When he was finished, Hanish sat staring at him. Two thousand? Among those people such a number would mean almost every child in the region. He felt like bridging the space between them and smacking Dagon’s bony face for such a number. Two thousand? It went against everything the established quota system guaranteed. It unmasked the barbarity of the whole thing in a way they might not recover from.

For a time he sat massaging his temples. He thought of Corinn. He would tell her all about this later. He would look in her face and listen to her response and gain some measure by which to weigh his own feelings. That would be good. It grew harder and harder to gauge the effect his decisions had on the world. She would help.

“You know,” he said, speaking through an exhaled breath, “some have argued that the league has outlived its usefulness. Some say you take too much and give too little.”

Sire Dagon sneered. “What learned adviser whispered that in your ear?”

Hanish ignored the question. “You expect me to allow you to take an entire generation from those people? I cannot. I will not. The provinces are tense enough already. What nation in the Known World won’t see such an action as a threat to them? They’d be outraged. It could be the spark that ignites all manner of unrest. No, you must find some other way. The world still needs to be repopulated, not harvested.”

Sire Dagon flipped his pipe closed and stuffed it away. After contemplating the chieftain for a moment, he said, “I’ve not been clear on something, Hanish. The orders have already been given. The raid, in all likelihood, occurred yesterday. I am here as a courtesy, so that you need not be surprised when the news reaches you. Scowl at me all you like, Hanish. Threaten me. Fume at me. Reach across the space between us and throttle my neck if you want to. Stab me with the blade at your waist. I’m entirely at your mercy. Just know that if you do so you’re like the ant that bites a man’s little toe. You bite one moment, the next you’re squashed. You rule the Known World at the pleasure of the League of Vessels. Haven’t you realized that yet? And the revolt you fear has already begun. It didn’t take our actions to start it. Look to the provinces, Hanish. Look to Talay and put your ear to the ground and hear the name those people are murmuring with more and more urgency. You’ll see you have enough problems to attend to. Leave us to our business. And know that whatever revolt is coming is nothing compared to the risk of angering the Other Lands.”

“So you do fear someone,” Hanish said. “You insult me, put me in the place you believe I should occupy, but the Lothan Aklun you fear.”

Sire Dagon had risen to his feet, ready to depart, but something in what Hanish said softened him. The look he fixed on the chieftain was almost kind. “You understand so little of the way the world works. It’s not the Lothan Aklun we fear. The Lothan Aklun are not so different from us of the league except that their wealth surpasses ours. The ones we have reason to fear live just beyond the Lothan Aklun. It’s they that the Lothan trade with, just as you trade with us.”

The last few moments had introduced too much information for Hanish to grasp at once. He was not sure which thing to question first, and he felt an almost adolescent need not to show his surprise. He cast his voice with a tone of disinterest, as if the question were not particularly important to him. “What are these people called?”

“The Auldek,” Sire Dagon said, after weighing for a moment whether he should answer. “You’ve never set eyes on one of them and you never need to. Knowing too much about them would only keep you awake at night. Yes, even you, Chieftain. But believe me, Hanish, on the day that they decide it’s worth their effort to set their sights on us-to punish, to reap the products themselves, even out of simple curiosity-on that day the world you love ends forever. Only the League of Vessels keeps the world in balance.”

Hanish stopped the leagueman from departing. “Don’t go,” he said. He bit down his pride. “I…thank you for telling me about Luana. I understand that the league must act decisively in these tumultuous times. I won’t fault you for it. It would be easier, though, if you sat with me a little longer and told me more about the things I don’t know. Better that you share with me than that I work against you. Don’t you agree?”

Sire Dagon considered this. He said nothing, but he did lower himself back into his seat and pat his pocket to locate his pipe.

The seas below the southern coast of Talay were blacker and more violent than any the raiders of the Outer Isles had ever seen. Currents converged from two sides of the continent, mixing with the waters chilled from being in the shadow of the earth’s curve. For five days running, mountainous waves lifted and dipped the Ballan. The ship tilted on each rise, crested like a bird taking flight, and then crashed down the other side in a momentary rush toward the depths. Sailors who had never been sick in their lives went weak-kneed, turned yellow, gave up all pretense and swagger. They spit up everything they had eaten. After that, they produced things they could not recognize and still later tried to loosen their internal organs and offer them to the sea as well.

Off to the north the coastline of Talay stretched in featureless desolation, nothing but a distant smudge of sand-duned shore, no trees or mountains or human settlements to break the monotony. Forlorn as it was, Spratling longed to drag himself onto its shores, to sit sodden and snot nosed on his backside and wave the Ballan into the distance. If nothing else, such improbable fantasies helped pass the hours.

They witnessed things they had previously heard only tales of. Lights rippled across the heavens at night, multihued flapping ribbons. Spratling tried to hear the sound of them, sure that such massive contortions of color must tear the air like thunder. The silence of them never seemed right. Once a family of whales performed an aerial ballet off to starboard: leaping one after another into the air, canting to the side, and crashing down in a foam of spray. Another time they sailed past an enormous island of floating ice. The lookout who spotted it cried an alarm in a rising adolescent voice. He later admitted that he feared they had come upon a land of ghosts, a thing people of the Known World should not see, a trespass for which they would be punished. Spratling had tousled the young man’s hair. Inside, however, he tingled with the same thought himself. What a venture they were on! He scarcely believed it was happening, and it still amazed him to recall how easy his crew had actually made it for him.

It had happened just a couple of days after the attack on the platforms. Gathered together on the deck of the Ballan as the sun set, he’d looked up from his tea and said, “I’ve things to say. You may think some of them are mad, but here it goes anyway.”

He began by swearing that he had loved every minute of his time among them. It had been wonderful the way they moved from place to place throughout the Outer Isles, living dangerous and free, by no laws except the ones they held to mutually. He considered each of them his brother or sister, aunt or uncle. He cited individuals by name. He recalled moments shared in the past. They had been a nation unto themselves, hadn’t they? They’d had a true enemy in the League of Vessels, and they’d bested them on more than their fair share of occasions. He was proud of that.

The trouble was, he had said, he could not go on like this forever. He had come from the Inner Sea, from the heart of workings of the Known World. He had fled a great turmoil and tried to forget it. He had tried to put it behind him and to pretend he owned no part of it. It had almost worked. But not quite. He had never really forgotten. He could not pretend not to have to answer to his native country, his blood, and his destiny. The time had come for him to reckon with the fate he had delayed for some years now. So that was what he was going to do.