Mistress of the Empire (81 page)

She had leisure to notice smaller discomforts: the cramp of overtaxed muscles, and the maddening sting of blisters beneath her armor. The passages the Strike Leader and his company traversed were unlighted. Lacking any sense of vision, Mara was reduced to clinging blindly while her escort sped on its errand.

The journey was the strangest in her memory. The darkness was unrelenting, never giving way to the chiaroscuro of blacks and greys found in the stormiest night upon the
surface. As she was jostled and jarred, Mara could only wait for vision to return. Yet every expectant moment was followed by another, until she had to clamp her teeth to stifle a rising scream.

At some point in the journey, Tax’ka inquired after her well-being. Mara gave back vague reassurance, though she felt none within; the rapid travel in utter darkness became a timeless voyage through contemplation. Fatigue and tension ruled her mind, providing sights where light and nature did not: imagined movements glimpsed at the edge of her vision caused her heart to pound and her breathing to become rapid and shallow. In time she shut her eyes, to make the darkness seem less menacing. The measure was a stopgap, and gave no sense of security. Each time she forgot herself and tried to see again, only blackness met her efforts. Her terror returned redoubled.

At last she sought calm in silent meditative chants.

An interminable interval later, a voice called her name.

Mara opened her eyes. She blinked at the surge of light, for not only were cho-ja globes glowing blue all about her, but oil lanterns burned hot-white with flame.

She awkwardly dismounted.

The Force Leader who had carried her saluted, and said, ‘At your command, mistress. Our ruler awaits.’

Mara glanced across the cavern. Ahead of her rose a half-familiar shape, a dais fashioned of banked earth. The cho-ja Queen reclined upon it, the enormous mass of her body screened from view behind rich hangings. As Mara met the gaze of the being who towered above her, her knees did not tremble only from fatigue.

The cho-ja Queen watched with eyes like black ice as her human visitor arose from her bow. Before Mara could utter even the most basic polite greeting, the ruler spoke.

‘We cannot help you, Lady Mara. You have by your
actions set the Assembly of Magicians against you, and we are forbidden to aid any they call foe.’

Mara forced her back straight. She removed her helm and raked back the damp coils of her hair. Letting the useless helmet hang by its strap from her hand, she nodded. She had no choice now but to take the boldest course she had ever dared attempt. ‘Lady Queen,’ she said as steadily as her state of nerves would allow, ‘I beg to differ. You must help me. The choice has been taken from you, for the terms of your treaty with the Assembly are already broken.’

Silence fell with the abruptness of a blow. The Queen reared back. ‘You speak from ignorance, Lady Mara.’

Never more aware of her danger, Mara closed her eyes and swallowed. She struggled against an irrational instinct to flee: she was underground, very deep. To run would avail nothing. She was at these cho-ja’s mercy, and if they could not be made to help her, all causes were lost.

Mara called back. ‘Not as ignorant as you think.’

The Queen stayed neutral. She did not settle to recline on her dais. ‘Speak on, Lady Mara.’

Mara chanced fate. ‘Your treaty has been violated,’ she ventured. ‘Not by your kind, good Queen. By me.’ The silence in the chamber was like deafness, it was so complete. Mara swallowed fear and resumed. ‘I broke your treaty, which by any unbiased judgment was unfair. I went to Chakaha. I spoke with your kind, and saw them as they were meant to live, free, and aboveground. I presumed, good Queen. I made a judgment, for the good of your race as well as my own people. I dared to ask alliance, and when I returned to the Empire’s shores, I brought with me two cho-ja mages sent to aid your cause.’

The hush became more profound at this news. Mara felt as if she raised her voice against a crushing weight of unspoken disapproval. ‘These mages shelter in an unused burrow within the hive near my estates. The Assembly will
not pause to distinguish whether your kind are innocent of their harboring. They will act as if all cho-ja are conspirators. Therefore the treaty is broken already, by my hand, for the betterment of this Empire, for which the cho-ja must now fight to reclaim their rightful free share.’

The heavy silence became prolonged; ‘Have you anything more to say?’ The Queen’s tone was like the ring of struck crystal.

