Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  'What's got the little one all stirred up?' Mara asked.

  Hokanu put his arm around her shoulder. 'A new game. Your Adviser for War laid a bet with the boy that he could not be ambushed unawares. Justin has taken to lurking behind the furniture, and the servants won't use the back hallways anymore, for fear of being set upon.'

  'And Keyoke?' Mara turned the last corner and passed the length of another corridor tiled in old, worn mosaic. 'Has he been caught?'

  Hokanu laughed. 'Several times. His hearing is not what it once was, and his crutch makes him easy prey.'

  Mara shook her head. 'Just so Justin doesn't terrorise him. The old campaigner has received scars enough in Acoma service without getting battered in his twilight years.'

  But Keyoke, Hokanu knew, did not mind his bruises in the least, for Justin held the affection of the grandson the old man had never had.

  The couple reached the doorway to Mara's study. There Hokanu lifted his arm and gave his wife a questioning glance. The servants had not reached this hallway yet, and the lamps were still unlit. Mara's face was a pale oval in the shadows, and her expression was unreadable. After a moment she said, 'Stay with me this time. Lady Isashani's news has left me unsettled, and I would like your counsel.'

  Hokanu heard the worry in her voice. He asked, 'Should I send for Saric and Incomo?'

  Mara returned a shake of her head. 'No. They would not condone what I plan, and I see no need to endure their criticism.'

  Suddenly cold, there in the warm darkness, with the calls of the servants near to hand, and the smells of supper wafting from the kitchen, Hokanu reached out and tipped Mara's chin up with one finger. 'Just what are you thinking, pretty Lady?' His tone was at odds with the apprehension that bound his breath.

  Mara answered after a pause. 'I am thinking that the Hamoi Tong has made trouble for far too long. I have lost a son and an unborn child to it. I would not see Lady Isashani suffer the same loss, and I owe her late husband, Lord Chipino, at least that much.'

  Hokanu released a sigh, distressed by the strain that came between them over the subject of children. 'It is not the tong but the enemy who employs it that is to be feared.'

  Mara gave back a fractional nod. 'I know. That is why I am going to ask Arakasi to penetrate its headquarters and steal its records. I will know its employer, and have his plots out into the open.'

  'His name is probably Anasati,' Hokanu said.

  'One of his names.' Mara's tone was ominous. 'I would know the others as well, that no more parents lose young heirs to the cause of murderous politics. Come, let us go and charge Arakasi to undertake this difficult task.'

  Hokanu could only nod as he escorted his wife into the hall leading to her study. He held respect close to awe for the Spy Master, since watching him act on the night they had sought the antidote. Yet even for a man of his gifts of guile and disguise, to infiltrate the Hamoi Tong was asking the impossible. Hokanu had no argument for the notion that his Lady was sending her Spy Master off to die at a time when she most needed his services.

  Arakasi departed his Lady's study preoccupied. Talk had left his voice hoarse. This night's report had been extensive, the end result of many months of labor in the field. The Spy Master had pushed his agents hard, had exhorted them to seek out answers even in the face of the dangers posed by Jiro's First Adviser, Chumaka. Two men had forfeited their cover to gain information, and had chosen suicide by the blade rather than face inquisition and torture, and risk betraying their mistress. And although they had winnowed out several traditionalist plots and shifts in old alliances against the Emperor, they had come no nearer to setting a name to the employer who had sent the Hamoi Tong against Mara.

  More disquieting news than the late failed attempt against Lord Hoppara was that several other attempts had been foiled by Arakasi's agent in the Xacatecas household. Twice she had been 'clumsy' around the cooks, and spilled dishes of food she suspected had been poisoned.

  That report had caused Mara to flinch openly. Her face had paled, and then flushed with a depth of anger Arakasi had never seen. Her words still rang in his memory, edged with a grief that never left her since Ayaki's loss. 'Arakasi,' she had said, 'I ask that you find a way to steal the records of the Hamoi Tong. These attacks against us, and now the allies of our Emperor, must be brought to a stop. If more than the Anasati are behind them, I would have you find out.'

