Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  Mara said, 'The tong is destroyed?'

  Arakasi's voice reflected unprecedented weariness. 'Nearly. There is a small matter left to resolve.'

  Mara glanced at the cipher, saw the key, and put the journal aside for later study. 'Arakasi, what is wrong?'

  The Spy Master found words difficult. 'I discovered . . . something about myself . . . on this journey, mistress.' He took a deep breath. 'I may not be the man I once was . . . no, I am not the man I once was.'

  Mara resisted the impulse to look into his eyes. She did not try to read his doubts, but waited for him to continue.

  'Mistress, at the time when we are most challenged, by the Assembly and by Jiro of the Anasati . . . I am not sure I am equal to the tasks before us.'

  Mara touched his hand in gentle affection. 'Arakasi, I have always admired your resourcefulness and the amusement I took whenever you would appear mysteriously, in this garb or that.' She regarded him with seriousness underneath her light warmth. 'But for each curious garb there was a story, a mission in which you endured danger and pain.'

  Arakasi said, 'A girl died.'

  Mara said, 'Who was she?'

  'The sister to another.' He hesitated, painfully unsure of himself.

  'She is important to you, this other girl?'

  Arakasi stared at the green sky above the garden, inwardly recalling a face that seemed to shift from that of a taunting courtesan to a dying, frightened girl's. 'I don't know. I have never known anyone like her.'

  Mara was silent a moment, 'I have said that I admired you the most among those in my service.' Her eyes looked into his. 'But of my closest officers, you have always seemed the least in need of affection.'

  Arakasi sighed. 'In truth, my Lady, I also thought myself without that need. Now I wonder.'

  'You feel that the Spy Master of the Acoma cannot afford friendships?'

  Arakasi emphatically shook his head. 'No, he cannot, which leaves us with a problem.'

  'How much of a problem?' she asked.

  Arakasi rose, as if giving rein to restlessness might ease his turmoil. 'The only man I would trust to have the skill to keep you safe in my place is, unfortunately, the one who is trying to destroy you.'

  Mara looked up at him, a spark of humor in her eyes. 'Chumaka of the Anasati?'

  Arakasi nodded. 'I must continue to seek out his agents and destroy them.'

  'What of this unfinished matter of the tong?'

  Arakasi saw at a glance that she would have all the tale, so he told her of his trip to the South that had led to the death of the Obajan. He mentioned the ris.k the courtesan Kamlio posed to them. 'As long as the tong holds out any hope of regaining their journal, its assassins will torture and kill anyone they suspect of having information. Only after their honor is compromised publicly will they begin to wither and die.

  'That scroll is the only means they have of ascertaining who they are contracted to kill. Once it is learned that the journal has been stolen, any man may claim the tong owes him a death, and they have no way to prove him a liar. More, it is their natami, and its absence shows that Turakamu no longer looks upon their efforts with favor.'

  Arakasi tucked his fingers in his sash. He paused as if choosing words, then said, 'Once you have reviewed the records to your satisfaction, I will insure that every rumor-monger in the Holy City is aware of the theft. As word spreads, the tong will disburse like smoke.'

  Mara once again was not diverted from the underlying issue. 'This courtesan. She's the one who has . . . caused such a change in you?'

  Arakasi's eyes betrayed confusion. 'Perhaps. Or perhaps she is but a symptom of it. Either way, she is . . . a danger to your safety. Out of prudence, she should be . . . silenced.'

  Mara observed her Spy Master's posture and manner, then made a judgment. 'Go and save her from the tong,' she ordered. 'Silence her by bringing her under Acoma protection.'

  'It will require a great deal of money, mistress.' His voicing a practical concern barely hid his relief and embarrassment.

  'More than you have asked for before?' she said with mock alarm. Arakasi had been her most expensive retainer over the years, and the lavish provisions she had allowed him had earned her many a scolding from Jican.

  'This is not something I do on behalf of the Acoma,' he revealed, an implied plea that somehow won past his iron control. He was not the sure servant, but a supplicant. Only once before had Mara seen him like this, when he had thought himself a failure and begged her permission to take his own life with the sword. She arose and gripped his hand tightly. 'If you do this for yourself, you act also for the Acoma. That is. my will. Jican is inside. He will provide whatever funds you need.'