For reply, Mara bowed deeply. ‘My word to you is complete.’

The Queen expelled a hiss of air. She swayed back and forth once, twice, then subsided onto her dais. Her eyes glittered. ‘Lady, still we cannot aid you.’

‘What?’ The expostulation left Mara’s lips before she could think. She remedied her lapse with another bow, this one low enough to be counted almost subservient. ‘The treaty’s terms are broken. Will you not rise to opportunity and bid to recover your freedom and reclaim your rightful destiny?’

The cho-ja Queen seemed sad as she gathered herself to answer. ‘Lady, we cannot. Our word was given. The breaking of the treaty was your doing, your treachery. You do not truly know our ways. It is not possible for us to violate an oath.’

Mara frowned. This interview was not proceeding as she had pictured. Driven by a raw fear, she said, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘The breaking of promises is a human trait,’ the Queen stated without rebuke.

Still puzzled, Mara struggled for comprehension. ‘I know that your kind never forget a memory,’ she mused, attempting to unravel this impasse.

The Queen voluntarily qualified. ‘Our given word cannot be broken. That is why humans over the years continually had the better of us. Each war ended in a treaty that we were
compelled by our nature to abide by. Humans have no such instinctive restraints. They break honor, and do not die of it. We recognise this odd behavior, but we cannot –’

‘Die!’ Mara interrupted in shock. ‘Do you mean that you cannot survive the breaking of a promise?’

The Queen inclined her head in affirmation. ‘Just so. Our given word is binding upon us, inextricably linked with the hive mind that itself is sanity and life. To us, a promise is as confining as walls and chains would be to a human – no, more. We cannot rebel against the tenets of our ancestors without calling madness upon the hive, a madness that brings death, for we would cease to feed, to breed, to defend ourselves. For us, to think is to act, and to act is to think. You have no words to embrace the concept.’

Mara gave in to the weakness in her knees. She sat abruptly upon the bare earth, her armor creaking in the stillness. Her voice was small, as close as she had ever come to sounding mollified. ‘I didn’t know.’

The Queen said nothing to exonerate Mara. ‘That is a common response by humans who at last perceive their error. Yet it changes nothing. You did not swear to the terms of the Forbidden. You cannot break what does not bind you. Only the cho-ja or the Assembly can violate this ancient pact.’

Mara cursed herself for pride and vanity. She had dared to think herself different from her fellow Ruling Lords; she had presumed to know her cho-ja friends, and had been guilty of an atrocity as great as any that her kind had perpetrated against the insectoid race in the past.

The Chakaha council had trusted her: wrongly, it would seem. She shrank from the association that eventually the mages she had cozened into coming to the Empire must know how poorly she had judged.

How many times had Ichindar, on his seat of power,
suffered for his human follies when they had come to adversely affect the people he had been set by fate to rule? Mara felt diminished with shame. She had aspired to set her son on the golden throne; to save his life, she believed.

How little she had reckoned the ramifications at the time, to set a weight of responsibility not even she could encompass upon the untried shoulders of a boy.

Mara set her face in her hands, burdened with something worse than mere despair. She contemplated the finality of death, that she had stubbornly named a waste of resource; now she was no longer sure. The gist of her philosophy had altered under her, until no course of action felt sure.

‘The magicians will seek reprisal against your kind,’ Mara ventured at last. She looked up humbly at the Queen. ‘What will you do?’

The massive insectoid regarded her with an expression no human could interpret. ‘Some of us will die,’ she replied with the implacable honesty of her kind. ‘This hive will very likely be first, since you were permitted an entry and an audience.’

‘Can you not flee?’ Mara badly wanted to hear one word of hope or encouragement, that all was not lost for these creatures whose friendship had sustained her through a lifetime of trial and difficulty.

The Queen twitched a forelimb, perhaps in the cho-ja equivalent of a shrug. ‘I am already within the deepest chamber of this hive. It is not possible to move me anywhere else. Once our Queens mature enough to lay eggs, we lose our mobility. Here, at least, I will survive until the last. Your Great Ones may destroy my body, but the hive mind will preserve my memory, and the record of all that passes here. Another hive will protect our mind, and when a new Queen is spawned, the mind will renew with her.’

