She turned and faced forward at once, lest the fullness of her courage collapse under the weight of the dangers that threatened. Straight, stiff-backed under her gold-studded robes, the Servant of the Empire started forward toward the opening.
Mara made her way with unsteady steps over the fallen earth and the clumps of tile and mortar. Unobtrusively, Arakasi moved to steady her elbow. She flashed him a grateful smile, glad for his human touch after the company of so many cho-ja.
And then she was out, dazzled by late-day sunlight, and by the flash of a magnificence of gold armor.
She caught her breath. Red hair pushed out from beneath the helm of imperial gold; Justin’s red hair, she realised with a great thump of her heart. He did not look like a boy anymore, armored in the finery of an Emperor. Mara shook to realise that this was the hour of his wedding.
She faltered in her step as the boy bowed to her, son to mother, as was proper. All that brilliance of goldwork felt wrong; as though she should be bowing to the floor, as she once had to Ichindar.
Then the boy straightened and gave a undignified whoop. ‘Mother!’ he cried and ran forward.
Mara forgot her finery and reached. Her son rushed into her arms, taller, heavier now, fully and impressively coming closer to manhood. As his arms locked around her neck, she realised she did not have to bend down anymore to embrace him. His shoulders had started to broaden in a way that felt all too familiar. He was all Kevin’s, Mara realised; he would have his father’s great height. The jolt of that restored her to dignity.
As her son stepped back from her embrace, he regarded her levelly with eyes that were the image of his barbarian father’s. ‘I am ready, Good Servant. The Princess Jehilia awaits.’
Mara’s voice failed her. She had lost two children already, Ayaki, and the little one poisoned before his birth. Now her only living son stood resolutely ready to give his life for her honor. The moment was more than she could endure.
Then Justin’s face broke into a grin of such insouciance, she was again recalled to past days, and to Kevin’s irrepressible humor. ‘We’d better hurry,’ her son admonished. ‘The late Emperor’s First Wife keeps having hysterics, and all of her makeup is going to run.’
Mara rallied. ‘What of Jehilia? Did she have hysterics, too?’
Justin gave back a boy’s shrug. ‘She shouted a lot. She locked herself in her room. Then somebody asked her if she would rather wed an Omechan with a paunch and grey hair, and she let the maids in to get her dressed.’
The girl had sense, Mara thought, as she took her place at Justin’s side and prepared to enter the great audience hall. Arakasi stood by her, to steady her other side, and no one seemed to notice that he yet wore the robes of a drudge as the iron-studded doors swung open and the musicians began the fanfare that announced the arrival of the groom.
Mara stepped resolutely ahead, aware of her own hand, sweating, where she gripped Justin’s. She wondered as she passed through the ranked columns of the Priests of the Twenty Higher Orders whether the gods would strike her down for pride, and for the sheer arrogance of presumption that caused her to dare set her son on the throne as the next Light of Heaven, the ninety-second Emperor of Tsuranuanni. But the representative of the Temple of Juran, God of Justice, did not look displeased, and the High Priest of Turakamu gave her a small smile of encouragement. Apart from the rest, behind the Red God’s priest, stood three shrouded figures in black, the Sisters of Sibi, Goddess of Death. Even those chilling aspects seemed to reassure Mara with a slight inclination of their heads. The High Priest of Jastur, the God of War, slammed his gloved fist against his chest in salute, as Mara passed, his blow ringing on the precious iron of his breastplate.
Mara took another step, and another, her inner confidence rebounding. As she passed, the priests of the higher and lower orders began to arrange themselves before the dais, in pairs by their nature, the priests of Lashima, Goddess of Wisdom, falling in beside those of Salana, Mother of Truth. The Priest of Turakamu partnered the Sister of Sibi, while the High Priest of Jastur was joined by the High Priest of Baracan, the Lord of Swords.
Ahead, on the imperial dais, waited a small, blond-haired girl in a sparkling veil of gold tissue. Jehilia, Mara identified, as her maids drew back her headdress; the girl still had freckles, from too much time playing truant in the imperial gardens. And if she looked pale beneath the paint and powder of her makeup, she saw the Good Servant, and grinned.
