C HAPTER
Rialus Neptos knew he should consider it an honor to be included in the envoy, but he was not very skilled at feeling honored. Actually, he could think of few things more unpleasant than the prospect of weeks aboard a league vessel heading off to the far side of the world. Rialus was a curious man, certainly, but his curiosity had strict boundaries, and he had plenty to occupy him within the confines of the Known World. For that matter, he had a good deal to occupy him within the confines of his own bedchamber.
He suspected Corinn had yet to forgive him for his impromptu wedding to Gurta. Why she should care he could not fathom, but she seemed annoyed by it. Surely, he was not the only man to ever wed a servant! By his accounting it was rather a respectable-honorable, actually-thing to do, especially as he had planted a child within her. An heir to the Neptos fortune. That was something he could not pass up. He had long ago resigned himself to the fact that the Neptos line would end with him. Indeed, in the frozen exile that had been his life in the Mein it seemed a good idea to end the Neptos misery.
But that was then. Now he was Queen Corinn Akaran's councillor, famed for having dispatched Hanish Mein. No other act in his life had changed his fortunes more than the few moments it took to make his hand thrust the knife blade into Hanish's pale flesh. Nobody would ever know how long he hesitated, or that he needed to grasp the knife in both hands to control his trembling. But he had done it. He really had! Hanish was just flesh and blood, like other men. Because of it, Rialus lived at the center of the world. Now he had a position of prominence. Now-thanks to Gurta being made a lady overnight-he would have heirs to pass on his good fortune to. The Giver did reward his worthies! Sometimes it just took a while for him to get around to it.
That was what Rialus kept reminding himself as he nodded to the guards who stood at the gates of the league compound. They were Ishtat Inspectorate, a force that held no real allegiance to the queen. They gave Rialus the shivers, cloaked as they were. That and the halberds they held at the ready. He had heard they could use the weapons for slashing motions that could disembowel or behead a person from eight feet away, or they could break the weapon into two parts-sword and staff both-and thereby crack your skull with one before slicing you open with the other. He could not help feeling they itched to do both, which is why their statuelike stillness caused him to quicken his steps.
Once in the outer chambers of Sire Dagon's offices, Rialus was told to wait. He sat on an iron chair that had a delicate beauty but was amazingly uncomfortable. That was how it always seemed when he was with the league. Their offices were sumptuous, pleasing to the eye, and promising of comfort. But he had never sat on a league couch without finding a ridge that poked him in the back, or fabric that irritated his skin. On the walls hung paintings of their massive ships astride even more massive waves. The angles they tilted at, the dark shapes beneath the water, the way the white fingers of the wave crests reached out for the tiny human figures on deck made Rialus queasy. He hoped that the images were exaggerations meant to impress or tumultuous aberrations that he was unlikely to witness firsthand.
He moved his eyes away. It would be a brief voyage. What was it? Four weeks across? A few weeks there, and then four weeks back. No more than two and a bit months of his life. He could spare that, considering that Gurta, plump with his heir, would be waiting for him. He did, of course, have Corinn's charges to worry about. She had laid them out for him just the day before.
"I have three charges for you, Rialus," she had said. "First, keep an eye on my brother. I want him safe, and nobody has a better nose than you for sniffing out danger. Whether they come from the league, the Lothan Aklun, the Auldek, or the ocean depths you must spot dangers before they touch him. Second, I want you in the room when the league meets with the Lothan Aklun and the Auldek. You speak the Numrek tongue better than anyone else I know. It just may be you will understand the Auldek language as well. Judge them for yourself and keep your judgment to yourself, understand? Try to find ways to speak with them alone. We may one day deal with them without the league between us, so we might as well know something about them. Third, of course, is that you return to me with a detailed report of everything you witness. My brother will do the same, but I want to hear separately from you. Never in our history of trading with the Lothan Aklun have we had a better opportunity to learn about them. Use it, Rialus. Use it so fully that when you return I don't regret not having gone myself."
She made each assignment sound both simple and laced with threat. She was good at that. He would have to keep his wits about him, make journal notes regularly, and find a way to quell the nausea that roiled in him each time he thought of those ocean waves. And the Auldek… Please let them be more refined than the Numrek! Two months, though. Only two months and he would be home again. He could handle that.
When he was finally ushered into Sire Dagon's chambers he found he was late in joining the meeting. Along with Dagon, Neen, and several league navigators sat the bulky and all too familiar forms of Calrach and his two seconds. The leaguemen sat at repose in their intricate, presumably uncomfortable chairs. The Numrek dwarfed them-all hard-edged muscle and rough features-and yet both parties seemed at ease.
"Ah, Rialus Neptos," Sire Dagon said, speaking through an exhalation of mist, "you join us at last. We've nearly concluded our meeting. Be prompter in future."
Rialus began an explanation that he had been sitting in the outer offices for nearly an hour, but nobody seemed interested. Calrach rose and greeted him with a crushing hug and then stood back, smacking his massive hand down on the frail man's shoulder. "My friend," he said in Numrek, "good to see you. You are not so much a rat anymore. More of a weasel now." He turned to his companions for agreement, which they gave. Each of them in turn inflicted the same chest-crushing embrace on him.
Rialus fumbled through it in terse Numrek. He still hated the language for the barbarity of it and for the contortions it demanded of his tongue and lips. He did speak it well, though, having learned it during his tenure as Hanish Mein's ambassador to the foreign invaders turned allies. Not a thing he liked being reminded of for many reasons. It had been a humiliating period of his life, worse, in some ways, than his exile in Cathgergen. Actually, his wrestling with the Numrek language had helped cure him of his stammer. He now spoke almost as smoothly as he would like.
Once he was seated, rail-thin servants gave him a sweet plum wine in a glass that would not sit straight when he set it down. Nobody else seemed to have the same trouble, which was odd because their glasses looked just like his. It suddenly seemed quite important that he did not spill any of the sugary liquid. He sat back in his chair, small glass held in his lap with what he hoped passed for composure. He wondered what they had discussed before he arrived. The best stuff, he was sure.
Sire Dagon cleared his throat and spoke without a hint of emotion, humor, or irony. "So, good Calrach, you see in Rialus a loyal servant of the queen. He's to shepherd the young prince about; keep him safe from harm, treachery, and such. Just between us, I sometimes suspect the queen thinks we harbor ill intentions toward her brother. I've assured her the league can forgive and forget as well as anyone. Dariel is a prince now, not a brigand, thief, and saboteur. Anyway, Rialus will, no doubt, strive to work in the Akaran interests in every way. But what of the Numrek? Is it at the queen's bidding that you will journey to Ushen Brae? Or have you your own purposes?"