A buzz of noise met her statement. Mara yielded to reckless, icy resolve. ‘This is my last bequest! Honor it as my death wish, or may the gods curse your kind unto the ending of time for perpetrating the very injustices you deplore in us!’
‘Silence!’ The command rocked the chamber, reverberating off the crystal dome with force enough to deafen. Cringing from the sheer volume of the sound, Mara took a second to realise that the command did not arise from the tribunal but came instead from a cho-ja magician that had materialised out of nowhere at the chamber’s center. Its wings were deployed to full extension, and its markings were complex enough to lose the eye in dizziness. It stalked toward Mara, hard turquoise eyes like the ice that sheathed the distant mountains. When it halted before the Lady, its stance was menacing.
‘Give me your token,’ it demanded.
Mara offered the object, certain she could not have done otherwise even had she been of a mind to resist. There was magecraft in the cho-ja’s tone that compelled response from her flesh.
The cho-ja mage scooped up the token with a touch that barely grazed her skin. Ready with an appeal she had no chance to deliver, Mara was startled by a blinding flash. Light enveloped her, densely implacable as suffocation, and when her senses recovered from the shock of spell-craft, the domed chamber of the tribunal was gone, swept away as though it had never been. She found herself returned to the hexagonal cell, windowless and doorless as before, but now the stone floor was scattered with colored cushions and a pair of Tsurani-style sleeping mats. On the nearest of these crouched Lujan, his head resting in his hands, and his mien one of total despair.
At his Lady’s arrival he started to his feet and gave a warrior’s obeisance. His bearing might be correct to the last detail, but hopelessness lingered still in his eyes.
‘You have heard what is to become of us?’ he asked of Mara. There was a whipsnap of fury in his tone.
The Lady sighed, too discouraged to speak, and unwilling to believe that she had come all this distance to be summarily consigned to an unjust fate.
‘Did they ask your last bequest before they read your sentence?’ Lujan asked Mara.
Numbly she nodded; and between hopelessness and grief, she thought of one small detail that offered comfort: the cho-ja of Chakaha had not read her sentence. Somehow the token and the disruption caused by the reappearance of the cho-ja mage had interrupted the formal proceedings.
Unwilling to read hope into that small anomaly, Mara made conversation. ‘What did you ask for, as your last bequest?’
Lujan gave back an ironic smile. As if nothing were wrong, he offered his hand and helped Mara down to a more comfortable seat amid the cushions. ‘I did not ask,’ he allowed. ‘I demanded. As is a warrior’s right when condemned by the state for crimes committed by his master, I claimed death by single combat.’
Mara raised her eyebrows, too sober to be amused, but wildly seizing upon the implications of this development. Right of death by combat was a Tsurani custom! Why should these Chakaha cho-ja honor such a tradition? ‘Did the tribunal that judged you grant your bequest?’
Lujan’s crooked grin of irony told her as much, before he answered, ‘At least I shall have the opportunity to chop at some chitin before they have my head.’
Mara stifled an inopportune rise of hysterical giggles at his vehemence. ‘Who have the Chakaha cho-ja selected as their champion?’
Lujan shrugged. ‘Does it matter? Their warriors all look the same, and the hive mind most likely ensures that they are of equal ability. The only satisfaction I may have is that I will be chopped to pieces in combat before their headsman gets his chance to cut my neck.’ He loosed a bitter laugh. ‘Once I would have considered such a death in your service to be a warrior’s honor, and the paeans that would have greeted me upon my entrance to Turakamu’s halls would have been the only reward I desired.’ He fell silent, as if in deep thought.
Mara ventured conclusion of his statement for him. ‘But your concept of honor has changed. Now a warrior’s death seems meaningless beside the opportunities offered by life.’
Lujan turned a tortured glance to his Lady. ‘I could not have summed up so neatly, but yes. Kevin of Zun opened my eyes to both principles and yearnings that the Tsurani way can never answer. I have seen you dare to challenge the course of our entire culture, as no male ruler might have done, for fear of ridicule by his peers. We are changed, Lady, and the Empire is poised on the brink of change with us.’ He glanced around, as if to savor what life was left to him. ‘I care not for my own life; who have I to mourn after me who will not soon follow me into death when we fail?’ He shook his head. ‘It is the frustration of losing any opportunity to somehow … pass along what we have learned, that these insights will not perish with us.’
