Servant of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  As the old man left, Murgali arose, feeling tired. He chafed an arthritic wrist, put on his softest slippers, and as soundlessly as he could shuffle, hastened to find Incomo. The Minwanabi First Adviser was perhaps the only person who could approach Tasaio with impunity. As the hadonra crossed through the corridor that led to the nursery, he clicked his tongue; even the children were quiet, as if aware of their father's lingering wrath.

  Incomo was none too pleased with the interruption, either. Sitting, dripping, in his bath, with a slave girl one quarter his age sponging his stringy back, he sighed soulfully at the water that poured over his knees. 'This is most inopportune,' he murmured in the direction of his privates.

  Murgali bobbed agreement. 'Most. The corpses are being installed in an empty bed suite. My Lord can examine them there.'

  Then, as Incomo heaved himself up from his tub and submitted to a rubdown by a towel slave, the hadonra stole his moment to escape.

  Left dry and naked and alone to carry the news, Incomo indulged in a rare string of oaths. He forwent his chance to fondle the slave girl who gave up her sponge to robe him, and that put him in a spiteful temper. He tied his tasselled belt in a quick, irritable knot and set off to locate his Lord and master.

  The search carried him from the dining chambers, through the grand hall, past innumerable meeting rooms, into and out of Tasaio's personal study, the scriptorium, and an exercise chamber; he finally ended his search on the archery range that lay on the far side of the guards' barracks. By now Incomo was puffing, and sweaty as if he had not just stepped from his bath. He bowed and spoke very deliberately and loudly, that his Lord could not mistake his presence for that of another warrior.

  Clad in the lightest silk robe and an incongruously battered war helm, Tasaio shot off seven arrows in rapid succession. They cracked with uncanny accuracy into a small shield's centre, painted as a target, held upright by a trembling slave.

  'Bodies,' snapped the Lord of the Minwanabi. He punctuated the word with another arrow, loosed whistling between the slave's legs to smack into dry summer earth.

  The slave flinched and forgot himself. He stepped back in white-faced terror.

  Tasaio showed no change in expression. His next arrow took the hapless man exactly in the hollow of the throat. 'I have told them, and told them, they are not to move!' The Lord snapped his fingers, and a servant rushed to relieve him of his bow and quiver. Tasaio stripped off his shooting glove, and his amber eyes turned to his First Adviser. 'By "bodies", I presume that you have located the missing Acoma spies?'

  Incomo swallowed. 'Yes, Lord.'

  'Five, you said,' Tasaio snapped back. 'But we knew only three.'

  'Yes, Lord.' Incomo followed the proper step behind as his master spun briskly and walked from the archery grounds.

  Tasaio pulled at the knuckles of his left hand, cracking each of the joints. 'I will inspect the bodies. Now.'

  'Of course, Lord.' Incomo stretched to keep up with the taller warrior's stride, the sweat springing freely from his face. When they reached the estate house, it took him some minutes to determine which bed suite housed the corpses. Domestic staff made themselves scarce, with the master present, and he had to make too many inquiries to get answers.

  Tasaio tossed his helm to a hovering slave, then spent the interval in coiled impatience. 'You have not been efficient,' he observed to Incomo, but fortunately he was in haste to inspect the corpses, and made no further comment. He strode the length of a painted corridor, shoved past a bowing guard, and whipped aside a screen.

  The stench of corrupted flesh wafted with the breeze of his motion. Tasaio was unfazed. Apparently nerveless in the presence of horrors, he entered the bed suite and knelt to examine the dirt-streaked lumpish forms of what had once been five men.

  Incomo lingered outside the door. Engaged in a silent struggle to control the heaving of his stomach, he watched his master finger the remains with long, inquisitive fingers. Tasaio ran his hand along an indentation in the neck of one body, barely a hair's breadth below where the head had been severed. 'This man was strangled,' he muttered. 'This is the work of a tong assassin.' He examined the last body and discovered a tiny cloth fragment embroidered with a red flower, hidden in the corpse's robe. 'Hamoi!' He arose, showing his anger as he spun to address Incomo. 'After my gifts of metal, I should own that tong!'

  The Minwanabi First Adviser interpreted his master's glare as a warning. He bowed in instant obeisance. 'Lord, your gifts were copious.'

