Free The War With The Mein by David Anthony Durham

Now, finally, Acacia had a king grown lax enough that they could strike. Hanish believed that Leodan was the weakest heir in the long chain of his family’s history. A new age could begin, with a new calendar to mark the day, with new concepts of justice, with a redistribution of wealth, with privileges finally in the hands of those who had so long labored for other men’s gain. There was little in this that Rialus could refute. He was, after all, in a prime position to know just how deeply Acacia taxed its allies.
    Rialus could not even remember just when the Mein brothers had brought him into their confidence, but he did recall his incredulity at the claims that Hanish made. He had said his league allies were more powerful than the Akarans. They had grown frustrated with the Akarans and angry with Leodan. They believed the king wanted to break the Quota and abolish the mist trade. Because of this they had decided his fate. He would be removed and replaced by another willing to more faithfully meet their needs. Hanish claimed that this had happened twice before in the twenty-two generations since Tinhadin, but this was different. The king was not merely being removed so that his son—younger, more easily molded and controlled—could take his place. This time the Lothan Aklun wanted the entire line extinguished and a new dynasty established, with the Mein upon the throne.
    That was why Hanish had at his disposal a strange race of people willing to march across the Ice Fields and make war on the Mein’s behalf. That was why he possessed new weapons that hurled flaming balls of pitch like the sun, or that tossed boulders. Add to this a hidden Meinish army that had been hard at training in the mountains to the north of Tahalian, unknown to the outside world. With these tools and several other surprises, Hanish promised to sweep down upon an unsuspecting world and take it apart piece by piece.
    The brothers had alluded to various positions of stature Rialus might occupy in the reshaped world they envisioned, but as yet he had seen no rewards. He had hoped to prove himself useful. Unfortunately, this business with Leeka had not gone as he wished. He knew that the general’s army had been mysteriously massacred, but he was not at all sure if this would bring Maeander the pleasure it should. After all, Rialus’s charge had been to keep the general caged and to do what he could to hide the foreigners’ arrival. He had failed on both accounts.
    Maeander entered the governor’s chambers with a visible disdain for the formalities due an Acacian official. He walked past the secretary who was preparing to announce him and strode into the room with clipped steps that seemed both casual and sharp enough to split the stones beneath his boots. Maeander was several inches taller than his host. He was broad in the shoulders, with strength that showed in movements of his muscled thighs and in the sinewy bulges of his forearms and in the contours of his neck. He wore his hair long, below the shoulders, the straw-gold strands of it washed daily in icy water and combed out—an unusual thing, for most Meinish men let their hair knot and walked with a nest of snakes cascading down their shoulders. He was, in all outward forms, a model figure for the rough-hewn, virile men of his race, strapped into garments of tanned leather, legs covered by fitted trousers.
    Maeander pulled off his fur-lined gloves and tossed them down on a table, making a loud thwack as they hit. He did a quick survey of the room, pausing on the window. “So this is your window,” he said, inspecting the sheet of glass. He spoke Acacian with the guttural tones of his native language, sounds that had always offended Rialus’s ear. “The guards joked with me on the way in. When I instructed them to send you word of my arrival, one of them said that you already knew, since you always had one eye pressed against this glass. Another said that you seemed not to realize that