The Complete Empire Trilogy (149 page)

‘
Daughter of my heart
,’ the old woman seemed to say, ‘
you are foolish and thrice to be pitied if you persist with this idea of bearing a child to Kevin. A messenger will be returning from the marriage broker’s any day with word from Kamatsu of the Shinzawai. Dare you enter into
marriage with the son of an honourable house while carrying a slave’s baby? To do so would shame the Acoma name past all mending.
’

‘Then I will tell Hokanu outright whether or not I am with child,’ Mara interrupted the imaginary voice.

She stepped around a gardener who raked away dead growth, and meandered aimlessly down another path. Behind her, the servant set his tool aside and followed.

‘Lady,’ called a voice as soft as velvet.

Mara’s heart missed a beat. With the blood gone cold in her veins, she slowly turned around. Fear raised a sweat on her body. She examined the servant in his sun-faded robes: Arakasi … With a grace quite outside the ordinary, he approached holding a dagger. As a cry of alarm was almost on her lips, he prostrated himself on the gravel path and held out the blade, hilt first.

‘Mistress,’ said Arakasi, ‘I beg your permission to take my life with my dagger.’

Mara stepped involuntarily back, numbed by shock. ‘Some say you betrayed me,’ she blurted, clumsily, without thought. Her words were accusingly rough.

Almost, Arakasi seemed to flinch. ‘No, mistress, never that.’ He paused, then added in a tortured tone, ‘I failed you.’ He was gaunt. The gardener’s robe hung awkwardly over his shoulders, and his hands were drawn as old parchment. His fingers did not shake.

Suddenly desperate for shade, or any sort of surcease from the sun, Mara swallowed. ‘I trusted you.’

Arakasi moved no muscle, unmercifully exposed by the daylight; all of his deceptions seemed stripped away. He looked like an ordinary servant, worn, honest, and frail. Mara had never noticed before the attenuated bone structure of his wrists. He said, his voice as whipped as his appearance, ‘The five spies in the Minwanabi household are dead. By my order, they were killed, and the tong that I hired
brought me their heads as surety. Eleven agents that passed their messages from Szetac Province lie dead also. Those men I killed with my own hand, mistress. You have no spies in your enemy’s house, but neither does Tasaio have any avenue left to exploit. No one lives who might be forced to betray you. Again, I beg leave to make atonement for myself. Allow me to take my life by the blade.’

He did not expect her to grant his request; he had been no more than a grey warrior, once, and not born to service in her house.

Mara stepped back again and sat sharply upon a stone bench. Her sudden movement attracted her sentries’ attention, and several came running to investigate. The officer in charge spotted the servant at her feet and recognized him for her Spy Master. The warrior signalled, and his small patrol closed at a run. A heartbeat later, armoured hands seized Arakasi’s outstretched wrists. Very fast, they dragged him upright and had him pinioned.

‘Lady, what should we do with this man?’ the Patrol Leader briskly demanded.

Mara watched, quite silent. The warriors, she noticed, handled their prisoner with care, as if he carried poison, or as though he might somehow strike back. Her gaze shifted to encompass Arakasi’s still face and his hollowed, shadowed eyes. No secrets lingered there. The Spy Master seemed an empty husk, all his spirit sucked out of him. He expected an ending, a hanging, and his mien was desolate. The fire and the pride that, along with a razor-sharp intellect, had marked him apart were missing.

‘Let him go,’ she said dully.

The soldiers obeyed without question. Arakasi lowered his arms, twitching his sleeves back into place out of habit. He stood with bowed head, and a seemingly endless patience that was painful to observe.

If he was acting, his extraordinary talent had her beaten.

The air seemed sluggish and heavy as Mara dragged in her breath. ‘Arakasi,’ she said slowly. Almost, she waited for a carping voice to raise protest; then she remembered. Nacoya was dead. She pushed on with the matter at hand. ‘You served as you saw fit. You and your network provided intelligence; you never guaranteed facts. You have not made decisions. I, as your ruler, decide. If there has been failure, or misjudgment, the blame must be mine alone. Therefore, you shall not be permitted to take your life with your dagger. Instead, I ask pardon for my shame, for demanding more than a loyal man should ever be expected to deliver. Will you still serve me? Will you continue to maintain your network, and bring ruin to the Lord of the Minwanabi?’

