Free The Other Lands by David Anthony Durham Page A

before, and he loved it. The work may have been nothing more than an attempt to busy himself, but he hoped it was more and that he was doing good for the right reasons. It was important to him that this be true.
    He described for Corinn the small moments he felt he would never forget. How he enjoyed sitting at fires with villagers and eating stew from wooden bowls, talking about such things as the weather and the growth of crops. He welcomed the fatigue with which he lay down each night, pleased that he had stolen nothing, killed no one, planned no destruction. He loved sleeping on straw mattresses and watching barn cats hunt mice and listening—as he once had in a village near the Gradthic Range—to two owls converse through the night. On the road outside Careven a blond-haired boy had presented him with a crown woven of grass. At a commemorative ceremony at Aushenguk Fell an old woman had approached him silently from behind. Without a word, she pressed her flat chest against his back and wrapped her stick arms around his torso and clung there. “She had no weight at all,” he said, “light as a bird.” She never said a thing, but he was sure the gesture was one of thanks.
    “As it should be,” Corinn said. “I don’t know that there was any similar venture done by an Akaran in all our generations of rule. Word is, you’ve done us a great service. The people speak well of you. I’ve learned from you, brother.”
    Dariel took a long draft of wine, enough to wash down the first thoughts he had on hearing this. She always thought foremost of rule and reputation and of the empire’s fortunes. Perhaps she had to, as queen, but he wanted to remember the good he did for the people he served, not for the Akaran name.
    “There is still so much to do,” he said. “I barely know what to attend to next. There must be some way we can fight the drought in Talay. And I know it will seem a strange idea, but we must convince the Mainlanders to begin planting new trees to replace the ones they cut from the Eilavan Woodlands. I passed along the edge of it on the way to Aos and I saw miles of stumps and bracken, hardly a forest at all anymore.” He paused, for no reason other than something in the patient way Corinn watched him indicated that she was humoring him, that she had something to say but was letting him ramble on first. “What?”
    “I heard something that doesn’t please me, Dariel. You have been critical of my policies.”
    Just like that, he felt a cold hand grip his heart. He felt the pulse in his palms, suddenly strong. It was absurd. She was his sister! There was no danger here, no matter that his body seemed to think there was. “I haven’t,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “King Grae complained to you about our tax levees on Aushenian ports. You, I’ve heard, said—Do you recall what you said?”
    He did, but he shook his head, shrugged.
    “You said, ‘You may have a point.’ How could you say that? Do you understand how that undermines me?”
    “I didn’t mean that. It’s just that they pay us for—”
    “Don’t question me! They pay us for the very possibility of the prosperity—the peace to trade. That’s what we give them; what we take is no more than our due. If we give them their commerce, we’re giving them the first piece of their independence.”
    Would that be so bad? Dariel thought but did not dare say.
    “We cannot do that. We cannot even suggest that it’s possible. Grae doesn’t know what’s good for him. He’s like a child who would eat only sweets. He may be happy—until his teeth drop out. No, the only way to prosperity in the Known World is my way, the Akaran way. Never show doubt about that, certainly not before others’ eyes.”
    She inhaled, ran her hand over her face, and changed her demeanor. With warmer, more complacent tones in her voice, she said, “It’s fine that you have already given so much and that you wish to continue with such work.