  Arakasi started to speak, but found no words. So he simply bowed and said, 'Mistress.'

  She watched him depart, and as he entered her apartment in the palace, she beckoned to a servant hovering in the doorway. She needed a cool, soothing drink. As the maid came to attend her, Mara pondered upon the consequences of countermanding Arakasi's judgment. She took a risk, encouraging him to spare the courtesan. Then, she thought with a bitterness left over from past losses, what would the future bring for any of them if she made no allowance for matters of the heart?

  Light shone through the dome. It caught like fire on the golden throne, and cast triangular dapples across the pyramidal dais. Twenty levels down, it warmed the marble floors and flashed on the rail where the supplicants came and knelt for audience with the Light of Heaven. Despite the small slave boys swishing plumed fans, the Emperor's throne room was airless. Officials sweltered under their finery, and the younger of the two present, Lord Hoppara, sat still. It was too hot even to fidget. The elderly Lord Frasai reclined upon his cushion, now and again nodding under his ceremonial helm, as if he fought off sleep.

  The five priests in attendance murmured, and tended their censers, adding the reek of incense to the already stifling atmosphere.

  On the golden throne, weighed down beneath layers of fine mantles, and the massive plumed crown of the Empire, Ichindar looked too worn and thin for a man in his late thirties. The day had been fraught with tense decisions, and the session was not over. Once weekly, the Emperor held a Day of Appeals, when, from dawn to sunset, he was available to his people. He must.sit in his chair of state, and give judgments for as long as supplicants should appear, until the hour of sundown, when the priests sang their evening invocations. Once, when a Warlord had held office over the Council, the Day of Appeals had been ceremonial. Beggars, low priests, commoners with petty grievances -these had gathered to hear the wisdom of a ruler who shared mystery with their gods. Ichindar often had napped in his chair while the priests acted as his voice, dispensing alms or advice as their gods allowed in righteousness.

  Since then the nature of the Day of Appeals had changed. The supplicants who came to beg audience were often nobles, and many times enemies, seeking to weaken, extort, or break the imperial rule over the Nations. Now, Ichindar sat rigid on the golden throne and played the deadly Game of the Council, in words, in judgments, in the knowledge that the stakes were often his own supremacy. Sundown always found him exhausted, and many days he could not be trusted to recall the name of the consort selected that week to share his bed.

  Today he dared not bend his head more than a fraction, lest the weight of his crown of state bow his neck. He flicked fingernails dusted with gilt toward the woman who sat on the white-and-gold cushion at his feet.

  'Lady, you should not be here, but resting in the cool gardens by the singing fountains.'

  Heavily pregnant, and tired enough that her skin looked transparent, Mara dredged up a smile. 'If you try to command me, I'll spoil your image of authority by refusing to leave.'

  Ichindar muffled a chuckle behind one wing of his pearl-crusted collar. 'You would, too, you insufferably willful woman. When I named you Servant of the Empire, I created a monster.'

  Mara's smile vanished as she inclined her head toward the floor below, where the nex
t supplicant approached and made his bow. Her eyes turned hard as precious metal, and the hand on her lap fan clenched white.

  Ichindar followed her glance, and muttered what might have been a profanity under his breath. One of the priests twitched around in annoyance, then quickly faced front as the voice of the Emperor rang out through the domed chamber of audience.

  'Lord Jiro of the Anasati, know that you have the ear of the gods through our ear. Heaven will hear your plea, and we will answer. Rise. You have leave to speak.'

  The slight snap to the consonants warned of Ichindar's irritation. His hazel eyes were chilly as he watched the Anasati Lord straighten up from his obeisance and stand at the rail, his avid, scholar's gaze trained intently upon the golden throne, and also the woman who sat before it, at the Emperor's feet. Jiro bowed. Although he observed the forms of courtesy, his graceful delivery somehow managed to mock.

  'The imperial dais holds company today,' he opened, shifting to Mara. 'Good day, Lady of the Acoma,. Servant of the Empire.' His lips thinned in what a friend might have construed for a smile. An enemy knew better.

