Rhrenna entered. She was pale and slim, attractive in a fine-boned way, but she looked as if the bounty of Acacia never quite nourished her as completely as one might hope. She spoke in a pleasant voice, one suited to song and often called for late on banquet evenings. "Excuse me, Your Majesty, but you have visitors. Sire Dagon and Sire Neen of the league wish a brief audience with you."

"Dagon and Neen? I didn't even know they were on the island."

"Yes, they just arrived. They beg your forgiveness but swear the matter is urgent."

By custom, the leaguemen should have petitioned her officially for a meeting at least three days ahead of time. As much as she would have liked to turn them away, Corinn knew that if she did she would wonder what had brought them so urgently. She would spend her time trying to figure it out. Better to hear them and know from their mouths. Then she would search out the truth behind what they said.

She greeted them in the meeting room adjacent to her main balcony, one large chamber open to the air down its whole length. Instead of enjoying the view, however, she sat at ease in a high-backed chair, the brightness of the day at her back. Her fingers curled around the knobbed fists of the armrests. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?" she asked, crossing her legs as Dagon and Neen approached. "Two sires calling on me at once. A rare treat."

"The pleasure is all ours," Sire Dagon said, bowing his head in the slow manner of leaguemen.

"We beg forgiveness for the intrusion," Sire Neen added. "The matter is of considerable import, Your Majesty. We could not but bring it to you immediately."

Both men fell into ritual greeting, spreading platitudes like rose petals they hoped would scent the room. They were dressed in the silken, luxurious robes of their sect and moved with a monklike air of reverence. They were not from a religious organization-indeed, their main doctrine centered on the insatiable appetite for wealth-but they were a closed group with mysterious ways that few outsiders understood. Outwardly, they were always gaunt, most often tall, with necks elongated by a lifelong stretching process. Their heads were bound in infancy and squeezed into a conical shape that eventually hardened to permanence. It was said they smoked their own distillation of mist-one so potent it would kill normal folk-that lengthened their life spans. But as no one outside the league knew when any of them was born or when most of them died, it was impossible to verify this rumor.

Though they talked as if this visit had no purpose other than social interaction, Corinn noticed that neither man fingered a mist pipe. This, more than anything else, was an indication they were anxious to get to the point. She obliged them. "Sires," she broke in, "sit down, please. I know your time is valuable. I trust you haven't had problems with the additive? You assured me it was perfected."

"It is!" Sire Dagon exclaimed. "It is. Even as we speak it is being delivered to Prios with careful instructions. No, it's another matter…" He paused a moment, cleared his throat, and began, "We have always been direct with each other, you and I. Direct and completely honest. I will be exactly that way with this matter."

Mentally Corinn rolled her eyes. League directness had a lot in common with the knotted brambles that choked the hills along the rivers in Senival. One could get tangled in that "directness," pricked a thousand times by barbs that dug deeper if you fought them. It was true that she had known Sire Dagon longer than Sire Neen. She felt vaguely more comfortable with him. It was he with whom she had brokered the arrangement that withdrew league support from Hanish's war effort and with whom she had drawn up the basic details of their continued commerce. They were not details she was proud of, but such were the realities of rule.

Chief among the concessions she had made was deeding the league ownership of the Outer Isles. The chain of white sand islands that had once been Dariel's haven as a brigand was now a series of plantations for the breeding and raising of quota. They deemed it necessary for the entire system to be self-enclosed. There could be no outside influence whatsoever. Nobody could trade or interact with the breeding population. What's more, the breeders themselves could have no memories of anything other than their life on the islands. For this reason, they had acquired infant children for several years now.

It would be some time yet before they were truly producing quota as Sire Dagon and the others envisioned, but it would lead to complete self-sufficiency. The slaves themselves would plant and harvest their own food. They would trade for goods among themselves within an enclosed system that cost the empire nothing. They would know nothing other than the existence the league engineered for them-and that, Sire Dagon had promised the queen personally, would be an existence of stability and even some measure of comfort. Once the league set in place a system of apparent self-governance for them, along with a religious doctrine shaped to the situation, the slaves need not even feel themselves slaves at all.

The result of this all was that they would offer their children up without question. Different islands would host them at different ages, so that parents would not grow to love children. Children would never know their parents. The exact details the league never disclosed to her, and she never asked. Just the fact that she had allowed it was a close enough bond between them. It would hold, she believed, for generations, perhaps for another twenty-two, as had been the case with the original agreement Tinhadin had brokered. Did it ever trouble her conscience? Yes, but such, as she often reminded herself, was the burden of rule.

"I would expect nothing less from you, dear Dagon," she said, making sure her courteous tone had a bite to it, "and you will get nothing less from me. Proceed."

Sire Dagon nodded, his eyes half closed as if the words were music to him. "Queen Corinn, you must know by now that the league holds you in the highest regard. In truth, we haven't held such complete faith in an Akaran for several generations. No insult to your ancestors intended, of course. It's just that we find yours a remarkable reign, young though it is."

"So full of promise," Sire Neen slipped in, grinning. His teeth had been filed, not to points, but to roundness, each of them a gentle curve of measured uniformity. When Corinn looked at him she kept her gaze pinned to his forehead. His eyes had a dead quality to them, a reptilian flatness that she could not-and to some degree did not wish to-penetrate. She was not sure which of the leaguemen held greater rank, nor did she know where or how Sire Neen had served the league before taking over management of the Outer Isles project. They never offered the information, and she never asked.

Despite their claim of directness, a few minutes more passed with both men praising the peace she had brought, both of them sure that the empire would soon be more prosperous than ever in its history. Eventually, Corinn lifted her finger. "Please, you digress again. What are you really here to tell me or ask of me?"

The two leaguemen conferred with their eyes and seemed to conclude that the time had come. Sire Neen said, "There has been an unfortunate development. Recently, last fall to be precise, we sought intelligence about the Auldek."

"Sought intelligence?"

"There has never been a more closed, maddeningly secretive people than the Lothan Aklun," Sire Dagon said with no hint that his listener might find this complaint ironic coming from him. "As you know, the Lothan Aklun are to the Auldek what we are to you. They are not the market you trade with; they are simply the merchants who hold sway in the Other Lands."