‘Let the doors be closed, and the ceremonial matrimony begin!’ intoned the priest of Chochocan, the Good God, in ritual opening. Behind him and to his right the High Priest of Tomachca, Lover of Children, began silent prayer. Mara stared at him a lingering moment, remembering that the lesser brother of Chochocan was also known as the Bringer of Peace. She prayed he would be so today.
Justin’s fingers gave Mara’s a last squeeze as she let him loose to take his place at his Princess’s side. Mara moved to where Hokanu waited and as the ceremony began, she slipped her hand into his.
The Imperial Palace was bustling. Messengers hurried by, and servants moved purposefully across the courtyards in an anxious rush to complete errands. Perched on an elbow by a windowsill, Shimone of the Assembly watched their industry with deep, unreadable eyes. His face was more than usually austere, and if anything, he was yet more spare with words. He moved his head slightly, calling attention to the unusual level of activity.
The gesture was noted by Hochopepa, who sat upon cushions before a low table and a tray of half-consumed sugared fruits. The stout magician acknowledged with a nod and spoke softly so that only Shimone could hear. ‘Something more than everyday business is afoot. I’ve counted five priests hidden under cowls, and by the smell on the air, the kitchens are baking a banquet. Odd fare, for a city under attack.’
As if to punctuate his observation, a large rock fired from a siege engine sailed down from the air and shattered in a courtyard nearby. A stray dog fled, yelping. Hochopepa gazed through the cracked screen with narrowed eyes. ‘Those damned things are starting to irritate me. Another stone this close and I’ll go out and …’ His threat was cut off as he was distracted by another band of oddly dressed nobles hurrying past the window. ‘We expected an influx of Ruling Lords to convene in the old council chambers, but this seems something more.’
Shimone stirred, standing straighter. ‘It is much more. Motecha will not be stayed much longer from taking action.’
Hochopepa regarded the remains of his snack with wistful regret. ‘I will not be stayed much longer from taking action,’ he corrected in faint reproof. ‘I think the Lady is here already, and that we waste our time in this vigil.’
Shimone said nothing, but his eyebrows raised, and he pushed himself away from the window. Not to be left behind as the taller, slenderer mage stalked from the chamber, Hochopepa lumbered up from his cushions and hurried after.
Servants engaged in nameless activities fled or prostrated themselves in fear as the pair made their way down the passage. If the palace corridors were a maze of constructions added one on top of another over the centuries, the Black Robes needed no directions. They proceeded without error to a red-painted door emblazoned with an enameled seal. They did not knock, but entered the office of the Imperial Chancellor.
Dajalo of the Keda stood resplendent in his regalia of office, red and black robes cut in layers, with gold trim flashing at collar and cuffs. His massive headdress was straight. He looked composed, if pale. His staff members seemed less poised. The secretary at his elbow trembled, half-sick with fear, while the runner slave by the outer screen cowered. The reason for so much nervous unrest was obvious: the cushions left out for audience with petitioners were all taken, occupied by a half-dozen Great Ones. Motecha was pacing. Looking far from pleased, he glanced up as his two colleagues entered, but continued the interrogation he had in progress. ‘Any word of her?’
The subject of his reference needed no qualifier. ‘None, Great One.’ Dajalo bowed to the new
arrivals and, adroitly as any skilled courtier, used the movement to unobtrusively blot running sweat from his brow. He straightened up, stiffly formal in appearance. If as Imperial Chancellor he felt uneasy in the presence of so many Black Robes, he contrived to hide it well.
Hochopepa crossed behind the imposing desk, plucked the chancellor’s own seat cushion from the floor, and removed it to the embrasure beneath the window, where a breeze refreshed the air; the room had been crowded throughout the morning, and the servants too timid to venture in and open the screens. Hochopepa sat down. He plucked a sweetmeat from a pottery urn left for guests and chewed, looking dangerously intent for a man with a round, merry face. ‘Oh, she will be here, certainly,’ he murmured around his mouthful. ‘The High Council is reconvening at this moment, and the Lady of the Acoma wouldn’t miss it. Never has there been one to play the Great Game like Mara.’
