‘Without the Emperor’s approval,’ Arakasi interjected. ‘That’s the gist. Ichindar had to be willing to discuss peace prior to dispatching any envoy.’
Mara turned pale as she considered. ‘So this is why the Light of Heaven was prepared to step in and rule.’ Slowly she added to Kevin, ‘Your appraisal of our Emperor may be more accurate than we gave you credit for, my love. Ichindar meddled in the Great Game, and none knew.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘This goes counter to all tradition.’
Kevin pulled a napkin from the tray and knelt to dam the flow of chocha. ‘You’re one to talk. I seem to recall you’ve bent one or two traditions to the point of twisting them beyond recognition.’
Mara protested. ‘But the Emperor …’ Her awe made it clear she considered the Light of Heaven to be just short of a god.
‘He’s a man,’ said Kevin, the hand with the dripping rag rested on his bent knee. ‘And he’s young. Young men often do unexpected and radical things. But this one’s lived a pampered life, for all his boldness. He’s surely naïve if he thinks he can skip in and order your power-hungry Tsurani Lords to pack up and go home and grow radishes.’
Arakasi said, ‘Mistress, whatever “radishes” may be, I fear Kevin is right.’
‘There’s another hand in this,’ Mara insisted, unsatisfied. She glared at her sodden overrobe, then threw it impatiently off. Fine cloth finished where Kevin’s ministrations had left off, but if a few silk cushions had been saved, Mara never noticed. ‘Had the magician Milamber not caused Almecho’s disgrace, how would things have proceeded?’
If the question was rhetorical, the progression was not hard to trace. Even Kevin could follow that the Blue Wheel Party would have once more reversed policy and withdrawn from the Alliance for War. This would have left Almecho with only Minwanabi as a major supporter. With the Acoma and the Xacatecas busy worrying the Minwanabi flank, Desio could not afford to increase support. Almecho and his party would have been deadlocked, after thirteen years of near-absolute rule.
Kevin wrung his rag savagely over the chocha tray and voiced the only viable conclusion. ‘So your Emperor would have barged into the High Council to announce a peace proposal, and your Warlord would have lacked enough support to confront him. Very neatly done.’ Kevin finished with a whistle of admiration. ‘Your Ichindar is a very smart boy.’
Arakasi appeared inwardly calculating. ‘Even had things gone as Kevin surmises, I don’t think our Emperor would have risked an open confrontation with the Warlord. Not unless he had some special avenue of appeal.’
Kevin’s eyes widened. ‘The magicians!’
Mara nodded. ‘Almecho has his “pets”, so Ichindar would need allies to counter them.’ To Arakasi she said, ‘Go and speak with your agents. Discover, if you can, who among the Great Ones is a likely candidate to have been involved in this game. See if one has a special relationship to any within the Blue Wheel, especially the Shinzawai. They seem to be at the heart of things.’
As her Spy Master bowed and departed, Mara’s gaze sharpened as if she viewed some private vista from a place of dizzying height. ‘Great changes are coming. I feel this like the breeze that brings the butana,’ she said in reference to the bitter, dry wind that in the old stories raised the spirits of demons and set them free to roam the land. Then, as if thoughts of mythological evils and present-day strife gave her shivers, she ruefully acknowledged her clumsiness. ‘But one can hardly seize the initiative while swimming in puddles of chocha.’
‘That depends on what sort of initiative,’ Kevin countered, and he rescued her from the disaster by sweeping her into his arms.
The upheaval precipitated by Milamber brought in a few small concessions. As trade resumed, and shortfalls opened opportunities, Mara received word from Lord Keda that her terms for the warehouse space had been accepted. The destruction along the dock front in Kentosani had made her offer the only option, and a premium would reward the first grain shipments to reach the market on the flood. Lord Andero conceded her the Keda vote with a minimum of sureties; with no High Council called to session, such a promise held questionable value.
Yet Mara dispatched a messenger with word of her acceptance anyway. Any promise was worth more than no promise at all, and from the information brought by her Spy Master, the ruling Lords who were not busy exploiting trade advantages were displeased with the Emperor’s machinations. Peace, they said, was a coward’s act, and the gods did not favour weak nations.
