'Humans,' the Queen amended in gentle sadness. 'You we see as different, Lady Mara, but the hive mind knows well: no other race upon this world you call Kelewan could match your people for viciousness. For men will fight without reason. As your Empire grew over the years, we cho-ja strove to see all issues between us resolved, yet again and again humans would come, seeking this thing or that, this right or that. And when we refused to grant unreasonable terms, bloodshed would follow. Many times we quit the contest, thinking the issue settled, only to be assaulted yet again for reasons that had no logic. In the end, we yielded.'
Mara tapped her fingers on her cup, watching ripples flick across her chilled drink. 'You were forced to treaty?'
The chamber's occupants snapped to total stillness, and the Queen's ringing tone went icy. 'That is forbidden.'
Mara's eyes widened. 'You are forbidden to speak by us?'
'That is forbidden.'
Now convinced she had not offended, but that the Queen must be bound by some term the cho-ja could not or had sworn not to violate, Mara let her thoughts leap ahead. 'Who holds the power to silence you - the Assembly? The Emperor?'
'That is forbidden.'
Mara unclenched her aching hand before she broke the fine porcelain cup. 'Forgive my curiosity. I shall seek that answer elsewhere.' Trembling in apprehension and frustration, Mara tried a new thrust. 'What other worlds should I know?'
The tension in the chamber did not relent. Mara held her breath while the Queen kept silent, the subliminal buzzing again ringing down the tunnels. Eventually she clicked her mandibles and spoke. 'There are but two things I may tell you without violating my trust. First, there are those who, for their own purpose, seek to oppose you, against whom you must find protection. Hear well, for we know: there will come a day when you must defend your Acoma against powers considered supreme.'
Mara released a pent breath, her stomach suddenly queasy. She set down her teacup before her fingers, nerveless, dropped it. The only powers considered supreme in Tsuranuanni were the will of heaven, and the Assembly of Magicians. Since cho-ja adhered to no religion, the Queen's reference could not be more fearfully plain. The Acoma must prevail against the Great Ones!
While Mara struggled to stay poised, the Queen continued, 'Perhaps, Lady, you might ask yourself: if other worlds exist, where are they?'
Mara struggled to reason past unknowable dangers that loomed deep as an abyss before her. 'Do you mean Midkemia beyond the rift?'
'You may cross there through the portal fashioned by the Great Ones, but where is Midkemia within the cosmos?'
Mara straightened in astonishment. The last word was one she did not understand. Every Tsurani meaning that she knew of translated to mean 'arch of the sky,' or 'star field.' Did the cho-ja Queen imply that Midkemia was placed in the sky with the gods? But the concept was absurd, even laughable! Yet Mara had learned better than to make light of the beliefs of other cultures. A long-past war in the deserts of Tsubar had taught her so, as well as many a frustrating argument with her barbarian lover, Kevin. Though she tactfully kept her own counsel, her dubious surprise must have showed to the keener perception of the cho-ja.
'Would it challenge you less to think that worlds exist in multitudes, many no farther from here than you can walk in your lifetime?' the Queen inquired. Her attendants had awakened again from immobility, and were once more scuttling to and fro through the curtained-off alcove that housed the egg chambers.
Thrown completely off balance, Mara strove to find sense in the Queen's words. This was no mystery created by alien thought patterns; in human terms, the Queen almost seemed to be leading her in ka-ta-go, a guessing game played between Tsurani children, where hints and suggestions led two rivals in a race to name whatever object, or animal, or plant their opposing teams might choose. Mara decided she was being deliberately led around the subject the Queen had been forbidden to speak of. After deep consideration, she said, 'I could walk many places beyond this Empire's borders before my time came to die.'
'Yes.' The Queen's mandibles shifted in parody of a human smile. 'You could do so, certainly.'
Encouragement, if not direct confirmation; Mara's excitement grew. 'The Thuril!'
The Queen stayed carefully noncommittal. 'There are others. Consider the boundaries of your nations.'
Convinced now that the information she sought had been proscribed, Mara leaned eagerly forward. 'Beyond . . .' Of course! How naive she must seem! Like most Tsurani, she considered all nations to lie under sway of the Empire, save the lost lands to the south and the Thuril to the east. Softly she asked, 'Are there folk who live to the east of the Thuril Confederation?'
Instantly the Queen said, 'They are called the Chadana.'