Small comfort, Mara thought, not to be forgotten for
eternity. She did not speak of the foreboding in her heart, that worse might happen: there might indeed be an end without memory for the cho-ja nation held captive in the Empire. Her brashness might have bought their permanent extermination. She recalled the trust she had won from the Chakaha council, and her need to weep became painful.

She was given no chance to dwell upon guilt or misgiving. The next instant the Queen cocked her head to one side as if listening.

A rapid-fire, high-pitched buzzing was exchanged between ruler and her servants. The communication ceased as if cut off. Workers and warriors departed, and the Queen tilted her head toward her human guest.

‘What is it?’ Mara asked, dreading to hear the answer.

‘Great Ones have come,’ replied the Queen. ‘A delegation thirty strong has surrounded the entrance of my hive. They accuse us falsely of oath-breaking, and they demand that your person be surrendered.’

‘I will go out to them,’ Mara said, the trembling in her knees redoubled. She wondered if she could force her sore body to stand. ‘I would cause your kind no more trouble.’

The cho-ja Queen jerked a forelimb in an unmistakable gesture of negation. ‘You are not our prisoner. We have broken no oaths. It was you who brought mages over the borders, and there is no statute in the treaty that forbids us to give you audience. You may go. You may stay. Or the Black Robes may come and fetch you out. Neither option is any of our affair.’

Mara’s eyebrows rose in shock. She held her speech, striving to avoid any more errors of assumption. Carefully she weighed her next words. ‘If I choose not to surrender my person, you must know that the Assembly will misinterpret. They will believe in your complicity, and seek retribution.’

The Queen seemed less serene than hard as polished
obsidian. ‘They will believe wrongly, if what you postulate is accurate.’

Mara swallowed. She felt as if the firmness of the earth might at any moment crumble beneath her feet. ‘Your people could be harmed by such a misunderstanding.’

The Queen did not relent. ‘Then they would be harmed. That does not make the Black Robes’ misjudgment any closer to truth. We have kept to the terms of our treaty, as our kind must. If they, as humans, act in error,
then the error is theirs, as are the consequences.
’

Mara frowned, pondering upon the meaning that might lie beneath the Queen’s words. The Lady of the Acoma had skirted proscribed issues once before, seeking clues concerning the Forbidden. Now, unable to suppress the hope that sparked in her, she wondered whether these wily cho-ja in fact
sought
to provoke a misjudgment.

As she drew breath to give voice to this thought a sudden terror gripped her. The air in the chamber grew too thick, as if a great pressure wave rushed through the tunnels to crush her. Covering her ears as pain stabbed them, Mara gasped in shock. An explosion shook the earth, tossing her down. She struck earth on her side. A cry exploded from her, as the chamber around her became laced with lightning and fire.

Over the concussion of air struck to thunder, the Queen shrieked in agony and what may have been pure cho-ja rage.

‘The magicians attack! Our hive is destroyed! The treaty that binds us is broken!’ Then language was abandoned. The Queen’s voice rose to painful dissonance as she buzzed her last communication to her kind.

Mara choked on burning air. Her eyes streamed tears, and her skin scorched in the beginnings of searing torment. Justin, she thought, Kasuma: I have failed you both –

Her eyes were blinded by a dazzling flash of light, then smothered in all-consuming darkness.

She screamed. The world she knew upended. No earth pressed against her body, and no sense of gravity bound her down. From heat, her flesh shriveled in the bite of a cold like frost.

And then there was only darkness that extended beyond eternity.

Awareness returned.

Mara blinked, her reemerging senses confused. She struggled to orient herself, but her consciousness refused to resolve more than the rudiments of cohesive impression. Her body reclined on what felt like cushions. Warm air surrounded her, and gentle illumination. She could make out nothing else, no solid detail of chamber or setting. The burning, agonising nightmare of sorcery and destruction seemed banished as a nightmare would be upon waking.

