Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  'You know this man?' Jiro exclaimed in astonishment. 'You've never once said you knew the identity of the Tuscai Spy Master!'

  Chumaka made a deprecatory gesture. 'Not by name, nor by looks, curse him for the brilliant fiend he is. I have never knowingly met him, but I recognise the manner of his craft. It has a signature like that of a scribe.'

  'Which is far from solid evidence,' Jiro was fast to point out.

  'Final proof will be difficult to get if I have recognised the same man's touch. Should this former Tuscai Spy Master have taken Mara's service, the gods may smile upon us yet. He may be a master of guile, yet I know his measure. My past knowledge of the Tuscai operation in Jamar should enable us to infiltrate his operation. After a few years we may have access to the man himself, and then we can manipulate the intelligence in Mara's net as we desire. Our intent must be made behind diversionary maneuvers to disrupt Acoma trade and alliances. Meanwhile the tong will be seeking Mara's downfall as well.'

  'Perhaps we could encourage the brotherhood's efforts a bit,' Lord Jiro offered hopefully.

  Chumaka sucked in a quick breath at the mere suggestion. He bowed before starting to speak, which he only did when alarmed. 'My master, that we dare not try. Tong are tight-knit, and too deadly at their craft to meddle with. Best we keep Anasati affairs as far removed from their doings as possible.'

  Jiro conceded this point with regret, while his First Adviser proceeded with optimism. 'The Hamoi Brotherhood is not one to act in hot blood; no. Its works on its own behalf have ever been slow-moving, and cold. Traffic has passed between the Hamoi and Midkemia that I did not understand as it occurred; but now I suspect it has roots in a long-range attempt to hurt the Acoma. The Lady has a well-known weakness for barbarian ideas.'

  'That is so,' Jiro conceded. His temper fled before thoughtfulness; he regarded the play of the fish. No adviser of any house was more adept than Chumaka at stringing together seemingly unrelated bits of information. And all the Empire had heard rumors of the Lady's dalliance with a Midkemian slave. That was a vulnerability well worth exploiting.

  Cued by the softening of his master's manner, and judging his moment with precision, Chumaka said, 'The Anasati can bear the tiny slight in the manner of the bungled evidence. Fools and children might believe inept information. But the wiser Ruling Lords all know that the tong keeps close guard on its secrets. The powerful in the Nations will never seriously believe such transparent ploys to link your name with a hired killer. The Anasati name is old. Its honor is unimpeachable. Show only boldness before petty slurs, my master. They are unworthy of a great Lord's attention. Let any ruler who dares come forward to suggest the contrary, and you will correct the matter forcefully.' Chumaka ended with a quotation from a play that Jiro favored. '"Small acts partner small houses and small minds."'

  The Lord of the Anasati nodded. 'You are right. My anger tends sometimes to blind me.'

  Chumaka bowed at the compliment. 'My master, I ask permission to be excused. I have already begun to consider snares that may be set for Mara's Spy Master. For while we appear to blunder about with the one hand revealed in Ontoset, that will draw the watchful eye away from the other, silently at work in Jamar to bring the dagger to the throat of the Lady of the Acoma.'

  Jiro smiled. 'Excellent, Chumaka.' He clapped in dismissal. While his First Adviser bowed again and hurried away, muttering possible plots under his breath, the Lord remained by the fish pool. He considered Chumaka's advice, and felt a glow of satisfaction. When the Assembly of Magicians had forbidden war between his house and Mara's, he had been covertly ecstatic. With the Lady deprived of her army, and the clear supremacy she held by force of numbers on the battlefield, the stakes between them had been set even.

  'Wits,' the Lord of the Anasati murmured, stirring the water and causing the fish to flash away in confused circles. 'Guile, not the sword, will bring the Good Servant her downfall. She will die knowing her mistake when she chose my brother over me. I am the better man, and when I meet Buntokapi after death in the Red God's halls, he will know that I gave him vengeance, and also ground his precious House Acoma under my heel into dust!'

  Arakasi was late. His failure to return had the Acoma senior advisers on edge to the point where Force Commander Lujan dreaded to attend the evening's council. He hurried to his quarters to retrieve the plumed helm he had shed during off-duty hours. His stride was purposeful, precise in balance as only a skilled swordsman's would be; yet his mind was preoccupied. His nod to the patrolling sentries who saluted his passage was mechanical.

