The Complete Empire Trilogy (148 page)

Nacoya and a patrol of brave warriors were ashes, but aching failure lingered in Mara’s mind. A week passed before she steadied enough to ask for Arakasi.

The hour was late evening, and Mara sat in her study beside a nearly untouched supper tray. Her request for the Spy Master’s presence had been carried by her little runner slave, who now bowed until his forehead touched the waxed floor.

‘Lady,’ he said, still prone. ‘Your Spy Master is not here. Jican regrets to inform you that he left your lands within the hour after the attack upon your person and son. He told no one of his destination, nor did he give a date for his return.’

Seated on her cushions under the hot lamplight, Mara stayed motionless for so long that the slave boy began to tremble.

She stared at the painted murals commissioned by her last husband, Buntokapi, the ones that depicted bloody battle scenes in rioting brilliance. From the rapt look on Mara’s face, she appeared to be seeing them for the first time. It was most unlike the mistress not to notice her slave boy’s discomfort, for she was fond of him, and patted him often on the head when he rendered quick service.

‘Lady?’ he offered timorously, when minutes passed and his knees began to ache.

Mara stirred and came back to herself. She realized the moon stood well up in the sky beyond the screen, and the wicks burned low in her oil lamps, ‘You may retire,’ she bade with a sigh.

The boy scurried from the room in grateful haste. Mara continued as she was, while servants entered and removed
the untouched dishes. But she waved away the maids who expected her to retire, and stayed toying with a dry quill pen, a blank parchment sheet spread before her. Hours passed, and she did not write. Night insects sang in the garden beyond the screens, and the relief watch changed guard at midnight.

It simply was not conceivable that Arakasi was a traitor; and yet, in low words, members of her household suggested so. Mara twisted the pen, anguished. She had delayed any formal summons, hoping the man would present himself and prove beyond any question he had no part in Tasaio’s attempt on her house. Keyoke had stayed closemouthed on the subject, and the usually outspoken Saric was reluctant to speak. Even Jican took care not to linger for a chat after his reports on estate finance. Mara tossed the quill pen aside and massaged her temples with her fingers.

It was most painfully plain that Arakasi could be suspect.

Were he to turn coat, her danger was multiplied. Over the years, he had been entrusted with her household’s deepest secrets. There was no aspect of her affairs that he did not know intimately. And he detested the Minwanabi as she did.

Or did he?

Mara sweated in torment. If his desire for revenge had been an act, what better ploy to gain her confidence than to revile the same enemy that had ruined her father and brother?

Arakasi, who was so gifted at changing roles and guises; he was a consummate actor, easily capable of feigning passionate hatred.

Mara closed her eyes and recalled conversations between herself and Arakasi over the years. The man
couldn’t
have betrayed her. Could he? She sighed, indulging herself in that simple release in the privacy of her quarters. She was certain in her heart that Arakasi couldn’t be a Minwanabi agent; the hatred for Tasaio and his family was too real, but could
someone else have turned the Spy Master? Someone who could, perhaps, offer Arakasi a better position from which to conduct his war against the Minwanabi? With the price for that more secure position the Acoma’s betrayal?

Mara’s fingers tightened until they left white marks on her flesh. If the Spy Master was the relli in her nest, everything she had done was for naught. At this moment Nacoya’s carping would have been welcome, a sign that errors could be rectified.

But the old woman was now ashes, dust amid the dust of a thousand Acoma ancestors whose honour Mara was entrusted to keep.

Again she tormented herself with the question: How could she have held such a deep, instinctive rapport with a man who wished her harm? How could she?

The night held no answers.

Mara dropped tired hands in her lap and regarded her abandoned quill pen. Though the lamps blazed brightly around her, and her best guards stood vigilant at her door, she felt cornered. With a hand that shook distressingly, she reached out and took up pen and parchment. She scraped dried ink from the nib, dipped it in the waiting ink jar, and wrote in formal style in the centre of the top of the page the name of Kamatsu of the Shinzawai.

