Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  The back of the chief cook's neck turned white. 'Master,' he murmured, 'I have already failed in your request. The cups and the dishes from yesterday were cleaned and put away, as always, at sundown.'

  Arakasi and Hokanu exchanged harried, desperate glances. What garbage had not been thrown to the jigabirds would have been burned, to discourage insects.

  No trace remained of what variety of poison the spice seller from Midkemia might have carried. And unless they could discover what potion had stricken Mara, there could be no hope of finding an antidote.

  Instinctively knowing Hokanu was on the verge of explosive, useless action, Arakasi gripped him hard by the shoulders. 'Listen to me!' the Spy Master said in a tone that made the prone servants flinch upon the floor. 'She is dying, yes, and the.baby is dead, but all is not yet lost.'

  Hokanu said nothing, but his body stayed taut as strung wire in Arakasi's grasp.

  More gently, the Spy Master continued. 'They used a slow poison —'

  'They wanted her to suffer!' Hokanu cried, anguished. 'Her murderers wanted us all to watch, and be helpless.'

  Daring unspeakable consequences, both for laying hands on a noble and also for provoking a man near to breaking with fury and pain, Arakasi gave the master a rough shake. 'Yes and yes!' he shouted back. 'And it is that very cruelty that is going to save her life!'

  Now he had Hokanu's attention; and much of that warrior's rage was directed at himself. Sweating, aware of his peril, Arakasi pressed on. 'No priest of Hantukama can be found in time. The nearest -'

  Hokanu interrupted. 'The bleeding will take her long before the poison is finished working.'

  'Pity her for it - no,' Arakasi said brutally. 'I spoke with the midwife on the way in. She has sent to Lashima's temple for golden crown flower leaves. A poultice made from them will stop the bleeding. That leaves me a very narrow span of time to track the spice merchant.'

  Reason returned to Hokanu's eyes, but he did not soften. 'That merchant had barbarian bearers.'

  Arakasi nodded. 'He dressed ostentatiously, also. All that gold would have drawn notice.'

  Through his overwhelming concern, Hokanu showed surprise. 'How did you know? Did you pass the man on the road?'

  'No.' Arakasi returned a sly grin as he released his hold on Mara's consort. 'I heard the servants gossiping.'

  'Is there any detail you don't miss?' Mara's husband said in wonder.

  'Many, to my everlasting frustration.' Arakasi glanced, embarrassed, toward the floor, both he and the master that moment recalling that the kitchen staff still abased themselves at their feet.

  'For the good gods' sake!' Hokanu exclaimed. 'All of you, please, get up and go about your duties. The mistress's ills are not your fault.'

  While the slaves and servants arose from the floor and turned back to tasks at chopping block and cooking spit, Arakasi dropped to his knees before Hokanu. 'Master, I request formal leave to pursue this seller of alien spices and find an antidote for my Lady Mara.'

  Hokanu gave back the curt nod a commander might give a warrior on the field. 'Do so, and waste no more time on obeisance, Arakasi.'

  The Spy Master was back on his feet in an eye's blink and moving for the door. Only when he was safely past, at one with the shadows in the corridor, did his rigid control slip. Openly anxious, he considered the probabilities of the situation he had not disclosed to Hokanu.

  The spice seller had been conspicuous indeed, with his barbarian bearers and his ostentatious jewelry; and certainly not by chance. A man born in Kelewan would never wear metal on a public roadway without a driving reason. Already Arakasi knew that the man's trail would be easy to follow: for the man had intended to be tracked. The Spy Master would find only what the man's master wished, and the antidote for Mara would not be part of that knowledge.

  In the portico between the great hall and the stairways to the servants' quarters, Mara's Spy Master broke into a run. Already he had a suspicion: he expected to find the spice seller and his bearers all dead.

  In a tiny, wedge-shaped room in the attic over the storerooms, Arakasi opened a trunk. The leather hinges creaked as he rested the lid against the thin plaster wall, then rummaged within and pulled forth the hwaet-colored robes of an itinerant priest of a minor deity, Alihama, goddess of travelers. The fabric was smudged with old grease stains and road dust. Swiftly Mara's Spy Master flung the garment over his bare shoulders, and fastened the cord loops and pegs. Next he dragged up a cracked pair of sandals, a purple-striped sash, and a long, hooded headdress with tassels. Lastly he selected a ceramic censer, strung with earthenware bells and twine clappers.