  The Acoma estate house had as many armed men in its halls now as servants; privacy since Ayaki's murder was next to nonexistent, particularly at night, when extra warriors slept in the scriptorium and the assorted wings of the guest suites. Justin's nursery was an armed camp; Lujan reflected that the boy could hardly play at toy soldiers for the constant tramp of battle sandals across the floors of his room.

  Yet as the only carrier of the Acoma bloodline, after Mara, his safety was of paramount concern. Lacking Arakasi's reliable reports, the patrols walked their beats in uncertainty. They were starting at shadows, half drawing swords at the footfalls of drudges secreted in corners to meet their sweethearts. Lujan sighed, and froze, shaken alert by the sound of a sword sliding from a scabbard.

  'You there!' shouted a sentry, 'Halt!'

  Now running, Lujan flung himself around a corner in the corridor. Ahead, the warrior with drawn sword crouched down, battle-ready. He confronted a nook deep in shadow where nothing appeared to be amiss. From behind, the tap and shuffle peculiar to a man moving in haste on a crutch warned that Keyoke, Mara's Adviser for War, had also heard the disturbance. Too long a field commander to ignore a warrior's challenge, he also rushed to find out who trespassed in the innermost corridors of the estate house.

  Let it not be another assassin, Lujan prayed as he ran. He strained to see through the gloom, noting that a lamp that should have been left burning was dark. Not a good sign, he thought grimly; the council suddenly deferred by this intrusion now seemed the kinder choice of frustrations. Snarls in trade and the uneasy shifting of alliances within Ichindar's court might be maddeningly puzzling without Arakasi's inside knowledge. But an attack by another tong dart man this far inside the patrols was too harrowing a development to contemplate. Though months had passed, Justin still had nightmares from seeing the black gelding's fall . . .

  Lujan skidded to a stop by the sword-bearing warrior, his sandal studs scraping the stone floor. 'Who's there?' he demanded.

  Old Keyoke thumped to a halt on the warrior's other side, his dry shout demanding the same.

  The warrior never shifted his glance, but made a fractional gesture with his sword toward the cranny between two beams that supported a join in the rooftree. A long-past repair had replaced a rotted section of wood. The estate house Mara and Hokanu inhabited was ancient, and this was one of the original sections. The slate scored white by Lujan's battle sandals was close to three thousand years old, and rubbed into ruts from uncounted generations of footsteps. There were too many corners to shelter intruders, Lujan felt as he looked where his sentry pointed. A man lurked in the shadow. He stood with hands outstretched in submission, but his face was suspiciously smudged, as if he had used lamp soot to blacken the telltale pallor of his flesh.

  Lujan freed his sword. With inscrutable features, Keyoke raised his crutch, thumbed a hidden catch, and drew a thin blade from the base. For all that he had lost one leg, he balanced himself without discernible effort.

  To the intruder now faced with three bared blades, Lujan said curtly, 'Come out. Keep your hands up if you don't want to die spitted.'

  'I would rather not be welcomed back like a cut of meat at the butcher's,' replied a voice rust-grained as neglected iron.

  'Arakasi,' Keyoke said, raising his weapon in salute. His ax-blade profile broke into a rare smile.

  'Gods!' Lujan swore. He reached out barehanded and touched the sentry, who lowered hi
s blade. The Acoma Force Commander shivered to realise how near Mara's Spy Master had come to dying at the hands of a house guard. Then relief and a countersurge of high spirits made him laugh. 'Finally! How many years have Keyoke and I attempted to set unpredictable patrols? Can it be that for once, my good man, you failed to walk right through them?'

  it was a rough trip home,' Arakasi conceded. 'Not only that, this estate has more warriors on duty than house staff. A man can't move three steps without tripping over someone in armor.'

  Keyoke sheathed his concealed blade and replaced his crutch beneath his shoulder. Then he raked his fingers through his white hair, as he had never been able to do when he was a field commander, perpetually wearing a battle helm. 'Lady Mara's council is due to begin shortly. She has need of your news.'

  Arakasi did not reply, but pushed out from behind the posts that had hidden him from sight. He was robed as a street beggar. His untrimmed hair was lank with dirt, his skin was ingrained with what looked like soot. He smelled pervasively of woodsmoke.