Mara spoke insistently to cover her own pang of fear. ‘Hokanu will be left, and our children, to carry on after us. They will somehow rediscover what we have, and find a way to act without blundering into this cho-ja trap.’ She let out a long sigh. Looking at her old companion, she said, ‘My largest regret, most strangely, is that of a wife and a woman. I’m everlastingly sorry that I cannot return to make peace with Hokanu. He was always the soul of sensitivity and reason before: something of importance must have prompted his behavior toward Kasuma. I maligned him unfairly, I think, by accusing him of a prejudice his nature would not allow. Now it’s too late to matter. I must die with the question unasked that could restore our understanding. Why, when I could easily bear another child that is male, did Hokanu act so aggrieved when he learned that his firstborn was a daughter?’
Her eyes sought Lujan’s in appeal. ‘Force Commander, you are a man who understands the game between sexes well, or so I have been informed through kitchen gossip. The scullions never tire of describing the serving girls and ladies of the Reed Life who languish for your company.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Indeed, if they are to be believed, there are droves of such women. How is it that a husband as wise as Hokanu should not be gladdened by the birth of a healthy, unblemished daughter?’
Lujan’s demeanor softened, very near to pity. ‘Lady, did Hokanu never tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’ Mara demanded sharply. ‘I was harsh with my husband, and bitterly outspoken. So deeply did I believe his behavior was in the wrong, I drove him from me. But now I regret my hard-heartedness. Maybe Kamlio taught me to listen more carefully. For like these cho-ja of the Thuril territories, I condemned my husband without ever asking his testimony.’
Lujan stood a moment looking at her. Then, as if reaching some decision, he folded to his knees before her. ‘Gods forgive me,’ he murmured softly, ‘it is not my right to break confidence between a Lord and his wife. But tomorrow we will die, and I have always been your loyal officer. Lady Mara, I would not have you pass this life without the understanding you desire. Hokanu was stricken with a grief, but he would never have spoken of its cause, even had you returned and begged to hear. But I know what sorrow afflicted him. I was in the chamber when the healer of Hantukama informed your husband of what he, in his kindness, swore he would never reveal to you: that after the poisoning by the tong that cost you your unborn babe, you should bear but one more child. Kasuma was your last issue. Hokanu kept the secret because he wished you to hold the hope of another pregnancy. His daughter is a joy to him, never doubt, and his consecrated heir for the Shinzawai mantle. But he knows, and is saddened, that you will never give him the son he longs for in his heart.’
Mara sat stunned. Her voice came out small. ‘I am barren? And he knew?’ The full import of Hokanu’s courageous resolve struck her, sharp as the most stinging thorn. He had been raised motherless and his blood father had been taken beyond reach by the Assembly of Magicians; Hokanu’s whole world had been one of male camaraderie, with his uncle, who became his foster father, and his cousin, who became a brother. This was the root of his longing for a son.
But he was also a man of rare sensitivity and appreciation for the company of
intellectual minds; where another Lord with less heart would have taken on courtesans as his gods-given male right, Hokanu had loved her for her mind. His craving for equality in companionship had become realised in marriage to a woman with whom he could share the most inspirational of his ideas. He spurned the usage of concubines, the company of women of the Reed Life, the pleasures to be found with bought creatures like Kamlio.
Now Mara understood how he had been faced with a choice abhorrent to him: to take another woman to his bed, one that meant nothing beyond her capacity to conceive and breed, or to go without a son – to forgo the fraternity he had shared with his adoptive father, his brother, and Justin, whom he had given back to Mara for the sake of Acoma continuance.
‘Gods,’ Mara all but wept. ‘How stone-hearted I have been!’
Instantly Lujan was beside her, his strong arm supporting her shoulder. Mara sagged against him. ‘Lady,’ he murmured in her ear, ‘you of all women are not insensitive. Hokanu understands why you reacted as you did.’
