Mara stiffened reflexively, the appropriate smile frozen like paint on her face. 'Your will, my husband.'
But a blind man would have sensed her reluctance. Buntokapi laughed. With a shout of drunken triumph, he raised her into his arms.
The guests cheered. Mindful of the thoughtless strength in the arms that held her, Mara tried to calm her racing heart. She would endure, had to endure, for the continuance of the Acorria name. She nestled her face into the sweat-damp fabric of her husband's collar and permitted him to bear her from the dais. Paper fertility charms thrown by the crowd showered them both as he carried her from the crowd of well-wishers and down the path to the brightly painted structure of the marriage hut.
Keyoke and Papewaio stood as honour guards at the end of the path. Buntokapi passed them by like common servants and stepped across the threshold into the silvery half-light of sky shining through walls constructed of reed paper and lath. The servant and the maid in attendance within bowed low as their master and mistress appeared. Buntokapi set Mara upon her feet. At his half-grunted syllable, the maid rose and slid the screen entrance closed. The manservant settled motionless into a corner, awaiting his Lordship's pleasure.
The hut had been rearranged during the day; the screen dividing the quarters of husband and wife had been removed, replaced by a wide sleeping mat covered with sheets of fine silk against the east wall, for dawn symbolized beginnings. In the centre of the floor lay an array of sitting cushions, and a low, bare table. Mara took a shaky step forward and settled upon the cushions before the table. She kept her eyes downcast as Bunto sat across from her.
'Send for the priest of Chochocan,' demanded the Lord of the Acoma. His gaze fixed upon Mara, fevered and intense, as the servant leaped from the corner to obey.
The priest entered alone, carrying a tray upon which sat a decanter of golden tura wine, two goblets of crystal, and a candle in a jewelled ceramic stand. He raised the tray skyward, intoning a blessing, and set it on the table between husband and wife. With eyes that seemed to hold misgiving, he glanced at both, the Lady with hands that trembled beyond control, and the young Lord whose impatience was tangible. Then, with resignation, he lit the candle. 'Let Chochocan's wisdom enlighten you.' He traced a symbol in chalk around the candle stand and lifted the wine in blessing. He filled the two goblets and set them opposite bride and groom. 'May the blessing of Chochocan fill your hearts.' He scribed more symbols in chalk around each goblet and the half-empty decanter.
'Drink, children of the gods, and know each other as your masters in heaven have ordained.' The priest bowed in benediction and, with near to visible relief, left the marriage hut.
Buntokapi waved his hand, and the servants retired. The paper screen clicked shut, leaving him alone with his bride in a shelter that quivered in the gusts of rising wind.
He turned dark eyes to Mara. 'At last, my wife, you are mine.' He lifted his goblet too quickly, and wine splashed, obliterating one of the symbols. 'Look at me, my Lady. The priest would prefer if we drank together.'
A gust slammed the screens, rattling the paper against the frames. Mara started, then seemed to take hold of herself. She reached out and lifted her own goblet. 'To our marriage, Buntokapi.'
She took a small sip while her Lord drained his wine to the dregs. He then emptied the remains of the decanter into his glass and finished that also. The first drops of rain spattered heavily against the oil-cloth ceiling of the marriage hut as he set glass and decanter down.
'Wife, fetch me more wine.'
Mara set her goblet on the table, within the chalk markings scribed by the priest. Thunder growled in the distance, and the wind ended, replaced by a tumultuous downpour. 'Your will, my husband,' she said softly, then lifted her head to call for a servant.
Bunto surged forward. The table rocked, spilling the wine with a splash of liquid and glass. Her call became a cry as the heavy fist of her husband slammed her face.
She fell back, dazed, among the cushions, and the falling rain drummed like the blood in her ears. Her head swam, and pain clouded her senses. Shocked unthinkingly to rage, still Mara retained her Acoma pride. She lay breathing heavily as her husband's shadow fell across her.