Barely able to contain her excitement, Mara whispered, 'Human?'
'They are like unto you and the Thuril, my Lady.'
Mara glanced at Lujan, who looked as astonished as she felt. How provincial her people were, to count themselves and their Empire the center of all the worlds. Tsurani philosophy could more readily accept humans living on another world across a rift than on other continents in Kelewan. 'What lies beyond the lands of the Chadana?'
'An expanse of vast waters,' the Queen replied. 'They are salt, like the Sea of Blood, and are the home of the egu.'
Mara had never seen one of the egu, the gigantic serpents that inhabited the depths of the oceans, but she had sailed, and had heard deckhands describe fighting off the creatures' depredations with lances tipped with fire. 'Are there lands across those oceans?'
'Many nations, Lady,' the cho-ja Queen allowed. 'As many as the lands beyond the sea to our west.'
Amazed to the point where he forgot protocol, Lujan risked a question. 'Why do our people not know of these?'
Quickly Mara nodded in allowance of his impertinence. 'Why?'
'That is forbidden.'
Mara's thoughts crashed together. What was forbidden? Not the knowledge of the other nations beyond Tsuranuanni, or the Queen could not have given even these sparse facts. Did those foreigners across the seas have knowledge that the Black Robes deemed threatening? Mara repressed a shiver. Such thoughts were too perilous to voice aloud, even here. She and the massive cho-ja Queen regarded each other through a silence made tense with frustration. If only their two species could speak plainly, so much might be understood! Still, the unstated implications piqued driving curiosity. Mara felt enlivened with fresh hope. For while the powers of the Assembly might yet prove to be omnipotent, and her family's name become forgotten to time, still she had been made aware of a larger world beyond the Empire. She could journey across the borders in search of new knowledge, and perhaps find an answer to her quandary. Suddenly awakened to the hours she had spent in the caverns underground, Mara longed to depart. If she intended to leave the Empire on a quest, subterfuge would be needed, as well as supplies and careful planning. Her enemies, particularly Jiro, must not get wind of her departure. And as she reviewed practicalities, it occurred to her that areas of her own culture remained for her to explore. She could start with the temples, whose priestly initiates were schooled in powerful mysteries; and there were also the practitioners of magic of the lesser path, adepts and sometimes charlatans, who had not merited study in the City of the Magicians.
Anxious to get started, Mara prepared to end her audience with the Queen. 'My Queen, the Goddess of Fate must have guided me here, for I have been given a fresh start on my difficulties.'
The Queen waved a forelimb. 'We are pleased. Though we yet think it odd you should journey so many miles downriver when we were so close at hand.'
Mara raised her eyebrows. 'Then the mind of the hives is also one? I could address you by speaking to the Queen of the hive upon the lands where I now dwell?'
'Always.'
Hopeful of a way to maintain communication wherever her journeys might lead her, Mara said, if I were to leave the Empire, would I be able to consult you if I sought out the cho-ja in some distant nation?
'
'That is forbidden.'
Mara straightened, tantalised again to the edge of discovery. 'One question, if you may answer. Why do you treat with me and others, we who were your conquerors?'
The Queen hesitated. Fearful that at last she had transgressed prudence, Mara dared not so much as breathe. Then, with the continued activities of the breeding attendants, she reassessed: the Queen was less angered than weighing words. For a while, Mara expected to hear that this answer, also, was forbidden.
But the Queen relented, her head tipped slightly back, and her words stern. 'We are not a conquered people, Lady of the Acoma.'
'The treaty?' A far step from understanding, Mara sighed in vexation.
The Queen strove valiantly to clarify. 'Even a captive nation may bargain.'
Mara rose from her cushions, so that the servants she had signaled to pack up the tea utensils could go about their duties without disturbing her. 'Why do you tell me these things, Queen?'
Black, multifaceted eyes fixed upon Mara, unknowable as the alien thoughts behind them. Then the cho-ja ruler spoke in what seemed almost wistful reminiscence. 'Before I merged with the hive mind, a young Queen recalls a human girl who was kind and who said she was beautiful. Of all your nation, you alone come to us with the intent to create harmony. You bargain like others, but you are more . . . you are what I believe you humans would call a friend. If the burden that has oppressed my kind throughout this nation is ever to change . . . we will need friends with bold minds such as yours.'