Lujan held her as a brother might, in undemanding companionship, as she ran through all the details to the half-painful, half-hopeful conclusion that if she died here, her beloved Hokanu would have Kasuma for his heir, and freedom to take another wife to bear him the son he longed for. Mara clung to that thought. At last, to escape her own woes, she said, ‘What of you, Lujan? Surely you do not contemplate the leaving of this life without regrets?’
Lujan’s fingers stroked her shoulder with a rough tenderness. ‘I do have one.’
Mara turned her head and saw that he seemed to be studying the woven patterns of the cushions. She did not press for his confidence, and after a moment he gave a wry shrug.
‘Lady, it is strange how life shows us our follies. Always I have enjoyed the favors of many women, but never held the desire to marry and be content with one.’ Lujan stared fixedly, self-conscious, but oddly freed from embarrassment by the fact that with the dawn, he must face an ending of life, an ending of dreams. The nearness of his accounting with Turakamu lent them both the solace of honesty. ‘Always, I told myself, my roving ways were the result of my admiration for you.’ Here his eyes flashed toward her in a glance of truthful adoration. ‘Lady, there was much about you for a man to appreciate, and a toughness that made other women seem … if not lacking, then at least smaller of stature.’ He made a tight gesture of frustration at the inadequacy of words. ‘Lady, our journey into Thuril has taught me to know myself too well, I think, for ease of mind.’
Mara raised her eyebrows. ‘Lujan, you have never been less than the exemplary warrior. Keyoke overcame his distrust of grey warriors to choose you above others to fill his former post as Force Commander. In these late years I believe that you have come to hold as much of a place in his heart as Papewaio did.’
‘Now, there is a tribute.’ Lujan’s lips quirked toward a smile, and then hardened. ‘But I have been less than honest with myself, now that my spirit lies near to its reckoning. I am sorry, this night, that I never found any woman to share my hearth and home.’
Mara regarded the bent head of her Force Commander. Recognising that in some manner Lujan wished to unburden himself, very gently she said, ‘What kept you from starting a family and raising children?’
‘I outlived my master of the Tuscai,’ he admitted with a tightness in his throat. ‘The misery of a grey warrior cannot be described, for his life is outside society. I was a young man, strong, and skilled in arms. And yet there were moments when I very nearly did not survive. How would a child or a woman fare, were they to be left houseless? I saw the wives and children of my fellow warriors driven away as slaves, forever to wear grey and answer to the needs of a master who cared little for their comfort.’ Lujan’s voice sank almost to a whisper. ‘I see now that I was afraid that someday those children would be mine, and my woman become some other man’s to use as he chose.’
Now Lujan looked his mistress squarely in the face. There was an unnerving depth to his eyes, and a ring to his voice as he added, ‘How much simpler it was to admire you from afar, Lady, and guard your life with my own, than to live the possibility of the nightmare that even yet wakens me sweating from my sleep.’
Mara reached out and touched his hands, then kneaded them until they relaxed their furious grip. ‘Neither you nor any unborn child of yours will ever in this turn of the Wheel go masterless,’ she said softly. ‘For I very much doubt that either of us will escape this prison with our lives.’
Now Lujan did smile, a strange serenity to his bearing that Mara had never seen. ‘It has been my pride to serve you, Lady Mara. But if we do live past tomorrow’s dawn, I ask a boon of you, that you command me to find a wife and marry! For I think that with the magicians as your enemy, such straits as these might easily be repeated, and if I am to die in your service, I should prefer not to face the Death God with the same regret in my spirit a second time!’
Mara regarded him with a smile of deep affection. ‘Lujan, knowing you as I do, I doubt I shall have to command you to do what is clearly in your heart to do. But, we must win past tomorrow’s dawn.’ Crossing her arms as if to ward off cold, she said, ‘We must sleep, brave Lujan. For tomorrow will come.’
• Chapter Twenty-Three •
Contest
Sleep was impossible.
