The Complete Empire Trilogy (209 page)

Pug deferred to her, allowing Lujan to see her seated first. As a Great One, he would have been entitled to be shown that honor. But up close, he was unassuming as a commoner. Mara found it difficult to equate this affable man with the figure of towering pride and power that
had single-handedly ruined a former Warlord. But it took more than appearances to settle her adviser and her Force Commander. Saric and Lujan waited until the magician had made himself comfortable before they sat themselves. Her more retiring hadonra looked as if he were on trial for a capital crime.

Servants hurried in with trays, offering meat and cheeses and fresh fruits. Others brought hot water and an assortment of beverages. Pug helped himself to a plate with sliced jomach, and before Mara’s trained staff could offer, poured himself what he must have presumed would be chocha. He sipped, and the half-moons of his eyes visible over his cup widened in surprise. ‘Tea!’

Mara fussed in worry. ‘Did you wish something else? My cook can have chocha brewed shortly, if that is your wish, Great One.’

Pug held up his hand. ‘No, tea is fine. I’m startled to find it here.’ Then his eyes narrowed as he added, ‘Though by all reports, little to do with the Lady of the Acoma should be surprising.’

Infused with sudden uneasiness, particularly that he should be acquainted with her affairs across the rift, Mara drew breath to demur. ‘Great One –’

Pug interrupted. ‘Please. I renounced that title when it was offered, at the time the Assembly asked to reinstate me.’ At Saric’s startled lift of brows, the Midkemian magician nodded. ‘Yes. They retracted my order of exile, after the conflict with the Enemy that came to threaten both our worlds. I am now also a Prince, by adoption into the royal family. But I prefer Pug, magician of Stardock, to any other title.’ He helped himself to more tea, then loosened his wool collar to ease himself in Kelewan’s warmer climate. ‘How is Hokanu? I have not seen him since’ – a frown knitted his brows – ‘since just after the battle of Sethanon.’

Mara sighed, hiding sadness as she nibbled a bit of
fruit from the tray. ‘He is well, but contending with some unpleasant rivalries among his cousins since he inherited his father’s title.’

Regret played across Pug’s expression as he set down his cup. The jomach lay untasted beneath his hands, which were fine-skinned, the nails impeccably manicured. ‘Kamatsu was one of the finest men this land has known. He will be missed. In many ways, I owe him for what I am today.’ Then, as if uncomfortable with dark thoughts, Pug grinned. ‘Has Hokanu developed the same passion for horses that consumes his brother?’

Mara shook her head. ‘He enjoys them, but not nearly so much as Kasumi did.’ Quietly, sadly, she added, ‘Or Ayaki.’

Pug focused on the reference with the open, barbarian sympathy that in Kevin had so often been disconcerting. ‘The death of your son was a tragedy, Mara. I have a boy close to his age. He is so bursting with life –’ He broke off, fingering his sleeves in discomfort. ‘You have been very brave, to endure such a loss without becoming callous or uncaring.’

It was uncanny, how much this barbarian magician knew of her affairs and her heart. Mara flashed a glance at Saric, who looked on the verge of comment. She signaled her wish to speak first, before courage forsook her entirely.

‘Pug,’ she opened, the familiar address coming awkwardly, ‘I sent you that message out of desperation.’

Pug folded his hands in his cuffs and regarded her, utterly still. ‘Perhaps it would be wise to start from the beginning.’

His eyes were old, as if he had beheld vistas wider than the human mind should encompass, and griefs more terrible than the loss of a single child. For an instant, Mara glimpsed past his mystery, to the powers that coiled within this man whose manner seemed easy as a chatty cousin’s. She recalled
the black-robed figure that had single-handedly destroyed the Imperial Arena, a gigantic stone edifice that had taken decades to build. Hundreds had died, and thousands had been injured in a fearful explosion of power, all because Milamber, this magician, had objected to the brutality of human combat as a display. Despite his everyday appearance and warm manner, he was a mage of unknowable dimension. Mara shivered sharply, feeling like a girl before the awareness of leashed might that this man seemed to hide so adroitly.

