Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  Much later, when the study room was lamplit, and the stars pricked the sky where the shatra birds had flown, Mara was disturbed in her reading by the door servant, who brought word that a shabby itinerant poet had arrived to beg the Lady's indulgence.

  Mara looked up from her scroll in mild interest. 'You did not send him on to the kitchen,' she stated. 'This poet, did he say he had verses for me in so-mu-ta rhyming?'

  The door servant frowned, the academic reference beyond his education to fathom. 'Indeed, my Lady. He insisted that would mean something to you.' His face creased with misgiving. 'I should have sent him off. He is very ragged.'

  Mara's expression warmed to a smile. 'Very ragged, unbathed, and perhaps with a woman in tow?'

  The servant's eyes widened. 'You know him?'

  'I do.' Mara rolled up her scroll, taut with anticipation. 'Have him shown in.'

  The door servant bowed, still mystified. 'Your will, Lady.'

  Presently the poet and his woman were brought into Mara's private study. Arakasi wore a mantle that looked as if it were fashioned out of moth-eaten blankets, sewn over at the cuffs and hemmed with tawdry fringes torn off a floor carpet. His companion was muffled under a patched, sun-faded robe that had once been adorned with shell sequins. Most had been ripped off with wear, leaving a sad collection of hanging threads. Her feet were filthy, and her sandals in tatters.

  Mara, with one swift glance, clapped for attendants. 'Wash water. Towels, soap, and something from my clothes chest that is pretty and clean.' She peered under the concubine's hood, and glimpsed a shining sweep of hair so heavy and thick it looked as if spun from red-bee honey. 'Make the color green,' she suggested to the maid. Then she smiled at Arakasi. 'How large a supper tray do you wish? As always, you appear famished.' She raised a finger as her Spy Master drew breath to speak. 'The verses can wait until after you are both refreshed.'

  Arakasi offered a performer's bow and raked back the hood of his mantle. In the lamplight, he looked exhausted, bruised in spirit, and held together by sheer nerves. Mara was taken aback. Then the concubine slipped off her overrobe, and the Lady of the Acoma watched Arakasi look at her, and understood all.

  'You must be Kamlio,' she greeted. 'I bid you welcome.'

  The girl started to sink into the deep bow that denoted lowly station. Mara fractionally shook her head, and, fast as reflex, Arakasi cupped the girl's elbow, stopping her obeisance by dint of her slight recoil from his touch.

  As though her gesture had not implied rejection, Arakasi addressed her quietly. 'The mistress has bought your freedom, not your service. Your contract is your own, to tear up or resell, as you please.' His deft hands smoothed back the hood of her underrobe, baring a face of breathtaking beauty, and pale eyes bright as sparks with resentment.

  Mara stifled an urge to recoil, so much did the manner of this girl remind her of another, a courtesan and a spy named Teani, who had once tried to kill her. 'Gods,' she whispered below her breath. 'Gods take pity.' Her expression was for Arakasi, and the tortured girl he had rescued from usage.

  Kamlio spoke, her low, modulated voice perfectly tempered in hate. 'I would hear such a promise from the Lady whose centis have bought me.'

  Mara thrust aside her anger at the impertinence. 'You may trust my servant, Arakasi, as myself in this matter. Kamlio, I, too, owe him my life. I chose to accept that gift from him with joy. He may have found you, child. But never forget: it was I who bought you from bondage. You are not brought here as a reward for his service.' The lamplight glittered off the girl's eyes as she tensed. Mara sighed softly and continued. 'You are your own woman, Kamlio. Because of you, I have a son and a daughter who may survive and achieve their inheritance. My gratitude is unconditional. You may leave Arakasi, leave these estates, and go your own way at this moment. I will provide you with enough wealth to establish yourself, in business, as a trader, or simply to live in modest comfort for the rest of your life. Or you may use the gift as a dowry, should you seek a husband. However, should you wish to take service, I would be pleased to have you stay.'

