way that acknowledges that you have a boy to be a mother to. You have siblings to be a sister to. You have a nation that needs leadership, and you have a band of sorcerers to deal with.”
Why are you doing this?
This time the smile formed and held. “I told you already,” Hanish said. “It’s the same as I said on the day you had me killed. I love you too much to ever leave you. I am a ghost, but I don’t haunt a place. I haunt a person. You, Corinn. You see, I also have a different destiny than I imagined. It wasn’t an accident that I came back. I didn’t just slip in randomly on the spell you brought Aliver back with. I had never left you, Corinn. I’d been haunting you, watching you, loving you. You didn’t know it, but from the day I died I’ve been with you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
It’s finally come to it, Rialus thought. He stood atop an Auldek station in a buffeting wind, taking in the view south toward Mena’s army. In the dwindling light the Acacians were visible as a stain, a dark slash across the pale expanse of snow. War. Another war. For the second time in my life I’m helping an enemy invade my own country.
He hated the words but could not shake them out of his head. He believed more fervently than ever that he was not a traitor. None of it was as it seemed. He loved the Known World and all its people! In his dreams he replayed his recent exchange with Princess Mena again and again. In his dreaming version he leaped across the few strides that had separated them. He joined her and rebelled against the Auldek. He flew up into the heavens on her dragon’s back, snug behind the princess, so elated that he crashed into consciousness on the swell of it.
If he could dream that, there had to be the possibility of truth in it. His dream self did not know it was only a dream self. Was not the point of such imaginings to prove that he was, somewhere inside himself, the man who could act like that? He could feel the pride and euphoria of decisive, righteous action for once in his life. Of course he could. It was not too late. He still believed that the Giver rewarded his worthies. The fact that his waking hours contradicted that truth frustrated him more than he could bear. It was not a new feeling, but he was getting very, very tired of it.
He climbed down from the station after only a few minutes, already feeling his fingers and toes stiffening. As ever, he was absurdly bundled in layers of fur. No warmer for it, though. Howlk had joked that furs only kept a living body warm because of the heat within it. “Perhaps you are dead already,” he had said, poking him, “just a shell of a man who doesn’t know it yet.”
Though Rialus climbed down with all the slow caution he could, his feet slipped off the rungs several times. On the lower landing he fell flat on his backside. At least the station was not moving. It had stopped the evening before at the first sighting of the Acacian force. Rialus knew that the Auldek had wanted to reach solid ground before meeting the Acacians, but they did not seem too troubled to be out in frozen arctic sea. The ice was so thick and constant it might as well have been stone. It did not creak beneath the weight of the stations.
The Acacian force had pushed their camp forward early the next day, staking out ground a couple miles from the jumbled shoreline. The battle would commence the next day. Because of it, Rialus scurried across the frozen ground between the steaming stations and spent several hours sitting beside Devoth during his war council with the other chieftains. Rialus was there to answer any last-minute questions about Acacian tactics. He had long since given up explaining that he did not really know anything about military matters. When pressed on details, he sat dumbly. He refused to answer, despite the chuffs about the ears and the threats directed at him.
It did not matter anymore. The chieftains were more intent on figuring out their positions in the line of battle than anything else. The Lvin took the center front, of course-the honor of the spearpoint, which Menteus Nemre had won for them in such bloody fashion back in Avina. The Kulish Kra got the left flank for some ancestral reason that Rialus could not fathom. The Antok, it seemed, won the right flank based on the toss of a handful of colorful bone dice. Millwa, the Antok chieftain, grinned his pleasure. The rest squabbled for positions behind them.
Rialus sat through it all, miserable, his head pounding. He might as well have been surrounded by a mob of jostling children. Did none of them understand that they were arguing over which of them was lucky enough to get them and their slaves killed first? It was almost like they did not know what the morrow really held for them. Yes, they would overrun Mena’s forces. How could they not, when each of the Auldek had lives to spare imbedded in him or her? But it would still be a horror of pain and slaughter, and the divine children had only their one life to risk.