Since her strangely intimate exchange of confidences with Lujan, Mara felt no urge to converse. The Acoma Force Commander had shown no indication to sleep and settled cross-legged on his mat. The cho-ja had confiscated his armor along with his sword. Left the padded underrobe designed to protect his skin from chafing, he looked both undressed and vulnerable. Battle scars normally concealed by his raiment were exposed, and although he was as fastidious as any Tsurani officer, his last opportunity for a bath had been in an icy river current while enduring Thuril jibes. His clothing was greyed with dirt, and his hair spiked up into whorls from long hours under his helm. Muscled as he was, he seemed somehow diminished without his trappings and officer’s plumes.
Looking at him, Mara was forced to recognise his human side, his maleness that would never know fatherhood, and the incongruously tender comfort he had given with hands better accustomed to the grip of a killing sword. As if his coming fate held no consequence, he meditated peacefully, his soldier’s discipline forcing worries aside to husband strength against demands of battle.
Mara, despite every training of the mind garnered in the Temple of Lashima, was left without such solace. This time her mind found ease in ritual; if she was not feeling regret for loved ones who had been lost, she felt rage against an intolerant fate that condemned her to failure in protecting those still alive. Try as she might, her thoughts could not be forced to subside toward anything approaching tranquillity.
The ignominy of imprisonment without any way to contact her captors left her galled. The magical chamber effectively sealed the condemned away from all other living beings. Sourly, Mara wondered whether even gods could hear prayer in such a place. And with no windows, nor even the sounds of outside activity, the minutes dragged. Darkness itself would have carried a blessing of change, but the cho-ja globe drifted always, its light stark and constant.
The dawn would come, inevitably.
And yet for all the creeping agony of waiting, daybreak caught Mara unprepared. Her racing, trapped thoughts still circled, repeatedly reviewing events and questioning whether this action, or that word, or that decision differently handled might have won them alliance and freedom. Her futile pondering left her with a crushing headache. With the flashing magical whirl of light that signaled the dissolution of their prison, Mara felt tired, and depressed.
A double-file guard of cho-ja marched forward to take custody of the condemned. Mara retained enough presence of mind to rise and cross to where Lujan waited, awake and already on his feet.
She took his dry hands into her own clammy ones. Then she regarded his expressionless face and intoned the ritual words, ‘Warrior, you have served in highest honor.
You have leave from your mistress to claim what death you choose. Fight well. Fight bravely. Go singing to the halls of Turakamu.’
Lujan sank into a bow. His return courtesy seemed to exhaust the patience of their captors, for cho-ja guards advanced and hauled him to his feet. Mara also was grasped and tugged away as a herder might drive a needra calf to slaughter. She lost sight of Lujan as the bodies of cho-ja warriors closed around her. They allowed her no chance for protest, but set her on the march through the maze of hallways that riddled the city of Chakaha.
She raised her chin high, though pride seemed meaningless. The cho-ja of these lands were not impressed by honor, or courage, nor did they have any care for human dignity. She presumed that very soon she would be greeting the spirits of her ancestors; but not as she had always expected. Here, now, the most glowing of her Tsurani attainments and even her illustrious title of Servant of the Empire seemed empty. Now she would have traded all for a last glimpse of her children, or one tender embrace from her husband.
Kevin had been more right than ever she knew. Honor was only a glorified word for emptiness, and no sane replacement for the promise of continued life. Why had it taken until now for her to fully understand what prompted the opposition of the Assembly? And if help to break their stagnating hold upon Tsuranuanni could not be found here, and these Thuril cho-ja would make no alliance, where would Hokanu seek for resources to end the tyranny the magicians so jealously guarded? If there were answers, they must remain a mystery.
The cho-ja guard were indifferent as beings of stone. They moved briskly through the corridors, and across two catwalks that sparkled like glass. Mara regarded the clear sky, never so green and fresh before now. She smelled the fragrance of rich earth and jungle greenery, threaded through with the perfumes of tropical flowers; and on the breeze she drew in the scent of ice carried on the winds from the mountain peaks. She drank in these pleasures of life, and also the beauty of Chakaha’s tracery of towers. She walked, bathed in colored arrows of light caused by sunbeams that shone through the towers, and her spirit shrank from the senseless end to come, the giving up of all hope, and the end of all dreams.
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