  His guise as a priest of Alihama was now complete; but as Spy Master, he added seven precious metal throwing knives, each keenly balanced and thin as a razor. Five of these he tucked out of sight under the broad sash; the last two were slid between the soles of his needra-hide sandals, under rows of false stitching.

  When he passed through the doorway from his narrow dormer room, he walked with a lanky, rolling stride and peered about carefully as he took the stair, for one of his eyes appeared to have developed a cast.

  So thorough was his transformation as he made his exit from the estate house that Hokanu nearly missed him. But the broad, gaudy sash caught the Shinzawai heir's eye, and since he had seen no priest of Alihama being fed in the kitchens, he realised with a start that Arakasi had almost slipped past him.

  'Wait!' he called.

  The Spy Master did not turn but continued to shuffle down toward the landing, with intent to catch the next dispatch barge to Kentosani.

  Dressed in the high boots and close-fitting breeches that Midkemians wore while riding horses, Hokanu had to run in discomfort and catch up. He caught the Spy Master by the shoulder, and was startled into a warrior's leap back as the man whirled under his touch, almost too fast for credibility.

  Arakasi's hand fell away from his sash. He squinted walleyed at Hokanu and said, soft as velvet, 'You startled me.'

  'I see that.' Uncharacteristically awkward, Hokanu gestured toward the priest's robe. 'The barge and the roads on foot are too slow. I am coming with you, and both of us are going to ride horses.'

  The Spy Master stiffened. 'Your place is by your Lady's side.'

  'Well I know it.' Hokanu was anguished, and his hand twisted and twisted at the leather riding crop thrust through his sash. 'But what can I do here but watch as she wastes away? No. I am coming.' He did not say what lay upon both of their minds - that Arakasi was an Acoma servant. As Mara's consort, Hokanu was not his legal master; Arakasi's loyalty was not his to command. 'I am reduced to asking,' he said painfully. 'Please, allow me to come along. For our Lady's sake, let me help.'

  Arakasi's dark eyes assessed Hokanu without mercy, then glanced away.

  'I see what it would do to you to refuse your request,' he said quietly. 'But horses would not be appropriate. You may travel, if you wish, as my acolyte.'

  Now Hokanu was sharp. 'Outside of these estates how many have seen a horse from the barbarian lands beyond the rift? Do you think anyone will have eyes for the riders? By the time they have finished staring at the beasts, we will have passed by in a great cloud of dust.'

  'Very well,' Arakasi allowed, though the incongruity between his costume and Hokanu's preference for transport worried him. All it would take was one clever man to connect his face with a priest who behaved outside of doctrine, and with an exotic creature from beyond the rift, and all of his work would be compromised. But as he considered the risks to Mara, he realised: he loved her better than his work, better than his own life. If she died, his stake in the future, and in the formation of a better, stronger Empire, was as dust.

  On impulse, he said, it shall be as you wish, my Lord. But you will bind me to the saddle, and I shall be driven before you as your prisoner.'

  Hokanu, already starting briskly for the stables, glanced in surprise over his shoulder. 'What? For your honor, I could never abuse you like that!'

&n
bsp; 'You will.' In a stride, Arakasi caught up with him. The cast was still in his eye; it seemed no distraction could make him break out of his disguise. 'You must. I will need these priest's robes for later; thus, we must tailor our circumstances to fit. I am a holy man who was dishonorable enough to try thievery. Your servants caught me. I am being escorted back to Kentosani to be delivered to temple justice.'

  'That's reasonable enough.' Hokanu impatiently waved away the servant who hurried to open the gate, and climbed the fence to gain time. 'But your word is sufficient. I will not see you bound.'

  'You will,' Arakasi repeated, faintly smiling. 'Unless you want to stop six times every league to pick me up out of the dust. Master, I have tried every guise in this Empire, and more than a few that are foreign, but I sure as the gods love perversity never tried straddling a beast. The prospect terrifies me.'

  They had reached the yard, where at Hokanu's orders a hired Midkemian freeman stood with two horses, saddled and ready for mounting. One was a strapping grey, the other chestnut, and though they were less spirited than the flashy black that had belonged to Ayaki, Hokanu watched Arakasi eye the creatures with trepidation. Through his worry for Mara, still he noticed: the Spy Master's squint stayed pronounced as ever.