Arakasi slowly straightened. His eyes grew penetrating, disquietingly, uncomfortably direct. Through the sun’s glare, and the dusty scent of the flowers, he appeared to see through flesh and read her invisible spirit. ‘You are not like the other rulers in this Empire,’ he said, the velvet restored to his voice. ‘If I could dare to venture an opinion, I’d say you were quite dangerously different.’

Mara lowered her eyes first. ‘You may be right.’ She twisted the jade rings on her hands. ‘Will you still serve?’

‘Always,’ Arakasi said at once. He released a long, audible sigh. ‘I have news, if you would hear it.’

‘Later. You may go now, and refresh yourself.’ When Mara looked up, she watched her Spy Master off, the spring in his step rejuvenated as he hurried away down the path.

‘How did you determine he was innocent?’ asked a patrol leader, just past his youth.

Mara shrugged slightly. ‘I didn’t. But I looked at him, and remembered his formidable competence at his job.’ She arose before her puzzled warriors, her eyes almost distant with thought. ‘Do you think, if such a man wanted me dead, that he would have bungled the task? If he were Tasaio’s
agent, or someone else’s, the Acoma natami would be no more. This I believe. So I trust him.’

Twilight threw a mantle of silver-green light over the garden when Arakasi reappeared to make his report. He had eaten and bathed, and now wore a house servant’s robe, tied with a crested green sash. His sandals were laced with meticulous perfection, and his hair had been freshly trimmed. Mara noticed these details as he bowed, and other servants walked softly around her, lighting the first lamps of the evening.

He straightened, slightly hesitant. ‘My Lady, your faith in me is not misplaced. I say again, as I did once before, that I would see your enemies dead and their names obliterated. Since the moment I swore by your natami, I have been wholly Acoma.’

Mara received this reaffirmation in considerate silence. At length she clapped for a servant and asked for a tray of fresh sliced fruit. When she and her Spy Master were alone once more, she said, ‘I have not questioned your loyalty.’

Arakasi frowned and struck to the heart of the matter. ‘It is as important to me as my life that you do not.’ He looked at her, his dark eyes for once unshadowed. ‘Lady, you are one of the few rulers in this Empire who thinks past ancient traditions, and the only one willing to challenge them. I might have come to serve you once out of shared hatred for the Minwanabi. But now that has changed. I serve for you alone.’

‘Why?’ Mara’s own gaze flashed up, also free of any posturing.

The shadows of the lamps darkened as the sky deepened overhead. Arakasi made a gesture of impatience. ‘You are not afraid of change,’ he observed. ‘That one bold trait is going to take you far, perhaps even make your house lastingly great.’ He paused, and a startlingly genuine smile lit his face. ‘I want to be there, be part of that rise to power.
The power itself does not interest me. But what can be done with it – there I admit to shameful ambition. Times of great change are upon us, and this Empire has stayed settled in its ways for many centuries too long.’ He sighed. ‘I do not know what can be done to alter our fate, but in more than fifty years of life, I have met no other ruler more able to accomplish reform.’

Mara released a quiet breath. For the first time since she had known the man, she realized that she had pierced through his reserve. At long last, she looked upon the real motive that drove her most enigmatic adviser. Master of deceit, Arakasi sat now stripped of deception. His face showed the longing of an excited boy, and with that, she saw also that he cared deeply for her, and would provide her with anything she might ask. At last convinced that Nacoya had been right, that there were limits beyond which no ruler should press a loyal heart to perform, she smiled. In the most banal tone she could manage, she said, ‘You mentioned you had news?’

Arakasi’s eyes sparkled with sudden enthusiasm. He reached for a fruit slice and opened: ‘The magicians have been very busy with a plot of their own, it appears. The rumours are intriguing, and almost beyond imagination.’

Settled back on her cushions in relief, Mara waved for him to continue.

