Saddened, for he had come to like the Midkemian’s odd humour, and his decidedly strange views of life, Saric bowed to his mistress’s wisdom. But as he hurried off to send in her maids, he reflected that he had never seen a more bleak expression in the eyes of any woman he had known.
The night passed in terrible, restless torment for Mara. While the butana wailed across the rooftree, she made frantic love to Kevin, the last time ending in tears in his arms. He stroked her with a tenderness that threatened to break her heart. Hurt by her silence, her unwillingness to speak her fears, he nevertheless ignored his own pain in a profound effort to comfort her.
Mara clung to him in a mounting tide of hysteria. Her world seemed unhinged and she could not conceive of a life without the solid presence of the man who had caused her to re-examine every aspect of her beliefs, and forced her to see the deficiencies of her culture. Kevin had become more than lover, more than a man she could confide in: he was the taproot of the tree of her resolve. She had to rely upon his strength to change the Empire and make it honourable in a new and moral way. Without him, the power, the goals, and the shining vision she held for a future now shadowed by her recent vow to Tasaio seemed things devoid of joy. Mara lay in the warmth of Kevin’s embrace and listened as the soft, steady beat of his heart blended with the hollow dirge of the winds that rattled the screens.
Somehow, against his volatile barbarian nature, Kevin sensed that her turmoil would not support questions. His sensitivity wounded her, robbed her of a perverse excuse to fly into anger and send him away. Mara endured the tender caress of his hands, cut by the knowledge that this was the last night she could touch him. At last, exhausted, she fell into restless dreams. He lay awake, her head cradled in the hollow of his shoulder.
Through all the years he had known her, he had never seen her so distraught. Open in revealing his own passions, it never occurred to him that her love for him might be the hidden cause of her anguish.
Dawn came, unwanted as an executioner’s arrival. Mara found a grain of courage amid the wreckage of her nerves and ordered Kevin away, before the onset of her morning sickness. She spent a miserable interval torn between tears that would not flow from swollen eyes, and dry heaves. Her maids worked tirelessly to restore her to a semblance of proper appearance. By the time she was fit to be seen in public, noon had already drawn nigh. Mara emerged from her quarters to find the escort quietly arranged by Saric already waiting by the door. Unaware of the Emperor’s proclamation, Kevin waited in his usual place by her litter, his red hair familiarly tousled, and a concerned expression on his face. At the sight of his blue eyes on her, Mara all but broke down.
Then the stern fibre of her warrior forebears sustained her. Drawing upon all her temple-taught training, she shut off her clamour of emotions and forced herself to step forward, one foot after another, until finally she reached her litter. Of desperate necessity, she chose Saric to assist her to her seat. Then, in a voice unrecognizable as her own, she said, ‘We must leave.’
She named no destination; this detail Saric had already attended to, and Lujan knew what lay ahead. But the anomaly roused Kevin to suspicion. ‘Where are we bound for this day?’ he asked on a fixed note of sharpness.
Mara dared not try speech. Aware that her eyes were flooding, she quickly snapped her curtains closed, and it was Lujan who waved her bearers to rise, and her honour guard of soldiers to march out of the town house courtyard, as Saric held his gaze upon the Midkemian with something resembling regret.
‘Will somebody please tell me why everyone acts as though we were going to a funeral?’ Kevin demanded plaintively. He received only Tsurani blankness for reply and resorted to a spectacular attempt at banter.
His extravagance at any other time would have sorely tried the deportment of her warriors, but today the most devastating of his repartee fell upon deaf ears. No one so much as hinted at a smile, far less indulged in a laugh.
‘Gods, but everyone’s as lively as a corpse.’ Mournful that some of his best jokes had been wasted, Kevin lapsed into silence as the escort crossed the bustle of Kentosani and took a turn toward the less fashionable district by the south-facing riverside.
Ahead lay a palisade constructed of wide, thick planks. Kevin stopped dead in the roadway, and only their fighters’ reflexes prevented the warriors behind from slamming into him. ‘I’ve seen the likes of this place before,’ he accused in a tone that snapped with reckless insolence. ‘Why are we going to the slave markets, Mara?’
