Servant of the Empire (37 page)

‘The grinders of condiments have sheds at the harbour-side,’ Lujan said, when Kevin commented. ‘Ilama does great trade in spices that grow only in the mountains to the south.’

The folk were also famous for their weaving, and prayer mats woven in Dustari were reputed to carry good fortune in their threads. Fey blood ran strong in the folk from that shore; many children born here grew up to take service with the Assembly of Magicians.

Kevin longed for the chance to explore the town, and watched the street traffic avidly as
Coalteca
dropped anchor in the bay. Two-wheeled carts moved along the docks, hauled by a six-legged creature much slighter than a needra. Weaving flocks of scarlet-and-white shore birds screamed and dived above the masts, chasing one another for the chance to snatch scraps tossed overboard by the cooks.
Dirty urchins shouted, their voices echoing across the harbour, as they likewise sought handouts. Suddenly their cries stilled, and they wheeled and fled into waterfront alleys. Kevin’s interest sharpened.

Onto the wharf marched soldiers armoured in yellow and purple. Bearers carried a lacquered litter hung with banners bearing the symbol of a catlike animal entwined with a snake. Servants hurried aside to clear the way for the company, and the dock crews bowed low in deference.

‘The Lord of the Xacatecas comes personally to meet us,’ Mara commented in some surprise. Poised by Kevin’s shoulder, and dressed in rich robes of green, she wore makeup that artfully managed to play down her youth.

‘You didn’t expect him?’ Kevin asked, turning to assess the reason for her nerves.

‘I did not.’ Mara considered, frowning. ‘That he has left his war camp to attend the arrival of the Acoma honours us.’ She waved to one of her maids and said quickly, ‘Unseal my black-lacquered carry chest. I’m going to need a finer overrobe.’

Kevin’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘The jewels you wear now are already blinding.’

Mara fingered the seed pearls and emeralds stitched in rows and whorls at lapel and cuffs. ‘For a Lord who rules one of the Five Families, and the Warchief of Clan Xacala, I shall wear metal. To appear in less than my finest apparel might be taken as insult, and this man is one my people must never risk offending.’

Sailors began to lower
Coalteca
’s tender, and under Lujan’s direction Mara’s honour guard assembled on the deck, their armour polished, and their spearheads adorned with streamers. The Lady hastened off to change her robe. Kevin, dressed in Midkemian-style trousers and shirt, took his place among her cortege like a grey-and-white dove in the midst of a festival.

Shortly after, Mara reappeared, clothed in an emerald silk overrobe tastefully sewn with copper sequins. Kevin preferred it to the pearls, and said so; the reddish glint of the copper set off the deep brown of her eyes. But the compliment brought no smile from her.

Lujan saw his Lady settled on board the canopied tender that would bear her party ashore. The new Force Commander’s light brand of humour also seemed absent, which Kevin interpreted as a cue to be restrained. Changed from the brash captive freshly taken from the battlefield, the Midkemian had finally learned the wisdom of keeping quiet when the time warranted. That Lord Xacatecas was immensely powerful was apparent by the depth of Mara’s bow, made the moment she stepped onto the stone wharf, to the personage in yellow armour and dazzling gold wristbands who sat like a king enthroned upon his litter.

The Lord of the Xacatecas inclined his head, arose, and returned a polite bow. He was an older man, who did not appear dissipated. His flesh was sunburned and hard, and his hazel eyes shrewd amid their wrinkles. His dress was fine, yet not frivolous, and his mouth was bracketed by deep folds that hinted at irony as he smiled.

‘Lady Mara, are you well?’

His voice was gruff, but well modulated. And Mara, looking up at him, smiled also. ‘You honour me too much, my Lord,’ she said in quick deference, by which Kevin knew the man had higher rank, but had not insisted she speak first. Lord greeted Lady in friendliness, with a public display of favour. ‘I am well,’ Mara continued, her poise belying her strain. ‘And greatly flattered to see you here. You are well, Lord Chipino?’

‘Well indeed,’ the man replied, with sudden, acid sarcasm. He tossed back steel-coloured hair and laughed; Kevin could not see why, but decided the Lord was responding to some subtle nuance of Mara’s as he offered
his arm and led her forward. ‘Lord Desio, may he and his cousins die choking, shall be made to regret this day.’

