Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  'Forgive me, good priest, for my ill manners. In my mistress's name, you are welcome here, my brutish behavior a pitiful reflection on the honor of this house.'

  The priest stepped forward, silent on bare feet. His sun-browned face showed no affront but only deepest sympathy as he touched the warrior's shoulder. 'With master and Lady both hurt, you would be a poor guardian if you did not seek to spare them from intrusions.'

  Lujan spoke with his face still pressed to the floor. 'Good priest, if you have .come to help, my feelings are of no consequence before the needs of my master and Lady.'

  Now the priest frowned, a fearful expression on a face that habitually was serene. His hand tightened, in surprising strength, and he raised Lujan from his posture of submission. 'On the contrary,' he snapped. 'The spirit and the feelings of any man are equal in the sight of my god. You are forgiven your lapse of manners, worthy warrior. Go now. Leave me to my business with your master, and mind your post by the door with all vigilance.'

  Lujan snapped the priest a salute, hand over heart, and stepped out as ordered. The surgeon gave a hasty half bow, and made as if to follow. But the priest waved for him to stay as he stepped to Hokanu's bedside. 'My novice is but a boy, and too tired from travel to assist. He sleeps, and if I am to be of service to my god, I will need help.'

  The priest set down his satchel. He took the sick man's sweating fingers into his own and looked into Hokanu's eyes. 'Son of my god, how are you?'

  Hokanu inclined his head, the best he could manage for courtesy, 'I do well enough. Blessings of your god, and Chochocan's favor for guiding you to this house.' He drew a difficult breath and forced his voice steady over his pain. 'If I may presume, I would ask that you look after my Lady. Her need is greater than mine.'

  The priest pursed his lips. 'No. I say not' -he held up a hand, forestalling Hokanu's protest - 'and it is my judgment to make. I have seen the Good Servant already. I traveled here in answer to her need, for her sacrifice and her love for her people are recognised by the followers of my god. But she is mending well enough without Hantukama's blessing. You brought the antidote in good time.'

  Hokanu closed his eyes, his relief palpable. 'I am grateful to hear she will be well again.'

  'She will be well.' The priest paused, his face suddenly careworn. As if he chose his words carefully, he added, 'But you should know, as her consort, that she will bear only one more child. The poison caused damage, and that was the best the healing powers of my god would allow.'

  Hokanu's eyes flicked open, black in the flicker of lamplight. His warrior's composure held, and nothing of his anguish leaked through, that his Lady could not have the many children she craved, to secure both her line and his also. 'That is enough, then, good priest.'

  A silence fell over the chamber, with the surgeon standing motionless in respect for his master's feelings. The hiss of the oil lamp blended with the whisper of the breeze beyond the screen and, farther off, the tramp of a warrior answering the change of the watch. With summer past, the amphibious creatures were silent on the lakeshore; only insects sang in the soft warmth of the night.

  Out of that stillness, and the peace that ruled the late hour, the priest of Hantukama spoke. 'Master Hokanu, that is not enough.'

  The eyes of Mara's consort focused with an effort, through the dulling effects of drugged wine. He looked at the slender, wizened little priest, and pulled himself half upright. 'What more would you ask of me that I have not already given?'

  The priest of Hantukama sighed and returned a thin smile. 'It is that you give too much, son of my god. Your love and devotion to your Lady consume all that you have and all that you are. For her, the heir to the Shinzawai has risked the wholeness of his leg, and for her, he would lay down his life to spare her own. I say, as the voice of my god, that this is too much.'

  Now Hokanu's cheeks flushed red in anger. 'What honor would I have if I saved myself before Mara?'

  The priest pressed him back against his cushions with a touch that was gentle but firm. 'She does not need your rescue,' he said, inarguably blunt. 'She is Servant of the Empire and Lady of the Acoma. She has her own strength. She needs you as confidant and companion beside her, not as a shield before her.'

  Hokanu drew breath to argue. The priest gave him a sharp shake that made him gasp in discomfort. 'You are no less than she in the eyes of this Empire and my god. The continuance of this nation, and the better life for all promised by the Light of Heaven, rely upon you, as heir to the House of Shinzawai, as much as on her. You are a major player in this changed Game of the Council. This you must understand.'