  Mara felt a chill chase across her skin. Never before had a pregnancy made her feel helpless; now, under Jiro's predatory regard, she felt her clumsy heaviness, and that unnerved her. Still, she did not lose control and allow herself to be baited.

  Ichindar's voice cracked across the interval that followed, as Acoma Lady and Anasati Lord matched stares. Slender and worn as the Emperor was, his authority was real, a palpable air of force even in that enormous chamber. 'If you have come to us as supplicant, Lord Jiro, you will not waste our time in idle social chat.'

  Ever the smooth courtier, Jiro waved aside the reprimand with a flash of gold; he wore metal rings, his one affectation to flaunt his wealth. The rest of his attire was plain. 'But my Sovereign,' he protested in gentle familiarity, 'I do come as supplicant. And my reason, I must admit, is a social one.'

  Mara resisted an urge to shift uneasily on her cushion. What could Jiro have on his mind? His informal tone was itself an insult to the Light of Heaven, but not one that could be noted without setting shame upon Ichindar's dignity. To react to Jiro's presumption was to give weight to him as a man. No one who sat on a god's throne could acknowledge so petty a slight.

  The Light of Heaven maintained a frosty silence through the minute that Jiro stood with his brows suggestively raised. The subject under discussion would have to be pursued by the Anasati, were it to continue.

  Jiro tilted his head, as if he only then recalled his true purpose. His face very subtly leered, and one eyelid drooped suggestively toward a wink. 'I came because I have heard many rumors concerning your daughter Jehilia's famed beauty. I ask a boon, my Sovereign: that you share your joy in her with your people. I ask to be presented to her.'

  Mara reined back a burst of fury. Jehilia was but a girl, barely ten, and not yet come into her womanhood. She was not a woman of the Reed Life, to be gawked at by men who were not relatives! She was certainly too young for courtship, or even for the suggestion that she should be entertaining suitors. Jiro's subtleties were twisted and deep, that he should come here and dare such a thought in public. The ramifications were endless, not least the implied slight to the Light of Heaven's manhood. Without sons, he must secure the imperial line through his daughter's marriage, but how presumptuous the Anasati Lord was to imply credence to the gossip of the streets, that the Emperor would have no son, and that the ninety-second crowned head of the Nations would be the man who won Jehilia's hand.

  But angry words could not be spoken; Mara clamped her teeth, aware of Ichindar's advisers standing red-faced with fury to the sides. Made sensitive to her own vulnerability, she was mindful that the three priests on the pyramid dais were affronted, but powerless to intervene. Lord Hoppara had taken a stranglehold on the place at his sash where a sword should hang, were weapons not forbidden in the presence of his Emperor. As father of the girl, Ichindar sat stone-still. The jewels on his mantle were frozen sparks, as if he had restrained himself from breathing.

  For a long, tense interval, nothing stirred in the grand audience hall.

  With unprecedented audacity, Jiro ventured a lazy-voiced addendum to his petition. 'I have done some interesting reading recently. You do know, my Sovereign, that before your reign, seven imperial daughters were presented on or before their tenth birthday. I can tell you names, if you like.'

  Mara knew this was a second slap against a man whose office had once revolved around memorisation of his family pedigree and other issues of religious context that had nothing to do with rulership. Ichindar would know of those seven girls, if not the mitigating circumstances of history that had forced their public presentation before puberty. And his office was much more, now, than religious ceremony alone.

  The sun shone hot on the topaz and marble floors, and the Imperial Guards stood like statues. Then, with icy deliberation, Ichindar set his clenched fists on the arms of the golden throne. Anger stiffened his face like a cameo against the mantling weight of his collars. Yet his voice was controlled to its usual regal pitch when he deigned to give answer.

  'My Lord of the Anasati,' he said, precise consonants echoing off the high dome overhead, 'it would please us better to present to you our son, when the gods choose to bless us with an heir. As to our daughter Jehilia, if the Lord of the Anasati enjoys paying heed to the gossip of her nurses, who boast that every infant they dote upon is blessed with extraordinary beauty, then we grant permission for a portrait to be made by one of the artists we patronise, and to be sent to the Anasati estates. This is our will.'