‘Quite,’ Motecha snapped irritably. ‘She would die first. As she will, the second we discover her location.’
Shimone looked faintly distasteful. ‘We all must die; it is a rule of nature.’
The Imperial Chancellor buried his discomfort behind a studied mask of urbanity.
Motecha glanced from one face to another, but said nothing. His colleagues were still. The suspicion that Mara was guilty of uncovering some of the most closely guarded secrets of the Assembly, secrets that for an outsider were a death warrant, seemed to color the very air with tension. Not even Hochopepa and Shimone had been able to deny that the willingness of the cho-ja to shelter her suggested worse: that she might have seeded a rebellion, a breaking of the treaty that had stood for thousands of years. As convincingly as Shimone and others had argued that the Servant of the Empire deserved a full hearing before her life became forfeit, this time their efforts had been overruled.
The Assembly had voted. Mara’s execution was now beyond debate.
Few would presume to act alone against the Servant of the Empire, but Tapek had, and the worst trouble had resulted. Black Robes were starting at shadows in the suspicion that their privileged status stood threatened. Now more critical issues were at hand than a brother Black Robe’s rashness. Hochopepa and Shimone exchanged glances of understanding. They had, in their way, admired Mara, who had accomplished much good for the Empire.
But now she had dared too much. The stout magician felt drawn into conflict: his loyalty to the Assembly and the vows sworn there when he took the Black Robe, against the allure of fresh ideas, many of them prompted by the heresies that Milamber the barbarian had shared with him.
Hochopepa valued the legacy of his friendship with Milamber. Over the years the Tsurani-born Black Robe had increasingly employed his arts in the cause of the common people. Now, with changes in the wind too great for even his progressive thinking to encompass, he wished for more time. Hochopepa longed for clear conviction on which course was right to follow: to work with Motecha’s faction for Mara’s immediate destruction or to embrace her call for reform and consider the unthinkable, after a majority vote: to oppose the Assembly’s resolve, even perhaps save her life.
Suddenly Shimone took a long, swift step toward the window. He accompanied his movement with a penetrating glance at Hochopepa, who swallowed his sweetmeat more suddenly than he had intended.
‘You feel it, too,’ the fat magician said to Shimone.
‘Feel what?’ Motecha interrupted. And then he also fell silent, as he sensed what had alerted the others.
A creeping chill pervaded the air, not the simple cold of shadow, nor even the clammy feeling prompted by uneasiness. Each magician present knew the unmistakable, subliminal tingle of powerful magic.
Shimone poised like a dog on point. ‘Someone sets wards!’ he announced in clipped tones.
Hochopepa rose awkwardly to his feet. ‘No Black Robe creates this spell.’ His admission came with reluctance, as if he deeply wished to claim otherwise.
‘The cho-ja!’ shouted Motecha. His face deepened to purple. ‘She has brought mages from Chakaha!’
The small chamber erupted into chaos as the other Black Robes surged to their feet. Their expressions, to a man, were stormy. The Imperial Chancellor was forced cowering into the cranny behind his desk to stay clear of them, but no one heeded his discomfort.
‘Mara will die for this!’ Motecha continued. ‘Sevean, call at once for reinforcements.’
Even Hochopepa did not protest this order. ‘Hurry,’ he urged Shimone, and while the outrage of the assembled magicians whipped to a boiling rage, the fat magician and his slender companion were the first out the door.
The corridor beyond was deserted. Even the servants had fled. ‘I don’t like this.’ Hochopepa’s words echoed off the vaulted ceiling of the now empty wing. ‘In fact, I have the distinct impression that more than the High Council has been seeking unsanctioned convocation.’
Shimone said nothing, but reached for his teleportation device, activated it, and vanished.
‘Hrrumph!’ Hochopepa exclaimed in frustration. ‘Letting me know where you’re going wouldn’t exactly be idle chatter!’
Shimone’s voice replied out of the air. ‘You imply there might be a choice?’
