Smiling and softening her voice she added, "Yourself and your mother, I should say." She mussed his hair. "All right, Aaden, enough of this talk! I can see you're restless."

"May I go to the Marah hall and train?"

"Yes. Do that. Show me what you've learned later."

Aaden handed his glass to a servant, who took it lightly, bowing and thanking his highness. The prince mumbled his own thanks to the servant, and then stepped close to Corinn and whispered, "Mother, do you ever use your singing to make the arrow… hit?"

Corinn slipped her hand around the back of his head and pulled him close. With her lips brushing his ear, she said, "Never."

An hour later the queen was back in her offices, sitting straight backed and expressionless as Rhrenna introduced Paddel, the head vintner of Prios. He was a jowly man, squeezed unflatteringly into a silken suit that bulged in all the wrong places. He was technically bald, but his scalp had been tattooed a dark blue-black. The ink followed his natural hairline, but the effect was unnervingly peculiar. Paddel seemed quite pleased with it. He regularly touched his scalp with his fingers, as if stroking and repositioning his hair.

Corinn decided to keep this meeting short. She actually knew most of what the vintner could tell her, having received detailed reports from the league for some years now. They had done their work; hopefully Paddel had done his as well.

"How have the trials gone?" she asked.

"Oh, wonderfully! Wonderfully!" The vintner could barely contain himself. He seemed oblivious of the fact that he flung spittle with each excited sentence. "You could not have asked for greater success. All that you wished for, Your Majesty, has been made reality. All of it."

Corinn sat some distance away, behind her desk, but she held her hand out before her chest, a posture half protective and half a threat that she might smack him. He didn't notice this either. "I hope so. Sire Dagon assured me the product would be worth any wait. In order for that to be true, your Prios vintage will have to be a very fine thing."

"My queen, my wine is the balm our thirsty nation needs. You will be delighted."

Corinn doubted delight would play any part in her emotions. She did, however, hide a keen interest behind her intentionally bland facade. She had waited years for this vintage. Balm for the thirsty nation. That would be a useful thing, indeed. It had not taken her long after seizing power to realize that her brother-however he had managed it-had left her gravely handicapped. The people were off mist, and their memories of the nightmares the drug had begun to induce must have been vivid, for none of them returned to the pipe. That was fine in the early days after Hanish's demise. There was work to be done, and more than enough for the people to focus on.

Before long, however, their clear-eyed awareness began to be a problem. They set their sights on her and started to grow disgruntled. First one nation and then another grumbled for independence, complained about being overtaxed, claimed that agents in the night still stole their children, argued Aliver's old pledges as if they were words from some holy book. Corinn was sure that she had to maneuver, cajole, bribe, flatter, and punish at a frenetic rate precisely because the people were no longer drugged. No Akaran monarch since Tinhadin had worked as hard as she had. If she had clamped down on dissent forcefully, it was the people's own fault! The Numrek were hers to deploy, and use them she did.

Initially, she had asked the league to find some way to spread the drug again. After all, it would upset their trade with the Lothan Aklun. Those foreigners still wanted quota. That was why the league had taken over the Outer Isles, to make them into a plantation for raising quota. But the Known World, it seemed, no longer wanted mist in return for it. The league had urged caution, patience. They said that to simply put the people back on mist would be a mistake, even if it were possible. It was too easily recognizable, too much a sign of their old condition. Some might take to a slightly altered variation, yes, but others would chafe and foment against it. All still remembered Aliver and considered him their deliverer from mist. It would not do for Corinn to simply reverse that. They convinced her to wait for a new product to control the people, and in the meantime she accepted payment for the quota in coin and jewel and a variety of other things needed to rebuild the empire. That she couldn't argue with.

It was seven years before they finally came to her saying the new drug had been perfected. It was, they said, made from the same base elements as mist, but they had managed to formulate it in such a way that it could be consumed day or night, without altering one's ability to work, sleep, or procreate. It had proven difficult to contain it in liquid form and in a substance that did not degrade over time. This was important to them, though, as they were convinced the drug should not be smoked. It should seem nothing like mist. This time, they urged, it should be consumed as a beverage, a beverage like… wine. Prios had long had a history of wine making. With Corinn's permission, and under league supervision, the operations had been expanded to cover as much of the island as possible. The result, finally, was this Prios vintage, a wine with a measure of the formula mixed in before bottling.

"Watching the test subjects," Paddel said, "one almost wants to throw reason away and join them." He leaned forward, beads of sweat clinging to his tattooed hairline. "The vintage, it isn't grandiose. It isn't unpredictable like mist. It doesn't take one over completely. Instead, from the first drink of it one feels the hum of mild bliss, a constant, happy sense of expectation. On the wine, they are convinced that something wonderful is about to happen. Always about to happen. The feeling, when properly dosed, never wears off. They never wonder why this wonderful thing hasn't happened; they only know that it is going to. It's coming. Always coming."

"And yet they still work?"

Vigorous nodding. "They do. Of course they do. Why wouldn't they? They feel wonderful, so what's a few more hours cracking rocks or whatever labor they're at?"

Corinn glanced at Rhrenna, the only other person in the room. Her small features did not do justice to the sharp mind behind them, but Corinn liked that about her. With her freckled Meinish skin and pale blue eyes she could sit within most rooms without drawing any more attention than an average household servant. She was much more, though. She asked, "And when they are deprived of it?"

"That's another bit of brilliance," Paddel said, addressing the queen as if she had asked the question. "If we withhold it, the test subjects feel only a vague unease, like the start of hunger pains or like a chill. And what does one do when hungry?" The vintner paused, grinning. "Eats! What does one do against a chill? Puts on a cloak. Nobody thinks 'Why am I slave to this hunger?' or 'Damn this chill, I'll fight it!' No, they do what comes naturally, Your Majesty. The same is true of the wine. In our trials the patients don't even understand that they crave the vintage. They'll do anything to get it, but they don't even know they want it. And I do mean anything…"

Corinn watched him rub his fingertips across his thumbs at some memory of this anything. "What of our military? If our own soldiers drink this stuff, will it make them unwilling to fight? Peaceful?"

"Not at all. They'll rush to battle confident of victory! Understand that the vintage-Oh, how should I say…" Paddel squinted his entire face as he searched for the words to explain himself. "They see the world with gilded highlights, yes, but they still see the world. They still walk through the motions of life as before, and honor their responsibilities. They honor them even better, in fact! You, my queen, will rule an empire of happy citizens. They'll do whatever you wish, and they'll never see their lives for what they are-complete and total drudgery!"