purpose. She tried to pull it back into her voice. “I will not offer you peace like this again.”
“Good,” Devoth answered. “Your peace is nothing to talk about. Vapor. It’s talking about the wind. You can hear it. You can see that it shakes the trees. But you can never grasp hold of it. Better to leave it. You will not stay with us?”
Mena shook her head. Dine with them? No, that seemed a horrible idea, worse than fighting them all. She could not have said why the prospect chilled her so completely. “That’s not what I came for.”
“You came to spy,” Devoth said, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Isn’t that so? You didn’t come to threaten us. If you did, you did not come well prepared.”
The Auldek woman, Sabeer, muttered something in her tongue. A few grunted agreement. Some laughed.
“What did she say?” Mena asked.
Rialus sputtered a moment before saying, “I had told her of your life previously-that you were a great warrior. She-she finds that hard to believe now that she sees you.”
“If she wishes a test, she may have it,” Mena said.
Rialus frowned. “I won’t tell her that.”
“Why not? Tell her.”
“Princess, you’ve not seen how they fight.”
“I’ve killed Numrek. Tell her that.”
“These are not Numrek. Sabeer is-”
“Enough,” Devoth said. “Do not be women. Don’t die on Sabeer’s point.” He paused, a hand raised in mock concession to Mena’s snarl. “Or don’t kill my dear wife. No use in that. Be a messenger for us, Princess Mena Akaran. You will, yes? Take this message: the Auldek come for your lands. We come for slaughter.” He broke out of Acacian and shouted something in his own tongue. By the way the throng yelled in response Mena knew he was translating his words. He turned back to her. “This has been amusing, but if you will not eat and drink with us, go. Go now, fly home. Tell your queen our nations are at war!” Again he turned and barked his translation. Again the crowd exploded in enthusiasm.
Mena felt Elya at her back. For the first time she realized how much the creature had surrounded her, her wings tented in a protective manner. “I would speak to Rialus Neptos in private.” She was not sure what she had to say to him, but thought she should try. Perhaps he would have something to offer.
The chieftain weighed this. “You can, but I would have to cut his tongue out first.” He gestured toward the dagger on his belt and waggled his tongue, and then grew serious. “He would be of little use, empty of words. If you wish, though…” He pulled the blade free and made to grab Rialus with his other hand.
“No,” Mena said. “I will take your message back. Do I have safe leave from here?” She indicated the flying beasts perched on the wagons.
Devoth grinned, shoving the dagger home and nudging Rialus playfully. “You do.” Calrach growled something close to the chieftain’s ear. Devoth flicked him away with his fingers. He said something softly in Auldek.
Rialus translated it as: “Fly safe, Princess. Fly true. Make your world ready for us.”
Turning from him, Mena slipped under the canopy of Elya’s upraised wing. She climbed into the saddle, slipped her legs into the harness, and fastened it. The Auldek waited in near silence. The freketes cried out, holding some fragmented conversation among themselves, eyes on Elya.
Sabeer said something to her, pointing a long finger at her as she did so.
“She says she will see you in battle,” Devoth said, acting as translator.
“Tell her I will kill her then.”
They spoke a moment, and then Devoth guffawed. “She says which of her souls will you kill? She has many within her.”
As Elya rose on her bunched hind legs, Mena said, “All of them. I’ll take all of them.” Elya leaped. Her wings flared and they were in flight, beating hard to rise above the raucous freketes, who trailed, snarling behind them for a time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
T he morning of his coronation, Aliver was up before the dawn. He watched the coming day lighten into a dull, drizzly morning. Not an auspicious start. A little later, the day remembered color. The rain slowed, stopped, and patches of sky broke up the cloud cover. For a midwinter day it was quite mild. Corinn, no doubt, would call the weather perfect. What better way to welcome a new monarch than with a world glistening wet beneath shafts of eager sunlight? Without even talking to her-without needing to hear her say it-he would think of it that way, too. That was how it was between them. Two minds; one mind. He knew he had not always felt that way about her, but he could not remember what it was he had felt instead. This must be a good thing, though. It certainly seemed like it.
They were doing right, acting bravely, making decisions for the empire. There were coming trials to face, yes. A foul invasion that they would have to meet with force. But how could any ragtag group of brutes stumble out of the Ice Fields and expect to defeat Corinn’s magic? Mena’s sword? Aliver’s joyful masses? There was the fact that Dariel had been lost in a distant land. But he might be found! Corinn would remind him of that. Nothing was certain yet. Until it was, live with hope.
Remember, Corinn had told him, that only he had walked through death and returned. Only he. She and he had done that together, and now they would rule together. The nation was on the cusp of a mighty change. They were creating it, and it was good.
Though he could not remember the exact details, he knew that in his earlier life leadership had sat much more heavily on him. No longer. Now he had only to think of a fear to have it swept away by confidence, reason, purpose.
When a servant opened his door and slipped inside to wake him, Aliver stood from the window seat and waved at the young man. “You wouldn’t expect me to sleep late on my coronation day, would you?”
“Your Highness,” the servant said by way of answering, a quick bow as he did so. Eyes pinned to the floor, he asked, “Are you ready for your bath? It’s all prepared, with all the special oils and fragrances for the day.”
Aliver watched him, a hint of frustration rising at the sight of his deferential posture. He almost instructed the man to raise his head and stand straight. What had this man ever seen him do that had instilled such subservience in him? Nothing, and in that case the respect was not true. It was an act, a delusion. In Talay, when he was a young man, he had no servants. Men and women and children, old and young alike, could talk to him as an equal and yet somehow honor him by doing so. In Talay, he had slain a laryx and earned his tuvey band. He could run from sunrise to sunrise without pause. He had been a warrior, and an entire army had watched him slip beneath the belly of a raging antok and slice it end to end. Many had real reasons to honor him. What reason did this man have?
Before the question was completed, he already heard Corinn’s inevitable answer rising in him. All those things were still true, she would say. For all those deeds and many more he had earned the reverence of the entire empire. This man need not have stood beside him in battle to believe him a warrior, or have witnessed any of the things for which he was famed. That would be impossible, and it would deny this man the prize of serving a king. For him that was a great boon. His bowed head said as much. A good king lets a servant be a servant.
As quickly as she spoke-or as he spoke to himself with her confident voice-he was reassured. “Yes, I’ll bathe now,” he said, to the obvious relief of the waiting servant.
So he set off for his first official duty that morning with the servant trailing him through the hallways. He stripped naked before attendants, who acted as if he were not naked, or as if his nakedness were nothing to take notice of. He submerged himself up to the neck in hot water and sat there as sachets of oil-soaked herbs bobbed around him. His toenails and fingernails were snipped. The soles of his feet scrubbed. His entire body massaged with warm oil that was kneaded into his skin by skilled fingers. He stood swaying as several towels dried him, and stayed standing as another contingent of servants swept in with his apparel for the first half of the day. Thus, the king to be acted like the king to be.
When he emerged in the central courtyard of the royal residential grounds, Aaden ran to meet him. “Aliver!