  Too weakened to argue, Hokanu sank back. 'You sound as if you know the future,' he said tiredly. 'What is it you see that we do not?'

  But the priest would not say. Instead he stepped from Hokanu's shoulder, and laid his hands on the flesh at either side of the wound on Hokanu's hip. Softly, firmly, he addressed the surgeon. 'Open my satchel, good healer. If this man is to rise without a limp, there is a long night's work ahead, and a need to invoke the blessing of my god.'

  Word of the ambush against Hokanu and the certainty of Mara's recovery caught up with Arakasi on a river barge bound downriver from Kentosani. The messenger who brought the news arrived just past dawn, during a stop to load fresh fruit. He boarded with the slaves carrying the baskets of jomach, and slipped unobtrusively forward to the huddled mass of deck passengers who bought their comfortless passage for a centi each. The barge was crowded with three families of migrant fruit pickers, two scabby beggars who had been run out of Kentosani for plying their craft without license from the Emperor, and a guild runner with a swollen ankle bound south to ask charity of an uncle while his injury healed.

  Arakasi was seated between two lashed casks, his dark hood drawn over his face. Since he was as dirty as the beggars, and looked as shifty as a street thief, the peasant mothers with their fretful infants and gaggle of skinny children had given him wide berth. The newcomer found enough space to squeeze down beside him, and whisper news from the Acoma estate.

  Eyes closed, head lolling against a barrel, the Spy Master appeared asleep; he had charcoal under his fingernails and an untended scab on his chin. He smelled as though he had not bathed in a sevenday. But his ears heard well. After a moment through which he thought furiously, he grumbled sleepily, rolled on his side, and returned the barest breath of a whisper.

  'I will not be getting off at the river fork. Tell the connection there to convey my regards to our master and mistress. If I am needed, have the net ask after me from the jewel setter adjacent to the trophy stuffer's shop in Sulan-Qu. You'll know the place by the harulth skull on the signpost.'

  The messenger touched the Spy Master's wrist in confirmation. Then he made a noise of disgust, leaned over toward the nearest of the passengers, and began to proselytise for an obscure priesthood of Lulondi, God of Farmers.

  'Be off, pest,' snapped the bothered victim. 'I don't love vegetables, and the flies are bad enough on this journey without your carping on top of them!'

  The messenger bowed, carelessly banging an elbow into the knee of a peasant wife. She cursed him, lashed out a foot, and caught him a blow in the shins.

  The disturbance brought the attention of the barge master. 'Hey there! Mind you stay quiet, or I'll heave the lot of you overboard.'

  The farm wife returned loud protest. 'This scum is here soliciting, and did you get a coin for his passage, anyway?'

  The barge master scowled, tramped forward, and peered at the prostrate man the farm wife pointed her calloused finger at.

  'You! Vermin-carrying, sores-ridden wretch! Have you a centi to pay for your space?' The barge master held out his hand, sweating in his annoyance.

  The man he singled out muttered pitiably. 'For the goodness of Lulondi's blessing, I ask that you let me stay.'

  The barge master scowled and snapped his fingers. 'I'll show you Lulondi's blessing.' At his signal, two polemen arose from their resting place by the rai
l. Muscled like wrestlers, they came forward on bandy legs and bowed before their master. 'Heave him off,' the barge master ordered in disgust. 'And none too gently, either, since he thought to stow away.'

  Identical grins spread across the faces of the polemen. They grabbed their victim by the wrists, raised him, and tossed him over the side.

  He landed with a smack and a splash of dirty water that all but swamped the fruit seller's dugout, tied alongside for the transfer of goods. The slaves whacked him away with their paddles, and the barge crew, the deck passengers, and bystanders gathered on the shore all laughed as the wretch kicked free of the strangling folds of his cloak and swam like a river rodent for dry land.

  'Lulondi's blessing, indeed,' harrumphed the barge master. He whirled, his mind back on business, and stepped over a snoring Arakasi without so much as a glance.