So the 'treaty' was not an accord, after all, but a forced acknowledgment of terms! Mara sucked in her breath. She dared not press for more, not when the Queen had waved her Force Commander forward to usher her from the breeding chamber. The discussion was being brought to a close.
Uncertain what the protocols might be for formal acknowledgment of friendship between races, Mara settled for the bow that denoted an alliance between houses, adding personal words of her own. 'You have always been a friend to me. I would accord your people the same considerations as I would any house within my clan.'
After the cho-ja Queen had nodded her own form of acknowledgment and awarded the Acoma retinue her gracious leave to depart, Lujan offered his Lady assistance into her litter. Gone was the lackluster quiet that had marked her sojourn back in her childhood home. Now Mara's eyes shone. Her movements were eager as she gestured to her bearer slaves to take up the poles of her litter. The Force Commander donned his plumed helm and marched at her side from the breeding chamber.
Companion of many years, commander of her armies, and onetime bandit, Lujan could not help but grin. Here went a mistress he would die for, without hesitation, not just for the honor and duty due any Ruling Lady, but for love and pride as well. Despite the overwhelming threat posed by the Assembly of Magicians, Mara showed the indefatigable spirit that had captured his heart from the start. For where a tired woman of middle years had entered these warrens, a Lady vigorous with renewed confidence, at the height of her power, would emerge. Against all probability, Mara had defied the limits of her circumstance: she had found a clear focus and a hope where none had existed, to find reprieve from difficulties that her culture believed unassailable.
Many were the Tsurani Ruling Lords who would have fallen upon their swords in despair at the breach of honor the Acoma Lady had been forced by the Great Ones to swallow. Her late enemy Tasaio of the Minwanabi, once the most powerful man in the Nations, had committed suicide rather than endure beyond shame. It was not cowardice but her own indomitable will that bound Mara to life.
The Assembly, Lujan decided in a moment of unabashed cockiness, had better look after its interests. Though how his diminutive Lady might find a way to face down powers of magic on a scale as vast as that commanded by the Black Robes, only the gods might know.
Afternoon sunlight fell through the screens and striped the parquet floor, and the akasi vines beside the garden walk scented the air of the room that had served Mara as study in the original Acoma estate house. The cho-ja-made clock still chimed softly on the hour; mellowed now by layers of wax was the patch of flooring by the screen that had been sanded and refinished since the day her first husband had stomped indoors wearing studded battle sandals in the aftermath of a sarcat hunt. Older memories crowded behind: of Lord Sezu setting the family chop to documents, while her brother, Lanokota, scrawled pictures in chalk on the floor by their father's feet. Mara recalled rubbing at the scribbled figures, her fat little-girl's palms a smudged and dusty white. The smell of chalk filled her nostrils now, even as in those bygone days of her girlhood. But the baby by her knee was Kasuma; and the boy who scrawled pictures only he understood onto sanded wood, a fiery redhead of a barbarian father. Hers were the hands that set the Acoma chop in the ink to seal the last letter of the day. A bin of ribboned parchments beside her writing desk awaited the arrival of the messenger runner, who would see them taken to the guild for swift delivery.
Mara set aside the heavy chop and mentally reviewed her instructions for Jican, Incomo, and Keyoke, back at the lakeside estate. They would keep her affairs running smoothly through what might become a prolonged absence. Irrilandi, her second Force Leader, was currently off with the Shinzawai, supporting Hokanu as he consolidated his control as Ruling Lord. There had been minor attempts by enemies, and one or two ruptures of alliances caused by pressure from traditionalist factions. Hokanu had not yet sent formal reply to the Emperor's request that he assume his father's imperial post. In his letter to Mara he had explained that his delay was a ploy designed to draw an unfriendly rival into the open.
He had written: 'My father's First Adviser Dogondi is a treasure — fiendishly clever, and a humorist. He likes to humble our foes by making them seem ridiculous. As he said to me the other day, "Kill a man, and you cede him honor in the eyes of the gods. Laugh at him and you shame him.'"
Mara gave a half-smile in reminiscence of this truth. Then her pleasure faded as she considered the rest of her husband's missive. Although he was under much stress, and subject daily to criticism from several jealous cousins, he still might have asked in more depth after the health of his daughter. That Mara proposed a long and possibly dangerous journey while the child still needed a wet nurse did not seem to trouble him.
