Hephron seemed to notice him just then. His eyes moved over toward him. His pupils were dilated to nearly the size of his irises, but something in the frantic intensity of them showed that he was trying to focus on Hanish. There was a tint of red in his sweat now. Hanish found a cloth in a basin beside the bed and dabbed Hephron’s forehead clean with it. Almost instantly the pink stain seeped back up into the creases of his skin.

“Some years back-before I was even born but when my mother lived-my people first made contact with the Numrek and through them with the Lothan Aklun. Those pioneering men all suffered this illness. The first party to return from across the Ice Fields infected nearly all of Tahalian. The whole fortress was racked as you are now. Thousands died. But those that lived, we learned, never got the illness again. Nor did we stay in a contagious state long after mending. At first we kept this illness a secret out of shame; only later, through my father’s genius, did we recognize it as a weapon as well. Your people never knew of it. We never reported our numbers accurately anyway. After the fever we were glad for it. We learned that it was possible to give a taste of the illness pricked on a needle, just enough so that a person once pricked would not succumb to the full wrath of it. Later still we discovered that the spirit of the illness can live on long after fever has passed. The touch I placed on you, young Hephron, came directly from a swatch of a garment my grandfather died in.”

Hanish slipped a hand into the fabric of his thalba-just as he had before touching Hephron two days before-but this time he drew out the square of fabric pinched between his fingers. “This is the thing that defeated you here today. It carries the contagion somehow trapped in it. Impossible to believe, isn’t it? I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t learned of its truth through suffering. You did not slay me after all, Hephron Anthalar. That possibility was never within your grasp. It is I who have slain you, with nothing more than a touch. Many people, with time, recover from this, but not without days in the throes you now feel and then a period of weakness afterward. So what will happen is this: this fever will travel like a wave through your people. And behind the wave we will come reaping. Be thankful your role in this is concluded. The Akarans’ idyll is over; as it dies a new age begins. Better for you that you do not live to see it. I doubt very much you would like the shape of things to come.”

When Hanish stepped out of the tent a moment later he carried his knife unsheathed in one hand. It was wet with the marbled pattern of blood. All around him his army kept at the butchery. He raised his eyes and looked at the wall of Alecia. He would have to find the Scatevith stone before proceeding past this wall. He would lay his cheek upon it. That is what he must do. He wanted very badly to lay his skin against that stone and have it whisper to him that all of this was as it should be. All of this was just and right. It began before him and would go on after him. He was simply an instrument of a greater purpose.

The chosen vessel was one of the larger fishing rigs, with two square mainsails near the midpoint and a triangular jib that danced before the prow like a kite at play, rippling and shifting so that the simple insignia that named its owner snapped into and out of view. Anyone watching from shore knew the boat well enough. It had plied Acacian waters for more than thirty years. The crewmen working the deck were slightly more numerous than usual, but it was not uncommon for the rigs to take on trainees in the late winter months, before the bonito returned from the Talayan Shoals, followed by mainland ships in need of spring crews. It floated high above the waterline, as was typical of empty hulls waiting to be filled; the time of its embarkation standard to begin the five-day loop necessary during the slack season. But none of these things were actually as they appeared.

The men dressed as fishermen were in fact Marah guards. The cargo was not to be the yellow-tailed fish the vessel normally trolled the winter seas for. Instead it carried the four Akaran children. They hid for the early part of the journey in the foul-smelling hold of the ship, each of them sullen and dead eyed, breathing through their mouths as much as possible. They wore the same look of worry under their skin, like a genetic trait passed to each of them at birth but only lately emerging. Mena kept feeling the impulse to speak, to share, to say something to break the tension. She was stopped every time by the indisputable fact that she could think of nothing reasonable to say.

Once out of the sheltered curve of the northern harbor, the vessel set a barb into the wind and flew hooked to its underbelly. It cut the glass-blue, frosted water, behind it a squall of seabirds, raucous creatures shouting out their demands. The captain of the guard invited the children up onto the deck once they had put the island some distance behind them, saying there were no eyes to spot them anymore. Mena watched the guards from the back of the boat, tasting the salty air on the wall of her throat. She wondered which of the men or few women she could see had killed before. Some among them had a part in putting down the uprising of the Meinish soldiers. The rebels had been defeated within a bloody hour, the last of them chased careening down the stairways and finally captured and slain in the streets of the lower town. Aliver, she knew, had been spirited away from the mкlйe. He did not speak about it, but she could tell he felt shamed by it. Nor was it the only insult to his pride.

She turned away from the guards and watched the wake of the boat. She was not sure what to think of this journey. Thaddeus had explained they were fleeing the island temporarily, for a week or so, no more than a month. They would be safer out of the public view and needed to stay away only long enough for the rebellion to be crushed and for the culprits who killed their father to be punished and for any other schemers on the island to be found out and dealt with. They would sail to the northern tip of Kidnaban and stay in quiet seclusion with the mine’s chairman there. Thaddeus promised that they would return to Acacia as soon as possible. For some reason Mena had not believed him. There was some other truth behind his faзade and his reasoned words, but she could not imagine what it was.

Aliver did not seem to doubt the man’s sincerity, but he had rebelled against the plan with more anger than Mena had ever seen him display before. He had shouted about the coming battle, saying it was his duty to lead the army. He was the king! The responsibility was his, even if he died in the effort! It took all of Thaddeus’s persuasive efforts just to soothe Aliver down to a normal volume. Thaddeus invoked his powers as sitting chancellor with interim responsibilities. He chastised Aliver, claiming the orders came directly from Leodan himself, saying that they were both honor bound to abide by them. In the end, though, it was not persuasion but force that got the prince onto the boat. He was escorted, along with the other children, by disguised Marah guards who made it clear they had to follow the king’s orders as handed to them by the chancellor. It was all Aliver could do to temporarily accept his exile, though he fumed and reddened at the perceived insult of it.

Late on the first day at sea they came in sight of the Cape of Fallon. It was a shoreline of crumbly cliffs, above which lay a landscape of gentle undulations, tall with grasses, splashed here and there with the colors of winter wildflowers. Dariel sat beside Mena near the stern of the ship. The two of them shared a spread of spiced sardines on crackers. Dariel picked at the fish more than he ate them, trying with the point of a knife to separate the soft bones from the flesh, collecting them in a pile that he occasionally scooped up on the blade and flicked overboard. Something about this filled her with love for the boy. The feeling swelled in her with the power of nostalgia for something lost, as if she were not sitting beside him at that very moment, still every bit his sister, as he was every bit her brother. She wondered why she looked at him with emotion that suggested this was no longer so.