  'This should not have happened!' Tasaio said in ice-cold rage. 'Send a messenger at once. I would have the Tong Master before my dais to explain himself.'

  Incomo sank lower. 'Your will, my Lord.'

  He could not move his old knees fast enough to avoid the shove of Tasaio's elbow as the master shouldered through the doorway.

  'Send this carrion back to the lime pit, then send word to my wife,' the Lord barked at the nearest servant in earshot. 'Tell her I wish a bath to remove the stink of rot from my flesh.'

  Incomo reached his feet and considered the idea a sound one. He reflected soulfully on the little slave girl, and the delicious massage of her sponge, but the day's upheavals were not over.

  From his tub, Tasaio summoned in an endless succession of servants for interrogation. Many admitted to having seen the tong assassin who had come to commit the murders; a Patrol Leader even confessed to allowing the assassin entry through one of the checkpoints in the hills at the border of the estate.

  The man's explanation for allowing the murderer passage was inherently logical. 'All soldiers know that my Lord purchased the tong's loyalty. The man came openly to the checkpoint, stating he was on my Lord's business, and showing a document.'

  Tasaio heard this with narrowed eyes and tight lips. He motioned to Incomo in the negative, and sadly the First Adviser instructed the house scribe to write the warrior's name on the list for immediate execution. The soldier would be dead before Tasaio was dry from his bath.

  The Lady Incarna continued mechanically to sponge her husband's back, but her cheeks were wax-white, and she looked sick around the eyes. Like a puppet on strings she soaped the lean muscular shoulders of the Lord of the Minwanabi over and over, until Tasaio tired of her attentions and snapped suddenly to his feet. Incarna dropped her sponge with a splash into the bath water and snatched back with a startled cry.

  'Silence, woman!' Tasaio jerked his wet head, and towel slaves flew to attend him.

  The guild messenger could not have chosen a worse moment for arrival, nor could the servant who scratched at the doorway to announce the man's presence in the foyer, awaiting the master's attendance.

  In no mood to hurry, but impatient with his dresser nonetheless, Tasaio snatched the lightweight but heavily embroidered robe from his body servant. He flipped it over his shoulders, held-out his hand for his shell-decorated belt, then accepted the black-lacquered sheaths of his sword and dagger newly threaded on a soft needra-hide baldric. A slave laced on his sandals, and he finished his dressing with a light, padded jacket sewn with bone rings that offered the same protection as light armour without being as cumbersome.

  'Send the messenger to me in ,my personal armoury,' he instructed his runner. Then he motioned for Incomo to follow and strode out, leaving his wife to oversee the slaves in the bath chamber as if her standing were no higher than an overseer's.

  The Minwanabi Lord's armoury was a small, windowless chamber with sanded wood walls, laid out with pegs for swords and stands for storing body armour. Tasaio's single personal indulgence since becoming Ruling Lord had been to purchase extravagant sets of arms for himself, some plain and deadly, designed for the rigours of war, others resplendent with lacquer and chasing, for dress occasions; yet a third variety was thin and strong and without fluting, designed to be secretly worn under clothing. Tasaio roved from stand to stand, stroking helms and breastplates and sword hilts, then examining his fingertips for dust. The slaves and servants who attended this chamber kn
ew well to keep it immaculate; predecessors who had failed the Lord's inspections had not survived his displeasure.

  Uncomfortable in the small, airless room, Incomo compromised his uneasiness by standing farthest from the lamp, which was hot, and drew unwanted attention to his actions, should the master's narrow scrutiny fall upon him. Still as every Minwanabi servant had lately learned to become, he waited while the Lord roved from sword to sword, and helm to helm, stopping occasionally to arrange a buckle or a boss, or to finger the edge of a blade.

  Tasaio was testing a dagger when the courier bowed at the door. The Lord flicked the barest glance over the man's guild badges, just enough to note the colours of the Sulan-Qu denomination. He spoke in his deceptively gentle manner. 'What message do you carry?'

  The man straightened. 'An overture from Mara of the Acoma,' he began, and silenced instantly as Tasaio whipped around in a breathtaking blur of speed.

