unfelt, that his skin prickled as it remembered the true touch of the air.
“I can see that you can feel it. Now, please… in your own words tell them that you can hear the queen’s voice, and that she will speak through you. You need not say anything about me. Please, speak now, Barad.”
“But…” He gestured toward the others.
“Just speak the truth. They’ll hear it in your voice.”
Though he did know his mouth was his own again, it was very hard to make it shape sounds. He moved his lips and jaws, as if unsure of how to use them. “Ah…” No one even turned. It had been but an incomplete whisper. “Aliver.” Still a whisper. “Prince Aliver, I have something to tell you,” he said. “The queen wishes to speak through me. She asks me to be her voice, for… she cannot be her own.”
Hanish said, “Tell them that the Santoth took her voice, but that she is still herself.”
Barad did. The others were looking between him and the queen now, confused. They all noticed when she raised a hand and drew circles in the air with her fingers. The gesture conveyed agreement with Barad’s words. They all saw that, except Aaden, who was still clinging to her.
“What are you saying, Barad?” Aliver asked. “Are you deceiving us?”
Barad had no idea what to say. “No,” he tried, but it was not enough. He looked to Hanish, pleading through his stone eyes.
Hanish turned his head slightly to the side, seemed to listen to something. He nodded. “Say this to Aliver. Tell him that you can hear his sister’s thoughts. That she is speaking through you. Ask him to remember the time that she and he and Mena and Dariel rode horseback with their father down to the beach, where he threw seashells into the waves and Mena walked holding Leodan’s hand and Dariel chased crabs and Corinn… Say that she stood on the trunk of a tree and imagined that she was a queen of an ocean empire. Say those things to him.”
Barad did.
“Tell him that he is free from any of Corinn’s control, just as you are.”
Barad explained this and watched as the truth of it dawned on Aliver. He saw him become free beneath his skin. It was as if a ghost skin had covered him until that moment. As it vanished, the man beneath came into sharper view.
“Now, come to us,” Hanish said.
Moving through the others, Barad climbed up toward the threesome. When he reached them, Hanish said, “Speak quietly to the prince. After this we will speak of other things, but for now, tell Aaden what I tell you. Tell him his mother loves him more than anything else in the world…”
The old mine worker, the large man with a voice that had often boomed before throngs to whom he had preached both for and against the monarchy, was some time whispering closely into the young prince’s ear. The words he repeated were Hanish’s only for a few sentences. After that, he knew them to be the queen’s, intimate things that he spoke with reverence. These things were between a mother and a son. He let them slide from his memory, a vessel that, for once, served the queen with all his heart.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Where is he?” Naamen asked. “He said he would be back by now. How long must we wait?”
Kelis did not answer. He had heard the query enough times already. He knew it was not a real question. It was a nervous tic, an expression of agitation. His answer-“I don’t know”-was the same. He saw no use in giving it again. He knew no more than Naamen himself did.
Kelis stood pressed against a wall behind a tavern, his weight hard on the rough stones and his eyes heavy lidded with fatigue. Behind him, Naamen and Benabe and Shen sat against the wall, hidden behind debris and shadowed from the structures all around them. Rats moved through the rubbish, growing bolder the longer the humans remained in their territory. It was a foul place, but in the chaos that the lower town had become it was at least a safe one.
When was the last time he had slept? Weeks, it seemed. He was functioning without sleep. He was, more than ever before, afraid of sleep. He did not want to take his eyes off the waking world for even a moment. Nor did he wish to dream, for he felt certain that his dreams would be horrible. Prophetic and horrible.
I t was days ago that he had left the Carmelia with Delivegu Lemardine, the man who had clamped his hand to Kelis’s elbow, half an escort, half a jailer. Moving through the opulent upper terraces of the city had been difficult. People rushed about, scared and confused and unkind because of it. Some wished to lock themselves away in their homes. Others were intent on fleeing the island. Marah and regular soldiers and private guards ran rough through the streets, calling for order and stirring turmoil in the process. It was hard to know what had happened. Kelis saw and heard enough to know that all his vague fears had just been shown to be real and worse than he had imagined.
None of it fazed Delivegu. He walked with deliberate strides, cutting through the crowds as if he barely noticed them. In the quiet of his sitting room a little later, he made Kelis tell his tale. A servant brought them a pot of strong tea. Kelis did not touch it, but Delivegu sat sipping from a cup as he listened. The truth came out, the story as Kelis knew it, each step of just how he had brought destruction right to Acacia’s shores. If he was going to have to tell it to the queen, he had better practice first. That was part of his thinking. Another, which never got near the front of his mind, was that maybe he would never have to tell it. Maybe this man would somehow do that for him. If he died before he had to stand before her, it would be no bad thing.
He blinked his eyes open without ever knowing he had shut them. Had he been sleeping? No, for the room was as before. He had only a second before stopped talking. That was all. A second of time lost, no more.
“Look at you,” Delivegu said with a sigh, “played like a puppet dancing a jig. Because of you we have a great problem on our hands. How great I don’t know, but I’m thinking we may all be leaned over a barrel and magically shafted before this is all through. It gives me no joy to be the bird that conveys this to the queen, but to me it falls.”
Kelis could not help thinking Delivegu did not look nearly as joyless as he claimed.
“Now, this girl you say is with you, is she really Aliver’s daughter? You have no doubt about this?” “No. There is no doubt.”
“Well, that’s something, then. We can use that.” Kelis looked askance at him.
“I’ll have food brought for you. Sleep here on the floor. I trust you won’t rob me. At sunrise, let’s go find them. I hope they come to where you told them to.”
Delivegu did not trust quite so much as that, though. As Kelis lay flat on the woven rug in the center of the floor, he could hear the scuffling sounds of the servant left outside the door to guard him. The servant fell asleep before long but did so pressed up against the door. His snores slid under it and crawled across the floor to where Kelis lay. He wondered if he should leave, but he could not see a better way in to the queen. He sat up, thinking how strange it was that a man who had fought so much for the empire and been so close to the Akarans could feel so powerless before the palace’s gates. He thought about this all through the long night, unsleeping despite his exhaustion.
I n the faint light of the dawning day they found Naamen at the inner gate. He stood half hidden behind one of the lion statues, staring out like a frightened child. It only took a few minutes more walking to reach Benabe and Shen. They were hidden, tucked around a corner and in an alley that saw no light even in the day.
Delivegu had to beg them to come forward into the weak light. “This is the girl? This is Aliver Akaran’s daughter?” He squatted closer as Benabe said that she was. Kelis hated the way he touched Shen on the chin and moved her face from side to side. He almost smacked his hand away. He saw that Benabe was on the verge of doing the same thing, so he did not. His inspection of Benabe was no less insulting. Delivegu studied her lascivious eyes, weighing whether she was or had been enough of a beauty to seduce an Akaran prince.
He did not share his verdict with them, but he did say he would go and try to arrange a meeting with the monarchs. He told them to wait right there in the alley amid the debris. “Just stay hidden,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
A nd then days passed.
Kelis, blinking more and more often, fought to stay awake. His body was so tired, but his mind still reeled. He was starting to hope that Delivegu would not come back. If he did not, they could flee. They could join the outflow