The news came thick and heavy after that; Mara spent yet another morning in conference with Arakasi, while Kevin dozed in the shade of a tree in the courtyard. He did not hear until later, when official word came, that the Light of Heaven had departed for the City of the Plains, his intent to cross the rift to Midkemia and negotiate for peace with Lyam, King of the Isles.
Kevin shot bolt upright at the mention of the Midkemian name. ‘Lyam!’
‘King Lyam,’ Mara repeated. She tapped the parchment delivered to her town house by imperial messenger. ‘So it is written here, by the Emperor’s own scribe.’
‘But Lyam is Lord Borric’s son,’ Kevin remembered, a dazed look on his face. ‘If he’s King, that can only mean King Rodric, Prince Erland of Krondor, and Borric himself are all dead.’
‘What do you know of King Lyam?’ Mara asked, choosing a seat by his side.
‘I don’t know him well,’ Kevin admitted. ‘We played together as children one time. I just remember him as a big blond boy who laughed a lot. I met Lord Borric once at a commanders’ meeting.’ He fell silent, wrapped in thoughts of his own land, until curiosity caused him to ask to read the parchment. The Emperor of Tsuranuanni did not believe in travelling without half the nobles in his Empire, it appeared. Kevin’s mouth quirked wryly. By imperial command, the Light of Heaven’s honour guard consisted of the Warchiefs of the Five Great Clans and the eldest sons of half the other Lords in Tsuranuanni.
‘Hostages,’ the Midkemian said outright. ‘The Lords will hardly defy edict and make bloody trouble with their heirs in the Emperor’s field army.’
The arena of politics suddenly paled. Kevin shut his eyes and tried to imagine the brown-haired youth in gilt armour seated across a table with Borric’s son Lyam, who was also young … and it came home to Kevin, like a slam to the heart, that time had passed. The war had gone on, and people had died in his absence. He did not even know if his father and elder brothers were alive. The thought stung, that for years he had forgotten to care. Seated in a beautiful courtyard, surrounded by alien flowers and a woman from a culture that often seemed incomprehensibly cruel, Kevin, third son of the Baron of Zun, took a deep breath and tried to take stock of who he was.
‘But why should Ichindar go there?’ Mara mused, unmindful of his turmoil. ‘Such a risk to our Light of Heaven.’
Her thoroughly Tsurani viewpoint sparked shock, and Kevin bridled. ‘Do you think our King would come here? After your warriors have been ravaging his lands for nine years? “Forget we’ve burned your villages, Your Majesty. Just step through this gate into our world!” Not bloody likely. Remember, this King has been a field commander with his father’s army almost since the start. He knows whom he faces. Trust will be a very thin commodity in the Kingdom of the Isles until your people prove otherwise.’
Mara conceded that Kevin was right on all points. ‘I would guess from your perspective we would be worthy of distrust.’
Her equanimity struck a nerve, mostly because he expected a fight. Kevin laughed, a cold and bitter sound. ‘I love you as the breath of my life, Mara of the Acoma, but there is just one of me. Thousands of my countrymen know the Tsurani only upon the battlefield. What they see are men who have invaded their homeland for bloody conquest. There will be no easy peace in all this.’
Framed by an arching trellis of akasi vines, Mara frowned. ‘Do you infer that Ichindar will be asked to surrender the lands the Warlord has gained?’
Kevin laughed again. ‘You Tsurani. You believe that eve
ryone thinks as you do. Of course the King will demand that you depart. You’re invaders. You’re alien. You don’t belong on the Midkemian side of the rift.’ Caught by an upwelling tide of irony, Kevin looked into Mara’s face. She looked worried, even hurt, but uppermost was her concern for him. That wrenched. She did not share his concept of cruelty, could never grasp what it cost him to beg for the concessions that had given Patrick and his fellow slaves the most basic sustenance. Torn by his improbable love and his inborn sense of justice, Kevin rose precipitately and left.
The trouble with the Kentosani town house was that it had no vast yards to get lost in. Mara found Kevin within a few minutes, crouched on their bed mat, casting small pebbles into the fish pool that separated the outer screen from the wall shared with the building next door. She knelt and circled his waist with an embrace from behind. With her cheek against his back she said, ‘What do you see in the fish pool, beloved?’