  The faint hiss of the oil lamps filled the stillness that followed. Kamlio's fingers clenched and unclenched on the ragged cloth of her gown. She did not smile, or settle, or relax, but stayed poised, like a creature caught and cornered. Mara forced herself to meet that hostile, gemstone gaze. 'What is your desire, Kamlio?'

  Plainly the girl distrusted kindness. Her eyes shone too bright, and her manner posed a defiant challenge as she said, 'Good Servant, great Lady, I'd prefer to be alone. I do not wish a pretty robe but an ugly one. I do not want the eyes of men upon me. I want a sleeping mat and a room to myself.'

  'As you ask, you shall have,' Mara allowed. She sent for her personal maid, Misa, who had been many years in Acoma service, and ordered Kamlio shown to a guest chamber and made comfortable. When the girl had gone, and the servant who entered with wash basins and towels had allowed Arakasi to refresh himself, she gestured her Spy Master to the nearest comfortable cushion.

  He sank into his seat as if his knees gave out. His eyes were sunken, almost haunted, and his mouth twisted crooked with irony. Softly he said, 'Thank you, Lady.'

  Mara looked upon him with pity. 'She means that much to you?'

  The Spy Master steepled his hands under his chin, an old habit he had when attempting a difficult explanation. 'She has changed me. When I look at her, I see my mother, sometimes. When she speaks, she reminds me of my sister. Both of them could be vicious, at the moments they hurt the most.' He paused, then added, 'She blames me for the death of her sister. Quite justly, I fear.'

  Quietly Mara gestured to the servant who waited at the door with the food tray. As the man entered with his burden in deferential silence, she regarded the Spy Master whom she had known for years, but whose life remained a mystery to her. After the man had served them, Mara motioned for him to leave. When she and Arakasi were alone, Mara said, 'You never mentioned any of your family to me before.'

  Arakasi's gaze flicked up, sharply defensive. 'There was little of worth to mention. My mother was a woman of the Reed Life, disease-ridden, run-down, and finally dead from her trade. My sister followed in her footsteps. She died at eighteen, at the hand of a violent client.'

  'I am sorry,' Mara murmured, and meant it. She should have guessed, since Arakasi set such store by his house allegiance, that he had been born to an honorless family. 'How did you come to take service with the Tuscai?'

  Arakasi made a self-deprecating gesture. 'There was a warrior who frequented our brothel. He lay often with my mother. I was just three, and was impressed by his loud voice, and the sword he carried with a jewel set in the grip. Sometimes he gave me candy, and ruffled my hair, and sent me on errands. I took them very seriously, only later coming to realise that he was just more tactful than most, sending me out of the way so he could take his paid woman without a foolish boy underfoot. At the time, I decided he was my father.'

  Mara did not prompt, but waited, while Arakasi picked a stray thread from a rip in his mantle. After a moment, he continued of his own accord. 'When my mother died, and the soldier came to bed another girl, I climbed out a window and followed him to his barracks. He was a Strike Leader for the Tuscai. His wife was a cook. She fed me, behind his back. I lived mostly on the streets, lurking around hostels and guild halls, keeping my ears open. I sold information to the Lord of the Tuscai's hadonra, and over the years became invaluable to him. When I alerted the Lord of the Tuscai to a plot against his life at the hands of the Minwanabi, he allowed me to swear to his service.'

  Quietly, Mara wondered how much of the spy net had already been in place when Arakasi had sworn to the Tuscai natami. Probably most of the area around the Tuscai estates, for an honorless street boy to have caught the notice of a hidebound traditional Ruling Lord. It awed her, to learn how far her Spy Master had risen from such humble beginnings. Now there was the girl, Kamlio, whose fate had entangled itself with his in ways she did not want. As the servant poured sa
wine and departed, Mara handed Arakasi a glass.

  'Drink,' she urged. 'You need it.' In fact, he looked wretched, and worn thinner than she had ever seen him.

  The Spy Master returned her regard levelly, his lip curled in distaste. He disliked drinking: alcohol dulled his reactions. 'Lady,' he said in a voice that was rust and velvet, 'I am not at all what I was.'

