Arakasi's eyes sparkled with sudden enthusiasm. He reached for a fruit slice and opened: 'The magicians have been very busy with a plot of their own, it appears. The rumours are intriguing, and almost beyond imagination.'
Settled back on her cushions in relief, Mara waved for him to continue.
Finishing his snack with a neat swallow, Arakasi licked his teeth, it's very thought-provoking. The word is that ten Great Ones from the Assembly went through the rift to Midkemia, along with three thousand Kanazawai warriors. A battle was fought, and wild speculation abounds concerning why. Some say the Emperor wished vengeance upon the King of Isles for the traitorous slaughter at the peace talks.' Here the Spy Master held up a hand to forestall his mistress's eager questions. 'That's not the unbelievable motive. Others say — persons in reliable offices — that the magicians made war upon the Enemy.'
Mara looked blank.
'The Enemy,' Arakasi repeated. 'The one from the myths before the Golden Bridge. Surely your teachers recited stories to you as a child.'
Recalling those tales, recognition dawned. 'But those are tales!' Mara protested. She glanced around at the lamps, as if the shadows they cast might suddenly have grown larger and darker. 'Not real.'
Arakasi shook his head, mystified and excited at the same time. 'So we thought,' he agreed. 'But who can rightly guess what enemies might challenge the Great Ones, particularly since the renegade, Milamber, had his name mixed up in the events? Those myths are older than history, as ancient as the names of the brothers who began the Five Families. How can we judge what is truth in that long-distant past?'
Suddenly poignantly troubled, Mara bit her lip. 'Kanazawai were involved? Then we can inquire what has passed when I hear from Lord Kamatsu.' Her thoughts skipped ahead. 'We could surmise that the Emperor's interference with the council might have been in cooperation with this action of the magicians.'
'So I presume.' Arakasi helped himself to another slice of fruit. 'But that's speculation. My sources closest to the Light of Heaven suggest negotiations may be under way for an exchange of prisoners between the Empire and the Kingdom of the Isles.'
'So the rift is opened!' Mara cut in. Her voice held a strangely emotional note.
Rightly attributing that to some concern with her barbarian lover, Arakasi coughed lightly. 'None of what I tell is common knowledge. But it would seem that if you applied again for a hearing in the right places, you might be able to gain the benefits of your trade concessions with Midkemia, at last.'
Mara seemed only distantly interested in a subject that had once been a hot source of frustration. Arakasi tactfully used the interval to clean off the last fruit on the tray. He recalled Mara and Kevin's discussion of the rift in Kentosani; the subject had revolved around granting the barbarian his freedom. Cued by shrewd intuition, Arakasi knew the idea was emotionally painful.
'I will probe the issue for you, Lady, and try to find more facts.'
Mara shot him a glance of wordless gratitude. 'For Kevin's sake,' she said in a small voice. 'He does not deserve to stay a slave.'
As if shrugging off the torments of unseen ghosts, the Lady changed the subject. 'If power continues to shift away from the council, there will be upheavals. Minwanabi will consolidate his allies and make a bid to revive the Warlord's office.'
She sighed, frowned, and added, 'It would be nice if all of us were alive to enjoy the gains of my exclusive trade rights.' Then her eyes narrowed. 'You had spies killed under Tasaio's own roof, you said. Why, then, does our enemy still breathe?'
Arakasi settled his elbows on his knees like a killwing ruffling feathers. 'My arm is not long enough to reach beneath Tasaio's roof to take his head — but his servants? They are a long and different story.'
In the soft summer night, under a brilliance of lanterns and stars, he told her.
* * *
The servants were discovered, finally, in a lime pit in a vegetable garden that was occasionally used for burials to enrich the soil; only the dishonoured were interred there, without rites, and where the stink of decomposition would not waft beyond the domestics' quarters. The five corpses were headless, and when the runner boy who made the find reported it to one of the overseers, the older staff member understood at once that the master must be informed. Shaking in the knees, and ducking his white head in consternation, he hastened off to report to Murgali.