The Acoma warriors did not wait for any signal; Kevin’s reactions were far too unpredictable for such nicety. Firmly, swiftly, and in force, they closed around the Midkemian and caught him back by the wrists.
Pinioned, and startled into rage, Kevin twisted, half an instant too late. The warriors grunted at the effort, but managed to keep their grip.
Traffic in the street was stopped by the commotion, and heads turned to stare.
‘Gods!’ Kevin exploded in a tone of blistering betrayal. ‘You’re selling me!’
The cry all but shattered Mara’s heart. She whipped aside the curtains of her litter and looked up into blue eyes that burned with fathomless rage. Words failed her.
‘Why?’ cried Kevin, with such terrible lack of inflection she felt clubbed. ‘Why should you do this to me?’
It was Lujan who answered, and roughly, for his own voice threatened to show feeling unseemly for a warrior, far less an officer of his status. ‘She does not part with you willingly, Kevin, but by the Emperor’s order!’
‘Damn the Light of Heaven,’ Kevin exploded. ‘Damn your sod of an Emperor to the deepest pit of the Seventh Hell!’
Gawkers poked their faces out of windows, and more passersby stopped to stare. Several farm matrons made a sign against blasphemy, and a sour-faced merchant on the verge expressed thoughts of sending for a priest. Unwilling to be tried by the temples for the mouthing of a miscreant barbarian, a warrior less well acquainted with Kevin reached out a hand to cover his mouth.
The barbarian exploded into violence. He wrenched a fist free, knocking two of Mara’s guards aside before any others could move. The men were under orders to refrain from drawing blades, but as Lujan joined the heaving knot of struggle that centred around the Midkemian, he prayed no one would forget. Kevin battled as if possessed, and with his great height, no one watching from the sidelines could miss that he transgressed sane limits. He was irate enough to forget protocols, and should he succeed in his attempt to snatch a sword from one of the warrior’s scabbards, the Emperor himself could not keep him from dying.
Lujan glimpsed the fear on Mara’s face Then he dared a fury more focused than any harulth’s, and dived headlong into the press.
The wrestler’s move he employed prevailed and he struck Kevin squarely off balance. Lujan bore him over backward onto the cobbles of the street, while another soldier added his weight to the Force Commander.
Most men would have been stunned by the fall. The Midkemian seemed unfazed. Driven by a rage that dulled physical pain, and goaded by emotions that no line of reason might stay, he tore into Lujan with a ferocity well capable of killing. Narrowly avoiding a knee in the groin, the Acoma Force Commander grappled a whirlwind of moving flesh. Somehow he managed to rap out orders to his men. ‘Close in! Use your shields and bodies to hide this fracas from public view.’
A fist grazed his cheek. Feeling the burn of torn skin, Lujan indulged in a rare curse. ‘Damn it, man, will you stop, or must I be forced to hurt you?’
Kevin snarled an obscenity. ‘… if you had a mother!’ he finished.
Aware that the slave he sought to subdue had not hesitated to pitch himself weaponless against armed ranks of enemy warriors, Lujan reacted by reflex. Desperate, and moved by care and admiration for Kevin, he employed the honourless, brutal tactics learned in the mountains as a grey warrior. Another criminal might have recognized the moves; any proper Tsurani warrior would have been shamed to employ a fist to an opponent’s
groin. Felled by a blow that held nothing of fairness, and blanched dead white with the pain, Kevin rolled into a moaning knot of limbs on the filthy paving of the street.
‘Sorry, old son,’ Lujan murmured, his inflection and choice of phrase borrowed intact from Kevin. ‘You will finish your life in freedom and honour, whether you wish to or not.’
Then, feeling battered inside as well as out, Force Commander Lujan raised himself to his feet. ‘Bind and gag him,’ he said with whiplash curtness to his men. ‘We dare risk no further incident.’
Then, aching for the mistress who watched all from the shadow of her litter, he forced his face back into a semblance of Tsurani impassivity and ordered the party forward on its errand.
At the gate of the compound, the master of Kentosani’s slave guild stepped out of his hut to inquire after the needs of the Lady of the Acoma.
Mara choked words past numbed lips. ‘This slave … is to be returned to his homeland, by order of the Light of Heaven.’