‘Where am I?’ she murmured.

‘Safe,’ said a voice. By its ringing, disembodied tone, Mara knew: a miracle had occurred. Spared the wrath of the Assembly by the narrowest margin, she must be in the presence of the cho-ja mages. In Chakaha, they had demonstrated their ability to move her from place to place by magic. So they must have done now, pulling her out of the ruins of the hive even as the Black Robes achieved its destruction. The knowledge that cho-ja had suffered strangely brought her no distress. Alarmed, Mara pushed herself upright.

Her concern immediately dissipated, slipped from her like water might. She made out the shadowy forms of the cho-ja mages, crouched on either side of her. They had been busy in her absence. The burrow they inhabited was now adorned by furnishings created by their craft. The peace that Mara now experienced was also due to their influence. ‘You practice your arts already, spellcasters?’

One mage returned a gesture of reassurance, forearms turned so that the sharp edges were averted from chance
accident. ‘Your aura was tinged with fear and anger. If I presumed to ease your mind, forgive me, but the time is now for clear-headedness, yes?’

Mara swallowed. ‘The hive was destroyed by the Assembly. I am sorry.’

The second mage shifted with a rustle of wings. ‘Necessary sacrifice,’ it intoned in emotionless brevity. ‘The Queen’s memory is preserved intact, and the unjust treaty has been broken at last. Cho-ja warriors are freed to march within the Empire. They will now support your cause, Servant of the Empire.’

Her cause! Mara felt cold at the words. She had wished to secure her children’s safety, and to expunge stagnation and cruelty from her people’s culture. But an entire cho-ja hive had just been sacrificed to save her, and now she was being called to fullest account for her pledge to the council in Chakaha. The Empire’s Queens held out the expectation that she would go on to win freedom for their race.

‘Yes,’ the cho-ja mage to her left intoned in response to her thought. ‘The imperial seal with temple endorsements on a document that restores cho-ja to full citizenship should be sufficient to revoke the Assembly’s unfair judgment.’

Mara gathered her inner strength. ‘First, the Great Ones must be defeated,’ she warned. The prospect of outright confrontation with the magicians terrified her.

The mages inclined their heads in what seemed maddening serenity. ‘The means are at hand. But time grows short.’

The speed at which events were overtaking the Lady of the Acoma carried its own weight of care. Mara fought off overwhelming despair. She had lost her advisers. Arakasi was gods alone knew where. Lujan’s fate was unknown to her. The Acoma armies might now be ashes, and her husband could have been obliterated by the Assembly in the moment when they declared
her its enemy. Jiro of the Anasati might already be in the Holy City, and her children dead. And even if by miracle the Imperial Precinct was still secure and under the protection of the Imperial Whites, there remained the armies of the Anasati and the Omechan poised outside the city walls.

Mara chided herself. Listing every possible ramification of misfortune served nothing, but would only cancel what slender advantage the Chakaha mages had won for her. She saw death at every turn, whether she acted or not. Better to fight, and take matters in hand as best she could. Whether Justin and Kasuma were well or not, or whether an Omechan or an Anasati pretender had already assumed the golden throne, she owed the cho-ja who had spared her an honorable best effort.

‘I need information,’ she urged, rising immediately to her feet. Her whole body ached. She ignored its twinges, and briskly turned toward the Chakaha mages. ‘Your aid will be necessary. Once I understand the array of the forces laid against us, I will need to reach the Holy City more swiftly than the wind.’

The Chakaha mages straightened from their crouch. They bowed to her and then flanked her. ‘Your will is as our command, Lady Mara,’ said one. ‘Ask us what you would know. We will engage our arts to show you.’

Filled with trepidation for the losses she now had no choice but to count Mara forced herself to bear up. ‘My husband, Hokanu,’ she opened, the tremble in her voice scarcely controlled. ‘Where is he?’

‘Close your eyes,’ bade the Chakaha mages.

Mara obeyed, foreboding in her heart. An energy tingled through her: magic. She beheld more than darkness behind her lids: caught by a sensation akin to dizziness, she saw Hokanu bending over a tactical map of the Holy City. He gestured to rows of white pins on the walls, his helm cradled
in his hand, and his face worried. He looked as though he had not slept in a fortnight.