  'Drink! That is a command!' Mara snapped back. 'You are human, and have a heart that can bleed, even if you only discovered that fact recently. And I say you are wrong. You are more than you were. The change that has happened is for the best.'

  'Not if you wish me to continue in my post as Spy Master.' The admission itself seemed to shake him. Arakasi reached out, took a goblet from the tray, and downed it in one violent draft. 'What would you know of best or worse?' he challenged.

  'Everything.' Her tone reproached. 'I had Kevin and lost him. I had the perfect husband who understood my heart, until one foolish misunderstanding has set him at a distance. I had two children who are dead.'

  Shamed, Arakasi wrapped his long, expressive fingers around his glass. He said nothing, only stared at the rug. For a while the lamplight revealed his rigid effort to keep his breathing steady. 'I had hoped the example of you and Hokanu might open her eyes to a new life.' He shrugged fractionally, a self-conscious hitch of his shoulders. 'You have both been my teachers, Lady.'

  Mara regarded the man who sat hunched and tight before her. His competence at times had humbled her, until now, when she realised how much of his achievements had been rooted in pleasureless, calculating logic. 'Arakasi, set her free. Let her find herself.' As his eyes swept up to meet hers, beseeching, she found she needed sa wine herself. She reached out for a goblet, tasted its bittersweet edge. 'Think, most cunning of my servants. You were never resentful because you did not love. Kamlio can hate, she can feel bitterness, because she can be hurt. Her basic nature is a caring one, or why should she defend herself so savagely?'

  His gaze dropped. 'I pray to the gods you are right.'

  'I am right.' Mara's conviction rang across the room's familiar dimness. But no truth could ensure the outcome. Whether Kamlio could outgrow her past and survive without scars, only time would tell.

  Arakasi sat like a man tortured, twisting the fine-stemmed crystal around and around in his hands. It occurred to Mara, watching him, that he had lost his piercing insight. She spoke kindly in reassurance. 'Your little lady will not leave these estates. She will stay, and serve here. That much I know.'

  'Or else she would have left at once?' Arakasi released an edged laugh. 'How can you be sure?'

  'She would not have accepted my hospitality.' Mara smiled. 'She has pride like fire.' She speculated, 'In my years I have come to judge human nature quickly. You are a fitting match for her.'

  He relaxed a little at that, setting the goblet on the polished floor, empty, and helping himself to a plate of fruit, cheese, and bread. In a fast change of subject, he said, 'I received your message, Lady. I can guess why you called me.' He mashed the bread together over a thick wedge of cheese, his feelings for the concubine certainly not set in abeyance. But his voice showed none of his conflict as he added, 'I can already assure you. The City of the Magicians is impregnable. Send anyone there to attempt entry, and you will call down the Assembly's wrath upon you. We have attempted seven times to find entrance; four men are dead, the other three unaccounted for, and I number them also dead. None can be traced to us, but even so, another attempt may cause us to fall.'

  'I supposed as much.' Mara watched him eat with an inner surge of relief. The day Arakasi ignored his appetite brought cause for major worry. While he chewed, she related her findings in the hive of the cho-ja, and then told of her plans to leave for the Thuril Confederation.

  Arakasi gave back a dry grin. 'I did not think you seriously intended a pilgrimage.'

  Mara's brows arched. 'I am devout. Did I not once plan to vow service to Lashima's temple?'

  A spark of irony touched her Spy Master's eyes. 'That,' he allowed, 'was long before you met one red-haired Midkemian barbarian.'

  Mara colored deeply. 'True.' She laughed. Arakasi had always stimulated her wit. The heart he had kept hidden all these years was proving a delight to her. 'I'll need you to hide my trail with subterfuge. Also, I want you to comb the Imperial Archives for history texts that might show us what circumstances led to our mysterious treaty with the cho-ja.'

  She looked across the low table and realised Arakasi had ceased eating. The bread had fallen into crumbs between his fingers, and his eyes looked deep as pits. Gently she asked, 'What's wrong? Are you afraid to leave the girl?'