  Arakasi had accepted the command, fist over heart in a soldier's salute. After months of attempts to penetrate the Anasati accounts, and three unsuccessful tries to place new agents on Jiro's estate, he regarded the order to go directly after the tong almost as a relief. Arakasi had conceded from frustration that Chumaka was by far the most clever opponent he had ever faced. But even as brilliant a player of politics as the Anasati First Adviser would not anticipate a move as foolhardy as attempting to challenge the assassins. And while Chumaka might not know Mara's Spy Master by name, he was developing an understanding that let him anticipate Arakasi's methods. A dose of the unexpected, especially if no clear motives could be discerned, might throw Chumaka off balance for a while.

  Quiet as shadow, and deep in his own thoughts, Arakasi turned, keeping to the dimmer passageways out of habit. This narrow hall crossed the oldest part of the estate house. The floors were built on two heights, legacy of some forgotten Lord who had believed he should always stand above his servants. He, or perhaps one of his wives, had also been a devotee of bric-a-brac. The walls held cavernous niches for statuary and artworks. Arakasi personally thought the things a liability, since some were large enough to harbor an assassin, or a large child.

  Consequently, he was not taken entirely off guard when an earsplitting yell sounded at his back, and someone gave an athletic leap with intent to hammer him down from behind.

  He spun, light and fast, and found himself with an armload of six-year-old, kicking and cross that his surprise attack had been anticipated.

  Mara's Spy Master blew a lock of reddish gold hair out of his lips and said equably, 'Do I look so much like Keyoke today that you saw fit to test my reflexes?'

  Young Justin giggled and squirmed, and managed to raise the toy sword carved from wood and inlaid with lacquer disks. 'Already killed Keyoke twice today,' he crowed.

  Arakasi's brows rose. He shifted his grip, surprised at the strength required to restrain the energetic little boy. Certainly he was his father's son, with his impertinent attitude and legs as long as those of a corani, an antelope-like creature renowned for its fierce speed. 'How many times did Keyoke kill you today, imp?'

  Justin looked sheepish. 'Four.' He added a rude phrase in the barbarian tongue, most likely overheard from a soldier in the barracks who had been close to Kevin on the campaign in Dustari. Arakasi took mental note that the boy had ears as quick as his wits; the child was not too young to eavesdrop on his elders. 'I have the feeling it's after your bedtime,' the Spy Master accused. 'Do your nurses know you're awake?' And carefully he began to walk in the direction of the child's quarters.

  Justin shook back a curly mop of hair. 'Nurses don't know where I am.' He smiled proudly, then looked dismayed as doubt crept in. 'You won't tell them? I'll get punished for certain.'

  A gleam lit Arakasi's dark eyes. 'There are terms,' he said in all seriousness. 'You will have to make a promise in exchange for my silence.'

  Justin looked solemn. Then, as he had seen the soldiers do at dice to seal a debt, he raised his closed fist and touched thumb to forehead. 'I keep my word.'

  Arakasi choked back a grin. 'Very well, honorable young master. You will not make a sound when I slip you into your sleeping quarters, and you will lie on your mat without moving, with your eyes closed, until you wake up, and it is morning.'

  Justin gave a howl of betrayal. So like his father, Arakasi thought, as he lugged the protesting boy off to the nursery. Neither would Kevin accept protocols, or propriety. He was honest when it was a frank embarrassment, and lied whenever it suited him. He was anathema
to any well-run Tsurani household, but life had certainly been less entertaining since his departure through the rift gate back to Midkemia. Even Jican, who had been the butt of more than his share of Kevin's jokes, had been known to remark wistfully on his absence.

  In true form, Justin ceased his outcry on the threshold of his own room. His tantrum was not worth continuing at the risk of wrath from his nurses. He held to his warrior's word as Arakasi slid him into his blankets; but he did not close his eyes. Instead he glared in outraged indignation as Arakasi stood by, until at last he lost his battle with fatigue and slipped into the deep and healthy sleep of a young boy.

  That he would have sneaked out of his chambers had Arakasi not stood by to enforce his warrior's given word, the Spy Master had no doubt. In many ways, the boy was more Midkemian in manner than Tsurani, a trait his mother and foster father encouraged.

