Neen, Rialus realized, was hiding something, plotting something all his own. Rialus turned away from him before Neen noticed him watching, but he kept the image locked in his mind, studying it.

C HAPTER

Do you ever wonder what the world would be like if Aliver had lived?" Melio asked.

"Of course," Mena said. "You know we all do."

"Yeah," Melio agreed. "We all do."

He pulled her closer with the arm he already had wrapped around her shoulders. The two of them lay together in the predawn, touching along the length of their naked bodies. They had just made love, the sort of silent, spontaneous coupling they were often driven to in the quiet hours before facing danger once again. Though they had said nothing since wishing each other a good rest the evening before, Melio's question seemed the continuation of an ongoing conversation.

He continued, "What if he really had abolished the quota trade? What if he had really freed all the races to govern themselves? Can you imagine that? I know it would be a grand confusion in some ways, but it might have been beautiful. Corinn has betrayed it all, though. Your sister, the Fanged Rose. She rather scares me, Mena. You know that?"

"You don't understand her."

"You do?"

Mena shrugged. "I haven't always. And… no, I don't completely. But I do know that she tries. She tries harder than you know to do what's right. It may not look like what Aliver would have done, but she is no less devoted to us, to the empire."

"Forgive me, Mena, but she seems mostly devoted to keeping an iron grip on power."

Staying silent for a time, Mena weighed whether she should answer. Talking about her sister-no matter whether she was being critical or speaking praise-always felt like a betrayal of sorts. Certainly, Corinn herself would have thought of it that way. But Melio owned part of her heart as well. He gave her so much and deserved to know how she felt.

"I need you to understand something about her," Mena said. She started slowly, seeking out the right words, testing them first to make sure she was speaking truly. "Corinn is strong. You know that. But she is also very scared."

"The Fanged Rose scared?" Melio laughed. "That I don't believe. I've seen her look warriors in the face as if she were about to bite off their noses."

Mena stayed him with a hand. "I said she was strong as well, but you have to know that strength… well, it springs from different sources. It has different roots in different people. In Corinn, it's fear."

"Fear of what?"

"Of being alone. Of being unloved. Of dying. No, don't laugh. I knew some of this about her even as a girl. When our mother died, Corinn felt like part of her died. Everyone had always said she was our mother reborn. Her twin. She was the beautiful one." Melio began to make some jibe, but she cut him off. "No, listen to me. When our mother died, Corinn felt that she lost part of herself. And then… well, I don't know how I know this, but I always felt that she believed Father should live for her then. That some of the love he held for Aleera should be transferred to her, just to her. I don't know that I can blame her for that. I was too young to even remember our mother. The loss was different for her. But then Father died, too. She took it as a betrayal. And then there was Igguldan, her first love, I think. He died, too. And then she didn't even manage to escape Acacia like the rest of us. Her guardian, Larken, betrayed her to Hanish Mein. You see, every time she trusted someone… every time she put her heart in someone's hands and let him decide her fate… And then came Hanish. She fell in love with him."

"Only to find out he was planning on sacrificing her to his ancestors. For all her beauty, she's not lucky in love, is she?"

"You see the pattern, then?"

"I do," he conceded, "and I know all these details. But we all have tragedies in our lives. It's no excuse."

"I know," she said, "and Corinn would never offer it as one. She's the last person who would ever do that."

"But think of the quota! Aliver would have abolished it; Corinn just reentrenched it. It seems so sad that instead of one monarch, we got another. Instead of one future, we-"

"Melio? Shhh. You're making a complicated thing sound simple. Don't." She wasn't sure that he would believe that. It was easier for him to see the black and white of it. But there was more to the world than black and white. Much more. He did not share blood with both of them, and she could only go so far in explaining her feelings about her siblings at one time. It was complicated, to her at least. "It's easy to see fault, I know. Fault is there, but she's my sister, Melio. I love her. She's part of me beneath the skin. Anyway, I would not want her position. I pray she lives long and that Aaden makes a strong ruler in his time."

Though she did not look at him, Mena could see the crooked smirk Melio likely greeted that thought with. "Never you?"

"Never. I wouldn't want that sort of burden."

"You risk your life-"

"You know that's different. That suits me. What Corinn carries is another thing. I would not accept the crown even if-may it never happen-it was thrust upon me."

"And Dariel? What if rule ever went to him?"

"I don't know," Mena said. She was quiet for a moment. "He did not fight Corinn for the throne when he could have. He has his own demons to wrestle with. He does search for a destiny. I know he wants to do something grand. He's talked about it, but I don't know where or how he'll find it."

The world outside their tent started to gray its way back into being, stirring others into life. Mena sat up, knowing the time had come to take up her role again. Her fingers flexed, wanting to hold her sword. Before that, though, there was something more mundane to take care of. She crawled off the sleeping mat and toward the basin she used to wash Melio's seed from inside her, infusing the water with a concoction of herbs prepared for her by a physician back on Acacia.

"Maybe you shouldn't do that," Melio said. He propped himself on his elbow. "Why not just trust what happens?"

Mena measured the herb powder and swirled it into the water. "Don't be silly. How would I look fighting foulthings while carrying around a fat belly? It would break all sorts of taboos."

"Then stop fighting foulthings," he answered, ignoring her joking tone. "You're not the only one who can do it. Give someone else charge. Not even Corinn could fault you. We've been wed for five years now, Mena. Let's make a child and live like-"

"Like what? Like everybody else? We're not everybody else." I'm Maeben on earth, remember? Wrath in raptor form. What sort of mother would I make? She did not say these things. She only half believed them, and she knew Melio would refute her point by point. He had many times before this. He started to say something else, but Mena had had enough of talking for the time being. She said, "Come. I want to reach Halaly by tonight. There's work to be done."

There was always work to be done. Or so it had felt for months now. Finally, though, it looked as if there might be an end in sight to this war against the foulthings. As far as she knew, there were only two left to face. One in Halaly, one across a large swath of hill region of northwestern Talay. Reports of the latter were scattered and unreliable. The word coming out of Halaly, however, was specific. And dire. It was toward that once-powerful interior tribe that she had pushed her band once the tenten creature had been vanquished.

With Melio and Kelis at her side, Mena spent her first evening in Halaly with Oubadal, the chieftain, and his councilmen. They sat on woven mats, beneath the cone-shaped shelter in which the aging leader held court. Mena pushed thoughts of home-or rest and calm and time for reflection-to the back of her mind and focused on the matter most immediately at hand. The tribesmen were impassioned, troubled, and anxious. The waters that had provided them with fish for all their history had been turned into a liquid desert, all because of a foulthing's voracious appetite.