She said, 'Lower your eyes.' The man stared at her a moment longer and then obeyed. 'How could you think the monarch of one kingdom would betray the monarch of another… for peasants? Don't you see how foolish that is? How impossible? And they told me you were bright. Devious. Cunning. Instead, you're none of these things.'
Had she really gotten all that out without a hitch or quaver of emotion? She had. The man's steady attention confirmed it. He stared at her feet but said nothing.
'You may speak freely to me,' Corinn said, trusting her voice a little more now. 'I am not easy to offend. Nor do you frighten me. If your language is coarse, so be it. I have some rough about me as well.'
One corner of the man's mouth crooked upward. It looked like a tic, a jerk of his cheek muscles, but the expression held. A lopsided smile.
'Well, speak. That's what you like to do, isn't it? Make up speeches. Exhort. Rant to the masses! Try it on an audience of one.'
The man bowed his head, moving that smile out of her view. She watched him gather himself with a series of inhaled breaths. She could have him beaten, she thought. Mutilated. Killed. She could-right now, right here-order his tongue cut out. No more speeches then. And, she realized, part of what was jumbling her mind was the song. It was high in her, roiling about the curve of her skull like liquid flame mixed with sound, hungry to get out. She did not even need to order another to act for her. She could open her mouth and sing him into oblivion.
'You have betrayed your brother's dreams.'
She saw the words on his lips, and then she heard them, and then put the two together and understood them.
'Have I? And did my brother detail his dreams to you?'
Barad took a few breaths before answering, but his voice was sure when he did, no hint of deceit or hesitation in it. 'Yes. Many nights he spoke to me in dreams.' He looked up. 'I make up no speeches, Corinn Akaran. I simply recite what I remember, what Aliver wished me to say to the world. You would do well to listen yourself. It is not too late to save yourself from ruin.'
Corinn was quicker even than the Marah in responding to this insult. She said nothing. She only opened her mouth slightly and let out the ribbon of song already waiting. It slipped through the air on a whisper, and the thing she had but thought was done. The eyes that had dared to look up at her were eyes no longer. They were stone replicas, frozen in place. Delivegu gasped. One of the guards whispered a curse of amazement. Barad himself did not move at all. His stone eyes stared at her, his expression otherwise unchanged.
She spun away.
In her offices an hour later she recalled the dream she had just that morning. In it, she had arranged to meet Grae in her chambers. She had not explained why, but when he arrived, the room was lit with low lamps, heavy with incense. A single musician in a hidden closet piped a faint tune on a bone whistle. And she stood in a thin shift, a diaphanous garment.
His eyes had widened into two blue saucers when he saw her.
She was naked beneath the dress. She could see by the nervous difficulty Grae had controlling his eyes that he had noticed this. The light from the candle beside her, she knew, would be languid around her curves, and the thought of the power she had just standing there pressed her nipples erect against the thin fabric. He noticed that as well.
'I am no virgin,' she had said. 'I am no blushing maiden. I have no desire to be in love again. Such things are of my past. I come to you as I am. A queen. A mother. A woman. Those three things may be too much for you to handle, but if you think yourself monarch enough for it, I will have you as a husband. This is me. Consider.'
With that, Corinn had slipped loose the knot at her waist and shrugged the silken shift from her shoulders. Corinn let Grae take her in from head to toe. It pleased her to have his eyes adoring her-that prodded her to cut his examination short.
'I'll have your answer now, by the way.'
His answer, in the dream, had been to rise and walk toward her, swaying oddly as he did, raising first one arm and then the other. It was a strange ballet that she understood as a custom of his people, a dance of the cranes or some such. She had thought it lovely, and began to return it.
But that was just a dream. In real life, she had not worn that shift. She had not made that offer. Sitting in her office after her encounter with Barad, she checked these facts several times to be sure of them. No, she had shown the Aushenian nothing but gracious hospitality. She had been more generous with her time than normal, perhaps had smiled too readily and spoke to him with unguarded familiarity. But nothing more than that. She was so grateful for this fact that she pressed the tips of her fingernails to her forehead and squeezed, thanking the Giver for her having had at least that much reserve.
When Rhrenna entered, her face as pale and distorted as beeswax grown soft in the sun, Corinn already knew what she would report. The secretary confirmed as much tersely. Grae had nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw Barad. Though Rhrenna spoke to him innocently about what was happening-betraying no suspicion of him- Grae had stammered and even trembled a bit. Sweat had appeared in instant droplets along his forehead, and his attempts at looking casual were clearly forced.
'I cannot believe it was all an act,' Rhrenna said, 'but there it is. He scorned you-'
'This is not about being scorned,' Corinn cut in. The words came before she knew she was to say them, but they were true. Scorn was for lesser people than she. 'It's about ruling an empire,' she said, and then gave new orders.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
She can't climb these mountains,' Naamen said. 'There's no way.'
'I can carry her,' Kelis answered.
The younger man plucked the knuckle root he had been sucking on from the corner of his lips, indignant. 'So can I! And I will! But still, when we drop from exhaustion she'll be no better off.'
Kelis answered this with only a sharp grunt and walked on with his chin high. Inside he feared the same thing. They had trudged toward the peaks for several days, their scale growing as they approached, deceptive, massive in a way that surprised him each time he looked upon them. They seemed to swell when his eyes touched them, as if they inhaled breaths and puffed out their chests to seem larger. Nor did the play of the light as the sun progressed seem to follow the natural order. At times, the upper regions of the mountains were snow dusted. At others, they appeared to have thick vegetation right up to the peaks. On occasion, he stopped, convinced he faced geometries of sheer black rock, unclimbable.
Though he never showed it outwardly, he half hoped Benabe would plant her feet and declare she and Shen would go no farther. If she did, what could he do but acquiesce? In matters of a daughter's welfare a Talayan mother had the final say. Though Shen was a princess, she was also just a young girl. Even if Aliver had been alive Benabe would have been her foremost guardian.
But Benabe never did shout them to a halt. Her face, in its own way, was as changeable as the strange mountain range. She is strong, Kelis thought more than once. Stronger than she is frightened by the future.
On the evening before they were to enter the mountains, Benabe approached Kelis. She sat beside him and stared up at the range before them, just there, so close she could have thrown a stone and hit the first of the foothills. Her daughter had combed and braided her hair the evening before, and the rows were tight against her scalp, dusted by the dry soil and twinkling here and there with flecks of gold. 'I hate these mountains,' she said. 'They are not right. They are not true.'
Kelis prepared a response and then rejected it, thought of another but felt it poor. He cleared his throat but said nothing. Behind them, Naamen and Shen slapped palms together as they played a rhyming game. Occasionally, peals of Shen's laughter flew by them.
'When I was a girl I used to dream of mountains,' Benabe said. 'A strange thing, yes? I lived in a flat, hot place, but I dreamed of high, cold things. I wanted to see snow. Like the Snow King.' She clicked her tongue. 'Tell
