rise to revolt in Kidnaban. He wanted to admit all these things. Instead, he said, “Praise to the queen, for she has brought back the dead.”
This seemed to underwhelm Aliver. “Barad,” he started, but then thought better of it, glancing at Aaden. “Yes, praise the queen. She brings much life, doesn’t she?”
“You should see how she made water in the desert,” Aaden piped.
Barad took his seat on the bench again and sat listening to the easy banter between Aliver and Aaden, with Rhrenna playing the third. Aaden reported that he had just shown his uncle Elya’s eggs. They were near to hatching, he thought. He even saw them move inside the hard casing of their shells. “They’re just waiting for Mother to return,” he declared.
The thought of that return ran a shiver of dread through Barad, but he knew it did not show on the outside.
Aliver reminisced about when he was a boy and had swum the tunnels that connect one pool to the next. He had discovered that the pools were all part of one system. If he held his breath long enough, he could vanish in one area, swim through the darkness, and emerge in another canal, one that looked from above to be separate.
“I could do that,” Aaden said. “My breath is good.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Aliver said, sizing him up. “I was older than you before I tried it.”
“But I’m a better swimmer.”
“How, exactly, do you know that?”
“I just do.”
Aliver made a sour face. “Perhaps a wager is in order.” Aaden jumped at the suggestion.
“It’s too cold!” Rhrenna said. “He’ll catch a chill. It’s nearly winter, Your Highness.”
Aliver blinked at her and whispered, “The pools hold the summer’s heat a little longer than you’d expect. One last swim won’t hurt anyone.”
As the two princes talked through the details, Aliver pointing and gesturing, pacing a bit as he recalled the way the tunnels worked, Barad wondered why the queen had brought him back to life. Surely not just to play with her son. Was there some part of her that was truly willing to face Aliver’s ideology of the world? He could not imagine that. Perhaps she had changed him already, made him into yet another mouthpiece to speak her words. He saw none of the hesitation with words that he himself felt, no hint of frustration. Barad peered at him, bringing the full pressure of his stone gaze on him.
There was something beneath the skin of his face. Something not physical and yet tangibly there, features that slipped beneath Aliver’s facade like another face pressed against the thin barrier of his skin. Just for a moment, and then it was gone. Beneath the prince’s face there was another face. Or another version of his face.
“All right, then, Aaden, let’s settle this bet,” Aliver said. He began unbuttoning his shirt. In nothing but his breeches a few moments later, Aliver dove into the water, much to Aaden’s delight. The boy leaped in, so near the prince he would have landed on him, had the man not ducked under water.
Barad turned to Rhrenna. He tried to say out loud the words his mind would not let him form in his head. He knew what he had seen and should have been able to speak it. It was Corinn’s doing. Another abomination. It was just there. If he could point it out to her, she would see it, too. He grasped her by the wrist and said, with all the gravity he could muster, “The queen’s work is a blessing to us all.”
No! That’s not it! He tried to slam his hand down on the stone, but only managed to gesture vaguely toward the princes.
Rhrenna nodded. “Isn’t it amazing? Life from death. Makes you wonder what else Corinn will do.” She gently pulled free of his grasp, gathered her things, and walked away, crisp in her steps, looking official once more.
Alone on the bench, Barad remembered the charcoal. He was not a very skilled writer, having learned to read only later in life, but he knew enough to scratch a brief message. He began to write, Prince Aliver, we are both enslaved! He imagined letters forming on the stone. He saw them side by side, spelling out his true intent. When he finished, he could feel his heart beating in his chest. This could do it. He had only to wave Aliver over and have him read the message. That would break through. He knew it would. He tried to catch Aliver’s eye, but the prince did not see him. He would have to stand. He did so, glancing back at his message as he rose.
He froze, only half standing. The words he had written were: Prince Aliver, we are both saved!
Barad lowered himself back to the stone. He smeared the words with the flat of his hand and let the charcoal fall from his fingers. His heart, which had been so profoundly happy a moment before, seemed to die within him. He watched the princes swim and splash each other, dive, and chase fish. Aaden shouted the impromptu instructions of a newly imagined tunnel game. Aliver added to them with enthusiasm, looking like a boy of exactly the same
