Empire - 03 - Mistress Of The Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  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 agitated 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.'

  Mara returned the smile that softened the sharpened angles that trials and years had lent to her face. 'Then when we have found our means to defeat the Great Ones, we shall have to appoint you to a new post.'

  Arakasi released a cracked laugh. 'What post? I have tried them all. Which shall I choose, when all of them suited me no better than a suit of borrowed clothing?'

  'When the time comes, you will know,' Mara assured him. But the words were a banality. Arakasi looked like an unmoored boat that spun untended in a current. She worried for him, and for the jaded, bitter girl who slept in the Acoma guest suite.

  Arakasi set aside his glass. A moth spun in crazed circles around the oil lamp, sending shadows swooping and arrowing through the light. He felt as giddy. The time had come for him to take his leave. The food tray held only crumbs, and a crushed crust of bread. His eyes stayed deep as he concluded, 'I will undertake what you ask, for I see that you comprehend the price. But this once, I would dare to ask a boon from you.'

  Mara raised her wineglass and drank to his health in return. 'You have always had from me whatever you have needed, without question. That has not changed.'

  Her Spy Master looked up at her, for the first time she could remember showing nerves and uncertainty. 'Take Kamlio with you to Thuril. Even the chance of a passing trader glimpsing her and remarking on her beauty in Sulan-Qu might bring the tong in search. By the time you return, the tong should have begun to wither.'

  Mara's smile returned like the sun. 'I was going to suggest that very course.' The hidebound tenets of Tsurani culture had deprived the courtesan of hope; Kamlio had been born as a pleasure toy for men to waste as they pleased. If she was going to come to her senses, if she was to escape becoming the twisted, tormented creature that Teani had been, she must rediscover the stifled personality she had been trained since childhood to hide. The chance might come to her more quickly if she experienced a strange culture, and customs outside her experience.

  Arakasi bowed deep in gratitude. 'Gods bless you, mistress.' He looked as if he would say nothing more, but wound up by blurting, 'Take care of her. The Acoma are my life, but she is my heart.' Then he arose to his feet, his poet's braid falling the rest of the way undone. He yanked off the violet ribbon as if it had offended him, and made his way silently through the screen.

  Mara stared after him long after he had disappeared into the darkened hallway. Before her, the moth spun in one last, suicidal circle, and flared up as it passed through the flame.

  'Gods pity them,' Mara murmured to the empty chamber. Whether her words were for the courtesan and the Spy Master who loved her, or whether she referred also to her husband, who was being made to dance to the tune of the Assembly, was unclear.

  16 — Countermoves

  The game ended.

  Chumaka set down his shãh piece with a click, and a deep-chested sigh of satisfaction. 'Checkmate, master.' The raw dawn light only emphasised his bright-eyed alertness.

  Perfectly groomed also, Jiro was once again chagrined to prove his servants' gossip, that his First Adviser's wit remained sharp, even before daybreak and breakfast. The Lord of the Anasati regarded the captured pieces clustered to one side of the game board. 'You're filled with life this morning,' he observed. 'More so than usual, if I may speak my mind.'

  Chumaka rubbed his hands together. 'Mara's spy net has become active again. I knew it was just a matter of waiting her out! Whoever her man in charge may be, he has just made a misstep. He thought to outlast me in this waiting game, but after years of dormancy, at last he has moved!'

  Jiro stroked his chin to hide a smile. 'There are few servants like you, who can bear to abandon years of work on the basis of mere suspicion.'

  The Anasati First Adviser warmed to the praise. He slipped off his heavily embroidered morning robe, and adjusted the thinner silk garment underneath to ascertain it hung without wrinkles on his narrow chest. On a plaintive note he added, 'You invited me to your suite for breakfast. Do I have to beat you at a second round of shãh before we can eat, my Lord?' His nervous, nail-bitten fingers reached to reset the board out of habit.

  Jiro laughed. 'You old tigindi,' he accused, comparing his adviser to a foxlike predator renowned for cleverness. 'You'd rather play games than eat.'

  'Perhaps.' Chumaka looked up, his eyes bright.

  Jiro signaled another game by inclining his head. 'What's on your scheming mind, anyway?'r />
  Chumaka slid the last piece into place and gestured for his master to make the first move. 'It's what Mara has in mind,' he corrected.

  Knowing better than to interrupt with questions, Jiro advanced a pawn. Chumaka's countermove was immediate. Forced to a brisk contemplation of strategy, Jiro wished he could match his opponent's penchant for following simultaneous topics as his adviser defined his comment.