A limp weight in the grip of her guardsmen, Kevin turned blue eyes toward her. The light in their depths beseeched, but the child in her womb kept her strong. ‘I am sorry,’ she murmured, heedless that the master of the slave guild stared at her in dumbfounded curiosity. Unable to voice the words, she moved her lips to mouth the phrase ‘my love’. The rest of what she wished to say stuck impossibly in her throat.
The slave broker nodded. ‘He’s very strong, though a bit past prime. I would think a fair price –’
Mara held up her hand, silencing the man. ‘No. Send him home.’
If the slave master found this behaviour odd, he said nothing. He was having enough difficulty understanding why the Emperor would choose to buy slaves simply to send them away to some alien palace. The edict had created enough confusion, and if this Lady chose to be generous, he would not object. ‘My Lady,’ he said, bowing deeply.
At last, unable to bear the wild, haunted pain she saw in her loved one’s face, Mara whispered, ‘Live a long and noble life, son of Zun.’
She managed to achieve the impossible and summon the courage to order her warriors onward to take Kevin away to the compound set aside for the Emperor’s purchases. The slave master directed the way, and dimly Mara heard one of her warriors speak words to the effect that Kevin was to be treated with respect and care, once his bonds were removed …
The stockade doors swung closed, forever cutting off her view. Lujan remained by her side, his face a stone mask beneath the shadow of his helm. Most atypically, he did not realize that his officer’s plumes had been bent and knocked awry during the foray in the street.
Mara sank back on her cushions, wrung dry of tears, and too debilitated to lift even a finger to close her curtains. The shadow thrown over her by the great wooden gates seemed utterly frigid. She could not banish the memory of Kevin’s eyes in the moment she had ordered their parting. Always, to her grave, it would haunt her, that she had sent him away bound and helpless. Dully she wondered how long Tasaio would spare her, after the coming truce came to its inevitable end. How many nights would she lie awake aching with the now unanswerable question: Would Kevin have left her reasonably, or willingly, if she had owned the nerve to consult him beforehand?
‘Lady?’ Lujan’s soft voice intruded into a wilderness of pain. ‘The time has come to go home.’
The warriors had returned, unnoticed.
Mara returned a limp wave. How, she wondered, with a pain sharp as a knife thrust, was any place in the Empire ever again going to feel like home?
The day and the night that followed seemed desolate and without ending. Alternately ravaged by grief and cruel nightmares, Mara tossed on her sleeping mat. Waking, sleeping, and in dreams, she seemed to see Kevin standing at her bedside, a look of naked accusation in his eyes. By now the barge that carried him would be well on the way downriver. By the time she and Tasaio and the Lords of the High Council resolved their differences with the Emperor, the man she loved above all others would be far beyond reach, on the soil of a distant, other world.
Stung awake time and again as she reached out and encountered the empty place where he had lain, or jolted bolt upright in terror by the vision of Tasaio of the Minwanabi holding a sacrificial sword over the gutted body of her son, Mara prayed. She begged Lashima for insight that would grant her the miracle she needed to thwart the enemy who cared for power more than peace, and who would see the natami of her ancestors buried face down, forever beyond reach of the sunlight. Hag-ridden, and feeling ill, she at last abandoned her pretence of rest. She paced the floor of her chambers until dawn, and then called a meeting of her advisers.
The butana continued to blow. Its whipping, tireless gusts pried at the shutters and screens as Mara, her Force Commander, and her acting First Adviser sat down in conference in her sitting room.
Huskily, as though her throat had been scraped with sand, the Lady of the Acoma opened. ‘I have one day to prepare for the confrontation between the Emperor and Minwanabi.’
Painfully bright in his confidence, Saric said, ‘What have you planned, mistress?’
Mara closed swollen eyes, worn through to her soul. ‘I have no plan. Unless you and your cousin have considered something I have not, we march into this moment of destiny with nothing more than our naked wits. I have promised Minwanabi that no one shall ascend to the Warlord’s throne before him.’
‘Then,’ said Saric, in a tone of patent reason, ‘the only choice must be that no one sits upon the Warlord’s throne.’
For a prolonged moment, only the wail of the butana held sway. A maid entered with a tray of chocha and sweet rolls and quietly left. No one seemed interested in refreshment.
