His temper changeable as the wind-blown clouds overhead, Jiro answered through clenched teeth, 'Mara is still alive. Bring me her head, and then I will agree that you have not failed me.'
Not the least discomfited by what another man might regard as a plain threat from the Lord of the Anasati, Chumaka said, 'Indeed, master, that is what I am working myself to achieve.'
'Hah!' Jiro moved through the gloomy woods toward the largest tent. 'Don't try me, old man. You'd work yourself to the bone for the sheer love of intrigue.'
Chumaka wrung out the hem of his dripping cloak and followed his master into the command tent. 'My Lord, it is a fine point, but if I should do such a thing for its own sake, that would be vanity. The gods do not love such faults in a man. Therefore, I work for the glory of your cause, my Lord, and there the matter ends. I am ever your loyal servant.'
Jiro ended the discussion with a deprecating wave. He preferred his philosophy out of books, which did not have Chumaka's irritating tendency to belabor every issue half to death.
The interior of the command tent was still in the process of being set up. One lantern had been lit, and servants bustled about unpacking cushions and hangings. From the outside, Jiro's quarters might appear plain, but inside, he insisted on his comforts, his fine silk tapestries, and two chests of book scrolls. Lately he had been reading up on obscure issues of law, imperial state functions, and precisely which ceremonies must be officiated by which priests of the Twenty Gods to make the crowning of an Emperor proper in the eyes of heaven.
The reading had been tedious, made worse because the lanterns attracted bugs and cast poor light. The Lord of the Anasati snapped his fingers, and a boy body servant jumped to attend him. 'Remove my armor. See that all the leather straps are oiled, so they do not dry stiff.' Jiro waited, statue-still, as he suffered the boy to undo the first buckles.
Although his high office allowed the attentions of a servant, Chumaka hated the pretension. He shucked his damp wool and found a seat. Jiro's silent, efficient house staff had just brought him a steaming pot of tea when a buzzing sound cut the air.
'A Great One comes!' he called in warning.
Jiro jerked free of his last bracer and spun around, while behind him, to a man, his serving staff fell prone upon the floor. As a gust fanned the tent, and the hangings rippled from their supporting poles, Chumaka set down the teapot and faded into the shadows toward the back of the tent.
The magician appeared in the center of the one rug that had been unrolled from its bundle. His fiery red hair trailed out from under his hood, and he seemed not to care that he trod over silk cushions as he approached the Lord of the Anasati. The eyes beneath his cowl were pale and sharp as they darted from side to side, and fixed at last on the Lord who waited with his armor heaped at his feet.
'My Lord of the Anasati,' greeted Tapek of the Assembly of Magicians, 'I am sent as delegate to command your presence in the Holy City. Troops have been deployed, and for the good of the Empire, the Assembly requires an accounting to avert the outbreak of open war.'
Glad of the wet hair that concealed the fact that he was sweating, Lord Jiro raised his chin. He gave a perfectly deferent bow. 'Your will, Great One. It shall not be the Anasati who break your edict. But I make so bold as to point out: if I go, who will see that Mara of the Acoma and her Shinzawai husband keep the edict against armed conflict?'
Tapek frowned. 'That is not your business, Lord Jiro! Do not presume to question.' Although the Great One was far from unsympathetic to the Anasati cause, he disliked the idea that any Lord dared to voice even token objection. But as Jiro bent his head in deference, Tapek relented. 'The Lady Mara has been issued a like summons! She is also commanded to appear in Kentosani. As you are, she is given ten days' leave in which to do so! The day after the imperial mourning ends, you will both convene with members of the Assembly to state your cases.'
Jiro thought rapidly and repressed a smile of satisfaction. Ten days' fast march would barely be sufficient to allow Mara to reach the Holy City. His position was closer, not with his main army to the south as all would suppose, but in this secret location near Kentosani in preparation for his planned siege. Mara would need to scramble to meet the Assembly's demand, while he would have days of leeway to seek advantage. To cover the bent of his thinking, the Anasati Lord said, 'These are unstable times, Great One. Traveling the roads is not safe for any Lord, with every other ambitious noble stirring about with his army. Mara may have your sanction against attacking my personal train, but she has other supporters and sympathisers. Many friends of the late Emperor have political cause to see me dead for my leadership of the traditionalist faction.'