The sight of him was more than Mara could bear. ‘He is alive!’ she cried, near tears in her relief. Her joy and thanksgiving to the gods for this turn of fortune left her weak. Then she set aside wonderment to consider the practical. The mages informed her that Hokanu and his company of swift cavalry had crossed the city gates ahead of the siege. The Shinzawai infantry companies still marched from the North, but they would be of no use as relief forces, Mara saw, as her cho-ja mages showed her Black Robes forbidding the ranks of blue-clad warriors access to the Holy City.

Mara had been declared enemy, and her allies were forbidden to give aid. Without orders to defy the Great Ones, Tsurani training came to the fore and Hokanu’s warriors obeyed.

‘The Imperial Whites,’ Mara mused. ‘They will defend. Who beside Hokanu might command them?’

For answer, she was given a second view of the chamber where the council discussed tactics. Mara identified the figures who clustered about the Shinzawai Lord whose dreams matched her own: Arakasi was present, quiet as a shadow, and looking grim. Near him was the Shinzawai First Adviser, Dogondi, his face implacable, as he conducted animated discussion with another that Mara recognised with a start for Chumaka, who was the Anasati First Adviser.

Unthinking, she questioned aloud. ‘What does Chumaka do here?’

For answer, the mages showed her more images: a glade in a forest where Hokanu twisted and twisted a leather thong, choking the life out of Jiro. The faded color and rippling quality of the vision identified the seeing as a past event. Mara saw Jiro go limp in Hokanu’s grip. The Lord of the Anasati was dead!

And yet, based upon her husband’s current activity, Kentosani suffered under siege. ‘Who directs the attack on the Holy City?’ she demanded to know.

The scene behind her eyes spun and shifted focus. She beheld armies and wooden engines, and a Force Commander in Omechan colors. The outer walls had crumbled and been breached. The Imperial Precinct itself was under attack, and the plumes on the walls showed several factions defending: Imperial White, and another. In amazement Mara made out the purple and yellow of Xacatecas. ‘Hoppara is in Kentosani?’

‘Sent by his mother, Isashani,’ one Chakaha mage intoned. ‘He whom you name Hoppara reached Kentosani ahead of the attack, and organised the Imperial Whites to defend. The Omechan Lord knows of Jiro’s death, but he dreams of seizing the Anasati plot as his own. You still have a foe who wishes to rule upon the bodies of your children.’

Mara bit her lip. Her own armies – if they had escaped destruction, and if the magicians had not already forbidden them movement – would be too far south to attack the force menacing the Imperial Precinct. Her other allies appeared to have fled, or were stalling elsewhere, fearful of transferring the aroused wrath of the Assembly against themselves.

Her dismay must have been evident. ‘Lady,’ one of the mages broke in. ‘You are not without an army. Every cho-ja warrior in the Nations is yours to command.’

‘How can they be?’ Mara’s tone was bleak. ‘The Queen of the hive that was sacrificed inferred that cho-ja can never break a promise. The warriors you offer to my cause are already sworn to answer to other Ruling Lords. Your people have contracts of service that span generations.’

The mages buzzed in what Mara had come to interpret as cho-ja laughter. ‘No longer,’ said one. ‘Close your eyes,’ the second directed. ‘Let us show you.’

Infused with a growing wonderment, Mara did so. She beheld a dry field upon which the armies of two minor nobles engaged in battle. A fat young man in Ekamchi colors was exhorting one of his Strike Leaders. ‘But they can’t quit the field,’ he shouted, his sword arm waving dangerously near the face of his senior adviser. The servant jumped back in vexation as his master ranted on. ‘These cho-ja owe me and my father their allegiance.’

The Strike Leader shook his head, stiff-faced. ‘They say not, master.’

‘How?’ The Ekamchi son reddened under his battle helm. ‘Their kind are as slaves! They never break an alliance!’