An extended interval passed before she could force herself to continue. Neither could she simplify her pain by sending a servant to fetch her scribe. Her promise to Nacoya was sacred. In her own hand, she completed the ritual phrases of the proposal for marriage, asking Kamatsu’s honoured son, Hokanu of the Shinzawai, to reconsider after her former refusal, and take her hand as consort of the Lady of the Acoma.

Tears welled in Mara’s eyes as she reached the final line, added her signature, and affixed her family chop. She folded
and sealed the document quickly, clapped for a servant, and gave her instructions with her throat tight with emotion.

‘Have this paper delivered at once to the marriage brokers in Sulan-Qu. They are to present it with all speed to Kamatsu of the Shinzawai.’

The servant accepted the paper and bowed before his mistress. ‘Lady Mara, your will shall be carried out at first light.’

Mara’s brows gathered instantly into a frown. ‘I said, at once! Find a messenger and send the document with all speed!’

The servant prostrated himself on the floor. ‘Your will, Lady.’

She waved him impatiently away. If she noted his quick and puzzled glance at the darkness beyond the screen, she did not call him back in allowance for the unreasonable hour. If she delayed the proposal to Kamatsu until morning, she knew well she would not be able to send the document on at all. Better the messenger stand a few hours in the dark, waiting for the broker to arise, than risk another opportunity to change her mind and break her vow.

The chamber suddenly seemed too stifling, and the scent of the akasi cloying. Mara shoved her writing table aside. Filled with a desperate need to see Kevin, she stumbled to her feet and hurried down the lit corridors, past rows of vigilant guards, to the nursery wing.

At the entrance, half-blind in the sudden dark, Mara hesitated. She blinked back a fresh flood of tears and waited for her eyes to adjust; the pungent healer’s herbs and poultice scents lay heavily upon the air. Finally, she crossed the threshold.

Moonlight turned the closed screen copper and carved the rows of watchful warriors outside into dark silhouettes. In no way comforted by their vigilance, Mara made her way to the mat where Kevin lay, his bandages white smears in the
gloom, and his torso twisted in the sheets as though his rest had been troubled. She paused, looked to Ayaki, and reassured herself that the boy was more settled, asleep with his mouth open, his hands half-curled on his pillow. The scratch on his neck was healing more quickly than Kevin’s hurts, which had been treated less promptly in the field. But the assassin had left more lasting marks on the little boy’s mind. Relieved he did not suffer another nightmare, Mara moved past, careful not to disturb him. She dropped to her knees by Kevin’s mat and tugged to disentangle his limp weight from the constricting snarl of the bedclothes.

He stirred at her touch and opened his eyes. ‘Lady?’

Mara silenced his murmur with her lips.

Kevin reached up left-handed and captured her around the waist. Strong despite his injuries, he pulled her to him. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he whispered in her hair. His hand moved, and under his practised manipulation, her light lounging robe fell open.

Mara buried her grief and strove to match his light humour. ‘My healer threatened dire consequences if I came to your bed and tempted you past restraint. He said your wounds could still open.’

‘Damn him for being a grandmother,’ Kevin said amiably. ‘My scabs do well enough, except when he chooses to pick at them.’ Sure and warm, the Midkemian stroked her breast with the back of his fingers. Then he hugged her tighter. ‘You’re my cure, all by yourself.’

Mara shivered, half from sadness, half from poignant arousal. She banished the painful wish that the marriage contract to Hokanu could be recalled, and snuggled closer. ‘Kevin,’ she began.

From her tone, he realized she was anguished. He gave her no chance to speak, but leaned across and kissed her. Her arms clasped him around the shoulders, avoiding his bandages. Kevin cradled her, instinctively offering her what
his soul knew she needed; and in familiar and natural companionship, they lapsed into lovemaking. His enthusiasm seemed in no way diminished, except that he fell asleep very quickly after his passion was spent.

Mara stretched out at his side, her eyes wide open in the dark. She ran her hands over her flat belly, much aware that her tryst in the nursery had not been planned with propriety. She had taken no elixir of teriko weed, to prevent conception. Nacoya would have been shrill with reprimand over the lapse.

Nacoya would have been wise.