  The traditional phrase rang into silence. Ichindar was not the figurehead his forebears had been but an Emperor fighting to retain his authority. Mara sat back, limp with relief; his handling of Jiro's aggression had been exemplary. A portrait of a child! Ichindar had neatly taken the blade out of the dilemma. But, sadly, the greater issue remained. Jiro had dared to be first to voice the thought that Jehilia would become a husband's path to the golden throne. She would not remain a pretty royal child for much longer, but would become a hotly contested prize in the Great Game. Once a girl torn wholesale from the Goddess Lashima's order into the throes of the Empire's bloody politics, Mara felt her heart go out to the child.

  Ichindar's hold upon the reins of rulership would slip on the day his eldest daughter married. Unless he could conceive a male heir, the traditionalists would use Jehilia as a powerful means to undermine him, especially if her husband was a well-placed, powerful noble.

  On the floor below, at the supplicants' rail, Jiro crossed both arms over his breast in the time-honored imperial salute. He bowed before the Emperor's honor guard, and arose, smiling. 'I thank my Sovereign Lord. A portrait of Jehilia to hang upon my chamber wall would be very pleasing indeed.'

  The dig was petty; Jiro had not quite dared to say 'bedchamber wall,' Mara noted with vindictiveness. But that he had stooped to so mean a comment in public hearing demonstrated his contempt for the man who sat upon the golden throne. And Mara realised, with a stab of intuition, that Jiro would not have been quite so vicious had she not been present. The taunt to Ichindar had been intended to goad her as well.

  'I fear this day I have not been a benefit to you,' she murmured as the great doors boomed closed behind the Lord of the Anasati.

  Ichindar started to reach out to her in sympathy, recalled his formal audience, and restrained himself before an adviser needed to step forth and intervene. 'My Lady, you are wrong,' he murmured back. His hair clung to his forehead, too damp with perspiration to be stirred by the fan boys' efforts, and his fists had not loosened on his throne arms. 'Had you not been present, strong as rock at my feet, I surely would have lost my poise!' He ended with a viciousness he had kept back from the enemy who had angered him. 'It is a very unscrupulous man who will stoop to attack through a father's love for his child.'

  Mara said nothing. She had known many such unscrupulous men. Her memory turned poignantly to two mur
dered children, a boy and a girl both under five years of age - the children of the late Minwanabi Lord - who died as a direct result of her actions. Her hand rested upon the mound of her belly, over the swell of her unborn child. She clenched her teeth in resolve. She had lost a son, and another child by Hokanu she had never had the chance to know. Again she swore that the deaths of all of the young ones must not be for nothing. She would die and the Acoma name be as dust before the wrath of the Assembly of Magicians before she let Jiro reinstate the Warlord's office, and bring back the unconscionable bloody conflicts that had comprised the Game of the Council in the name of honor.

  Now that the first steps toward change had been taken, she was determined not to give back old ground.

  Her eyes and Ichindar's met, as if the thought had been spoken aloud between them. Then the doors opened, and the imperial herald announced the next supplicant.

  It seemed a long time until sundown.

  Hokanu stripped off his sweaty leather riding gloves. 'Where is she?' he demanded of the white-clad personage that stood blocking the doorway.

  But the immensely fat servant did not budge. His gleaming, moon-round face went stiff with displeasure at the Shinzawai Lord's poor etiquette, in showing such unseemly haste. The imperial hadonra was a man attentive to nuance, and he ran the vast complex of the Emperor's private apartments in the palace with unflinching, cold-hearted proficiency. Moths did not infest the imperial closets, the servants went about their duties like oiled clockwork, and anxious husbands did not disrupt the hadonra's morning round of inspection with commands better suited to the battlefield.

  Fixed squarely in the vestibule's entryway, the huge man folded meaty forearms. 'You may not pass at this time, my Lord.'

  Hokanu restrained himself from a pointed comment. 'My wife, I was told, went into labor two days ago. I have been riding on horseback at speed from my estates beyond Silmani since then, and have not slept. I will know if my wife is safe and well, and whether my heir was born whole, if you will kindly let me pass through to her apartment.'