‘They do now.’ The Strike Leader turned from his commander and watched with stony eyes as rank after rank of cho-ja warriors disengaged from combat and marched in swift order from the field.

‘This cannot be!’ shrieked the Ekamchi son. He ran forward and planted himself in the path of the ranking cho-ja Strike Leader. ‘You are traitors,’ he accused. ‘You break oath.’

The cho-ja officer returned a click that showed scorn. ‘Three thousand centis in metal and gems have been delivered to your father’s treasury. Such was the price that bought our service. All past bargains and alliances are ended; all payments are refunded.’

The Ekamchi boy spluttered, but as the cho-ja officer crouched into a posture that threatened attack, he was forced to give ground.

Mara opened her eyes, shaking with unbridled laughter. ‘What a surprise to most Ruling Lords that the cho-ja were something more, or perhaps less, than loyal mercenaries.’

‘Humans have much to learn concerning our kind,’ the Chakaha mages agreed tactfully. ‘Old ways have changed. Not even the Assembly could wring from our people another treaty like the one that endured in such
misery through thousands of years. When the war of the mages was lost, our magic was not developed for defensive purposes. Be sure that such weakness has been remedied in those lands beyond the Empire.’

Mara beheld the perilous glitter in the eyes of the Chakaha mages, and her blood ran cold in her body. Traditions were broken, and danger was in the wind, and now was her moment to seize advantage if she would, to secure the next age’s peace. She mastered her inner trepidation and opened. ‘Messages must be sent, and actions taken to enforce Justin’s claim to the golden throne before the Assembly can interfere. Here is what must be done.’

Mara waited, suppressing the deep quiver of fear. Her hair was piled high on her head, elaborately looped and braided, and fixed with precious metal pins. Golden pins, she thought, and the arrogance of her presumption, to put on imperial gold, made her feel the more small and uncertain. And yet there could be no half measures, if the Empire as a Nation was to survive.

Her head swam with recollection of the orders she had given between her bath and her robing. She drew a deep breath. To the cho-ja Force Commander, who crouched at her elbow, she said, ‘Where are we exactly?’

Like his counterparts in free Chakaha, this warrior eschewed the trappings of human commanders. His jet-dark carapace had begun to show a faint turquoise stripe, perhaps a decoration, perhaps a mark of rank. Mara looked forward to the chance to study such distinctions, if the gods saw fit to grant her victory. Then she dismissed speculation as the warrior pointed upward and said, ‘Directly above is the imperial antechamber. The ones you requested should gather for a legal coronation ceremony already await inside the audience hall. All preparations are in order, and your people anticipate your arrival.’

Mara braced herself. She waved away the maid called in from the Imperial Palace, who had edged between the ranks of the warriors for one last adjustment of her dress. The gown she wore could not possibly hang without wrinkles, taken as it had been from attic storage. It had belonged to the last dowager Empress, a larger woman than Mara, but it was the closest to Acoma green that could be found, so it would have to do. Hasty stitches had gathered in the waist, and pins nipped up the long hem. Mara felt encased in layers like a needle cushion. The heavy fabrics chafed the sores left from her armor, and rice powder could never conceal all the scrapes and scratches she had sustained in her flight though the forest.

Feeling every inch the hoyden bundled under a disguising mass of finery, she said, ‘When you cut through to the outside from this tunnel, the Black Robes will know something is afoot.’

The mages inclined their heads. ‘We are prepared for them, as best we can be.’

Mara took a grip on her nerve, which seemed by the minute to ebb. ‘Then send me Arakasi. I would confer with him before we start the final move.’

It was still disconcerting to the Lady how swiftly the mages could translate her merest wish into command. She had no sooner finished speaking than her Spy Master was delivered into her presence, as disgruntled as anyone had ever observed him.

Arakasi arose from where he had been dumped by the spell, face down upon the earthen floor. Unlike the imperial maids who had been summoned earlier by magic to attend to Mara’s robing, the Spy Master did not lose his wits. His raised brows settled into a frown that immediately smoothed as he glanced about and identified the presence of cho-ja. Next he fixed upon his mistress, who was almost unrecognisable in imperial robes of state.