  The messenger swallowed awkwardly against the pressure of a sword tip against his throat. He looked into the eyes of the man who held the weapon, and saw there a flat lack of expression that terrified him to his soul. 'My Lord,' he quavered, 'I am but a guild messenger hired to bear letters.'

  Tasaio moved no muscle. 'And do you bring me a letter?' His voice had not altered a hair's-breadth.

  Incomo cautiously cleared his throat. 'My Lord, the guild's runner is blameless, and his life protected by oath.'

  'Is he?' Tasaio fired back. 'Let him speak for himself.'

  The messenger sucked in a difficult breath. 'Mara requests a meeting,' he began, and stopped at a twitch from the blade.

  'You will not mention that name under this roof, within these walls.' Tasaio gave another light dig with the weapon, and teased a trickle of scarlet from the skin beneath the point. 'What does this thrice-accursed Lady ask a meeting for? I wish no parley. I want only her death.'

  The messenger blinked uncomfortably. Suspecting that he reported to a madman, and convinced he would end with a cut throat, he gathered his dignity and bravely concluded the words he had been employed by his guild to deliver.

  'This Lady asks that the Lord of the Minwanabi visit her estate for the purpose of a mutual discussion.'

  Tasaio smiled slowly. Impressed by the little man's courage, he lowered the sword, wiped the point clean on a polishing cloth, then replaced the weapon on its pegs. As an afterthought, he tossed the rag to the messenger, along with gestured permission to tend the scratch on his throat.

  The guildsman lacked the effrontery to refuse; he lifted the lightly oiled cloth to his neck and began tentatively to dab. And as though no stranger were present, Tasaio resumed his inspection. Roving between items in his collection, he spoke to his adviser as if they were the only occupants of the room. .

  'Ah, Incomo, I believe I have frightened her badly,' he said. 'My ambush and my assassin might not have accomplished my ends, but Sezu's little bitch is running scared. Luck has helped her cause, but fortune never endures. She knows she cannot last another year.' The Minwanabi Lord abandoned one armour stand for the next. He fingered a plated garget as if probing for a weakness. 'Perhaps the Lady offers compromise, say, a sacrifice of the Acoma name and line, in exchange for survival for her son?'

  Incomo bowed with due respect. 'My Lord, that is a dangerous assumption. As well as you, the Lady knows the time for compromise is past. She initiated blood feud with your uncle Jingu; and Desio made pledge to Turakamu. For the sake of her ancestors' honour, and against the Red God's displeasure, she must know she has no position from which to bargain.'

  Tasaio let the plates of the gorget fall with a click like the rolling of game dice. 'She is desperate,' he insisted. 'Let her come to me here, if she has a desire to speak.'

  The armour room seemed stiflingly claustrophobic. Incomo risked a small movement to mop his brow, and dared another interruption. 'My Lord, I hesitate to remind: the Lord Jingu underestimated the girl, and in this very home she forced a situation that required him to take his own life.'

  Sandals scraped lightly on waxed wood as Tasaio leaned an elbow on a fine suit of armour. The tawny eyes he fixed on his First Adviser were wide and bright in the lamplight. '1 am riot a coward,' he said softly. 'And my uncle was a fool.'

  Incomo nodded hasty agreement. 'But even the bravest man should do better to act with caution.'

  Tasaio's eyes narrowed dangerously. 'Do you suggest she could threaten me?' He tipped his head and spat upon the polished floor. 'Here? Just because she is presently too strong to succumb to an open attack, make no mistake. It is only a matter of time before I will step in and finish her. Indeed, I should relish the chance to see my warriors sack and burn her estate. Perhaps I should use this request for parley as an opportunity to go there and study the site for assault tactics.'

  The guild messenger seemed uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. His task as a courier required discretion, but the discussion at hand was not one he cared to witness. Rival factions might torture him to learn just what he was overhearing; his guild was well respected, but that did not make him sacrosanct for those hours with his family when he was not wearing his official badges.

  Incomo mopped his brow again, but the sweat continued to trickle down his collar. Learned in the ways of three generations of Minwanabi Lords, he offered argument by his silence.

  Tasaio had examined all the armour. He could not leave the chamber without confronting his First Adviser in the doorway; and Incomo stood like a rock jammed immovably in a river current when he had a point to make.