Just when Rialus thought the meeting might be drawing to a close, Skahill, the head of the Anet clan, offered to trade positions with the Antoks, arguing that the dice toss was not strong enough to override their seniority. He made some argument about their performance in a footrace they had held on a stony beach earlier in the invasion. Rialus wanted to smack him. Instead, Rialus took off his inner gloves and pinched a mist pellet in his fingers. Nobody took any notice. He stuffed it up his nostril with his thumb and inhaled. The first time he had seen Howlk do this he had been horrified. Now he was quite used to it. The ball disintegrated almost immediately, and the euphoria of the mist came fast afterward. Rialus closed his eyes and tried to relax.
Remembering what Sabeer had confessed to him, he realized that the Auldek did not personally remember the wars they had fought in more than a hundred years ago. They may have done battle themselves, but their knowledge of the events would be no more real to them than things they read in books. The actions they attributed to themselves would be like those of characters in the old tales.
How do they even know their own records are accurate? he wondered. Acacian histories were full of rubbish. He opened one eye and scanned the faces gathered around the table. You sad people. You don’t even know who you are anymore.
When the meeting ended, Howlk steered Rialus into the frigid dark with an arm clamped over his shoulder, following Sabeer. Rialus did not protest. Within a few minutes he was stripping off again inside the station that the Lvin used for martial exercises. It was as hot as a steam room. Despite the cold outside, Rialus was sweaty from the moment he entered. He tried to cling to the mist’s sedative effects, but doing so just pushed him further away from the mild bliss he had managed during the meeting.
“Rialus, I’m going to show you our secrets,” Sabeer said. “Let me hear your opinion. Come.”
She stood in the center of a sparring ring marked out on the floor, a small gathering of Auldek and sublime motion around her. She held one of the curving Auldek swords and stepped deliberately through a choreographed routine of strikes, parries, and footwork. At first Rialus thought she was wearing a black training suit of some sort. It clung as snug as leather shrunk to fit her contours, with a patterning to it something like fish scales. As ever, Sabeer wore it with a deadly sensual grace.
“Devoth doesn’t like it that you’ve decided to shut your mouth to us,” she said. “I don’t either. Perhaps you are having pangs of doubt now. Perhaps you’re dreaming that your princess will defeat us. For your own sake, you should forget such hopes. She has no chance against us.”
When Howlk took up a sword and slashed at the back of her leg, Rialus thought he had finally gone mad from his lust for her. The strike was hard and fast. Rialus expected it to take her leg off at the thigh and send her sprawling, blood spurting horribly. He went instantly light-headed. A cry of “No!” escaped his lips.
Instead, Sabeer spun on Howlk and came back at him in a playful attack. The sword had done no damage at all. They carried on for a time, Sabeer obviously letting Howlk strike her. She even tossed her sword to Menteus Nemre, who stood watching, and went at Howlk with a sudden barrage of kicks and punches. She blocked his sword strikes with her forearms, and she kicked his blade free with a sudden roundhouse kick. The move was lightning fast, the first that Howlk responded to with true surprise.
The two of them were all grins as they turned to Rialus. “Our battle skin, Rialus,” Sabeer said, raising her arms and twisting to display her suit. “You see, in this I will be very hard to kill. They won’t be able to chop off an arm or a leg. Believe me, that’s something we worry about. The souls inside us can do nothing about a missing limb.” She paused a moment, looking as if she were wistfully disappointed in the souls for not being more diligent in their service to her. “But I won’t lose any. The amusing thing is that the princess and her soldiers won’t even know we’re wearing it. It’s against the skin, as you see. I’ll have all my clothing on over it. For this battle, at least. Down in Acacia in the warmth of spring I’ll fight just like this. It’ll be a sight, won’t it?”
“It’s… armor?” Rialus asked, unable to twin the concept with the way the fabric showed the curve of Sabeer’s hips and the contours of her muscles.