  'Later this week, your master engineer will be in Ontoset hiring carpenters and craftsmen to build war engines after the prototypes you have had re-created from the ancient texts.'

  Jiro looked up from the game board, not at all intrigued. His siege weapons were his most coveted plan, a secret kept even from his closest allies, or so he believed. He did not like the topic bandied about casually, and his tone showed controlled irritation. 'Mara can't have heard anything about our prototypes in the charcoal burners' sheds — '

  'In the forests north of Ontoset,' Chumaka filled in, at his most irksome when he finished sentences out of sheer impatience. 'Yes. She has known for quite some time.' Chumaka waved at the shãh board. 'It's your move, master.'

  Jiro advanced his priest to a new square with a flick of one finger. A flush stained his cheekbones, and his eyes narrowed as he demanded, 'How did she hear? Why didn't you tell me our security was compromised sooner?'

  'Patience, my Lord.' Chumaka moved his empress onto the front line. 'I tell you, always, when the timing is to your advantage.'

  Very near open anger, Jiro forced self-control. Chumaka's cleverness at times could be excessive: as if the man could not resist playing the game within his master's household. But what Chumaka lacked in humility he more than made up for in innovative service. The Anasati Lord pitched his pent-up fury against the shãh board, and waited, icily quiet, for his impertinent adviser to qualify.

  Chumaka smiled with the glee a child might show at discovering an insect could evade his goading through flight. 'My Lord, it is good to see you have mastered the art of patience. We have allowed Mara's machinations against us to come to flower, the better to spoil her design. She has conceived a cunning plan to infiltrate your craftsmen at the construction site with a few of her own. Once there, they would work very handily to be sure your great siege engines have design flaws. We then use them in battle, or so the Mistress of the Acoma hopes, and the mechanisms will misfire and cause damage to our own troops, or at the least simply not function, leaving you with some very expensive kindling wood outside the walls of the city.'

  Startled into inadvertent admiration, Jiro raised his eyebrows. 'Mara came up with such a plot?'

  'A master toy maker in her employ.' Chumaka moved another shãh piece and placed Jiro's priest in jeopardy. 'It's quite an amusing plan, really.'

  Frowning, inconvenienced by the game, but unwilling to concede himself outmatched on both fronts, the Anasati Lord considered his next move with thinned lips. His First Adviser's tendency to keep secrets bordered on disrespect. But Jiro held back from criticism. His weakness at shãh was his desire for fast conclusions. He needed Chumaka's love of intricate plotting, which was content to spin webs and set traps against enemies long years in advance. Jiro chose to save his priest from attack; today his mood was prudent. 'What move did you have in mind, First Adviser?'

  Chumaka gave back a reptilian smile. 'Why, to steal Mara's gambit from her. I have a list of her infiltrators' names. We can arrange to have them hired on, bring them deep into Anasati territory, and then have them disappear.'

  'Kill them?' Jiro's distaste for crude measures diverted his attention, and he had to force himself to keep pace with Chumaka's next move.

  The First Adviser advanced another pawn, setting two of his master's pieces under threat. 'I'd like to take the infiltrators quietly.' He spoke as he did when contented, low-pitched, as a cat might purr. 'Not kill them. They may have useful information for us. I'd like to know just how Mara's toy maker planned to sabotage our siege equipment, for one thing; I'm sure the modifications would be very clever to elude the notice of those overseeing construction. That's more idle curiosity than anything else.

  'But far more important, if we can force one man to talk, and learn their method for passing information as well, we can send back false signals through the Acoma spy net. The Lady will not know her plot has been spoiled until the actual day we take the field against the Emperor. When our engines assault the walls of the Imperial Precinct, she will expect them to fail and cause us chaos, and she will have her forces arrayed to take advantage of that situation.' With an almost sensual glee at the possibility of reversing Mara's plot, Chumaka said, 'Instead, our new equipment will function flawlessly, and the Acoma will find themselves upon the field, outside the walls, while we are already securing our position within.'

  Jiro sacrificed his fortress, and tipped his head to concede his First Adviser his argument. 'I will leave you to oversee the arrangements.' Extracting information by force from a captive was not a detail he relished thinking about. He did not have a weak stomach; torture simply did not interest him. The treatises he had read told as much as he cared to know on the topic. 'And as far as Ichindar is concerned, I thought we'd agreed I should goad a traditionalist fanatic into assassinating him rather than take him head on with an army.' Almost spitefully, Jiro finished, 'The Black Robes seem to dislike the idea of a civil war.'