  'You look like something dragged out by a chimney sweeper,' Lujan observed, gesturing for the sentry to resume his interrupted patrol. 'Or as if you had been sleeping in trees for the better part of a sevenday.'

  'Not far from the truth,' Arakasi muttered, turning an irritated glance aside. Keyoke disliked waiting for anyone; now free to indulge the impatience he had repressed for years while commanding troops, he had stumped on ahead toward the council hall. As if relieved by the old man's departure, Arakasi bent, raised the hem of his robe, and scratched at a festering sore.

  Lujan stroked his chin. Tactfully he said, 'You could come to my quarters first. My body servant is practiced at drawing a bath on short notice.'

  A brief silence ensued.

  At last Arakasi sighed. 'Splinters,' he admitted.

  Since one terse word was all he was likely to receive in explanation, Lujan surmised the rest. 'They're infected. That means not recent. You've been too much on the run to draw them out.'

  Another silence followed, affirming Lujan's surmise. He and Arakasi had known each other since before House Tuscai had fallen, and had shared many years as grey warriors. 'Come along,' the Force Commander urged. 'If you sit in Lady Mara's presence in this state, the servants will need to burn the cushions afterward. You stink like a Khardengo who lost his wagon.'

  Not pleased by the comparison to an itinerant family member that traveled from city to city selling cheap entertainment and disreputable odd jobs, Arakasi curled his lip. 'You can get me a metal needle?' he bargained warily.

  Lujan laughed. 'As it happens, I might. There's a girl among the seamstresses that fancies me. But you'll owe me. If I ask her for the loan of such a treasure, she is bound to make demands.'

  Aware that few young maids in the household would not willingly jeopardise their next station on the Wheel of Life for the promise of Lujan's kisses, Arakasi was unimpressed, 'I can as easily use one of my daggers.'

  His apparent indifference set Lujan on edge. 'The news you bring is not good.'

  Now Arakasi faced the Acoma Force Commander fully. Light from the lamp down the corridor caught on his gaunt cheekbones and deepened the hollows under his eyes. 'I think I will accept your offer of a bath,' he responded obtusely.

  Lujan knew better than to tease that his friend the Spy Master also looked as if he had not eaten or slept for a week. The observation this time would have held more truth than jest. 'I'll get you that needle,' he allowed, then hastened on in an attempt to ease Arakasi's ruffled pride through humor. 'Though you certainly don't need it, if you're carrying your knives. I doubt my sentry understood when he held you at swordpoint that you could have killed and carved him before he had a chance to make a thrust.'

  'I'm good,' Arakasi allowed. 'But today, I think, not that good.' He stepped forward. Only now it became apparent that he was far from steady on his feet. He awarded Lujan's startled gasp of concern his blandest expression of displeasure and added, 'You are on your honor not to allow me to fall asleep in your tub.'

  'Fall asleep or drown?' Lujan quipped back, extending a fast hand to assist the Spy Master's balance. 'Man, what have you been up to?'

  But badger though he might, the Force Commander received no explanation from the Spy Master until the bath was done, and the helm retrieved, and the council was well on into session.

  Keyoke was already seated in the yellow light cast by the circle of lamps, his leathery hands crossed on the crutch across his knees. Word of Arakasi's homecoming had been sent to the kitchens, and servants hurried in with trays laden with snacks. Hokanu attended at Mara's right hand, in the place normally occupied by the First Adviser, while Saric and Incomo sat in low-voiced conference opposite. Jican huddled with his arms around his knees behind a mountainous pile of slates. Bins stuffed with scrolls rested like bastions at either elbow, while his expression looked faintly beleaguered.

  Arakasi ran his eyes quickly over the gathering and surmised in his dry way, 'Trade has not been going well in my absence, I can see.'

  Jican bristled at this, which effectively canceled anyone's immediate notice of the Spy Master's ragged condition. 'We are not compromised,' the little hadonra swiftly defended. 'But there have been several ventures in the markets that have gone awry. Mara has lost allies among the merchants who also have Anasati interests.' In visible relief, he finished, 'The silk auctions did not suffer.'

  'Yet,' Incomo supplied, unasked. 'The traditionalists continue to gain influence. Ichindar's Imperial Whites more than once had to shed blood to stop riots in Kentosani.'

  'The food markets by the wharf,' Arakasi affirmed in spare summary. 'I heard. Our Emperor would do more to stop dissension if he could manage to sire himself an heir that was not a daughter.'