The Minwanabi hadonra was hunched over ledgers stacked precariously high, doing his best to stay inconspicuous. All the household had felt Tasaio's temper since his ambush had failed to kill Mara. Bristling at the interruption, he heard the house servant's news and cursed as he recognized its import. This matter of dead bodies was not something he dared to ignore.
'Go,' he commanded the house servant. 'Have the bodies removed from the garden and laid out in an empty bed suite.'
As the old man left, Murgali arose, feeling tired. He chafed an arthritic wrist, put on his softest slippers, and as soundlessly as he could shuffle, hastened to find Incomo. The Minwanabi First Adviser was perhaps the only person who could approach Tasaio with impunity. As the hadonra crossed through the corridor that led to the nursery, he clicked his tongue; even the children were quiet, as if aware of their father's lingering wrath.
Incomo was none too pleased with the interruption, either. Sitting, dripping, in his bath, with a slave girl one quarter his age sponging his stringy back, he sighed soulfully at the water that poured over his knees. 'This is most inopportune,' he murmured in the direction of his privates.
Murgali bobbed agreement. 'Most. The corpses are being installed in an empty bed suite. My Lord can examine them there.'
Then, as Incomo heaved himself up from his tub and submitted to a rubdown by a towel slave, the hadonra stole his moment to escape.
Left dry and naked and alone to carry the news, Incomo indulged in a rare string of oaths. He forwent his chance to fondle the slave girl who gave up her sponge to robe him, and that put him in a spiteful temper. He tied his tasselled belt in a quick, irritable knot and set off to locate his Lord and master.
The search carried him from the dining chambers, through the grand hall, past innumerable meeting rooms, into and out of Tasaio's personal study, the scriptorium, and an exercise chamber; he finally ended his search on the archery range that lay on the far side of the guards' barracks. By now Incomo was puffing, and sweaty as if he had not just stepped from his bath. He bowed and spoke very deliberately and loudly, that his Lord could not mistake his presence for that of another warrior.
Clad in the lightest silk robe and an incongruously battered war helm, Tasaio shot off seven arrows in rapid succession. They cracked with uncanny accuracy into a small shield's centre, painted as a target, held upright by a trembling slave.
'Bodies,' snapped the Lord of the Minwanabi. He punctuated the word with another arrow, loosed whistling between the slave's legs to smack into dry summer earth.
The slave flinched and forgot himself. He stepped back in white-faced terror.
Tasaio showed no change in expression. His next arrow took the hapless man exactly in the hollow of the throat. 'I have told them, and told them, they are not to move!' The Lord snapped his fingers, and a servant rushed to relieve him of his bow and quiver. Tasaio stripped off his shooting glove, and his amber eyes turned to his First Adviser. 'By "bodies", I presume that you have located the missing Acoma spies?'
Incomo swallowed. 'Yes, Lord.'
'Five, you said,' Tasaio snapped back. 'But we knew only three.'
'Yes, Lord.' Incomo followed the proper step behind as his master spun briskly and walked from the archery grounds.
Tasaio pulled at the knuckles of his left hand, cracking each of the joints. 'I will inspect the bodies. Now.'
'Of course, Lord.' Incomo stretched to keep up with the taller warrior's stride, the sweat springing freely from his face. When they reached the estate house, it took him some minutes to determine which bed suite housed the corpses. Domestic staff made t
hemselves scarce, with the master present, and he had to make too many inquiries to get answers.
Tasaio tossed his helm to a hovering slave, then spent the interval in coiled impatience. 'You have not been efficient,' he observed to Incomo, but fortunately he was in haste to inspect the corpses, and made no further comment. He strode the length of a painted corridor, shoved past a bowing guard, and whipped aside a screen.
The stench of corrupted flesh wafted with the breeze of his motion. Tasaio was unfazed. Apparently nerveless in the presence of horrors, he entered the bed suite and knelt to examine the dirt-streaked lumpish forms of what had once been five men.
Incomo lingered outside the door. Engaged in a silent struggle to control the heaving of his stomach, he watched his master finger the remains with long, inquisitive fingers. Tasaio ran his hand along an indentation in the neck of one body, barely a hair's breadth below where the head had been severed. 'This man was strangled,' he muttered. 'This is the work of a tong assassin.' He examined the last body and discovered a tiny cloth fragment embroidered with a red flower, hidden in the corpse's robe. 'Hamoi!' He arose, showing his anger as he spun to address Incomo. 'After my gifts of metal, I should own that tong!'
