Aliver tried to look around and return the greetings directed at him, but his eyes faltered before long. He heard some of the kind words with his gaze fixed on the tabletop.

His eyes continued to roam over the grain of the stone as he heard Thaddeus’s secretary give his report. There was scarcely a person on the island who could confirm the assassin’s identity, he said. By chance an official who had lived a year in Cathgergen auditing the satrapy’s books attested that the man was, indeed, Thasren Mein. But the matter was not without dispute. Speaking via messenger pigeons, Meinish representatives in Alecia issued a denial, swearing the assassin could not have been Thasren. They insisted that it was a plot by some other conspirators, but not by the Mein. They even announced their intention to sail promptly to Acacia and plead their innocence. This may have been a ploy, however, for the only Meinish official actually on the island had vanished. Gurnal and his family had fled, leaving his house a tomb for several servants. It was, to say the least, difficult to make sense of.

As the secretary concluded, Julian, one of the more senior councillors, said, “This is not enough information to form action on.” A few voices, seemingly exasperated with the elder already, pointed out that nobody had yet suggested any action. Julian continued undeterred. “Hanish Mein sending his brother to his death…and for what-to start a war he cannot hope to win? I can believe neither what my eyes saw nor what I’ve been told since. Hanish is barely more than a boy. I saw him at the winter rites a few years ago. He grew a downy beard on his cheeks, untrimmed like boys anxious to be men.”

Relos, the commander of the Acacian forces and a man Aliver knew his father trusted, said, “He is a boy no longer. I believe he is now in his twenty-ninth year.”

Julian’s eyes touched on Aliver for a second, and then he asked the general company, “If Hanish Mein did this, for what reason? What does he intend?”

“We cannot know what he intends,” Chales, another older soldier, said. “Julian, your love of peace is well known, but not all persons are as generous minded as you.”

“And boys are often foolish,” Relos said. “Full of pride. Folly.”

Thaddeus cut off Julian’s response. “No one here looks at the night and calls it day,” he said. “We should consider all possibilities, and Julian’s question is valid. Perhaps this is not Hanish Mein’s doing. Perhaps, but I have found the most obvious culprit is usually the actual culprit. The Mein are an ancient people. Ancient people have long memories. Hanish might believe he acts on his forefathers’ behalf. He is in contact with his ancestors, and they crave Acacian blood as much now as they ever did. At least, that is what men of the Mein believe. They delude themselves this way.”

“We are all ancient people, Thaddeus,” Relos said. “Some of us remember this and some don’t. Some can name their father’s father’s father and some cannot. But the blood in each of us began at the beginning and runs still. Age is no excuse for treachery.”

A quiet moment of hesitation prompted Aliver to speak. “We are circling the issue here without looking it in the face,” he said. “The man-the assassin-does anyone doubt he was of the Mein race? And that he spoke their language with ease? Did he not name himself?” The room answered this with silence, all seemingly surprised to hear the young man speak and not sure how to answer him. “Then why look at the night sky and wonder whether it is actually daytime disguised? We know who did this. A Mein stuck a blade in my father! We will do the same to them but with greater force. And I do not care why they did it. An act is an act, no matter the reasoning of the mind that commited it. They must be punished.”

“Just so, Prince,” Thaddeus said. “That is why we are here. We must form some sort of response. The governors will have their own ideas, but they will look to us for guidance and, ultimately, for approval of any course of action.”

“Then we are here to decide how to attack?” Aliver asked, gaining confidence from his own boldness. “How quickly can we have an army knocking on the door of Tahalian?”

Thaddeus deferred to Carver, the only Marah captain on the island, for his thoughts on military deployments. In his role as councillor Carver was the youngest in attendance, just in his mid-thirties. He had been born fortunate, the latest of a long line of warriors, and his skill and ambition had sped his way to prominence. He had volunteered to lead the army against the Candovian Discord a few years earlier. This was a rare military action, of which Aliver believed the stories were more fiction than truth, but Carver could claim to have commanded in battle. Few Acacians could say the same. Still, Aliver did not care for what he had to say.

No attack against the Mein could be rushed, he proclaimed. They had to consider the Mein’s military prowess, their isolated location, and the territory through which one had to travel to reach them. Acacian forces were spread through the empire in a way that allowed them police powers but not in concentrations sufficient to launch a military campaign without reorganization and transportation of troops. They could start pulling in units from the provinces, order call-ups of more, and they could marshal troops around Alecia in the early spring. Perhaps, if Aushenia was amenable, they could move troops into forward positions near the Gradthic Gap by the spring equinox. But this would be a defensive measure. They could not actually march onto the Mein Plateau until at least a month later, and then travel would be difficult over the sodden ground and with all the rivers at flood, not to mention the insects…

“Insects?” Aliver asked. “Are you mad? My father is stabbed by a Mein assassin and you speak to me of insects?”

Carver frowned in a way that drew his prominent eyebrows toward each other. “My lord, have you ever seen the tiny flies of the Meinish spring? They swarm the land, clouds so thick that men have suffocated just from inhaling them. And they bite. Men have died of blood loss. But the worst is that they cause disease, fevers, plagues… There are many things to consider in a military campaign, many ways for soldiers to die other than on a sword. Insects, my prince, are one of them. Perhaps a forward force familiar with the winter conditions of the Mein could start movements earlier, before the thaw brings the pests of the place to life, but with General Alain missing I would not recommend it.”

Aliver shook his head, perplexed to hear a soldier voice such reluctance. He had always been taught to think in terms of a direct strike, especially as their army outnumbered the forces of any one province. He wanted to ask what had happened to General Alain, but from the way that Carver mentioned him, it was clear everyone else knew something of this already. He said, “The soldiers of the Mein number no more than twenty thousand, and ten of those are in our service throughout the empire. That was the decree. So my question is how quickly can we have a force large enough to defeat the ten thousand fighters in place? That hardly seems an impossible task.”

Carver muttered that the Mein’s population had always been hard to ascertain. At times their numbers seemed to fluctuate in ways that did not correspond to the official census. “If we are to have war with the Mein, it is unlikely we will clash arms before early summer. A punitive force sent sooner…I am not sure it is possible. If Hanish picked his timing so as to leave us unable to strike back immediately, he chose well. There is also the innate nature of Meinish soldiers to consider. Men of the Mein kill as a matter of course. They cull the weak so that each generation makes them stronger. They train in the harshest of conditions. They keep secret customs that we can only guess at. Each Mein life we take will be paid for dearly.”