  Two days later, Mara's Spy Master disembarked in Sulan-Qu. He made his way across the riverfront, unobtrusive in the noon shadows. The streets were nearly deserted, the shops closed in siesta. What few loiterers were about either slept in the shade of the window awnings and balconies or poked through the refuse in the gutters, in search of a crust to eat. Arakasi made his way to the House of Seven Stars, a brothel that catered to wealthy nobles with odd tastes. There, under a back-door arch adorned with kissing cherubs, he knocked in a prescribed sequence. The panel opened, and an immensely fat woman hung with beads and corcara necklaces pulled him inside.

  'Gods,' she murmured in a voice as deep as a man's, 'do you always have to come here smelling like a sewer? We have clients upstairs who might be offended.'

  Arakasi flashed a grin. 'Now, Bubara, don't tell me you've used up all the bath water with the kekali leaves and citrus so early in the day?'

  The madam grunted through her nose. 'Hardly. The girls and boys have to smell sweet.' She twitched a flabby arm through a curtain, and a naked deaf-mute child with skin the color of chocha-la beans scurried out and bowed before her.

  She motioned toward Arakasi and nodded.

  The little boy looked at the dirty visitor, cocked his head to one side, and grinned in delighted recognition. Unmindful of the smell, he took the charcoal-marked hand and led the Spy Master off.

  Arakasi tousled the boy's hair and from some hidden pocket produced a cho-ja-made candy. The boy smiled, showing a pathetic expanse of gums where teeth should have been at his age. He made soft moans of pleasure and bowed his forehead to his fists repeatedly as a gesture of thanks.

  As an afterthought, Arakasi added two shell coins. 'Somebody should buy you some clothing,' he muttered and caught the boy by the elbow, tugging him upright as he made to prostrate himself on the floor. He patted the boy again on the head and waved him off, as he had been this way many times and knew which room he sought.

  He moved off down the corridor, touched a section of carving that unlatched a hidden door, and climbed the narrow, shadowy stair beyond to a cubbyhole under the eaves, while, behind him, the little boy clutched his treasured gifts and groveled upon the pretty carpets for long, unnoticed minutes.

  In the cramped chamber, under the heat of shingles ablaze under the noon sun, Arakasi picked from an assortment of carry boxes and chests which held garments of all types, from beaded, glittering robes to field workers' smocks. He selected an orange-and-purple livery and a dusty pair of sandals with a hole in the toe of the left one's sole. Then he bundled his unwashed robes in another chest that held what looked to be beggar's rags, and, clad in nothing but his dirt and a soiled loincloth, made his way back downstairs to avail himself of the madam's bath.

  An hour later, he was on his knees in the offices of the moneylenders' guild, a scrub brush and bucket in hand. Afternoon trade had resumed, and if he spent overlong cleansing the tiles around the desk of the clerk by the aisle, no one commented. Merchants tended to kick him out of their path as they came and went, particularly if repayment of their loans was behind schedule, or if their need for credit had resulted from misfortune: a caravan load lost to bandits or a silk shipment spoiled by damp weather.

  Arguments tended to flare in the heat of afternoon, and no one noticed that the servant muttered under his breath as he scrubbed the tiles.

  Except the clerk who, as he copied rows of figures, held his head tilted to one side.

  '. . . hafta track in dog dung,' Arakasi grumbled. 'Should be a law against letting the pets of the ladies defecate in the streets.' He sniffed, cursed his aching back, and in exactly the same singsong tone added, 'Offends my nose, it does, and did you notice whether the red boy took out any notes that might have been for blood money? Crap in the wash water again, and I'm tired of refilling my bucket.'

  The clerk scrubbed sweat from his brow, picked a slate off a corner of his desk, and made a notation. Then he shuffled it into another stack, smeared with erasures and chalk dust, and lashed out with a foot, catching the floor scrubber a hard blow in the ribs. 'Here, you. Clean these.'

  Arakasi tugged his forelock and pressed his nose to the wet tiles. 'Your will, sir, master, your will.' He accepted the pile of slates, shuffled off to fetch a rag, and began the appointed task. His muttering continued, the inflection even as ever as he came to the slate with the blurred notation. At the sight of the figures there, with dates noted in code to one side, he could barely keep his wipe rag steady. Three flicks of his wrist, and the slate was empty, the figures and dates committed to memory. His appearance remained innocuously bland, but his heartbeat doubled.