The Minwanabi First Adviser interpreted his master's glare as a warning. He bowed in instant obeisance. 'Lord, your gifts were copious.'
'This should not have happened!' Tasaio said in ice-cold rage. 'Send a messenger at once. I would have the Tong Master before my dais to explain himself.'
Incomo sank lower. 'Your will, my Lord.'
He could not move his old knees fast enough to avoid the shove of Tasaio's elbow as the master shouldered through the doorway.
'Send this carrion back to the lime pit, then send word to my wife,' the Lord barked at the nearest servant in earshot. 'Tell her I wish a bath to remove the stink of rot from my flesh.'
Incomo reached his feet and considered the idea a sound one. He reflected soulfully on the little slave girl, and the delicious massage of her sponge, but the day's upheavals were not over.
From his tub, Tasaio summoned in an endless succession of servants for interrogation. Many admitted to having seen the tong assassin who had come to commit the murders; a Patrol Leader even confessed to allowing the assassin entry through one of the checkpoints in the hills at the border of the estate.
The man's explanation for allowing the murderer passage was inherently logical. 'All soldiers know that my Lord purchased the tong's loyalty. The man came openly to the checkpoint, stating he was on my Lord's business, and showing a document.'
Tasaio heard this with narrowed eyes and tight lips. He motioned to Incomo in the negative, and sadly the First Adviser instructed the house scribe to write the warrior's name on the list for immediate execution. The soldier would be dead before Tasaio was dry from his bath.
The Lady Incarna continued mechanically to sponge her husband's back, but her cheeks were wax-white, and she looked sick around the eyes. Like a puppet on strings she soaped the lean muscular shoulders of the Lord of the Minwanabi over and over, until Tasaio tired of her attentions and snapped suddenly to his feet. Incarna dropped her sponge with a splash into the bath water and snatched back with a startled cry.
'Silence, woman!' Tasaio jerked his wet head, and towel slaves flew to attend him.
The guild messenger could not have chosen a worse moment for arrival, nor could the servant who scratched at the doorway to announce the man's presence in the foyer, awaiting the master's attendance.
In no mood to hurry, but impatient with his dresser nonetheless, Tasaio snatched the lightweight but heavily embroidered robe from his body servant. He flipped it over his shoulders, held-out his hand for his shell-decorated belt, then accepted the black-lacquered sheaths of his sword and dagger newly threaded on a soft needra-hide baldric. A slave laced on his sandals, and he finished his dressing with a light, padded jacket sewn with bone rings that offered the same protection as light armour without being as cumbersome.
'Send the messenger to me in my personal armoury,' he instructed his runner. Then he motioned for Incomo to follow and strode out, leaving his wife to oversee the slaves in the bath chamber as if her standing were no higher than an overseer's.
The Minwanabi Lord's armoury was a small, windowless chamber with sanded wood walls, laid out with pegs for swords and stands for storing body armour. Tasaio's single personal indulgence since becoming Ruling Lord had been to purchase extravagant sets of arms for himself, some plain and deadly, designed for the rigours of war, others resplendent with lacquer and chasing, for dress occasions; yet a third variety was thin and strong and without fluting, designed to be secretly worn under clothing. Tasaio roved from stand to stand, stroking helms and breastplates and sword hilts, then examining his fingertips for dust. The slaves and servants who attended this chamber knew well to keep it immaculate; predecessors who had failed the Lord's inspections had not survived his displeasure.
Uncomfortable in the small, airless room, Incomo compromised his uneasiness by standing farthest from the lamp, which was hot, and drew unwanted attention to his actions, should the master's narrow scrutiny fall upon him. Still as every Minwanabi servant had lately learned to become, he waited while the Lord roved from sword to sword, and helm to helm, stopping occasionally to arrange a buckle or a boss, or to finger the edge of a blade.
Tasaio was testing a dagger when the courier bowed at the door. The Lord flicked the barest glance over the man's guild badges, just enough to note the colours of the Sulan-Qu denomination. He spoke in his deceptively gentle manner. 'What message do you carry?'