  'You're lying,' the Shinzawai accused, affection in his tone robbing the words of insult. 'You have ice water for blood, and if you weren't so inept with a sword, you would have made a formidable commander of armies.'

  'Fetch out some rope,' Arakasi replied succinctly. 'I am going to instruct you how sailors make knots, Master Hokanu. And for both of our sakes, I hope you will tie them tightly.'

  The horses thundered at a gallop, dust billowing in ocher clouds on the noon air. Traffic on the roadway suffered. Needra pulling goods wagons huffed and shied in a six-legged scramble for the safety of the verge. Their drivers shouted in rage, and then in awed fear, as the four-legged beasts from beyond the rift shot past. Runners sprang aside, wide-eyed, and trade caravans scattered out of formation, their drovers and road masters gaping like farmers.

  'You've never had these creatures off the estates,' Arakasi surmised in a tight voice. Bound by his wrists to the saddle horn and by his ankles to a cord that looped underneath the gelding's girth, he endured indescribable discomfort as he tried to keep his posture and his dignity. His priest's robe flapped like a flag against the restriction of his sash, and the censer whacked him in the calf at each thrust of the gelding's stride.

  'Try to relax,' Hokanu offered in an attempt to be helpful. He sat his saddle with what seemed liquid ease, his dark hair blowing free and his hands steady on the reins. He did not look like a man chafed by blisters in unmentionable places. If not for his concern for his wife, he might have enjoyed the commotion his outlandish beasts were causing on the roadway.

  'How do you know to start in Kentosani?' Hokanu asked as he drew rein along a forested stretch of roadway to give the horses a breather.

  Arakasi closed his eyes as he endured the jolt while his gelding responded to the jerk on the leading rein and shifted from a canter, to a long trot, and finally to a smoother walk. The Spy Master sighed, knocked the censer away from his bruised ankle, and gave a sideways look that spoke volumes. But his voice held no disgust as he answered Hokanu's question.

  'The Holy City is the only place in the Empire that already has Midkemians in residence, where Thuril and even desert men walk about in native costume. I expect that our spice dealer wished to be conspicuous, and then blend his trail into one more difficult to follow, so that we find him, but not too soon. For I believe he has a master who gave him his orders concerning your Lady, and that man, that enemy, will not want to keep his secrecy.'

  The Spy Master did not add a second, more telling conjecture. Best not to voice his suspicions until he had proof. The two men rode on in silence, beneath a canopy of ulo trees. Birds swooped from the branches at the sight and smell of the alien beasts. The horses switched at flies, and ignored them.

  Hokanu's comfort in the saddle stayed deceptively at odds with the emotion he wrestled inside. At each bend in the road, under the shadow of every tree, he imagined threat. Memory haunted him, of Mara's pale face against the pillow, and her hands so unnaturally still on the coverlet. Often as he chastised himself for the worry that wasted his energy, he could not marshal his thoughts. He fretted in his warrior's stillness, that he could do nothing more than provide horses to hurry Arakasi on his errand. The Spy Master was competent at his art; companionship in all likelihood hindered his work. Yet, had Hokanu remained behind, he knew the sight of Mara lying helpless would have enraged him. He would have mustered warriors and marched against Jiro, and be damned to the Assembly's edict. A frown marred his brows. Even now he had to restrain himself from grasping his crop and lashing the animal under him. To give free rein to his inner rage, his guilt, and his pain, he would make the beast gallop until it dropped.

  'I am glad you are with me,' Arakasi said suddenly, unexpectedly.

  Hokanu recoiled from his unpleasant thoughts and saw the Spy Master's enigmatic gaze fixed upon him. He waited, and after an interval filled with the rustle of wind through the trees, Arakasi qualified.

  'With you along, I cannot afford to be careless. The added responsibility will steady me, when, for the first time in my life, I feel the urge to be reckless.' Frowning, self-absorbed, Arakasi regarded his bound hands. His knuckles flexed, testing the knots. 'Mara is special to me. I feel for her as I never did for my former master, even when his house was obliterated by his enemies.'

  Surprised, Hokanu said, 'I did not realise you had served another house.'

  As if wakened to the fact that he had shared a confidence, Arakasi shrugged. 'I originally established my network for the Lord of the Tuscai.'