  For 'red boy' was his code name for Anasati, and the clerk, a carefully placed agent. The numbers exchanged had revealed large sums in metal, taken out by the Anasati First Adviser. They had not been for trade purposes; those the hadonra would have signed for, and most would have been in notes to merchants that handled regular transactions. One of the sums had been borrowed just before the time of Arakasi's near-disastrous exposure in the silk warehouse. Could the events have been connected? And the other two, recently dated, might have been payments to the Hamoi Tong, blood money for specified assassinations.

  Arakasi polished the last slate and shuffled back to the clerk's desk. He resumed mopping the floor, and roundly cursed when the clerk tossed a bit of thyza paper at the waste bin and missed. The crumpled bit of scrap landed on Arakasi's cleaned tiles. He retrieved it, bowed obsequiously, and deposited it within the waste barrel. But a second scrap of paper twisted inside remained in his palm, and vanished into a fold of his loincloth.

  He endured the cuffs and blows of the merchants as he scrubbed his way across the aisle, until he reached haven in a far corner.

  Just before closing time, when voices were loudest and tempers most frayed, an ostentatiously dressed merchant stopped by the desk of the clerk who was Arakasi's agent. He flicked a swift glance about the shop, saw that all on the floor were occupied, and made an inquiry.

  The apparently flustered clerk dropped his chalk. Arakasi dipped his scrub brush into his bucket and started on a new section of floor, but his bent head was angled so that he caught a clear view of the exchange at the clerk's desk under his arm.

  The two men spoke for a few minutes. Shell counters changed hands, invisibly to anyone who happened to be standing, but not to a servant bent down on the floor. The merchant glanced to left and right, his eyes bright with exhilaration.

  Arakasi, muttering, repressed a frown. Where have I seen that man before? he thought. Where? And in time the answer came to him, who was adept at separating details from circumstance, no matter how incongruous they might have seemed.

  He knew, with a thrill of excitement, that the man dressed as the gaudy merchant was none other than Chumaka, the Anasati First Adviser.

  'Chochocan's favor,' he grumbled. 'Damned floor goes on forever.' He dragged his bucket to one side, half blocking the doorway that led to the privy. A moment later, he was rewarded by another blow in the ribs, as the clerk who hastened to nature's call tripped over him.

  'Damn you for a wretch!' He bent to deliver another punitive
blow, and, between curses, said breathlessly, 'The merchant wanted to know if anyone had made inquiry into the Anasati accounts. I told him several shifty and questionable men had offered me bribes to that effect, just to make him worry.'

  Arakasi choked back a grin, and pressed his face to the floor in a slave's bow of apology. 'Sorry, sir, master, I'm sorry. That's damned interesting news, and forgive me for my clumsiness, I beg you.'

  'You aren't forgiven!' shouted the clerk. 'Get out on the street and scrub the stoop! And make sure no street brats have made water on the pillars on the alley side, while you're at it.'

  Arakasi bowed and scraped, and backed hastily out the door. But though he detailed his sharpest squad of street children to seek out the merchant's trail, no trace of Chumaka could be found.

  By sundown, Mara's Spy Master was forced to concede the man's cleverness. It also left him worried. He felt cold to discover a man who could match his skills at subterfuge in the camp of an enemy. For not only was Jiro sworn to destroy Mara, he was the most dangerous member of the traditionalist faction that sought to bring down the Emperor. Others might be more public in their opposition, but Arakasi had no doubt that Jiro sought advantage by letting others voice his desires. What progress had been made to change a governance fallen to stagnation and decay remained threatened. As evening fell, Arakasi hastened through darkening streets toward the House of Seven Stars. He must go there and shift identity, then return to his mistress straight away. For although he had run into a dead end in his lead to root out the Hamoi Tong, he had other disquieting news to report, concerning political affairs within the Empire. Still more upsetting was his chance discovery that Chumaka, First Adviser to Jiro of the Anasati, had somehow discovered a need to guard his tracks.