The man straightened. 'An overture from Mara of the Acoma,' he began, and silenced instantly as Tasaio whipped around in a breathtaking blur of speed.
The messenger swallowed awkwardly against the pressure of a sword tip against his throat. He looked into the eyes of the man who held the weapon, and saw there a flat lack of expression that terrified him to his soul. 'My Lord,' he quavered, 'I am but a guild messenger hired to bear letters.'
Tasaio moved no muscle. 'And do you bring me a letter?' His voice had not altered a hair's-breadth.
Incomo cautiously cleared his throat. 'My Lord, the guild's runner is blameless, and his life protected by oath.'
'Is he?' Tasaio fired back. 'Let him speak for himself.'
The messenger sucked in a difficult breath. 'Mara requests a meeting,' he began, and stopped at a twitch from the blade.
'You will not mention that name under this roof, within these walls.' Tasaio gave another light dig with the weapon, and teased a trickle of scarlet from the skin beneath the point. 'What does this thrice-accursed Lady ask a meeting for? I wish no parley. I want only her death.'
The messenger blinked uncomfortably. Suspecting that he reported to a madman, and convinced he would end with a cut throat, he gathered his dignity and bravely concluded the words he had been employed by his guild to deliver.
'This Lady asks that the Lord of the Minwanabi visit her estate for the purpose of a mutual discussion.'
Tasaio smiled slowly. Impressed by the little man's courage, he lowered the sword, wiped the point clean on a polishing cloth, then replaced the weapon on its pegs. As an afterthought, he tossed the rag to the messenger, along with gestured permission to tend the scratch on his throat.
The guildsman lacked the effrontery to refuse; he lifted the lightly oiled cloth to his neck and began tentatively to dab. And as though no stranger were present, Tasaio resumed his inspection. Roving between items in his collection, he spoke to his adviser as if they were the only occupants of the room. .
'Ah, Incomo, I believe I have frightened her badly,' he said. 'My ambush and my assassin might not have accomplished my ends, but Sezu's little bitch is running scared. Luck has helped her cause, but fortune never endures. She knows she cannot last another year.' The Minwanabi Lord abandoned one armour stand for the next. He fingered a plated garget as if probing for a weakness. 'Perhaps the Lady offers compromise, say,
a sacrifice of the Acoma name and line, in exchange for survival for her son?'
Incomo bowed with due respect. 'My Lord, that is a dangerous assumption. As well as you, the Lady knows the time for compromise is past. She initiated blood feud with your uncle Jingu; and Desio made pledge to Turakamu. For the sake of her ancestors' honour, and against the Red God's displeasure, she must know she has no position from which to bargain.'
Tasaio let the plates of the gorget fall with a click like the rolling of game dice. 'She is desperate,' he insisted. 'Let her come to me here, if she has a desire to speak.'
The armour room seemed stiflingly claustrophobic. Incomo risked a small movement to mop his brow, and dared another interruption. 'My Lord, I hesitate to remind: the Lord Jingu underestimated the girl, and in this very home she forced a situation that required him to take his own life.'
Sandals scraped lightly on waxed wood as Tasaio leaned an elbow on a fine suit of armour. The tawny eyes he fixed on his First Adviser were wide and bright in the lamplight. 'I am not a coward,' he said softly. 'And my uncle was a fool.'
Incomo nodded hasty agreement. 'But even the bravest man should do better to act with caution.'
Tasaio's eyes narrowed dangerously. 'Do you suggest she could threaten me?' He tipped his head and spat upon the polished floor. 'Here? Just because she is presently too strong to succumb to an open attack, make no mistake. It is only a matter of time before I will step in and finish her. Indeed, I should relish the chance to see my warriors sack and burn her estate. Perhaps I should use this request for parley as an opportunity to go there and study the site for assault tactics.'
The guild messenger seemed uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. His task as a courier required discretion, but the discussion at hand was not one he cared to witness. Rival factions might torture him to learn just what he was overhearing; his guild was well respected, but that did not make him sacrosanct for those hours with his family when he was not wearing his official badges.
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