Mara murmured something in reply that caused the Lord of the Xacatecas to laugh again, and to eye her with fresh appreciation. He completed a gracious motion, and the Lady was handed into the Lord’s own litter, a thoughtful courtesy, since his personal appearance had not been expected, and time had not allowed the Acoma servants to unpack her palanquin. The company of warriors moved off in squares of black and yellow offset like a chequerboard with squares of green.

‘If I were younger,’ boomed the Lord in his gravelly voice, ‘I would be minded to give young Hokanu some competition.’

Well, Kevin decided – with a small pang of jealousy – at least the Lord of the Xacatecas seemed charmed by the Lady who desired his alliance.

‘For which your beautiful Lady wife would wish me poisoned,’ Mara demurred smoothly. ‘Is Isashani well?’

‘Well, thank you, and grateful for my absence, which keeps her from becoming pregnant again. Turn here,’ Lord Chipino instructed his bearers. The company wheeled smartly across a narrow intersection and entered the canopied shade of an open-fronted hostel.

A refreshment bar extended the length of the back wall, and the sides were open framework. Soups, pastries, and assorted blends of local herb brew, called tesh, as well as the usual chocha were sold here. Benches and tables emptied as patrons of lesser rank scurried to make room for their betters, and a flurry of servants in smocks descended to clean up leavings and lay out clean cups and plates. Chipino saw Mara to a seat, took the Lord’s place at the head of the table, and set his elbows on the sanded planks, chin rested on his steepled fingertips. He regarded the girl who had routed Lord Jingu of the Minwanabi in his own home, and
whose quickness at the game was earning her notoriety. Around him, Lujan’s warriors and Xacatecas’ were arrayed in defensive formation, leaving Kevin standing with the bearers just beyond earshot of the conversation. He could tell by Mara’s bearing that the social chat ended, and that discussion of serious matters began almost immediately. Servants brought food, which was laid aside barely touched, to make room for parchment maps, and a series of slates brought in by a servant in yellow-and-purple livery.

Presently Mara waved for Kevin to come and stand at her shoulder. ‘I want you to hear this,’ she said, and by her tone the Midkemian understood that she intended to ask his opinion later, when they had time in private for talk.

The afternoon passed in discussion of the previous year’s succession of skirmishes, which had resulted in Mara’s summons from the High Council.

‘There is only one thing to be concluded,’ Xacatecas wrapped up. ‘The raiders from Tsubar are growing vastly more numerous, and aggressive beyond their normal nature. What I would ask you is, why?’

Mara regarded the older man steadily, thinking. ‘We shall find out, Lord Chipino.’ She spun her empty tesh cup with her fingers and said obliquely, ‘Rest assured, my estates are vigorously fortified.’

The Lord of the Xacatecas smiled to show even teeth. ‘Then, daughter of Sezu, we understand each other well. The enemy shall gain nothing of advantage.’ He reached out, and lifted his goblet of Jamar crystal in hands that bore no rings. ‘To the victory,’ he said softly.

Mara met his eyes and nodded, and for some unknown reason Kevin felt chilled.

The
Coalteca
had been unloaded by the time the Lord and Lady emerged from their table of refreshment. Mara’s palanquin awaited beside Lord Chipino’s, and servants had
commandeered a herd of pack beasts. These were lightweight, six-legged, and to Kevin’s eyes, resembled a cross between a camel and a Ilama, except for the ears, which were scaled and whorled like a lizard’s. Mara’s wardrobe chests and the tents, braziers, charcoal sacks, oil barrels, and stores and supplies for her army had all been strapped to strange, U-shaped racks that rode the creatures’ backs like saddles. The train was a very long one, noisy with the bleat of animals and the calls of swarthy-faced tenders who wore loose scarves at their throats. Drovers in baggy garments striped in garish colours prodded their charges into a straggling order of march; the human and cho-ja companies formed up more quickly, and ascent into the mountains began.

Kevin followed with the rest of Mara’s house servants. Distracted by a giggling child who rolled in the gutter by the roadside, he was startled by a splash of warm fluid.

He spun, discovered a white gobbet of saliva dripping from his shirt sleeve, and grimaced. ‘Damn it to hell,’ he said in Midkemian.

Lujan smiled broadly in commiseration. ‘Don’t stand too close to the querdidra,’ he called in caution. ‘They spit.’