'This is true.' Tapek gave a magnanimous gesture. 'You are permitted to travel with an honor guard to ensure your safety. When you reach the Holy City, you may take one hundred warriors within the walls. Since the Imperial Whites still enforce order inside the city, that number should be proof against assassins.'
Jiro bowed deeply. 'Your will, Great One.' He held his deferential pose through the buzzing sound that signaled Tapek's departure. When he arose, he found Chumaka once again seated upon the cushions, dusting at the footprints left by the magician between sips of his tea. His manner was inscrutable, as if no great visitation had happened; except that a flush of unholy satisfaction colored the First Adviser's craggy face.
'Why are you so full of yourself?' Jiro demanded, half snatching the dry robe brought to him by his servant. The Lord stepped over his discarded armor and, checking to be sure no grit sullied his personal cushion, sank cross-legged across from his adviser.
Chumaka set down his cup, reached for the teapot, and calmly poured for his master. 'Send your runner to fetch in the Omechan heir.' The Anasati First Adviser handed his master the tea, then rubbed his hands together in bright-eyed anticipation. 'Our plot ripens well, my Lord! In fact, all unknowing, the Assembly has helped it along!'
Jiro took the cup as if it were filled with foul-tasting medicine. 'You equivocate again,' he warned; but he knew better than to stall in sending his runner off on the errand Chumaka suggested.
As the messenger boy left, Jiro peered at his adviser over the rim of his teacup, then took a sip. 'We will be inside the walls of Kentosani in four days with one hundred of my best fighting men,' he allowed. 'What else do you have brewing in that head of yours?'
'Great deeds, master.' Chumaka raised a hand and ticked off points on his fingers. 'We will leave this camp and set off for Kentosani, in strict compliance with the Great Ones' summons. Next, assuming Mara acts in compliance — that's safe, since if she doesn't, she's as good as dead by the hand of the Assembly, and we have won — anyway assuming she is no fool, while she is still many days' march to the south of Kentosani, we are inside the walls and covertly prepared for a raid on the Imperial Precinct.' Chumaka grinned, and tapped his ring finger. 'The Omechan Force Commander, meantime, acts on his Lord's orders and begins the siege of the Holy City, as we have planned all along. But here is the change for the better, courtesy of the Assembly: you, my master, are innocent of this attack, being inside the walls. If the magicians protest the breaking of the imperial peace, you cannot be implicated. After all, you cannot be expected to answer for a popular move to set you on the throne. But alas for the Imperial Whites, the old walls prove weak indeed. They are breached, and a war host invades the streets.'
Chumaka's eyes sparkled. Less excitable, ever cynically cautious, Jiro set down his tea. 'Our allies under Omechan break into the Imperial Precinct,' he responded. 'Mara's children suffer an unfortunate accident, and lo, the imperial mourning ends, and there is a new Emperor upon the golden throne by the time Lady Mara arrives in Kentosani, and his name is Jiro.'
Now Jiro's faintly underlying scorn surfaced to outright irritation. 'First Adviser, your ideas have several flaws, if I may point them out?'
Chumaka inclined his head, his enthusiasm like banked coals that ,at any moment might ignite a bonfire. 'Mara,' he second-guesse
d. 'I have not accounted for the Acoma bitch that you want dead so badly.'
'Yes, Mara!' Tired of his adviser's conversations, which at times seemed convoluted as his shah tactics, Jiro vented his annoyance. 'What about her?'
'She will be dead.' Chumaka let a dramatic pause develop as he shifted his haunches to allow a servant behind him to spread another carpet on the tent floor. Then he said, 'Do you think the Assembly would stay its hand if her troops were to attack your main army by Sulan-Qu?'
This time, Jiro caught his drift. 'The Great Ones will kill her for me!' He leaned forward, almost slopping the tea on the table. 'But that's brilliant. You think we can goad her into attacking?'
Chumaka smiled in satisfaction and poured himself a second cup of tea. Through the dimness of the tent, his teeth gleamed. 'I know so,' he allowed. 'Her children's lives are at stake, and she is a woman. She will risk all to defend her babies, depend on it. And unless she calls an attack, your troops in the south will break camp and march around her lines to support your newly established rule by controlling the lands outside the walls of Kentosani. This her clever Spy Master will tell her with absolute certainty, for it will be the truth.'