Kevin’s reply held flinty honesty. ‘I see years of pretence. I let myself become lost within your love, and for that I am grateful, but upon hearing of this coming peace …’
‘You remember the war,’ she prompted, hoping he would talk.
Mara sensed bitterness behind the fine tremors of rage that coursed through him as he said, ‘Yes. I remember. I remember my countrymen, my friends, dying trying to defend their homes from armies we knew nothing of, warriors who came for reasons we could not understand. Men who asked for no parley, but who just came and butchered our farmers, took our villages, and occupied our towns.
‘I remember fighting your people, Mara. I didn’t think of them as honourable foes. I thought of them as murdering scum. I hated them with every fibre of my being.’
She felt him sweat with the memories, but when she did not withdraw, he made an effort to calm himself. ‘In all this I have come to know you, your people. I … can’t say I find some of your ways pleasant. But at least I understand something of the Tsurani. You have honour, though it’s a different thing from our own sense of justice. We have our honour, too, but I don’t think you understand that fully. And we have things in common, as all people do. I love Ayaki as if he were my own.
‘But we’re people who have both suffered, you at the hands of my countrymen, me at the hands of yours.’
Mara soothed him with her touch. ‘Yet I would change nothing.’
Kevin turned within the circle of her arms and looked down at a face shining with tears that were considered an unconditional weakness in her culture. Immediately he felt shamed. ‘You’d not save your brother and father if you could?’
Mara shook her head. ‘Now I would not. Most bitter of all is that knowledge, my beloved. For to alter my past griefs, I would never have had Ayaki, or the love I share with you.’ Behind her eyes were other, darker realizations: she would never have ruled, and so would never have known the intoxicating fascination she found in the power of the Great Game.
Stunned by her soul-bearing honesty, Kevin felt his throat constrict. He held Mara close, letting her tears wet his shoulder through his shirt. Half-choked by emotion, he said, ‘But as much as I love you, Mara of the Acoma …’
She let him push her away. Her eyes held his as she searched his face and discovered the harsh truth he could no longer evade. Fear twisted her spirit, and a sorrow not felt since the day fate had forced her to assume the mantle of the Acoma. ‘Tell me,’ she snapped. ‘Tell me all, now.’
Kevin looked tortured. ‘Ah, Lady, I love you beyond doubt … I will until death. But I will never embrace this slavery. Not even for you.’
Mara could not bear to look at him. In this moment, for the first time, she at last knew the depth of his pain. Gripping him desperately, she said, ‘If the gods willed it … would you leave me?’
Kevin’s arms tightened around her shoulders. As if she were his only antidote against pain, he held her; yet he said what could no longer be denied. ‘If I could be a free man, then I would stay with you forever. But as a slave, I would take any expedient I could to return home.’
Mara lost the heart to control her sobbing. ‘But you can never be free … here.’
‘I know. I know.’ He brushed damp hair from her cheek and lost his own poise with the touch. His tears fell as freely as hers. The depths had been shared at last, and acknowledged: while they loved each other desperately, there would always be this open wound, as vast as an ocean and as deep as a chasm, and as wide as the rift between worlds.
Events in the Holy City revolved around the coming peace conference. With only days left before the Emperor’s departure, the Ruling Lords of the Empire exchanged heated speculation over what terms had been agreed to in advance; yet even Arakasi’s network could glean only sparse information on that subject. Mara spent long hours closeted with her scribes, sending messages to allies and tentatively confirming ties. Occasionally she entertained other Lords whose town houses were located nearer to the inner city and whose households had been inconvenienced by damage.
Small frustrations and concessions balanced larger ones. The craftsmen were slow in replacing her lost litter; with every carpenter in Kentosani busy fixing broken rooftrees, lintels, and doorframes, not even an apprentice could be borrowed from the work. Jican bargained to no avail. Imperial decree held a freeze on all private contracts until the dockside warehouses were rebuilt. Mara resigned herself to playing host to those she wished to see, until Lord Chipino of the Xacatecas heard of her straits and sent a replacement litter as a gift.
It was Xacatecas purple and yellow, and well chipped, since a succession of Isashani’s daughters had used it for shopping excursions. Jican remedied the matter by delving into the cellars after paint, but there were still no craftsmen to be hired. The task in the end fell to Tamu, a runner slave who had outgrown his post and graduated to formal messenger. But for three days after, young Tamu sat idle because his hands and arms were stained green to the elbow.