Kevin flicked his hand, and shed a foaming mess on the pavement. It reeked unpleasantly, like rotted onions.

‘Evidently they don’t like your smell,’ the Force Commander finished, laughing.

Kevin eyed the offending pack beast, which was looking at him through violet, long-lashed eyes and curling its monkeylike lips. ‘Feeling’s mutual,’ he groused. And he wished it a painful attack of constipation, and thorns in all six of its padded feet. Dustari was going to be peachy, he groused to himself, when the querdidra that carried the supplies seemed to outnumber the soldiers.

The mountains changed drastically as they approached the
passes. Forested slopes fell away, scoured by winds and driven sand to bare rock. The smells of sun-heated stone replaced those of greenery and soil, and the land became a vista of bleakness. The high country dropped sharply off into a broken series of buttes awash in vast oceans of sand. The sun burned in a sky pale green with drifts of airborne dust, and cooked the lands beneath to a shimmering curtain of heat waves. The rock itself seemed to smoulder, rough-grained, and textured red, black and ochre. The fires of its forming seemed very recent, and renewed each day with the sharp blaze of sunrise.

In contrast, the nights were chill, with dry gusts cutting through clothing like ice. It became no surprise that the drovers and native guides wore their neckerchiefs over their faces to protect them from wind-driven grit. Centuries of such weather had chiselled the rocks into odd formations resembling towers or stacks of crockery, or sometimes demonlike pillars that seemed to prop up the Kelewanese sky. Kevin and Mara both stared at such shapes in fascination, early on – but not after the first raid by desert men, which happened on the steep trail leading to the top of a pass.

Aware first of a blood curdling yell, and a disturbance in the line of pack beasts up ahead, Mara whipped aside the curtains of her palanquin. ‘What’s amiss?’

Lujan motioned for her to stay back, and then drew his sword. Mara peered around him and through the ranks of her honour guard saw small, broad-shouldered figures in dun-coloured robes leaping in a screeching charge from a cleft between the rocks. They grabbed the bridles of several querdidra and dragged them, bleating, off the road. Surefooted even on loose stone, the creatures bucked and shied as warriors in Xacatecas colours jumped downslope in pursuit.

Lujan shouted to his First Strike Leader and signalled
broadly with his sword. Acoma warriors broke from the caravan line lower down, on a switchback curve below their position. Their sally was joined, then overtaken by a fast-moving strike force of cho-ja. Less sure than the insects, the humans fanned out in a wide ring to cut off the desert men, while the cho-ja under their Strike Leader slipped past them and cut in an arc across the path of the raiders’ descent.

‘Defer to Lord Chipino’s officers,’ Lujan commanded the Acoma. Then, as the Lord of the Xacatecas called something to Mara from his litter, the Lady touched her officer’s sleeve.

‘The Lord would have no live prisoners,’ she instructed.

Lujan relayed the order.

Kevin watched, wide-eyed, as the cho-ja overtook the raiders. Seeing the shining black insectoids race upslope to take them, with their helmets sitting square on faces that were nothing close to human, and upraised forelimbs lifted like razors to kill, the diminutive mountain men skidded to a stop. They drove the querdidra forward with slaps and curses, trying to disrupt the cho-ja ranks. But Lax’l’s warriors were fast, almost black blurs in the sunlight as they swerved around the fear-maddened beasts. And uncannily, they made no sound, beyond the click of hooked feet on broken rock. The cho-ja flowed past the disturbance and came on, while the desert men spun and tried frantically to run.

The slaughter was swift. Kevin, who had never seen cho-ja in war, felt gooseflesh rise beneath his sleeves. He had seen men die, but never disembowelled
from behind
, with a single stroke of those black, chitin-bladed forelimbs. The cho-ja were deadly swift, and they slew with a machinelike thoroughness.

‘Your cho-ja make short work of the nomads,’ Lord Chipino observed, his grim tone revealing he derived no enjoyment from the deaths. ‘Perhaps they will think twice about harassing our supply trains into Ilama henceforth.’

Mara lifted a fan from her cushions and tapped it open, thoughtfully. She cooled herself, more from nerves than heat. Though blood sports did not appeal to her, she did not show squeamishness at the sight of battle and death. ‘Why attack so heavily guarded a caravan? By Lashima, can’t they see we have your honour guard as well as three companies of warriors?’