The Other Lands by David Anthony Durham Page B

benefited the Lothan Aklun. “This is why you came into the Known World over the Ice Fields. Hardly an easy route.”
    “It was a feat to make us immortal,” Calrach said with a bravado that, even for him, felt a bit forced. “No other has ever accomplished it. We are not so different from gods, yes?”
    Sire Neen nodded but did not answer. Instead, he looped back. “Amazing that you fear the sea so much, and yet—”
    “Fear! Fear?” Calrach spat, this time without aiming at all. “I know no fear, but the water will not support us!”
    “So you cannot swim? Surely, you could learn. Even the smallest child can—”
    For a moment Rialus was sure Calrach was going to smash the league-man across his too-thin jaw. Indeed, the Numrek half rose from his seat. He grasped Neen’s chair at the armrests and pushed his face close, the muscles in his neck quivering, his jaw tight. “We have heavy bones!”
    Sire Neen, straight-faced and nonplussed, asked, “Heavy bones? That’s a strange ailment.”
    “I am iron inside,” Calrach said. “Drop me in the ocean, and I will sink to the bottom like an anchor. I would not like that. I would have to walk along the bottom to return to land. I could do it, but the very thought of it makes me angry.”
    Despite the fact that Rialus did imagine Numrek bones to be nearly as hard and heavy as iron, he had to duck his head and clear his throat to keep his amusement from curling his lips. Angry, indeed! Angry like a child lost in the woods. He had not thought the Numrek so adept at manipulating language.
    “So you say we must bind you?” Sire Dagon said. “With chains, you mean?”
    Calrach loosened his grip and returned to his seat. “Yes, if you wish to live. I cannot promise we’d not go into a rage out of sight of land. You wouldn’t want that.”
    For a moment, as Sire Dagon spoke and Calrach detailed the strength of the bonds that would be needed to contain his great power, Rialus watched the other leagueman. Sire Neen’s bland visage did not quite hide the amused interest with which he listened. His eyes were wide and attentive, his cheeks flushed. This might have been from staring into Calrach’s shouting face, but he looked pleased. His mouth hung open just slightly, and the tip of his tongue slipped across the round little nubs that were his teeth.
    A moment later, one of the navigators began to brief him on preparations being made for the prince, but Rialus only half listened. And then Rialus understood something that had tugged at the edge of his understanding since he arrived at the meeting. He knew, of course, that not even a single word spoken by a leagueman could be taken as truth. He had sensed in every question and glance and pleasantry that the two men were so entangled in deceptions that their spoken words had only the semblance of truth to them. But all of this was standard. Anybody with a working knowledge of the league knew these things. What Rialus saw, however, was there on the tip of Sire Neen’s pink tongue as it slid across his teeth. Rialus could not have explained exactly how he knew it, but an uncanny ability to recognize deceit was his chief skill. Who can explain the gifts the Giver bestows on him?
    Neen, Rialus realized, was hiding something, plotting something all his own. Rialus turned away from him before Neen noticed him watching, but he kept the image locked in his mind, studying it.

Chapter Six
    D o you ever wonder what the world would be like if Aliver had lived?” Melio asked.
    “Of course,” Mena said. “You know we all do.”
    “Yeah,” Melio agreed. “We all do.”
    He pulled her closer with the arm he already had wrapped around her shoulders. The two of them lay together in the predawn, touching along the length of their naked bodies. They had just made love, the sort of silent, spontaneous coupling they were often driven to in the quiet hours before facing danger once again. Though they had said nothing since wishing each