  'No.' The Spy Master knuckled back his tangled dark hair. The poet's braid at his temple had slipped half-undone, the violet ribbon that tied it frayed at the ends, and sun-faded. 'I am no longer the best man for the job, my Lady. My heart is no longer ruthless.'

  'Was it ever?' Mara countered.

  Arakasi looked at her, open and pained as he had been but once in her presence, and that the time he believed he had failed her and caused old Nacoya's death. 'Yes, Lady. Yes, it was. Once, I would have let Kamlio die at the hands of the tong without conscience. I have increased risk to you by returning for her. It took some persuasion and significant funds to extricate her from her existing term of employment. The transaction was far too public for my taste.'

  Mara considered the weight of his admission. She stared a moment at her wineglass, barely touched, and warm now in the soft evening air. 'The Acoma have no one else to send,' she said finally, and hid from him the cost of that confidence. She had Justin and Kasuma to think of; if, as Fumita had hinted, her being Servant of the Empire had been all that stayed the Assembly from annihilating her, she had to find the children protection, or they would be helpless, good for nothing, but to be puppets of the Black Robes' whim, after she was gone.

  'Arakasi, let me tell you something the cho-ja Queen implied to me. What if, all along, it was not tradition that has held this Empire static all these thousands of years? What if our people strove for growth and change, but were kept from it? What if the great Game of the Council, our bloody, violent heritage of honor, was not ordained by the gods but was used as a contrivance to keep us in our place?'

  Arakasi's left eyebrow quirked. 'You claim to be devout,' he said in a low voice. 'You know, beloved Lady, that what you say is heresy.'

  'I suggest instead,' Mara said, 'that our Great Ones have done more than keep the imperial peace. If I rightly understood what the cho-ja Queen tried to impart, the Assembly has held our whole culture stagnant. The Black Robes are the ones who barred us from change — not the gods, not tradition, and not our code of honor. That is why they intervened between the Acoma and the Anasati. For I have created too much change, I hold too much influence with the Emperor, and, as Servant, I am too much a talisman of the people's luck. If what I think is correct, the magicians are not just hoping I will break their prohibition on making war upon Jiro; they are depending upon it. Some may even be contriving to bring it about. They are awaiting any excuse to step in and annihilate me.'

  A breeze through the screen caused the lamp to flicker, making Arakasi seem a shadow cut from stillness. 'Hokanu will never let go of honor and allow his father's murder to pass unavenged.'

  'Precisely,' Mara almost whispered. 'That would be expecting too much, even for a man raised by the progressive thinker that his foster father was. His blood father, Fumita, as much as warned him at Kamatsu's funeral. I believe, as does Hokanu, that the Assembly knew of Jiro's contract with the tong assassins. They did not act to stop him. Deliberately. It is me and my line they want dead. And sooner or later, fate will provide them with a reason.'

  The wick brightened. As the darkness shrank back, Arakasi sat staring at his emptied wineglass, his eyes fathomless as obsidian. 'And so you need me to sort through the Imperial Archives, and to cover your absence when you journey outside the Empire in search of answers.' His fingers tapped an agi
tated tattoo on the floor as he continued to think aloud. 'You ask this of me, not for the Acoma or the Shinzawai, but for the people of the Nations whose cause you have adopted for your own.'

  'You understand.' Mara reached out for the carafe and refilled both of their goblets. 'I do what I do for more than my name and ancestors. Because I hold hope that slaves may one day be allowed to go free, and that boys such as you were, and girls like Kamlio, may have the chance to earn honor through their merits.'

  'A large task. I salute you, Lady.' Arakasi tossed back his wine. He regarded her, his bearing still bleak, but his expression one of admiration. 'Once I said I wished to follow in the wake of your path to greatness. I was arrogant, and cold, and fascinated as a man who prides himself on solving puzzles. Now I wish nothing beyond a house with warmth, and a woman to smile at who does not know the secret of joy. To my sorrow, I have learned. It is not a lesson to benefit a Spy Master who must act only for reason.'