  Eyes turned toward the Lady of the Acoma as her staff all waited upon whatever she might ask of them.

  Thinner than she had been on the occasion of Ayaki's funeral, she was nonetheless immaculately composed. Her face was washed clean of makeup. Her eyes were focused and keen, and her hands settled in her lap as she spoke. 'Arakasi has revealed that we are confronted by a new threat.' Only her voice showed the ongoing strain she yet hid behind the Tsurani façade of control; never before Ayaki's loss had she spoken with such a hard-edged clarity of hatred. 'I ask you all to grant him whatever aid he may ask without question.'

  Lujan flashed Arakasi a sour glance. 'You had already dirtied her cushions, I now see,' he murmured with injured irritation. Keyoke looked a touch disgruntled. The discovery was belated that the patrol which had finally caught the Spy Master lurking in the corridors had done so only after he had held a conference with the mistress, undetected by any. Aware of the byplay, but obliged by code of conduct to ignore it, the other two advisers inclined their heads in acceptance of the mistress's wishes. Only Jican fidgeted, aware as he was that Mara's decree would create additional havoc in the Acoma treasury. Arakasi's services came at high costs of operation, which caused the hadonra unceasing, hand-wringing worry.

  A breeze wafted through the open windows above the great hall of the Acoma, carved into the side of the hill against which the estate house rested. Despite the brilliance of the lamps, the room was thrown into gloom in the farthest corners. The cho-ja globes on their stands stayed unlit, and the low dais used for informal conference remained the only island of illumination. Those servants in attendance waited a discreet distance away, within call should they be needed but out of earshot of any discussion. Mara resumed, 'What we speak of here must be kept in our circle alone.' She asked Arakasi, 'How much time do you need to spend upon this new threat?'

  Arakasi gave a palms-upward shrug that revealed a yellow bruise on one wristbone. 'I can only surmise, mistress. My instincts tell me the organisation I encountered is based to the east of us, probably in Ontoset. We have light ties between there and Jamar and the City of the Plains, since the cover was a factor's business. An enemy who discovered our workings to the west would see nothing beyond c
oincidence in the eastern connection. Yet I do not know where the damage originated. The trace could have started somewhere else.'

  Mara chewed her lip. 'Explain.'

  'I did some cursory checking before I returned to Sulan-Qu.' More nervelessly cold than Keyoke could be before battle, the Spy Master qualified. 'On the surface, our trading interests seem secure to the west and north. The recent expansion I have regrettably been forced to curtail was located south and east. Our unknown opponent may have stumbled onto some operation we just set in place; or not. I cannot say. His effect has been felt very clearly. He has detected some aspect of our courier system, and deduced of our methods to establish a network to observe us. This enemy has placed watchers where they are likely to trap someone they hope they can trace back to a position of authority. From this I extrapolate that our enemy has his own system to glean advantage from such an opportunity.'

  Hokanu settled an arm around Mara's lower back, though her manner did not indicate she needed comfort. 'How can you be certain of this?'

  Baldly Arakasi said, 'Because it is what I would have done.' He smoothed his robe to conceal the welts the splinters had marked on his shins. 'I was almost taken, and that is no easy feat.' His flat phrases implied a total lack of conceit as he raised one finger. 'I am worried because we have been compromised.' He lifted a second finger and added, 'I am relieved to have made a clean escape. If the team that gave me chase ever guessed whom they had cornered, they would have taken extreme measures to be thorough. Subterfuge would have been abandoned in favor of my successful capture. Therefore, they must have expected to net a courier or supervisor. My identity as Acoma Spy Master most likely remains uncompromised.'

  Mara straightened in sudden decision. 'Then it seems a wise course to absent yourself from this problem.' Arakasi all but recoiled in surprise. 'My Lady?'

  Misinterpreting his reaction for hurt feelings that his competence lay questioned, Mara attempted to soften her pronouncement. 'You are too critical to another problem that needs attention.' She waved her dismissal to Jican, saying, 'I think the trade problems can wait.' While the little man bowed his acquiescence and snapped fingers to call his secretaries to help gather his tallies and scrolls, Mara commanded all the other servants to leave the great hall. When the great doubled doors swept closed, leaving her alone with the inner circle of her advisers, she said to her Spy Master, 'I have something else for you to do.'