And yet it must equally be recognised that, alone, Pug had flown in the face of tradition, and had earned himself exile for deeds the Assembly could not countenance. If the Acoma were to gain protection, he was a potential key to knowledge.

Mara chose to risk all. She dismissed Lujan and her advisers, and when she was alone with the barbarian magician, she spoke freely. She began with the year the death of her father and brother forced her to assume control of her house, and recounted the triumphs and defeats that had followed. She spoke without pause, neglecting her tea and the food on the tray for a long time, finally ending with her confrontation with the Anasati that had brought intervention by the Assembly.

Pug interrupted with a question. From that point forward, he asked often for clarification of a thought or enumeration of a detail, or probed her to learn the motive behind an action. Mara was impressed at the quality of his memory, for he often asked for more information on something mentioned more than a half hour prior. When Mara mentioned Arakasi’s latest findings concerning the lapses of continuity in ancient documents in the Imperial Archives, Pug’s questions became yet more pointed.

‘Why did you wish my help in these matters?’ he asked at last, his tone deceptively mild.

Mara knew nothing would suffice but total honesty. ‘It has become apparent that the Assembly might oppose me, not to keep peace, but to arrest change within the Empire. Great Ones have been reining the nations back from growth for more than a thousand years, if my advisers and my Spy Master’s assessments are correct.’ Although she might be judged and destroyed for the boldness of her accusation, Mara shed her uncertainties. If she backed away from this chance to gain knowledge, the Acoma were lost anyway. She forced herself to frame in clear words what had become a lifetime’s dedication since Ayaki’s death. ‘Your Midkemian ways have shown the time-honored traditions we Tsurani most revere become destructive when they result in stagnation. We have become a cruel people, since the Golden Bridge. Merit has been replaced by elaborate codes of honor, and by a rigid caste system. I would see change, and an end to merciless politics for personal honor. I would see our Lords become accountable for their actions, and our slaves set free. But I suspect the Assembly would prevent even the Light of Heaven enacting such shifts in policy.’

Mara looked up to find Pug staring into his empty teacup. Late sunlight slashed the wooden floors, and the cheeses had half melted on the food tray. Hours had passed, all unnoticed. Ruefully Mara realised that the Midkemian magician’s questioning had not only caused her to reveal more than she had planned, but also had crystallised her thinking, ordered her mind and delineated exactly which problems lay ahead of her. More in awe of the barbarian magician than before, since she had not noticed his molding of her thoughts, Mara clenched her hands together. In a fever of anxiety, she awaited his terrible judgment, or the gift of his understanding.

For a while nothing moved in the great hall but the war banners stirred by the breeze. At last Pug broke his silence.
‘Much in what you say puts me in mind of things I have felt … things I have done.’

Nervously Mara said, ‘I don’t follow.’

Pug smiled. ‘Let us simplify by saying that the Assembly is filled with disagreement. From without, the society of magicians might seem a monolithic entity, a body that occasionally intervenes in the affairs of the Empire, but habitually keeps itself separate.’ He gestured widely as folk from his culture were wont to do. ‘That is far from the case. Each Great One may act as he sees fit, upon any occasion, for his training is predicated upon serving the Empire.’

Mara nodded.

Pug’s gaze caught hers, dark with an irony that might have been amusement had the topic been less grave. ‘However, there are times when two magicians may have radically different views of how best to serve. On rare occasions, disagreements give rise to conflict.’

Mara dared a supposition. ‘Then some of the Great Ones may not sanction the intervention in my war against the Anasati?’

‘They would be the minority,’ Pug allowed. Perhaps his own memories of exile from the Assembly came to mind, for he seemed to weigh Mara’s eagerness. ‘I am also sure that others argued that your death would solve the matter quickly.’ Deliberately careful in his wording, he neither confirmed nor denied her speculations concerning the Assembly’s hold over the Empire’s development; in bald fact, he had told her little that Fumita had not already hinted to Hokanu at Kamatsu’s death rites.

Mara restrained her frustration as Pug rose, plainly with intent to end the interview. Desperate not to lose her hope of aid, she blurted, ‘I wrote you on the chance you might know how I may defend myself against the Assembly if the need arises.’

