A few hours before dawn, he stood up, did some stretching exercises, and gathered together those things he felt he would need. He exited the estate house without drawing notice from the sentries. Hokanu had once joked that, one day, a warrior might accidently kill Mara’s Spy Master, should Arakasi continue to skulk about the estate at night. Arakasi had replied that a guard who slew him should be promoted, as he would have rid Mara of an ineffective servant.
Dawn found Arakasi on the far side of the lake, walking steadily as he took his own counsel. Plans were formulated, reviewed, and discarded, but he felt no despair, only a quickening sense of challenge. By sundown, he was at the river, melding with other travelers waiting for a commercial barge, another nameless passenger on his way to the Holy City.
• Chapter Eleven •
Bereavement
Months passed.
The bloom at last returned to Mara’s cheeks. Spring came, and the needra gave birth to their calves, and the barbarian mares delivered seven healthy foals to add to the stables. With Lujan’s permission, Hokanu had appropriated two patrols of swordsmen and, into the summer, proceeded to teach them to ride, and then to drill on horseback in formation.
The dust from such maneuvers overhung the fields in the dry heat, and the lakeshore in the late afternoons became boisterous with the laughter and chaffing as off-duty comrades watched the chosen few swim their barbarian beasts, or sluice the sweat of a workout off glossy hides. More than riders and horses emerged wet, some days when the play got rough. From the terraced balcony that Tasaio of the Minwanabi had once used to oversee field tactics, Mara often watched. She was attended by maids, and her young son, and increasingly often by her husband, still wearing his riding leathers, saber, and quirt.
One afternoon, as the sun sank low, as a scarred and grizzled old veteran bent to kiss his chosen mare on the muzzle, Mara gave the first carefree smile she had shown in weeks. ‘The men are certainly becoming used to the horses. Not a few of their sweethearts have been complaining that they spend more time in the stables than they do in their rightful beds.’
Hokanu grinned and slipped his hand around her slender middle. ‘Are you making such complaint, wife?’
Mara turned in his arms, and caught Justin staring with guilelessly wide blue eyes. The look reminded her poignantly of his father, before he made a rude symbol with his hands that he certainly had not learned from his nurses. ‘You’re going to make a baby tonight,’ he said, proud of his deduction, and not at all nonplussed when the nearest of his nurses gave his cheek an open-handed slap.
‘Impertinent boy! How dare you speak to your mother so? And wherever you learned that finger sign, you’ll be whipped if you try it again.’ With a red-faced bow to master and mistress, the maid hustled a protesting Justin off to bed.
‘But the sun’s still up,’ his voice pealed back in protest. ‘How can I go to sleep when I can still see outside?’
The pair disappeared around the stair that led down the hill, Justin’s hair catching the lowering light like flame.
‘By the gods, he’s growing up,’ Hokanu said fondly. ‘We’re going to have to find him an arms tutor soon. His ciphers and writing are plainly not enough to keep him from spying on the servants.’
‘He wasn’t.’ Mara’s hands tightened around her husband’s trim middle, appreciative of the muscles that his hours in the saddle kept firm. ‘He sneaks out to the barracks, or the slave quarters, every chance he gets. And listens intently when the men boast of their feats with ladies of the Reed Life or serving girls. He is his father’s son when it comes to staring at the women, and something he said to my maid Kesha this morning made her blush like a maiden which she’s not.’
Her head tilted sideways, and she regarded her husband through her lashes. ‘He’s a randy, rude little boy who had better be married off young, lest he sow Acoma bastards like hwaet, and have half the fathers of girls in the Nations after him with swords.’
Hokanu chuckled. ‘Of all the problems you might have with him, that one worries me least.’
Mara’s eyes widened. ‘He’s barely seven!’
‘High time he had a little brother, then,’ Hokanu said. ‘Another little demon to look after, to keep his mind off bigger trouble.’
‘You’re a randy, rude little boy,’ Mara retaliated, and with a quick, breathless laugh slipped out of his arms. She raced off down the hill with her robe half-undone in abandon.
