The Sacred Band Read online

  Among the jubilant faces that applauded him as he exited the chamber, Barad saw Hunt, the Kindred representative from Aos. He was still, close-lipped, and grave. Barad wanted to rush to him, but instead he walked by, turning his face away as he neared. Why did I do that? he wondered, even as his feet moved him away.

  When he was done with each of these speeches, when he had no more words and his bass voice went silent, when he dropped his animated gestures and looked through his stone eyes at the faces his words had worked miracles on … he knew that he had not said any of the things he had intended to. Instead, he had praised the queen. He had sung her praises and reinforced the empire’s shackles. Somehow, she controlled each word spoken through his mouth. Each destination she had chosen. Each time he turned his strides in a specific direction it was following a path she had laid out.

  At times the words he uttered were his own, but only for short moments. On occasion barbed comments and asides and even criticisms of the queen escaped his lips. In his first days he had thought he could build on these, string them together so that he might explain his true sentiments. But he managed only to weave a folksy, familiar humor in with the comments.

  Nor could he express how much he loved the people to whom he preached, something he was reminded of at every turn. He recognized the faces of the farmers north of Danos. They were the same ones among whom he had shepherded King Grae of Aushenia. Now, as he spoke to them, he could see in their faces how they struggled to twin his former message with whatever it was he now espoused. In Bocoum an elderly woman fixed him with her bloodshot eyes, her face ridged with some great effort of comprehension. He so wanted to explain everything to her. Instead, he had pressed his lips together as he turned and walked away.

  Watching as his boat sailed out of Alecia’s harbor, he saw the rocks from which children swam with dolphins. He caught a splash of spray on his fingertips and touched them to his lips. This was a land to love, peopled by souls who had never yet been allowed to be fully themselves. Though he returned to Acacia full of dread, even the sight of the isle itself reminded him of this. To his eyes, the island and the sky, the moving sea and the leaping creatures in it were all gradations of stone, different textures of a granite world. Solid stone here. Liquid stone there. A stone as transparent as vapor there, and stone as glistening as a wet dolphin’s back there. He saw with a clarity no different from before, but it was a clarity of sand and rock, of white and gray and black.

  In his dreams the world was as it had been, sometimes so vibrantly colored that he gasped himself awake with the joy of seeing it. Awake into his gray curse of world. The way Acacia thrust up through the turquoise sea. Layer upon terraced layer climbing ever higher, so full of color, each spire a jewel trying to outshine its peers as it pierced the belly of the sky. How could the heart of a nation so corrupt be so terribly beautiful? How could a world he had lived in for so many years continue to astonish, confound, defeat him? How could he see one thing and remember another each and every minute of his imprisoned freedom?

  It was maddening, but he should not have been surprised. The queen had told him it would be this way. Weeks ago, when she leaped at him and grasped his head in her hands, he had lifted his hand to smash her. He would have done it, except that she slipped her fingers into his eyes and pressed. On her lips and in those fingers hummed a power that took away the connection between his will and his ability to act on it. His anger did not die within him, but the fist raised to crush her recognized no kinship with it. It hung there a moment, until the fingers opened and the hand came to rest gently on her arm.

  She whispered, “Your mind is mine.”

  In answer, he formed curses behind his lips, refutations, a litany of condemnation. When his lips moved they said, “Yes.” He heard this and screamed “No!” but his lips said “Yes.”

  No longer a pariah, Barad could wander wherever he wished in the palace, even up to the higher terraces near the royal quarters. He was trapped, but to all the world he looked to be a free man. He could follow his feet wherever they cared to take him. Clearly, the queen had given instructions that he was to be indulged like some dignitary of high rank when he was on the island. But he could not form actions from any desires contrary to the queen’s wishes. He might decide to leave the island and flee into hiding, but he would forget his mission after only a few steps. One time he even imagined his own death. Instead of using the knife he had chosen for the purpose on his own flesh, he peeled an apple.