Bemused by the implications, Jiro mirrored his First Adviser's smile. 'The magicians will be busy chastising Mara, while I seize the golden throne. Of course, we may lose all of our Anasati army, but that will not ultimately matter. The Acoma will be obliterated, and I will be left with the highest honor in all the Empire. Five thousand Imperial Whites will answer to me then, and all Lords will bow to my will.'
The tent flap opened, interrupting Jiro's enraptured speculation. His face went expressionless at once as he turned to see who entered.
A young man ducked through the doorway, striding briskly. His armor, also, was unmarked, but his snub nose and flat cheeks identified him unmistakably as a scion of the Omechan. 'You called for me, Lord Jiro?' he demanded in an arrogant alto.
The Lord of the Anasati arose, still slightly flushed with excitement. 'Yes, Kadamogi. You will return to your father at speed, and tell him the hour has come. Five days from now, he will attack Kentosani using the siege engines I have provided.'
Kadamogi bowed. 'I will tell him. Then you will hold to the vow you made for our support, my Lord of the Anasati - when the golden throne is yours, your first act as Emperor will be to restore the High Council, and to see an Omechan reclaim the white and gold as Warlord!'
Jiro's lip curled in barely suppressed distaste. 'I am hardly senile, to have forgotten my promise to your father so quickly.' Then, as the young Omechan noble stiffened with the beginnings of affront, the Anasati Lord added placatingly, 'We waste time. Take my best litter, and my fastest bearers to see you on your errand. For myself, I must consult with my Force Commander to oversee disposition of my honor guard.'
'Honor guard?' Kadamogi's heavy features darkened in confusion. 'Why should you need an honor guard?'
In a mercurial change of mood, Jiro laughed. 'I march also upon Kentosani, and by order of the Assembly. The Great Ones have summoned me there to offer an accounting concerning deployment of my troops!'
Kadamogi's face cleared as he gave back a deep-chested chuckle. 'That's rich. Very. And our plot to restore the High Council is nearly a foregone conclusion.'
Now Jiro gestured in animated anticipation. 'Indeed. The siege will be short, having help from the inside, and the supporters of the Good Servant will be set upon by the Assembly.' Glee touched his tone as he finished, 'The magicians will kill Mara for us. Servant of the Empire she may be, but she will die in magic flames, roasted like a haunch of meat!'
Kadamogi's fat lips stretched into a smile. 'We should drink a glass of wine to that ending, before I leave, yes?'
'A fine idea!' Jiro clapped for his servants, and only noticed in passing that the cushions where Chumaka had sat were no longer occupied. The empty teacup on the table was gone also, leaving no sign that the First Adviser had been there at all.
That man is more devious than the God of Tricks himself, Jiro thought; and then the wine came, and he settled down to an evening of camaraderie with the heir to the Omechan mantle.
Outside the command tent, in the drizzle as evening fell, a shadowy form moved through the trees. Over one arm, Chumaka carried the oiled wool cape haste had not allowed him to don. As he walked briskly toward the tent that housed the Anasati messenger runners, he appeared to be counting on his fingers. But it was not sums he muttered in a monotone under his breath.
'Those leftover warriors who were of the Minwanabi, and who did not swear to Mara, now - yes, it is time for them to earn their keep, I think. A precaution, yes, just in case Mara slips through the grasp of the Assembly. She is clever. We cannot suppose we know all the details of her inner council. That time she supposedly spent in the temple in seclusion has yet to be adequately explained. How could she be there, then suddenly be upon her own estates . . . ?'
Chumaka hurried on, not tripping over roots or blundering into trees, though it was very dark, and the camp was strange. Preoccupied as he seemed, he stepped cleanly over guy lines and tent pegs, while he finished formulating his backup plan. 'Yes, we must have sets of armor lacquered in Acoma green for these men, and have them insinuate themselves into the Lady's honor guard - at least, they will stay in hiding until the last minute, when the Lady is on the run, and then they will slip in among her warriors and slaughter her defenders. Posing as loyal Acoma, they can either capture her and turn her over to the Black Robes, or take their pleasure and kill her themselves, in revenge for the Minwanabi master whose line she obliterated. Yes . . . that would be the thing.' Chumaka reached the compound where the messengers' tent was set. He startled a sentry as he stepped out of the gloom, and nearly received a sword thrust to the chest.