But then, in all fairness, Hokanu was not a man to harp upon his worries. He might be sick inside with concern, but not wanting to burden her. Mara might disguise her journey as a pilgrimage all she wished, and her traditionalist enemies might be fooled. The Anasati might swallow the ruse for several months before Jiro's First Adviser discovered the truth, but the Assembly of Magicians would quickly sift through subterfuge if they perceived any reason to question her motives. Mara shut her eyes and rubbed damp hair back from her brow. She put aside the nightmare memory of the fiery rain that had beset the Imperial Arena when Milamber had manifested his arcane anger.
If the Black Robes chose to stop her, all would be lost in one wrenching, brutal instant. She must not give them cause to suspect, and that meant weeks of careful planning.
Again Mara tried to thrust the horror of Milamber's destruction of the Imperial Games from her thoughts. The barbarian Black Robe had been unruly, even stubborn, she had heard. The Assembly itself had exiled him, after his acts, which had crossed the Order of Heaven by causing slaves to be freed. A thought occurred that perhaps this Milamber viewed life in the same quirky fashion her lover Kevin had . . . that life meant more than honor, and that religion did not rule the lives of men but instead offered guidance. Mara frowned. If Milamber had been considered a renegade by his fellows, might he not be a source of inspiration in her present dilemma?
Acting with headstrong inspiration, Mara clapped her hands. The boy appointed by the servants as her runner slave appeared at the door, a tow-headed youngster scarcely ten years of age. He had been promoted from the post of herd boy to that of house slave, and still felt awkward wearing livery. Mara saw that he trembled in awe as he made his bow.
She took pity, though shy boys her sons were not, and she had better experience bullying young warriors into line than drawing a quiet one out. 'Kalizo,' she said. 'Come here.'
The boy scrambled back to his feet, all knees and wide eyes. He came to her, tripping awkwardly on the edge of the carpet. His sandals were new, the soles not yet softened with wear.
Mara fished a cho-ja-made candy from the vase by her desk. She tossed it into the air, and smiled as the boy shed his clumsiness and caught it. 'Kalizo, can you tell me when the next silk shipment is bound for the City of the Plains, for export into Midkemia?'
'Next week, Lady.' The boy had a lisp, made more pronounced by his mouthful of hard candy.
Mara debated a moment, then reached for her pen with shaking fingers. 'I have a letter to go with the factor,' she instructed. 'Fetch him here, for I would have words with him.'
'At once, Lady.' The boy bowed, spun, and departed with a speed that justified his appointment to his new position. Mara bit her lip as he raced out past the screen. Then she hastily sealed her brief missive, which was addressed to Milamber, Magician, Kingdom of the Isles, Midkemia. As she set the wax and inked the Acoma chop, she wondered whether with the seal upon the letter she was inviting her own doom.
Then the silk factor arrived, escorted by Kalizo. Her misgivings fled before the need to give the man instructions that caused him to tremble. His evident nerves made little Kasuma fussy, and Mara had to call for the child's nurse. Justin tossed aside his chalk with a loud announcement that he was hungry. Straight and lithe, where Ayaki had been stocky, he sprang to his feet and challenged Kalizo to a race to the kitchens. Mara nodded dismissal to the runner slave, who shouted and grinned, not at all abashed at the prospect of a contest. As the two boys bolted off at top speed, Mara half expected to hear a squawk of protest from old Nacoya . . . but those days were gone forever.
Left alone with her thoughts as the sun dipped in the west, Mara called a servant to open the screens. Years had passed since she had seen the shatra birds fly at sundown over Acoma lands. Considered the lucky symbol of her house, the creatures were a source of delight to Mara, as they greeted the night like a ritual with a celebration of flight and song. As her eyes followed the dance patterns of birds against gold-edged clouds, Mara thought more on her husband. He had not taken any concubines, nor had he made further issue of his disappointment at Kasuma's gender. Mara supposed the matter was left dormant deliberately. Hokanu's sole reference had involved the promise of a deep talk upon her return to the estates. A boat, he had said, with only themselves inside and a tray of light supper and sa wine, on calm waters; no slaves, no servants, only a lantern and himself at the oars. That he left the matter unexplored in his writing spoke volumes about his discomfort. Mara rested her chin in her hands and sighed. Whatever he had to say, it would be months before she had the liberty to meet with her husband, on water or dry land. For all had been done to prepare for her departure on her quest to seek protection against the Assembly. All that held her now was a final consultation with Arakasi, who was due to report back at any time.
Mistress of the Empire Page 36