Hokanu gathered himself in surprise and followed. Delight, more than exertion, caused his face to flush. His Lady had not been playful for entirely too long, since the poisoning. As he knew she desired, he ran easily, and did not extend his long, athletic stride to overtake her until she had reached the glen by the lakeshore.
The summer was fully upon them. Though dry, the grasses still retained a trace of green. The stinging insects of the early season had dispersed, and the shrill of night callers had not yet died for the season. The air was syrupy warm. Hokanu caught his wife in a flying tackle, and both of them tumbled to the earth, breathless, disheveled, and utterly departed from solemnity.
Mara said, ‘My Lord and consort, we seem to have a problem between us, that being a shortage of heirs.’
His fingers were already loosening the rest of the ties on her underrobe. ‘Lujan’s sentries patrol the lakeshore after dark.’
Her smile came back to him, a flash of white in the dusk. ‘Then we have no time to lose, on several counts.’
‘That,’ Hokanu said gaily, ‘is hardly a problem.’ After that, neither of them had the attention to spare for talk.
The much-longed-for, and overly disputed, heir to the Shinzawai must have been conceived on that night, either there under the open sky, or later, amid scented cushions, after a late-night cup of sa wine shared in their private chambers. Six weeks later, Mara was sure. She knew the signs, and though she woke feeling miserable, Hokanu could hear her singing in the mornings. His smile was bittersweet. But what he knew, and she did not, was that this child to come would be her last, the miracle that was all the healers of Hantukama’s priesthood had been able to bestow upon her.
Until he overheard a speculative argument between the kitchen scullions and the bastard child of one of the household factors, it never occurred to him, that the babe, when it came, might be female. He let the matter lie, and took no notice of the bets that were being laid in the barracks over the forthcoming child’s unknown sex.
That this, Mara’s last child, who was to be heir to his family name and fortune, might not be a son quite simply did not bear thinking about.
The pregnancy that had begun in such carefree abandon did not continue in the same vein – not since the poisoning, and not since the attempts on the lives of Acoma allies. Lujan tripled his patrols and personally inspected the checkpoints in the passes. The prayer gate over the river entrance to the lake was never without watchers in its towers, and a company of warriors was always armed and at the ready. But autumn came, and the needra culls were driven to market, and commerce went on without interruption. Even the silk caravans suffered no raid, which was not usual, and did nothing to set anyone at ease. Jican spent hours mumbling over armloads of tally slates. Not even the surplus of hwaet profits seemed to please him.
‘Nature is often most bountiful before the severest of storms,’ he grumbled pessimistically when Mara complained that his restlessness was making her neck ache. Weighed down by her swollen middle, she could hardly walk the floor with him, to follow his rendering of accounts.
‘It’s too quiet by far,’ said the little hadonra, dropping like an arrow-shot bird to the cushions before the mistress’s writing desk. ‘I don’t like it, and I don’t believe that Jiro is sitting by innocently, up to his nose in old scrolls.’
In fact, Arakasi’s agents had sent word. Jiro was not idle, but had been hiring engineers and joiners to build strange-looking machinery in what had been his father’s marshaling yard. That the equipment was intended for siege and sapping
was probable, and by dint of suggestively placed gossip, old Frasai of the Tonmargu had been convinced by Lord Hoppara of the Xacatecas to spend imperial funds. Workers had been taken on to repair the cracks in the walls of Kentosani, and in the Emperor’s inner citadel, caused by the earthquake set loose by the renegade magician Milamber when he had wreaked havoc at the Imperial Games years past.
As autumn dragged on, and the wet season threatened, Mara found herself as restless as her hadonra, and unable to do so much as pace. Her only respite came upon Justin’s eighth birthday, when Hokanu presented him with his first real sword, not a mock weapon used by children. He had received the well-made small blade with solemnity and resisted the impulse to rush around swinging it at everything in sight. If Keyoke had instructed him on the proper behavior, such forbearance was lacking the next morning, when Justin charged with bared blade down the hillside to his lesson from his arms tutor.