Leaning forward so his form obliterated the light behind him, he pointed at Mara. 'I said you do it.' His voice was low and filled with menace. 'Understand me, woman. If I ask you for wine, you will fetch it. You will never again give that task, or any other, into the hands of a servant without my permission. If I ask anything of you, Lady, you will do it.'
He sat back again, his brutish features emphasized in the half-light. 'You think I'm stupid.' His tone reflected long-hidden resentment. 'You all think I'm stupid, my brothers, my father, and now you. Well, I'm not. With Halesko and, especially, Jiro around, it was easy to look stupid.' With a dark and bitter laugh he added, 'But I don't have to look stupid anymore, heh! You have married into a new order. I am Lord of the Acoma. Never forget that, woman. Now fetch me more wine!'
Mara closed her eyes. In a voice forced to steadiness she said, 'Yes, my husband.'
'Get up!' Bunto nudged her with his toe.
Resisting the urge to touch her swollen, reddened cheek, Mara obeyed. Her head was bowed in the perfect image of wifely submission, but her dark eyes flashed with something very different as- she bowed at Buntokapi's feet. Then, even more controlled than she had been when she renounced her rights as Ruler of the Acoma, she arose and fetched wine from a chest near the door.
Buntokapi watched her right the table, then retrieve and refill his glass. Young, and lost in his anticipation as he watched the rise and fall of Mara's breasts beneath the flimsy fabric of her day robe, he did not see the hate in her eyes as he drank. And by the time the wine was finished and his goblet thrown aside, he closed his sweaty hands upon that maddening obstruction of silk. He pushed his new wife down into the cushions, too far gone in drink and lust to care.
Mara endured his hands upon her naked flesh. She did not fight him, and she did not cry out. With a courage equal to any her father and brother had shown on the barbarian battlefield on Midkemia, she accomplished what came after without tears, though Bunto's eagerness caused her pain. For long hours she lay upon crumpled, sweaty sheets, listening to the drumming rain and the rasp of her husband's snores. Young and aching and bruised, she thought upon her mother and nurse, Nacoya; and she wondered if their first night with a man had been different. Then, turning on her side away from the enemy she had married, she closed her eyes. Sleep did not come. But if her pride had suffered sorely, her Acoma honour was intact. She had not cried out, even once.
* * *
Morning dawned strangely silent. The wedding guests had departed, the Lord of the Anasati and Nacoya bidding farewell on behalf of the newlyweds. Servants cracked the screens of the wedding hut, and fresh, rain-washed air wafted inside, carrying the calls of the herders driving the stock to the far meadows to graze. Mara inhaled the scent of wet earth and flowers and imagined the brightness of the gardens with the layer of summer dust washed off. By nature she was an early riser, but tradition dictated she must not be up before her husband on the morning after the marriage was consummated. Now, more than ever, the inactivity chafed, left her too much time to think, with no diversion from the various aches in her body. She fretted and fidgeted, while Bunto drowsed on, oblivious.
The sun rose, and the marriage hut grew stuffy. Mara called a servant to slide the screens all the way open, and as noon sunlight sliced across the coarse features of her husband, he groaned. Straight-faced, Mara watched him turn into the pillows, muttering a sharp command to draw screens and curtains. Before the shadows of the drapes fell, she saw his complexion turn greenish and sweat bead the skin of his neck and wrists.
Sweetly, knowing he had the grandsire of all hangovers, she said, 'My husband, are you indisposed?'
Bunto moaned and sent her for chocha. Sweating herself from memory of his abuses, Mara rose and fetched a steaming pot. She pressed a hot c
up into her Lord's shaking hand. As it had been brewing all morning, it was probably too strong to be considered drinkable, but Buntokapi sucked the cup dry. 'You're a small thing,' he observed, comparing his large-knuckled hand to her slight one. Then, sulky from his headache, he reached out and pinched her still-swollen nipple.
Mara managed not to flinch, barely. Shaking the hair over her shoulders so its loose warmth covered her breasts, she said, 'My Lord wishes?'