'Gods save us from our own men!' he exclaimed, bounding back and throwing up his bundled cloak to catch the blade. 'It's Chumaka, you blind fool! Now find me a messenger who is fresh, and quickly, before I decide to report your incompetence to the master.'
The soldier bobbed his head in fearful deference, for it was known that any who displeased the First Adviser came to unfortunate straits. He ducked into the messengers' tent, while behind him, in gently falling rain, Chumaka resumed his singsong musing.
27
Defiance
The palanquin jolted.
Mara snapped awake at the thump, disoriented by the close confines, until she remembered. She was not in her tent, but on the road, answering the summons by the Assembly to appear in the Holy City. For two days now she had been traveling at speed in her most ornate, formal palanquin, changing the thirty bearers required to lift the monstrous thing in shifts, and eating on the move. It was night; she knew not what hour.
Light breeze stirred the curtains, smelling of rain, as Keyoke, who sat across from her, leaned out. Although still muddled with the aftereffects of sleep, she could hear by the tone of her Adviser for War as he exchanged words with someone outside that a problem had arisen.
She pushed herself upright on her cushions. 'What passes, Keyoke?'
The old man ducked back inside the palanquin. By the light cast by the oil lamp hanging from a ring overhead, his face more than ever seemed chiseled from seamed granite.
'Trouble,' Mara surmised.
Keyoke returned a curt nod. 'A messenger sent by Arakasi brings ill news.' Then, well aware such detail was no afterthought, he added, 'The man met us on cho-ja back.'
Mara felt her heart thud in raw fear. 'Gods, what's gone wrong?'
The elderly campaign veteran knew best how to break the news cleanly. 'Jiro's location is at last made known. He was not with the Anasati troops, as we supposed. He is ahead of us, by now just over one day's march from Kentosani.'
Mara slumped back, crushed by the sudden ebb of hope. 'That leaves him five days in which to wreak mischief unopposed, since that doddering fool Lord Frasai saw fit to send Hoppara of the Xacatecas home after the Emperor's murder.'
'Mistress
,' Keyoke interrupted in worried tones, 'that's not all.'
Distracted by horrible images of possible death for her children, Mara forced herself to track the immediate issue. Seeing the grave expression on Keyoke's face, she surmised the worst: 'Jiro's siege engines.' Her tone was dulled by the scope of a disaster that seemed to widen by the second.
Keyoke gave back the clipped nod he used during battle councils. 'The attack on the walls is poised to begin, and Arakasi has discovered that our efforts at sabotage have failed. The toy maker's plans we labored to implement were never set in place. Presumably, the engineers we sent were apprehended and put to death, and false reports of their success sent back through your network. Arakasi could say only that the assault against Kentosani's walls will occur without mishap, under Omechan colors. Once Jiro is safely inside the Imperial Precinct, his hands will seem clean. His coming bid for the golden throne could legitimately be justified as an attempt to restore the peace.'
Mara bit her lip hard enough to hurt. 'He's not in the Imperial Precinct yet?'
Keyoke's expression stayed wooden. 'Not yet. But the messenger's news is not fresh, and much can have happened since he rushed south.'
'We are not ready for this!' Mara burst out. 'Gods, how could we be ready for this?' Her voice shook with despair. Ever since her return from Thuril, calamitous events seemed to be trampling over her with unrelenting speed. Fate was cruel, to thrust her into conflict unprepared, when she had the means to avert total ruin so nearly within her grasp. If only she had a peaceful interval in which to plan, and set to use the advantages she held in the presence of the Chakaha mages!
'Mistress?' Keyoke prompted gently.
Aware her silence had stretched too long, Mara made herself rally. 'We are already lost, in all likelihood, but I cannot let go without a fight. If I fail to act, my children will soon be killed, and without them, my line ends with me.' Forcing resolution in her voice, she added, 'I would not see my faithful servants left in heaven's disfavor, without a mistress, as I go meekly to answer Emperor Jiro's justice.'
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