Disgusted that his robe belt seemed suddenly to be cinctured too tight, Hochopepa pawed through cloth until he found his pocket. He grasped his teleportation device and engaged it, just as Sevean, Motecha, and the others shouted from the antechamber of the Imperial Chancellor’s office. As he disappeared from the hallway, Hochopepa felt his last disconcerting thought cut off by the disorientation of his transfer: which party would accomplish Mara’s execution? He and Shimone, who acted only for the purpose of the Assembly’s self-preservation, or the others, led by Motecha, who lusted after revenge?
‘She has made fools of us, and worse!’ Sevean’s voice rang out just before the shift in Hochopepa’s location became accomplished.
Worse, the fat magician concluded as he reappeared, puffing, in the sunlit splendor of the courtyard outside the antechambers of the imperial audience hall. Mara had brought power to battle absolute power, and now far more than civil war might tear the Empire asunder.
The courtyard too was deserted. The flowering trees that bordered the wall and the approach to the wide steps hung still in the noon air. No birds flew, and no insects droned around the flowers. The din of the armies that clashed at the walls and the unceasing battering of rocks from the siege engines seemed distant and faint. If the noise was inconvenient, none of the Black Robes made any move at this juncture to quell it.
The warriors who defended the Imperial Precinct were best off distracted at the walls, to keep them unaware of the pending storm that soon must break over the audience hall.
Shimone stood in the center of the square, his head cocked slightly. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘The ward starts here.’
Nothing showed in the noon air that looked in the least arcane. ‘You can’t break through?’ puffed Hochopepa. He squinted, concentrated, and extended his senses to their utmost. At last he detected a faint shimmer that might have been due to heat; except that when he looked directly at it, the phenomenon disappeared. He pawed through his other pocket, pulled out a gaudy handkerchief, and mopped his streaming brow. ‘If that’s a ward, it hardly seems substantial.’
Shimone turned with an air of sharpened reproof. ‘You try and pierce it.’
Hochopepa extended his might, then suddenly widened his eyes as a rainbow of color played through the air before him. As if brushed aside without effort, the potency of his magic dissipated along the barrier created by the cho-ja. Hochopepa’s mouth sagged open in astonishment. Then a stray fragment of rock fired from without descended whistling toward his head. He recovered his poise and deflected it as casually as a man might bat aside a fly. Throughout, his attention remained focused on the cho-ja wrought protections. ‘That strong, eh? Fascinating. A very subtle piece of work. The way it lets you probe, then siphons off your energies and weaves them with its own …’ Immersed in scholarly study,
he was slow to waken to the fact that the cho-ja had mages evolved considerably in their skills since the treaty had effected the ban. ‘This is unsettling.’
‘Very.’ Shimone chose not to elaborate as behind him other magicians arrived in the central square. More had joined the party that had stood vigil in the Imperial Chancellor’s chamber. Their number was two dozen strong, and growing. ‘There can be no argument now except force,’ Shimone concluded sadly.
Motecha picked up this last statement. ‘We should flame this palace to the ground! Burn every mind to idiocy that has dared to raise rebellion against us!’
Sevean stepped forward. ‘I disagree. Collapse these unsanctioned wards, yes, this is necessity. We must also destroy the cho-ja mages who work in violation of the treaty, and execute the Lady Mara. But destroy the Imperial Palace? That’s excessive. We may be outside the law, but we are still answerable to the gods. I doubt that heaven would sanction the priests of every order in the Empire dying along with Mara.’
‘The Holy Orders could be accomplices!’ accused one of the recently arrived Black Robes.
‘Indeed,’ Shimone cut in. ‘Or they could have been pressed into service by force. Better we hear their motives before we do their holinesses any violence.’
‘The wards only, then,’ Hochopepa summed up. He hitched at his too tight sash, and blotted with his dampened handkerchief. For all his outward resolution, his eyes were troubled. ‘We must break in without risking the lives of those inside the audience hall.’
The magicians banded together in silence, as carrion birds might who contemplated the spoils on a battlefield. They stilled in mind and body, and the air seemed shaken by a deep, subliminal vibration as they melded their efforts into one.
The Complete Empire Trilogy Page 203