'More chocha, woman.' As if embarrassed by his clumsiness, he watched her fill his cup. 'Ah, I feel like a needra herd has stopped to deposit their night soil in my mouth.' He made a face and spat. 'You will attend me while I dress and then you will call servants to bring thyza bread and jomach.'
'Yes, husband,' said Mara. 'And after?' Longingly she thought of the cool shadows of her father's study, and Nacoya.
'Don't bother me, wife.' Bunto rose, tenderly nursing his head. He stretched naked before her, the knobs of his knees only inches from her nose. 'You will oversee the affairs of the house, but only when I have done with your services.'
The shadows of the drapes hid Mara's shudder. Heartsick at the role she must live, she braced herself to endure; but drink and excessive feasting had blunted her husband's desire. He abandoned his empty cup on the bedclothes and called for his robe.
Mara brought the garment and helped to slip the silk sleeves over arms that were stocky and thick with hair. Then she sat at tedious length while servants brought water for her Lord's bath. After she had sponged his great back until the water cooled in the tub, he permitted his Lady to dress. Servants brought bread and fruit, but only she might serve him. Watching him shovel jomach into his mouth, juice dripping down his chin, she wondered how the shrewd Lord of the Anasati had come by such a son. Then, looking beyond his coarse manners into his secretive eyes, she realized with a chill of purest panic that he watched her as carefully in return; like a predator. Mara realized his insistence that he wasn't stupid might be no boast. A sinking feeling hit her. If Buntokapi was simply cunning, like the Lord of the Minwanabi, there would be ways to manage him. But if he was also intelligent . . . The thought left her cold.
'You are very clever,' Buntokapi said at last. He caressed her wrist with a sticky finger, almost dotingly possessive.
'My qualities pale beside my Lord's,' whispered Mara. She kissed his knuckles, to distract his thinking.
'You don't eat,' he observed. 'You only ponder. I dislike that in a woman.'
Mara cut a slice of thyza bread and cradled it in her palms. 'With my Lord's permission?'
Buntokapi grinned as she nibbled a bite; the bread seemed tasteless on her tongue, but she chewed and swallowed to spite him. Quickly bored with watching her discomfort, the son of the Lord of the Anasati called for musicians.
Mara closed her eyes. She needed Nacoya, so badly she ached inside. Yet as mistress of the Ruling Lord she could do nothing but await his pleasure as he called for ballads and argued with the singer over nuances in the fourth stanza. The day warmed, and with closed drapes the marriage hut became stifling. Mara endured, and fetched wine when her husband tired of the music. She combed his hair and laced his sandals. Then, at his bidding, she danced until the hair dampened at her temples and her bruised face stung with exertion. Just when it seemed her Lord would while away the entire day within the marriage hut, he rose and bellowed for the servants to prepare his litter. He would pass the time until evening in the barracks reviewing the numbers and training of the Acoma warriors, he announced.
Mara wished Lashima's patience upon Keyoke. Wilted from heat and strain, she followed her husband from the hut into the blinding sun of afternoon. In her discomfort she had forgotten the waiting honour guard, and so her bruised cheek was uncovered as she appeared before Papewaio and Keyoke. Years of the harshest training enabled them to see such a mark of shame without expression. But the stolid hand of Keyoke tightened upon his spear haft until the knuckles shone white, and Papewaio's toes clenched on the soles of his sandals. Had any man save the Ruling Lord put such marks upon their Mara-anni he would have died before he completed another step. Mara stepped into a day as bright and clean as the gods could make it; but as she walked past her former retainers, she felt their anger like black shadows at her back.
The marriage hut was burning before she reached the estate house. By tradition, the building was set aflame to honour the sacred passage of woman to wife and man to husband. After tossing the ritual torch over the threshold, Keyoke turned silently towards the guards' quarters, to await the orders of his Lord. Papewaio's expression remained like chipped stone. With an intensity fierce for its stillness, he watched the paper and lath, with its array of soiled cushions and tangled sheets, explode into flames. Never had he been happier to see something burn; for in watching the violence of the fire he could almost forget the bruise on Mara's face.