‘I thought as much.’ Suddenly hard as barbarian iron,
Pug laced his hands together under his wide sleeves and regarded her as she, too, arose to her feet. ‘Walk with me to the pattern.’

Mara waved back the servants who closed in to collect the food tray, and the two warriors who moved from their positions by the outer door, to accompany her as escort. Aware that Pug could depart from any place in her house, she surmised that his request stemmed from a wish for privacy. As she led from the great hall into the dimmer inner corridor, Pug drew her to his side with a touch upon her arm. ‘Why should you have concern for your safety, Mara of the Acoma?’ Softly he added, ‘If you were a good child who ceased troubling your parents, you would have nothing to fear by way of punishment.’

In better times, Mara might have smiled at the image. ‘The last agent I sent into the Imperial Archives to research significant financial discrepancies in certain historical periods was destroyed outright by the Assembly.’

As if Pug had been born knowing the halls of a strange house, he turned up the steps toward the pattern room.

‘Knowledge can be a dangerous thing, Mara of the Acoma.’

He did not ask which years her agent had inquired into, or what findings he had unearthed; his silence on those points only underscored Mara’s fears. She stepped into the pattern room at the magician’s side. Pug turned and closed the door. She did not see the pass he made with his hands, but her flesh felt chilled as if a cold wind blew across her, and she knew that a spell had been invoked. Pug straightened, his expression grave. ‘For a few minutes, no one, not even the most gifted of my former brethren, can hear what you say.’

Mara’s face drained of color. ‘Great Ones could listen to what passed in my great hall?’

Pug smiled in quick reassurance. ‘Most likely it never
occurred to any of them to try – it’s considered a breach of proper behavior. Though I can’t guarantee that much for Hochopepa if the matter is weighty enough. He’s a bit of a snoop.’ The last was said with affection, and Mara realised that the portly magician must have been one of Pug’s friends and supporters, after the upheaval in the Imperial Arena. As much as any Black Robe could be, this Hochopepa might be sympathetic to the Acoma cause.

Pug’s next question caught her back from speculative thought. ‘Mara, you realise that the changes you work for will turn the Empire upon its collective ear?’

Tired to her bones from the strain, Mara leaned back against the wood-paneled walls and regarded the shatra bird symbol inset into the floor. ‘Should we continue as we have, and be ruled by men who murder children, and let good people become beaten down and ruined by servitude when their talents and efforts deserve better? Jiro of the Anasati and the faction he leads would see petty power struggles take precedence over all else. It is heresy for me to say so, but I no longer can believe that the gods endorse such waste.’

Pug made a deprecating gesture. ‘Then why concern the Assembly? Have an assassin dispose of Jiro. You certainly have wealth enough to buy his death.’

The ordinary callousness of his statement at last disarmed her. Mara forgot he was a magician, forgot his terrible powers, forgot all but her own bitter anguish. ‘Gods, don’t speak to me of assassins! I destroyed the Hamoi Tong because they were too readily available as a weapon for grasping Ruling Lords to further their own selfish causes. The Acoma have never dealt with assassins! I will see my line dead and lost to memory before I begin such practice. Seven times have I been marked for death. Three times the lives of my loved ones have been sent to Turakamu’s halls by the tong in my place. I have lost two sons and the mother of my
heart to its bloody hands.’ Then, reawakened to awareness of whom she addressed, she finished, ‘There is more to this than my hatred of assassins. Jiro’s death might settle honor, but that ends nothing, solves nothing. The Assembly would still seek to ruin my house. Because Ichindar, and Hokanu, and I myself as Servant of the Empire, all seek to replace what is missing from our lives.’

‘Missing?’ Pug prompted as he folded his arms across his chest.

‘Within us. Within the Empire.’

‘Go on.’

Mara looked deep into Pug’s eyes. ‘Do you know Kevin of Zun?’

Pug nodded. ‘Not well. I first met him here –’

‘When?’ Disrupted utterly from her train of thought, Mara’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You never called upon me. Surely I would have remembered such a momentous event!’