Mara regarded the faces that all turned toward her with maddening expectancy. ‘Well, how shall we contrive to make a miracle?’ she said in thinnest exasperation.
Showing a bruise and a scabbed cheek from his fisticuffs with Kevin, her Force Commander said without humour, ‘Mistress, it is for such things that all look to you.’
Mara stared bleakly back. ‘This time I have run out of inspiration, Lujan.’
Her Force Commander shrugged with total impassivity. ‘Then we shall die honourably killing Minwanabi dogs.’
A surge of protest moved within Mara. ‘Kevin is –’ Her voice caught and a rush of emotion caused a sting of tears beneath her eyelids. Forcing her grief and pain behind rigid control, she ran a damp hand over her face. ‘Kevin was right. We are a murderous race, and we waste ourselves in killing one another.’
The butana howled, shaking the screen, and sending chill draughts across the room. Mara repressed a shiver and did not at first notice Saric’s request to speak. When she saw, and signalled her acquiescence, he questioned her condemnation with a buried hint of impatience. ‘Mistress, the answer is plain? It does not matter if Minwanabi is not defeated, so long as the Emperor wins, yes?’
Mara’s eyes opened wide. ‘Explain this.’
Saric searched for words to express the concept which hovered upon the edge of his mind. ‘If the Light of Heaven can bolster his position, can find enough support in the High Council for his absolute rule –’
Mara shot upright, causing her loosely pinned hair to tumble in waves down her back. Ignoring the maid who rushed to remedy the untidiness, the Lady of the Acoma knotted her brows in a frown. ‘Then he could order Minwanabi …’ She fought against the reflexive instinct to oppose any break in tradition and embrace the alien concept of absolute rule. ‘Leave me,’ she said with sudden sharpness to her circle of advisers. ‘I have much to think about.’
As Saric arose with the others, Mara retained him with a command. ‘Send word to the Light of Heaven, Saric. Beg him for an audience. Swear upon whatever honour our name holds that the safety of the Empire depends upon this meeting.’
The young adviser repressed curiosity. ‘When, mistress?’
Over the incessant noise of the butana, Mara called, ‘As soon as he is able, but no later than one hour before
noon today.’ Her voice ceased sounding whipped, as her mind weighed options, discarding those that were based on unfounded hope, rather than sound possibility; for inspiration had arrived at a moment nearly too late. ‘If Tasaio’s ambition is to be thwarted, I will need every minute of time.’
• Chapter Twenty-Six •
Resolution
The Emperor listened.
In his grand audience hall, a chamber large enough to house twenty companies of warriors, Ichindar, ninety-first in an unbroken line, sat atop his ceremonial throne. The imposing chair was ancient wood, overlaid with gold and topaz, with massive rubies, emeralds, and onyx stones faced into the sides and back. It rested on a raised pyramidal dais, with a course of steps upon each side. The floor at the base was inset with a vast sunwheel pattern in warm tones of agate, white opal, and more topaz. Upon each side of the huge pyramid, twenty Imperial Whites stood guard upon the stairs. The floor directly before Mara held chairs for high priests and advisers, but only three were present: a scribe who took notes for distribution to those temple representatives who were absent, the Chief Priest of Juran, and the High Father Superior of Lashima. Mara had been grateful for the prelate of Lashima’s presence, hoping it was a favourable omen, for that man had officiated at her interrupted ordination, on the day Keyoke had arrived to take a seventeen-year-old child home as Ruling Lady of the Acoma.
Stripped of even her honour guard, for warriors were forbidden in formal audience with the Emperor, she voiced the last part of her proposed plan. An imperial scribe sitting to Mara’s right hurriedly transcribed her words for the archives, as her phrases echoed into the cavernous chamber. With the hall’s vast domed skylights, gold-and-crystal-framed windows, and polished marble floors, the sound of her voice made her feel physically diminished.
At the close of her last phrase, she bowed deeply and stood as protocol dictated, her hands crossed in salute at her breast, behind the low railing beyond which no petitioner might approach. Trembling despite her best efforts, she awaited the Light of Heaven’s reaction. As the minutes passed, and the silence became prolonged, she dared not even raise her eyes for fear she might find disapproval on the youthful countenance atop the dais.
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