Outside the arena, walking through a dim passageway, Haleeven spoke to his nephew. “You do know how to stir the blood. But still, these matches unnerve me, Hanish. They are ill advised, considering the moment we face. I might just as easily have been looking on your corpse.”

“It was imperative,” Hanish replied, “especially considering the moment we face. If I cannot live by the ancestors’ codes, what value does my life have? It is the old ones who bless our bodies in battle, who approve of our skills or reject them. You know this, Haleeven. How else but in this could I be sure the Tunishnevre still blessed me? You surprise me sometimes, Uncle. No one man’s life is important; only the goal is.”

The other man smiled with one side of his mouth. “But each man has his place within the goal. Manleith was no friend of yours. He wanted the glory that will soon be yours, that’s all. He should not have challenged you right now, especially you, the twenty-second generation-”

“I am not the only son of this generation,” Hanish countered. “My role is to lead them by example. That is why I danced with Manleith. He was a friend from my youth. Think of the men in that chamber. Think of how they march now, how they practice for the war to come. Clear-eyed, physically fit, not one of them tainted by the mist. Think of that! Compare our men to the millions in the world who are slaves to deception. If you think I can keep them loyal to me without proving my loyalty to them, you are mistaken.”

With those words Hanish left his uncle to oversee the training. He pushed through the pinewood doors and climbed the stairs out of the Calathrock and up into the open air. A savage wind smacked him with enough force that he had to pause a moment, legs wide, one hand shielding his face from the tiny splinters of ice that peppered his cheeks and eyes. Though he had endured it all of his twenty-nine years, the harshness of the Mein winter never failed to amaze him, especially when stepping out of the massive shelter of the Calathrock or the warmth of the inner hold. It felt as if the winter night was a living, raging creature. The more they entrenched themselves and made life livable on the plateau, the more the snow tried to blanket them from existence; the more the wind sought to push them against the stones of the mountain, the more the cold found ways to enter their defenses. Hanish leaned forward and started the short walk across the frozen ground, the low-huddled mass of shadow that was Tahalian just visible through the storm.

An aide, Arsay, met him inside the hold. He held the tiny scroll out for him to take. “A message from Maeander,” he said. “Thasren has touched Leodan. He walked and slept and ate unnoticed by the enemy, and then came upon him at a banquet and pierced him with an Ilhach blade. The king’s time of idyll has ended.”

Hanish took the note in his fingers but did not read it. He had thought of his brother’s mission every day since Thasren had departed, and yet with the mention of his name he felt a tinge of shame that he had passed even a few hours not thinking of him. Thasren, weeks now alone in a foreign land, the vile treachery that was Acacia all around him, his life daily in a sort of danger very different from the Maseret. Hanish knew that Thasren had always felt himself the lesser sibling. The youngest, the least skilled in war, the farthest away from a claim to his father’s patriarchal lineage. To be a third son among the Mein was not easy. But such a thorn twisting in one’s side can be a boon if it drives one to action. That was what Meinish wisdom said.

“And my brother?”

Arsay averted his eyes at the question and answered in an ancient formula used to indicate an honorable death. “He asks to be praised.”

“He will be,” Hanish said swiftly. He instructed Arsay to call a council of generals in the morning. He said to send two messengers, one into the mountains alerting the army hidden there that the time had come, another to Maeander in Cathgergen, telling him to unleash the Numrek. And he was to rouse the mercenary naval officers so long guests in this ice-bound land. They had drunk enough grog, slept long enough wrapped in what pleasures the Mein could offer. It was time for them to earn their commissions. They were a thousand miles from the sea, but a fleet was ready, yet another secret project long years in construction. It would soon be afloat and pressing forward through a frozen ocean.

“I will meet with them all tomorrow,” Hanish said. “And alert my scribe that I will call on him tomorrow as well. Tonight I sit vigil with the ancestors. They will be anxious to understand Thasren’s fate. I should explain it to them. And I must cleanse myself of my opponent’s blood. It will be a long evening.”

Arsay had bowed his head at the mention of the elders and did not lift it again. As he walked away Hanish read the fear in the tension in the man’s neck and the cant of his head. Though he was critical of it-none should fear their ancestors, even if they were a ghostly embodiment of wrath-he had to acknowledge the tightness in his own throat, the tension high in his upper chest. None should fear the Tunishnevre, but all did. Inside their sacred chamber he felt the pulse of their undead energy as tangibly as he sensed heat or cold on his skin, joy or fear in his heart. They were the old ones of his people, preserved in timeless suspension. Such enmity as they contained within their ancient memory was a chilling thing to face.

He waited alone for some time, gathering strength, feeling the alignment of forces so long out of sync. The twenty-third generation since the Retribution…that’s what he was. If the Tunishnevre were right-and certainly they were-everything in the world was about to change.

Corinn would dream of the last embrace for many nights thereafter, so much so that the moment became something of a curse, a nightmare trap made of her siblings’ arms and her father’s dying body. It did not matter that she knew her father had not intended it that way. It did not matter that there was nothing else he could do, that it was a last tortured gesture made in love. She still wished it had never happened. Rather than see him as she did, she would have chosen not to see him that last time. Some things were better left incomplete, she thought, better left unfinished forever.

What transpired in the room between the king and his four children was simple. He awaited them on his bed, propped by pillows into a seated position. Corinn hung back behind the others as they ran toward him and fell to their knees beside his bed. Even at a distance she could see a man more ravaged than she could have imagined. She had thought of him all throughout the previous night, imagining him in pain, in different postures and conditions, and even still in death. But finally seeing him…It was as if a cloaked demon that had haunted her dreams all night had been un-hooded in the light of day; instead of allaying her fears the demon had been shown to be a more hideous thing than she had yet imagined. She wanted to turn and flee. She might have, except that the king’s eyes were pinned to her the moment she entered and seemed to stare at her alone.

Initially the others whispered their relief at seeing him, their horror at what had happened, their wishes that he gain his health again soon. But he could not listen to this for long. He motioned them to silence by lifting an arm and dragging his fingers through the air. The children waited, but it seemed there was nothing else he could offer them. She had realized before her siblings that he could not talk, that he was terribly weak and perhaps only hours from death. He could make no speeches to them. He could give them no last presents or words of wisdom. He could not, Corinn realized, keep the promises he had made to her.