  'Very well,' the Lord of the Minwanabi concluded. '1 will not meet the bitch on her accursed Acoma soil.' To the messenger he snapped shortly, 'Here is my reply. Tell the Lady I will consider a meeting, but in the open, on my lands. Let us see whether she has the courage, or the stupidity, to accept.'

  The messenger bowed in relief, and bolted promptly through the opening that Incomo edged aside to create. Straight as the doorjamb against his back, and canny in years, the adviser regarded Tasaio.

  'My Lord, if it is trickery you have on your mind, still, I would counsel you to take care. Mara is not just a girl, but an enemy to be feared. She has united the Hadama clan, no child's task, and even were you to have her brought naked and bound before you, surrounded by your bodyguards, still, I would have you be wary.'

  Tasaio stared into his adviser's spaniel eyes. 'I am wary,' he said quietly. 'Most wary of letting this matter become the obsession that it was for cousin Desio. Mara I intend to kill. But I need no grand promises to the Red God to carry the matter out, and neither will I give her ancestors the satisfaction of losing even one night's sleep over the matter. Now move aside. I would have the armoury locked, now, and a light meal brought to the terrace garden down by the shore of the lake.'

  The Lord of the Minwanabi lingered in the terrace garden long past the hour of sunset. Great torches burned on poles in ceramic containers; a carpet had been laid over the stones, and a wooden dais brought, and upon this, Tasaio sat twirling a wine goblet between his fingers, exactly as he had while on campaign. The lake shore looked much like a war camp, with warriors in full armour performing a mock attack on a knoll overlooking the water. The soft splashes of feeding fish were interspersed with shouted commands. At Tasaio's feet sat a boy lately apprenticed to the house scribes, a sharpened chalk clutched in fingers that were tense to hide their shaking. As the Lord commented on his soldiers' performance in low, half-whispered phrases, the boy scribbled down his words with a frown of desperate concentration. He was but duplicating the efforts of the scribe set to teach him the craft, but should the Lord of the Minwanabi decide to appraise his work, he could be beaten for failing to achieve some arbitrary standard.

  The warriors on the rise advanced in timed unison, and, absorbed in every nuance of the drill, Tasaio did not at first notice the house runner who lay prostrate in obeisance at the top of the terrace stair. The unfortunate man had to raise his voice to catch attention.

  'What is
it!' Tasaio snapped, so suddenly that the scribe dropped his slate. The chalk fell bouncing across the carpet and rolled to a stop against the runner's forehead, which was pressed into the stone of the last stair.

  'My great Lord, the Hamoi Tong Master has arrived in answer to your summons.'

  Tasaio briefly weighed the displeasures of meeting the tong and interrupting his evening battle drill. Interrogating the tong won out. 'Bring him here.' Then, obviously preoccupied with a subject that vexed him, he glanced at the apprentice's slates and compared the clumsy lettering to the finely practised script of his teacher. 'Take that away, and be glad I didn't order you beaten with it.' Motioning to the, older scribe to remain, he glanced at the soldiers on the hill.

  Bowing profusely, and trying not to cry despite the disgrace of a reprimand, the apprentice collected his materials. He hurried off, almost crashing into the house servant who escorted the summoned visitor to the Lord's dais.

  The Tong Master, the Obajan in the ancient tongue, was a man of immense breadth and girth, but not one ounce of fat. Save for a long scalp lock tied high and cascading down his back, he had a shaved head tattooed in patterns of red and white. His nose was flat, his skin deep tan, and his ears multiply pierced. His jewellery consisted of bone pins and rings that jingled lightly as he walked, and his belt held loops sewn into the leather, each of which held a variegated array of instruments of death: a half-dozen daggers, a weighted strangling cord, throwing stars, knuckle guards, picks, vials of poison, and a long metal sword. While considered an outlaw by Tsurani standards, he demanded the respect due a Ruling Lord from any he encountered in person. He was accompanied by two assassins, clad in black, as much of an honour guard as Tasaio would permit. The Tong Master came to Tasaio and bowed his head slightly, asking, 'Are you well, my Lord?' His voice was an ominous rumble.

  Tasaio ignored him for a long, pointed moment. Then he nodded once, acknowledging he was well. But the Lord of the Minwanabi did not inquire after the Tong Master's health, a pointed insult.