  Because of this curse, he was sitting on a bench in the center of the maze work of canals, listening to the gurgling fountain and watching the slow-moving piscine forms gliding through the water beneath him. He was exactly where the queen wished him to be. He knew it, and he could do nothing about it.

  Rhrenna sat beside him, scribbling notes on a sheaf of parchment. “A successful trip, I would say. The queen will be pleased with you.”

  Barad pulled his gaze from the water and rolled his eyes toward her. The effort of moving the stone orbs was considerable. It fatigued him more than moving his large frame through the world, and if he moved them too much he developed headaches that lasted for days. There was an advantage to them, though. At times they saw with a clarity his old eyes never had. It was not a matter of visual acuity, really. It was more that they translated the truth more completely, as if he read emotions and thoughts as clearly as he saw the features that hid them.

  He cleared his throat to avoid responding to her comment. He would have told her that he hated the queen, not cared that she be pleased. He would have spat at her and called her a servant of suppression, a deluded tool of an evil mistress. But none of it would come out as he intended.

  “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 beh
ind 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 façade 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 age.

  Watching Aliver’s face as he treaded water, Barad saw the vague motion beneath his skin again. Aaden could not see it. Nobody could. Only he with his accursed stone eyes. Not even Aliver knew. He doesn’t know that he is trapped inside himself, and I can’t tell him. I can’t tell anybody.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Melio Sharratt watched Clytus exit the tavern. The thatch hanging from the roof brushed his hair as he emerged, leaving him no more or less neatly coiffed for it. Clytus strode over and stood beside Melio. With his thick arms crossed and shoulders bunched with muscle and his weathered face one notch down from a full scowl, he seemed more like a figure to fear than like one who needed to be cautious. Once he had been one of Dariel’s close friends, a brigand then and still now. He said, “He’s here.”

  Melio asked, “Will he talk?”

  Clytus cleared his throat and brushed the hard knuckles of one hand along his chin. “Yeah, he’ll talk,” he answered, sliding his gaze over to study a group of children playing a betting game with seashells.

  Melio nearly said that nobody on the street was paying them the slightest bit of attention, but this was not his territory. He had been out of that since Corinn sent him south on the Ballan, all the way around the Far South and back up along the western coast of Talay in the company of some of Dariel’s old brigand crew. Clytus captained the ship now, with old Nineas still as the chief pilot, and Geena in command of the crew. Strange the way the passing of time made enemies friends, folding one thing in upon another so that it was hard to imagine the old order of things. D
ariel, going by the name Spratling, had once pirated the coast south of here, a criminal in the eyes of Hanish Mein’s authority. Now he was a prince of the empire, and the brigands who had once been his lawless crew sailed in service to the crown. Although now he was an absent prince, missing in a faraway land, perhaps no longer among the living …

  “All right, come in,” Clytus said grudgingly, as if it were against his better judgment. “Let’s get this over with.”

  As he slipped beneath the overhanging thatch, Melio reflexively grasped for the hilt of his sword, to rest his hand there and feel the tilt of the sheath trailing him like a tail. He had to settle for gripping his leather belt instead. His sword was back on the Ballan with the rest of his things. Prominent weapons were not allowed in the taverns of the Coastal Towns. He did, however, carry a smaller one, unseen by the eyes of the tavern guard who looked them over as they passed.

  Melio followed Clytus back through the dim room, lit only by the candles at each table and torches along the rear wall, where young men poured ale. The air oozed with the scent of it, mixed with pipe smoke and the pungency of garlic.

  The table they stopped at was no different from the others, a circle centered around a thick-wicked candle. The yellow glow lit two men in sharp highlights. One of them rose and moved away when they arrived, without so much as a glance up. Clytus turned and followed the man, only turning back when he had seated himself at another table. The second man had stayed put. Large bone earrings, shaped like primitive fishhooks, dangled from his ears. His beard covered only his chin and had been oiled to a curving tip, something he kept shaped with caressing fingers. His face, behind all that, was forgettable. If Melio had turned away and had to describe him, he would only be able to recall the earrings, beard, the oily fingers.