  Whether his un-Tsurani bent would prove an asset in adulthood, or whether it would leave the Acoma name and natami vulnerable to Jiro and his allies, could not be foretold. Arakasi sighed as he slipped through the screen and made his way across moonlit gardens. Reaching the quarters he used on his rare stays at the estate, Arakasi changed out of his most recent disguise, that of an itinerant peddler of cheap jewelry. He bathed in water gone tepid, unwilling to waste time to have servants make the tub hot, and thought as he sponged away road grime.

  The only written records of contracts held by the Hamoi, or any other tong, would be in the possession of the Obajan himself. Only one trusted successor, usually a son, would know where those scrolls were secreted, against the possibility of the Obajan's accidental demise. For Arakasi even to locate the records would require him to come within touching distance of the leader of the Red Flower Brotherhood, the most powerful tong in the Empire.

  Arakasi rubbed dye from his hair, his vigorous scrubbing as much a release from frustration. To gain the heart of the tong would be far more difficult than his past forays into the Imperial Palace.

  Of the risks, Arakasi had said nothing. He had but to look at Mara's wan face to know that more worries would further delay her return to health. If she knew the risks behind the order she had just delivered, she would be strained enough without anyone seeming to call her judgment into question.

  Arakasi settled back, unmindful that the last warmth had fled from the water. He reflected on his encounter with Justin. Mara's worry would revolve around the well-being of her surviving child, Arakasi knew. His shared duty was to see that the boy survived to reach adulthood; this moment, that meant finding means to bring down the most dangerously guarded man in the Empire: the Obajan of the Hamoi Tong.

  That any sane man would have regarded the task as an impossibility bothered Arakasi not at all. What troubled his devious mind was that for the first time in his long and varied career he had no clue about where he should start. The location of the Brotherhood of Assassins' headquarters was a closely held secret. The agents who took payment for commissions were not easy marks, as the apothecary he had once tortured in a back alley in Kentosani had been. They would commit suicide - as they had, many times in history — before revealing the next in their chain of contacts. They were as loyal to their own murderous cult as any of Arakasi's agents were to Mara. Troubled, Arakasi slipped out of the tub and dried off. He dressed in a simple robe. For almost half the night, he rested in a near-meditative state, sifting his memory for facts and faces that might lend him a starting connection.

  A few hours before dawn, he stood up, did some stretching exercises, and gathered together those things he felt he would need. He exited the estate house without drawing notice from the sentries. Hokanu had once joked that, one day, a warrior might accidently kill Mara's Spy Master, should Arakasi continue to skulk about the estate at night. Arakasi had replied that a guard who slew him should be promoted, as he would have rid Mara of an ineffective servant.

  Dawn found Arakasi on the far side of the lake, walking steadily as he took his own counsel. Plans were formulated, reviewed, and discarded, but he felt no despair, only a quickening sense of challenge. By sundown, he was at the river, melding with other travelers waiting for a commercial barge, another nameless passenger on his way to the Holy City.

  11

  Bereavement

  Months passed.

  The bloom at last returned to Mara's cheeks. Spring came, and the needra gave birth to their calves, and the barbarian mares delivered seven healthy foals to add to the stables. With Lujan's permission, Hokanu had appropriated two patrols of swordsmen and, into the summer, proceeded to teach them to ride, and then to drill on horseback in formation.

  The dust from such maneuvers overhung the fields in the dry heat, and the lakeshore in the late afternoons became boisterous with the laughter and chaffing as off-duty comrades watched the chosen few swim their barbarian beasts, or sluice the sweat of a workout off glossy hides. More than riders and horses emerged wet, some days when the play got rough. From the terraced balcony that Tasaio of the Minwanabi had once used to oversee field tactics, Mara often watched. She was attended by maids, and her young son, and increasingly often by her husband, still wearing his riding leathers, saber, and quirt.

  One afternoon, as the sun sank low, as a scarred and grizzled old veteran bent to kiss his chosen mare on the muzzle, Mara gave the first carefree smile she had shown in weeks. 'The men are certainly becoming used to the horses. Not a few of their sweethearts have been complaining that they spend more time in the stables than they do in their rightful beds.'

  Hokanu grinned and slipped his hand around her slender middle. 'Are you making such complaint, wife?'

  Mara turned in his arms, and caught Justin staring with guilelessly wide blue eyes. The look reminded her poignantly of his father, before he made a rude symbol with his hands that he certainly had not learned from his nurses. 'You're going to make a baby tonight,' he said, proud of his deduction, and not at all nonplussed when the nearest of his nurses gave his cheek an open-handed slap.