By the dim, filtered moonlight, Mara studied Kevin’s profile, nested amid a tangle of red hair. She found she did not wish to be wise. Marry Hokanu she must, if Kamatsu would allow, and he would have her; but if Kevin was to be sacrificed, she did not possess the will to relinquish his love and her happiness without any trace of a tie.

Foolish she might be, even selfish. But she wanted Kevin’s child. All she had accomplished had been for the honour of her family name and ancestry. Her heart felt battered, eaten up by rulership’s endless griefs. This one thing she had to have for herself.

‘I love you, barbarian,’ she whispered soundlessly in the dark. ‘I shall always love you.’ Her tears flowed freely, for a very long time after that.

A week passed, and another week, and the healer permitted Kevin short bouts out of bed. He found Mara seated in the east garden, the one the kitchen staff used for growing herbs. Clad in the light, loose robes she habitually used for meditation, she had set her discipline aside to sit amid dusty stems of aromatic plants and watch the front road. Messengers came and went, mostly on Jican’s errands. Whether she studied the traffic or whether she was lost in thought did not matter.

‘You’re moping again,’ Kevin accused, setting aside the cane he used to keep his weight off the leg that had taken the sword cut.

Mara twisted a mangled bit of greenery between her hands. It had once been a slender tira branch, now wilted, stripped entirely of its spicy leaves. Peeled strips of bark emitted a heady, pungent odour on the noon-heated air. The Lady who tortured the sprig did not answer.

Kevin settled with some difficulty beside her, his wrapped leg stretched out before him. He lifted the poor stem from her hands, and sighed at the sap beneath her fingernails.

‘She was a mother to me, and more,’ Mara said unexpectedly.

‘I know.’ He did not need to ask if she spoke of Nacoya. His response was gentle. ‘You need to cry more, spill your grief out and let it go.’

Mara stiffened, sharp-edged. ‘I’ve cried enough!’

Kevin tilted his head to one side and shoved his fingers through unruly hair. ‘You people never cry enough,’ he contradicted. ‘Uncried tears remain inside you, like poison.’

He did not intend to drive Mara away; but she rose abruptly and he could not regroup in time to follow, not with his leg bound in splints. By the time he reached his feet, found his cane, and pursued, she had disappeared through the hedges. He decided it would be tactless to give chase. Tonight, in bed, he would try once again to console her. But forgetting the tragedy that had upset her was not possible, with soldiers in armour standing guard almost everywhere one stepped. The assassin might not have killed Ayaki, but the event had left other damage. Troubled, withdrawn in unhappiness, Mara could find no peace within the walls of her own home.

Kevin shuffled out of the herb garden and decided to seek out young Ayaki. In a sheltered courtyard, out of sight of the house servants, he had been teaching the boy how to
fight with a knife. It might be forbidden for a slave to handle weapons, but on the Acoma estate none would interfere. True Tsurani, they all looked away from this latest breach of protocol. Kevin’s loyalty was proven, and he reasoned that the boy might stop screaming from bad dreams if he learned a few tricks in self-defence.

But today the courtyard was not deserted when Kevin arrived with a purloined kitchen knife and the Acoma heir in tow. Keyoke rested in the shade under the ulo, two wooden practice swords between his knees. He saw Kevin, and the contraband, and a rare smile creased his eyes. ‘If you are going to train the young warrior, someone should be on hand to see that the job is done properly.’

Kevin grinned insouciantly. ‘The lame leading the lame?’ He looked down, ruffled Ayaki’s dark hair, and laughed. ‘What do you say, little tiger, to the idea of beating up two old men?’

Ayaki responded with an Acoma battle cry that caused the servants within earshot to dive for cover.

Mara heard the shout from the secluded corner of the kekali garden where she had chosen to make her retreat. The corners of her mouth lifted with the barest trace of amusement, and then stilled; her melancholy stayed in force. The sun beat down, sucking life and the colour from the glade. The bushes seemed grey in the glare, the deep indigo flowers scorched at the edges from the heat. Mara paced the walkways, fingering her mourning robe’s red tassels. Almost, she seemed to hear Nacoya’s ghost behind her.