But at least the litter looked passable. Mara made social calls and compared her findings with Arakasi.
Overtly, the ruling Lords of Tsuranuanni were supportive of the Emperor’s intervention; they sent their eldest sons to serve the imperial delegation, and they did not break peace. But beneath compliant manners, each Lord jockeyed for position, and counted enemies, and made compacts. Frustrated in their desire to convene the council, the rulers of all the great houses made covert, alternative plans.
Mara paid particular attention to the movements of the Minwanabi. Tasaio remained in exile in the remote western islands. But Desio had insinuated another cousin, Jeshurado, into the former Warlord’s army as Subcommander, which gave Minwanabi an ally in the Emperor’s camp. Desio was one of the five Warchiefs who would be in attendance at the conference on Midkemia, along with Andero of the Keda, the Lord of the Xacatecas, and the Lord of the Tonmargu.
But Clan Oaxatucan named no Omechan Warchief, owing to bitter infighting over who should succeed the seat left vacant by Almecho. His eldest nephew, Decanto, was the obvious choice, but another nephew, Axantucar, had shown unexpectedly strong backing from other members of the clan. Since the most vigorous factions were deadlocked, and many held back from supporting either man, Decanto and Axantucar were forced to cede the privilege to a third cousin, Pimaca, to act as Omechan Warchief for the imperial honour guard.
Mara’s inquiry into the role taken by the Great Ones had drawn no clear answers. But Arakasi did find a relationship between the Assembly of Magicians and the Blue Wheel Party. As Mara watched the water fall in silver streams from the fountains in her courtyard garden, the Spy Master addressed that point. ‘It turns out that the Great One Fumita was once the younger brother to Lord Kamatsu of the Shinzawai, and is Hokanu’s true father.’
Mara showed astonishment. For whenever and wherever arcane talent was discovered, the Assembly took that man for training and broke all ties to family. Children were raised by relatives as if they were their own, their ties to their natural parents ‘forgotten’. ‘So Hokanu is Kamatsu
’s adopted son and actually a nephew by blood.’ Since his mother had sworn service to the temple of Indiri after her husband’s departure, Kamatsu and Kasumi were the only family Hokanu had known since the age of ten.
‘Do you know if Fumita ever visits his son?’ she asked of her Spy Master.
Arakasi shrugged. ‘Kamatsu’s house is well guarded. Who can know?’
Recognizing that the continuance of her house would be better served by cultivating Hokanu’s interest, Mara was equally curious to ply him for information on the chance that Fumita’s commitment to the Assembly might have a weak point: that he might not have entirely put aside family concerns, and had been influential in bringing the Shinzawai and the Kanazawai Clan aid from the magicians.
But any thought of Hokanu led endlessly back to the thorny hedge of pain concerning Kevin. Mara sighed. In a rare moment of abstraction, she watched the water drops fall and fall, then firmly forced herself to concentrate on more immediate concerns. If she indulged herself in preoccupation with personal troubles, the Acoma would be overwhelmed at the next move of the Great Game.
The Light of Heaven would depart downriver in four days. If he succeeded in his peace with the Kingdom of the Isles, all houses would be equally disadvantaged. But if the Emperor failed, there must be a call for a new Warlord. Otherwise Ichindar, ninety-one times Emperor of Tsuranuanni, would face open revolt in the council. It had been centuries, but regicide had occurred before in the Empire.
A short while later, Mara clapped her hands for her runner. ‘Tell Jican we shall move our quarters to the apartment in the Imperial Palace this afternoon.’
‘Your will, Lady.’ The slave boy bowed and raced off to complete the errand as if happy for the chance to run.
Jican received the order like an antidote to frustration after days of simply assessing damage. Kevin was set to work lifting carry boxes outside to the waiting needra carts. On the stairs and landing, crates of jigabirds rubbed edges with parchment satchels, and the Lady’s coffers of shell centis and centuries. At least the number of warriors had thinned down. One half of the company had relocated to a public barracks in the city. Of the others, fifty would serve as escort to see their mistress across town, of which twenty would return to guard the town house grounds.
The Complete Empire Trilogy Page 94