Mara saw her son from the terrace, wishing she could go watch Justin take his instruction. But her healers would not let her stir from her cushions, and her husband, who usually was indulgent when she became stubborn, would not relent. The heir that she carried must not be risked. To ease her confinement, anything she requested was sent for.
Gifts from other nobles arrived, as her time approached, some lavish, others minor tokens, the minimum tradition demanded. An expensive but undeniably ugly vase was Jiro’s gift to the expectant Servant of the Empire. Amused to sardonic humor, she ordered it given to her servants so they might use it to carry out night soils from the house.
But her most welcome gifts of all were the rare books delivered in chests that smelled of mildew and dust. Isashani had sent them, instead of the more usual lacquered boxes or exotic songbirds. Upon reading the inscription on the gift card, Mara had laughed. Beneath the makeup, and the feminine airs, there was no limit to Isashani’s shrewdness. It was her son, Hoppara, who sent a traditional if astonishingly extravagant arrangement of sweet flowers.
Surrounded by painted vases, Mara breathed in the perfume of cut kekali blossoms and tried not to think of Kevin the barbarian, who had first taught her what it was to be a woman in the dusk of a garden, years past. A frown on her face that had nothing to do with the lighting, she studied a treatise on weapons and campaigns of war. Her frown deepened as she considered the likelihood that Jiro had also studied this very text. From there her thoughts wandered. Arakasi’s messages arrived irregularly since she had charged him with his mission to acquire the Hamoi Tong’s records. She had not seen him in months, and missed his quick wit and his unfailing appreciation of odd gossip. Closing the book, she tried to imagine his location. Perhaps he sat in some distant inn, disguised as a needra driver, or a sailor. Or he might be lunching late with a merchant in some distant city. She refused to consider that he could very well be dead.
Arakasi at that moment lay on his side amid a tangle of silk sheets, and ran light, expert fingers down the thigh of a nubile girl. That she was by binding contract another man’s property, and that he risked his very life to seduce her, was not at the forefront of his thoughts. He had come in through the window. The absent master’s bedchambers in the midafternoon were the last place any servant or guardsman bent on protecting the virtue of a slave concubine would expect to find her with a lover.
The girl was bored enough to be excited by the adventure, and young enough to believe herself immune to misfortune. Her latest master was old, and fat, and his prowess had flagged with age. Arakasi posed a different sort of challenge. It was she who was jaded, having been trained for pleasure and bed sport since the age of six. Whether or not he could successfully excite her was the sum of the issue at hand.
For Mara’s Spy Master, the stakes that he dallied to win were a great deal higher.
In the half-light shed by closed screens, the air smelled heavy with incense and the girl’s perfume. The sheets had been treated with herbs that in some circles were considered aphrodisiacs. Arakasi, who had read texts on medicine, knew the belief was a myth. The elderly master had wealth enough not to care if his money had been wasted. The miasma of scents was powerfully cloying, causing Arakasi to regret that the screens must stay closed. Almost, he would rather have endured the stinking loincloth and apron he had bought from the dyers in Sulan-Qu, which he used for disguise when he did not want well-bred passersby examining his face too closely. The reek at least would have kept him alert. As it was, he had to fight not to fall fatally asleep.
The girl shifted. Sheets slid away from her body with a hiss of silk on skin. She was magnificent, outlined in afternoon light, her hair in heavy honey-colored curls on the pillows. Slant eyes the color of jade fixed on Arakasi. ‘I never said I had a sister.’
She referred to a comment some minutes old. The Spy Master’s fingers slipped past her hip, dipped down, and continued stroking. Her magnificent eyes drooped half closed, and her hands spasmed on the silk like a cat’s paws, kneading.
The velvet-soft voice of Arakasi said, ‘I know from the merchant who sold your contract.’
She stiffened under his touch, spoiling ten minutes of his careful ministrations. She had had men enough that she did not care. ‘That was not a prudent remark.’