* * *
Nacoya was not in the study. With an unpleasant jolt, Mara remembered that here also marriage changed the order she had known. The master's study was now the province of Buntokapi, as Lord of the Acoma. Hereafter no aspect of the household she had known would be the same. Jican would tally his accounts in the wing assigned to the scribes, as before, but she could no longer receive him. Feeling weary despite her seventeen years, Mara retired to the shade beneath the ulo in her private garden.
She did not sit but leaned against the smooth bark of the tree while the runner she had dispatched hastened to fetch Nacoya.
The wait seemed to last interminably, and the fall of water from the fountain did not soothe. When Nacoya appeared at last, breathless, her hair fallen crooked against its pins, Mara could only stare at her in a silence of pent-up misery.
'Mistress?' The nurse stepped hesitantly forward. Her breath caught as she saw the bruise on Mara's cheek. Without words the old woman raised her arms. The next instant the Lady of the Acoma was only a frightened girl weeping in her embrace.
Nacoya stroked Mara's shoulders as sob after sob convulsed her. 'Mara-anni, daughter of my heart,' she murmured. 'I see he was not gentle, this Lord you have married.'
For an interval the fountain's mournful fall filled the glade. Then, sooner than Nacoya expected, Mara straightened up. In a surprisingly steady voice she said, 'He is Lord, this man I have married. But the Acoma name will outlive him.' She sniffed, touched the bruise on her face, and directed a look of wounding appeal to her former nurse. 'And, mother of my heart, until I conceive, I must find strength to live with things my father and brother would weep to know.'
Nacoya patted the cushions beneath the ulo, encouraging Mara to sit. Her old hands made the girl comfortable, while a servant brought a basin of chilled water and soft cloths. While Mara lay back on the cushions, Nacoya bathed her face. Then she combed the tangles from her glossy black hair, as she had when the Lady had been a child; and as she worked, she spoke, very softly, into her mistress's ear.
'Mara-anni, last night brought you no joy, this I know.
But understand in your heart that the man you have wed is young, as impetuous as a needra bull at the time of its third spring. Do not judge all men by the experience of only one.' She paused. Unspoken between them was the fact that Mara had disregarded advice, and rather than educating herself to awareness of men through a gentle encounter with one hired from the Reed Life, she had been headstrong. Nacoya dabbed chill water over her mistress's bruises. The price of that stubbornness had been cruelly extracted.
Mara sighed and opened swollen eyes. To her nurse she directed a look that held painful uncertainty but no regret. Nacoya laid cloth and basin aside and nodded with reflective approval. This girl might be young, and small, and battered, but she owned the toughness of her father, Lord Sezu, when it came to matters of family. She would endure, and the Acoma name would continue.
Mara tugged at her day robe and winced slightly as the cloth abraded sore nipples. 'Mother of my heart, the ways of men are strange to me. I am much in need of advice.'
Nacoya retu
rned a smile that held more craft than pleasure. Her head cocked to one side, and after a moment of thought she pulled the pins from her hair and carefully began binding it afresh. Watching the ordinary, even familiar movements of the nurse's wrinkled hands, Mara relaxed slightly. Day always came after night, no matter how dark the clouds that covered the moon. She listened as Nacoya began to speak, quite softly, that only she could hear.
'Child, the Empire is vast, and many are the lords and masters whose ambitions turn their hearts hard with cruelty. Hapless servants often suffer beneath the rule of such men. But from such adversity wisdom springs. The servants have learned, as you shall, that the codes of honour can be two-edged as a weapon. Every word has two meanings, and every action, multiple consequences. Without compromising loyalty or honour, a servant can make the life of a cruel overlord a living hell.'
Empire - 01 - Daughter Of The Empire Page 21