  'Impertinent boy! How dare you speak to your mother so? And wherever you learned that finger sign, you'll be whipped if you try it again.' With a red-faced bow to master and mistress, the maid hustled a protesting Justin off to bed.

  'But the sun's still up,' his voice pealed back in protest. 'How can I go to sleep when I can still see outside?'

  The pair disappeared around the stair that led down the hill, Justin's hair catching the lowering light like flame.

  'By the gods, he's growing up,' Hokanu said fondly. 'We're going to have to find him an arms tutor soon. His ciphers and writing are plainly not enough to keep him from spying on the servants.'

  'He wasn't.' Mara's hands tightened around her husband's trim middle, appreciative of the muscles that his hours in the saddle kept firm. 'He sneaks out to the barracks, or the slave quarters, every chance he gets. And listens intently when the men boast of their feats with ladies of the Reed Life or serving girls. He is his father's son when it comes to staring at the women, and something he said to my maid Kesha this morning made her blush like a maiden which she's not.'

  Her head tilted sideways, and she regarded her husband through her lashes. 'He's a randy, rude little boy who had better be married off young, lest he sow Acoma bastards like hwaet, and have half the fathers of girls in the Nations after him with swords.'

  Hokanu chuckled. 'Of all the problems you might have with him, that one worries me least.'

  Mara's eyes widened. 'He's barely seven!'

  'High time he had a little brother, then,' Hokanu said. 'Another little demon to look after, to keep his mind off bigger trouble.'

  'You're a randy, rude little boy,' Mara retaliated, and with a quick, breathless laugh slipped out of his arms. She raced off down the hill with her robe half-undone in abandon.

  Hokanu gathered himself in surprise and followed. Delight, more than exertion, caused his face to flush. His Lady had not been playful for entirely too long, since the poisoning. As he knew she desired, he ran easil
y, and did not extend his long, athletic stride to overtake her until she had reached the glen by the lakeshore.

  The summer was fully upon them. Though dry, the grasses still retained a trace of green. The stinging insects of the early season had dispersed, and the shrill of night callers had not yet died for the season. The air was syrupy warm. Hokanu caught his wife in a flying tackle, and both of them tumbled to the earth, breathless, disheveled, and utterly departed from solemnity.

  Mara said, 'My Lord and consort, we seem to have a problem between us, that being a shortage of heirs.'

  His fingers were already loosening the rest of the ties on her underrobe. 'Lujan's sentries patrol the lakeshore after dark.'

  Her smile a: me back to him, a flash of white in the dusk. 'Then we have no time to lose, on several counts.'

  'That,' Hokanu said gaily, 'is hardly a problem.' After that, neither of them had the attention to spare for talk.

  The much-longed-for, and overly disputed, heir to the Shinzawai must have been conceived on that night, either there under the open sky, or later, amid scented cushions, after a late-night cup of sa wine shared in their private chambers. Six weeks later, Mara was sure. She knew the signs, and though she woke feeling miserable, Hokanu could hear her singing in the mornings. His smile was bittersweet. But what he knew, and she did not, was that this child to come would be her last, the miracle that was all the healers of Hantukama's priesthood had been able to bestow upon her.

  Until he overheard a speculative argument between the kitchen scullions and the bastard child of one of the household factors, it never occurred to him, that the babe, when it came, might be female. He let the matter lie, and took no notice of the bets that were being laid in the barracks over the forthcoming child's unknown sex.

  That this, Mara's last child, who was to be heir to his family name and fortune, might not be a son quite simply did not bear thinking about.

  The pregnancy that had begun in such carefree abandon did not continue in the same vein - not since the poisoning, and not since the attempts on the lives of Acoma allies. Lujan tripled his patrols and personally inspected the checkpoints in the passes. The prayer gate over the river entrance to the lake was never without watchers in its towers, and a company of warriors was always armed and at the ready. But autumn came, and the needra culls were driven to market, and commerce went on without interruption. Even the silk caravans suffered no raid, which was not usual, and did nothing to set anyone at ease. Jican spent hours mumbling over armloads of tally slates. Not even the surplus of hwaet profits seemed to please him.