Quietly, Mara wondered how much of the spy net had already been in place when Arakasi had sworn to the Tuscai natami. Probably most of the area around the Tuscai estates, for an honorless street boy to have caught the notice of a hidebound traditional Ruling Lord. It awed her, to learn how far her Spy Master had risen from such humble beginnings. Now there was the girl, Kamlio, whose fate had entangled itself with his in ways she did not want. As the servant poured sa wine and departed, Mara handed Arakasi a glass.
‘Drink,’ she urged. ‘You need it.’ In fact, he looked wretched, and worn thinner than she had ever seen him.
The Spy Master returned her regard levelly, his lip curled in distaste. He disliked drinking: alcohol dulled his reactions. ‘Lady,’ he said in a voice that was rust and velvet, ‘I am not at all what I was.’
‘Drink! That is a command!’ Mara snapped back. ‘You are human, and have a heart that can bleed, even if you only discovered that fact recently. And I say you are wrong. You are more than you were. The change that has happened is for the best.’
‘Not if you wish me to continue in my post as Spy Master.’ The admission itself seemed to shake him. Arakasi reached out, took a goblet from the tray, and downed it in one violent draft. ‘What would you know of best or worse?’ he challenged.
‘Everything.’ Her tone reproached. ‘I had Kevin and lost him. I had the perfect husband who understood my heart, until one foolish misunderstanding has set him at a distance. I had two children who are dead.’
Shamed, Arakasi wrapped his long, expressive fingers around his glass. He said nothing, only stared at the rug. For a while the lamplight revealed his rigid effort to keep his breathing steady. ‘I had hoped the example of you and Hokanu might open her eyes to a new life.’ He shrugged fractionally, a self-conscious hitch of his shoulders. ‘You have both been my teachers, Lady.’
Mara regarded the man who sat hunched and tight before her. His competence at times had humbled her, until now, when she realised how much of his achievements had been rooted in pleasureless, calculating logic. ‘Arakasi, set her free. Let her find herself.’ As his eyes swept up to meet hers, beseeching, she found she needed sa wine herself. She reached out for a goblet, tasted its bittersweet edge. ‘Think, most cunning of my servants. You were never resentful because you did not love. Kamlio can hate, she can feel bitterness, because she can be hurt. Her basic nature is a caring one, or why should she defend herself so savagely?’
His gaze dropped. ‘I pray to the gods you are right.’
‘I am right.’ Mara’s conviction rang across the room’s familiar dimness. But no truth could ensure the outcome. Whether Kamlio could outgrow her past and survive without scars, only time would tell.
Arakasi sat like a man tortured, twisting the fine-stemmed crystal around and around in his hands. It occurred to Mara, watching him, that he had lost his piercing insight. She spoke kindly in reassurance. ‘Your little lady will not leave these estates. She will stay, and serve here. That much I know.’
‘Or else she would have left at once?’ Arakasi released an edged laugh. ‘How can you be sure?’
‘She would not have accepted my hospitality.’ Mara smiled. ‘She has pride like fire.’ She speculated, ‘In my years I have come to judge human nature quickly. You are a fitting match for her.’
He relaxed a little at that, setting the goblet on the polished floor, empty, and helping himself to a plate of fruit, cheese, and bread. In a fast change of subject, he said, ‘I received your message, Lady. I can guess why you called me.’ He mashed the bread together over a thick wedge of cheese, his feelings for the concubine certainly not set in abeyance. But his voice showed none of his conflict as he added, ‘I can already assure you. The City of the Magicians is impregnable. Send anyone there to attempt entry, and you will call down the Assembly’s wrath upon you. We have attempted seven times to find entrance; four men are dead, the other three unaccounted for, and I number them also dead. None can be traced to us, but even so, another attempt may cause us to fall.’
‘I supposed as much.’ Mara watched him eat with an inner surge of relief. The day Arakasi ignored his appetite brought cause for major worry. While he chewed, she related her findings in the hive of the cho-ja, and then told of her plans to leave for the Thuril Confederation.
Arakasi gave back a dry grin. ‘I did not think you seriously intended a pilgrimage.’
Mara’s brows arched. ‘I am devout. Did I not once plan to vow service to Lashima’s temple?’
A spark of irony touched her Spy Master’s eyes. ‘That,’ he allowed, ‘was long before you met one red-haired Midkemian barbarian.’
Mara colored deeply. ‘True.’ She laughed. Arakasi had always stimulated her wit. The heart he had kept hidden all these years was proving a delight to her. ‘I’ll need you to hide my trail with subterfuge. Also, I want you to comb the Imperial Archives for history texts that might show us what circumstances led to our mysterious treaty with the cho-ja.’
She looked across the low table and realised Arakasi had ceased eating. The bread had fallen into crumbs between his fingers, and his eyes looked deep as pits. Gently she asked, ‘What’s wrong? Are you afraid to leave the girl?’
‘No.’ The Spy Master knuckled back his tangled dark hair. The poet’s braid at his temple had slipped half-undone, the violet ribbon that tied it frayed at the ends, and sun-faded. ‘I am no longer the best man for the job, my Lady. My heart is no longer ruthless.’
‘Was it ever?’ Mara countered.
Arakasi looked at her, open and pained as he had been but once in her presence, and that the time he believed he had failed her and caused old Nacoya’s death. ‘Yes, Lady. Yes, it was. Once, I would have let Kamlio die at the hands of the tong without conscience. I have increased risk to you by returning for her. It took some persuasion and significant funds to extricate her from her existing term of employment. The transaction was far too public for my taste.’
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, e
ven 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.
• Chapter Sixteen •
Countermoves
The game ended.
Chumaka set down his shah 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 shah 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?’
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 shah 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 shah board, and waited, icily quiet, for his impertinent advi
ser 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 shah 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 shah 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 Complete Empire Trilogy Page 167