  'Ah,' Hokanu nodded. That stray fact explained much. 'Then you took service with the Acoma at the same time as Lujan and the other former grey warriors?'

  The Spy Master nodded, his intense eyes following every nuance of Mara's consort's bearing. He seemed to arrive at some inner decision. 'You share her dreams,' he stated.

  Again Hokanu was startled. The man's perception was almost too keen to be comfortable. 'I want an Empire free of injustice, sanctioned murder, and slavery, if that is what you refer to.'

  The horses plodded on, making confusion of an approaching caravan as drovers and the reinsman of a cook wagon all started shouting and pointing. Arakasi's quiet reply cut without effort through the din. 'Her life is more important than both of ours. If you go on with me, master, you must understand: I will risk your life as ruthlessly for her as I would my own.'

  Aware somehow that the Spy Master spoke from the heart, and that he was uncomfortable sharing confidences, Hokanu did not attempt a direct reply. 'It's time for us to move out again.' He thumped his heels into his gelding's ribs, and dragged both mounts to a canter.

  The back alleys of Kentosani reeked of refuse and runoff from the chamber pots of the poor. Spy Master and Shinzawai Lord had left the horses in the care of a trembling hostel owner, who bowed and scraped and stuttered that he was unworthy of caring for such rare beasts. His face showed stark fear as the pair left; and the stir the horses' presence caused among the hostel's staff masked Arakasi and Hokanu's departure. Every servant was still outside, along with every patron, staring and pointing at the Midkemian horses as stablehands used to dull-tempered needra fumbled with the much more active animals.

  In a change of roles like irony, now the Spy Master affected the upper hand, and Hokanu, wearing only his loincloth, played the part of a penitent on a pilgrimage as the priest's servant, to appease the minor deity he had reputedly offended. They blended into the afternoon crowd.

  On foot instead of carried in a litter, and for the first time in his life not surrounded by an honor guard, Hokanu came to realise how much the Holy City had changed since the Emperor had assumed absolute rule in place of the High Council. Great Lords and Ladies no longer traveled heavily defended by warriors, for Impe
rial Whites patrolled the streets to keep order. Where the main thoroughfares had generally been safe, if crowded with traffic — farm carts, temple processions, and hurrying messengers — the darker, narrow back lanes where the laborers and beggars lived, or the fish-ripe alleys behind the warehouses at the wharf, had not been a place for a man or woman to venture without armed escort.

  And yet Arakasi had a knowledge of these dim byways acquired years before Ichindar's abolishment of the Warlord's office. He led a twisted path through moss-damp archways, between tenenents too close-packed to admit sunlight, and, once, through the malodorous, refuse-choked channel of a storm culvert.

  'Why such a circuitous route?' Hokanu inquired in a pause when a shrieking mob of street children raced by, in pursuit of a bone-skinny dog.

  'Habit,' Arakasi allowed. His smoking censer swung at his knee, its incense only a partial palliative against the assault of stinks from the gutter. They passed a window where a wrinkled crone sat peeling jomach with a bone-bladed knife. 'That hostel where we left the beasts is an honest enough house, but gossipmongers congregate there to swap news. I didn't wish to be followed; when we left there was an Ekamchi servant on our tail. He saw the horses at the main gate, and knew we were of the Acoma or Shinzawai households.'

  Hokanu asked, 'Have we lost him?'

  Arakasi smiled faintly, his slim hand raised in a sign of benediction over the crown of a beggar's head. The man was wild-eyed and mumbling, obviously touched to madness by the gods. With a twirl of the cord that spun the censer and clouded the air with incense, the Spy Master replied, 'We lost him indeed. Apparently he did not wish to soil his sandals in the garbage pit we crossed two blocks back. He went around, lost sight of us for a second . . .'

  'And we ducked through that culvert,' Hokanu concluded, chuckling.

  They passed the shuttered front of a weaver's shop, and paused at a baker's, while Arakasi bought a roll and spread sa jam in zigzags across the buttered top. The bread seller attended another customer and waved to his apprentice, who showed the apparent priest and penitent into a curtained back room. A few minutes later, the bread seller himself appeared. He looked the pair of visitors over keenly and finally addressed Arakasi. 'I didn't recognise you in that garb.'