Finishing his snack with a neat swallow, Arakasi licked his teeth. ‘It’s very thought-provoking. The word is that ten Great Ones from the Assembly went through the rift to Midkemia, along with three thousand Kanazawai warriors. A battle was fought, and wild speculation abounds concerning why. Some say the Emperor wished vengeance upon the King of Isles for the traitorous slaughter at the peace talks.’ Here the Spy Master held up a hand to forestall his mistress’s eager questions. ‘That’s not the unbelievable motive. Others say – persons in reliable offices – that the magicians made war upon the Enemy.’

Mara looked blank.

‘The Enemy,’ Arakasi repeated. ‘The one from the myths before the Golden Bridge. Surely your teachers recited stories to you as a child.’

Recalling those tales, recognition dawned. ‘But those are tales!’ Mara protested. She glanced around at the lamps, as if the shadows they cast might suddenly have grown larger and darker. ‘Not real.’

Arakasi shook his head, mystified and excited at the same time. ‘So we thought,’ he agreed. ‘But who can rightly guess what enemies might challenge the Great Ones, particularly since the renegade, Milamber, had his name mixed up in the events? Those myths are older than history, as ancient as the names of the brothers who began the Five Families. How can we judge what is truth in that long-distant past?’

Suddenly poignantly troubled, Mara bit her lip. ‘Kanazawai were involved? Then we can inquire what has passed when I hear from Lord Kamatsu.’ Her thoughts skipped ahead. ‘We could surmise that the Emperor’s interference with the council might have been in cooperation with this action of the magicians.’

‘So I presume.’ Arakasi helped himself to another slice of fruit. ‘But that’s speculation. My sources closest to the Light of Heaven suggest negotiations may be under way for an exchange of prisoners between the Empire and the Kingdom of the Isles.’

‘So the rift is opened!’ Mara cut in. Her voice held a strangely emotional note.

Rightly attributing that to some concern with her barbarian lover, Arakasi coughed lightly. ‘None of what I tell is common knowledge. But it would seem that if you applied again for a hearing in the right places, you might be able to gain the benefits of your trade concessions with Midkemia, at last.’

Mara seemed only distantly interested in a subject that
had once been a hot source of frustration. Arakasi tactfully used the interval to clean off the last fruit on the tray. He recalled Mara and Kevin’s discussion of the rift in Kentosani; the subject had revolved around granting the barbarian his freedom. Cued by shrewd intuition, Arakasi knew the idea was emotionally painful.

‘I will probe the issue for you, Lady, and try to find more facts.’

Mara shot him a glance of wordless gratitude. ‘For Kevin’s sake,’ she said in a small voice. ‘He does not deserve to stay a slave.’

As if shrugging off the torments of unseen ghosts, the Lady changed the subject. ‘If power continues to shift away from the council, there will be upheavals. Minwanabi will consolidate his allies and make a bid to revive the Warlord’s office.’

She sighed, frowned, and added, ‘It would be nice if all of us were alive to enjoy the gains of my exclusive trade rights.’ Then her eyes narrowed. ‘You had spies killed under Tasaio’s own roof, you said. Why, then, does our enemy still breathe?’

Arakasi settled his elbows on his knees like a killwing ruffling feathers. ‘My arm is not long enough to reach beneath Tasaio’s roof to take his head – but his servants? They are a long and different story.’

In the soft summer night, under a brilliance of lanterns and stars, he told her.

The servants were discovered, finally, in a lime pit in a vegetable garden that was occasionally used for burials to enrich the soil; only the dishonoured were interred there, without rites, and where the stink of decomposition would not waft beyond the domestics’ quarters. The five corpses were headless, and when the runner boy who made the find reported it to one of the overseers, the older staff member
understood at once that the master must be informed. Shaking in the knees, and ducking his white head in consternation, he hastened off to report to Murgali.

The Minwanabi hadonra was hunched over ledgers stacked precariously high, doing his best to stay inconspicuous. All the household had felt Tasaio’s temper since his ambush had failed to kill Mara. Bristling at the interruption, he heard the house servant’s news and cursed as he recognized its import. This matter of dead bodies was not something he dared to ignore.

‘Go,’ he commanded the house servant. ‘Have the bodies removed from the garden and laid out in an empty bed suite.’