  'Of course; nothing is more destructive to any society.' Chumaka advanced another piece and looked up to accept the satchel of new correspondence brought in by his assistant. 'But as we discussed, even a dead Emperor will have supporters. They will hole up behind walls with his heir. If you, as the nations' savior, step in and divert chaos by restoring the office of Warlord, you must also seize Jehilia as your power base. Even without Mara and Hokanu's resistance, you will need to break the city's defenses to get to the Imperial First Daughter . . . before someone else does.'

  But for the gleam that wakened in his eyes from review of future hopes, Jiro seemed absorbed in the shãh game. Chumaka turned from the board and riffled through the rolled dispatches. He selected one, squinted to be sure it had not been tampered with, then split the seal. He scanned the lines, not needing to pause to interpret the cipher, interesting,' he mused to himself. Idly, he wondered how irritated his master was likely to become when he learned of the ex-Minwanabi warriors that Chumaka maintained in secrecy in a remote northern province.

  If they became useful in arranging Mara's downfall, Chumaka decided, he would receive a citation for them. His lips quirked. How he wished he belonged to a household that did not have touchy internal politics! Or a master of such heated pride. As Jiro completed his next move, Chumaka flicked his empress to a new square.

  He speculated whether a woman's rule would follow the same fashion as a man's; was Chumaka's Spy Master counterpart in the Acoma household permitted a free hand with his work? Only exceptional brilliance could keep such a network intact past the fall of House Tuscai. And Mara's willingness to take masterless men into service had shown the falsehood of counting such without honor. Certainly those who had labored as spies for the Lord of the Tuscai seemed even more diligent on behalf of the Acoma.

  Or had the creature who directed them been Lord Sezu's man all along? Chumaka judged not, since Mara's father had dealt straightforwardly in council and on the battlefield. The Anasati First Adviser stroked his chin, peripherally aware of his master's expletives over the shãh board as he saw his attack plan threatened. He set aside the dispatch and reached for the next, the contents of which caused him to snap off his cushions with a thoroughly uncharacteristic oath.

  Diverted from his straits on the shãh board, Jiro raised his eyes in languid inquiry. 'What passes?'

  'The devil!' Chumaka gestured with the parchment scroll, which appeared to contain random squiggles. 'I've miscalculated, maybe; underestimated him, almost certainly.'

  'Who?' Piqued, Jiro pushed the board out of harm's way as his adviser began pacing. 'Do we have a problem? A setback?'
>
  Chumaka looked askance, his eyes deep as still pools. 'Maybe. The Obajan of the Hamoi Tong has been assassinated. In his pleasure harem.'

  Jiro gave a small shrug. 'So what?'

  'So Wnat!' Chumaka curbed his agitated movement. Seeing Jiro's darkening expression at his sharp tone, he said, 'Master, the Obajan was one of the best-guarded men under heaven, and he has been stabbed to death. What's more, his killer escaped. Clean. Very professional work.' Chumaka consulted his scroll more closely. In dawning astonishment, he added, it says here that the tong brotherhood have disbanded. They are now masterless men: grey warriors.'

  It pointed to one possible conclusion. 'That can only mean their records were lost?' Jiro's voice was forced and level. The contents of the tong's accounts could dishonor his house several times over, not least for the latest cash outlay, to buy an attempt on old Frasai of the Tonmargu, who lent his ear to Hoppara of the Xacatecas too often when he wanted advice on policy decisions. As long as Frasai remained alive, Kamatsu's death would serve traditionalist causes very little. Hokanu would stand in his father's post soon enough, but his tie to Mara and the Acoma would hamper him against any move made by Jiro's allies only when Frasai's vote of support was eradicated. If the Imperial Overlord fell, the Imperial Chancellor would find his powers in the Emperor's council crippled at a stroke. But Jiro needed Frasai's death to be caused in discreet fashion; killing one's own clansman, especially one's own Clan Warchief, was an extreme act even by Tsurani standards.

  Chumaka responded, bemused with thought. 'The secret accounts were stolen, or so every rumormonger in the Holy City now reports. I wonder if Mara has the tong's records?' She must, he deduced. If an ally had access to such sensitive secrets, Anasati agents would have been informed; a foe would simply turn the information to immediate advantage, unless . . . the only enemy the Anasati had that was under constraints not to initiate conflict was the Acoma/Shinzawai faction that centered on Mara. Chumaka stroked his chin, the shãh game utterly forgotten. What if he had miscalculated? What if the Acoma Spy Master was a better player than he? What if a trap yawned under Anasati affairs, just waiting for a misstep to snap shut?