Insult did not enter into the question; that she was in truth little better than a very expensive prostitute was not the issue. Who had been the sister’s buyer: that was dangerous knowledge, and the dealer who had made the transaction would hardly be so free, or so foolhardy, that he would tell. Arakasi stroked aside honey-gold locks, and cradled the back of the girl’s neck. ‘I am not a prudent man, Kamlio.’
Her eyes widened and her lips shaped a wicked smile. ‘You are not.’ Then her expression turned thoughtful. ‘You are a strange man.’ Breathing deeply, she feigned a pout. ‘Sometimes I think you are a noble, playing the part of a poor merchant.’ She fixed him with a steady gaze. ‘Your eyes are older than your appearance.’ When a lingering moment passed, and he gave no answer, she said, ‘You are not very forthcoming.’ Then she licked her lips suggestively. ‘Neither are you amusing. So. Amuse me. I am someone else’s toy. Why should I risk disgrace to become yours?’
As Arakasi drew breath to reply, Kamlio raised a finger and stopped his lips. Her nails were dusted with gilt, costliest of cosmetics. ‘Don’t say you’ll buy me my freedom for love. That would be trite.’
Arakasi blessed the rosy flesh of her fingertips with a kiss. Then, very gently, he removed her hand, so he could speak. His expression was faintly offended. ‘It would not be trite. It would be true.’ Mara had set no limits on his expenses, ever, and for stakes so high as access to the tong’s most guarded chieftain, she would hardly stint his needs.
The girl in his arms went icy with distrust. To free her from the seven-year contract signed and sold to her aged master would be worth the cost of a town house; but to buy out her worth, and the expense of her training and upbringing, from the merchant of the pleasure house who had invested in her – that would be as much as a small estate. Her contracts would be sold, and sold again, until she was faded to the point where even her skills between the sheets would be spurned. ‘You were never so rich.’ Even her voice was contemptuous. ‘And if the master who employs you is so wealthy, then I risk my very life to be speaking to you.’
Arakasi bent his head and kissed her neck. His hands did not tighten against her tenseness; she could at any moment draw away, a nuance she understood, and in appreciation of the subtlety, she kept still. Few men treated her as though she had a will of her own, or feelings. This one was rare. And his hands were very schooled. She heard the note of sincerity in his voice as he added, ‘But I work for no master.’
His tone conveyed the nuance. His mistress, then, would have little use for an expensive courtesan. The offer of freedom might be genuine, if he had access to the money.
Arakasi’s hands recovered lost ground, and Kamlio quivered. He was more than rare: he was gifted. She settled a little, her flank melting into the curve of his body.
As though the footsteps of servants did not come and go in the corridor, separated by only a screen, Arakasi’s touch drifted down the girl’s golden flesh. She leaned into him. Pleasure came rarely enough to her, who was a thing bought and sold to meet the needs of others. Discovery might earn her a beating; her partner would wind up dishonorably dead on a rope end. He was either exceptionally brave, or else careless unto insanity. Through skin that had been caressed and cajoled into unwonted sensitivity, the girl could feel the unhurried beat of his heart.
‘This mistress,’ Kamlio murmured languidly. ‘She means so very much to you?’
‘Just at this moment I was not thinking of her,’ Arakasi said, but it was not his words that convinced as his lips met hers with a tenderness akin to worship. The kiss blurred all doubts and soon after, all thoughts. The filtered sunlight through the windows blended with a red-golden haze behind her eyes, as passion was drawn out of her and savored like fine wine.
At last, gasping and drenched with the fine sweat of lovemaking, Kamlio forgot herself and clung to the lean form of the man as she exploded into relief. She laughed and she wept, and somewhere between amazement and exhaustion, she whispered the location of the sister sold away in far Ontoset.
Despite his mysterious background, it did not occur to Kamlio that her partner might be no more than a consummate actor until she rolled over. The light touch that cradled her body was no more than the fold of warm sheets. She flung back damp hair, her beautiful eyes narrowed and furious to find the window opened, and himself gone, even to the clothes he had worn.
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