The Complete Empire Trilogy (123 page)

Kevin stared a moment longer, then bent his head toward his Lady. ‘The tiger knows we’re outside his lair.’

Mara arrived at her chair, and sat, and by all appearance seemed occupied with arranging her formal overrobe. ‘Tiger?’

‘Like one of your sarcats, only four legged, twice as big, and a lot more dangerous.’ Kevin assumed his position behind her chair, crowded into the narrow space by the press of extra warriors who normally would have waited on the upper concourse.

Mara took stock of the hall, which seemed more gloomy and, oddly, more resonant to sound. There were empty chairs, with the gloss of armour and sword scabbards more plentiful than fine silks and jewels among the Lords present. As intrigues became more tangled, the talk turned convoluted; words gained layers of meaning, and looks between Lords were all weighted. Each empty place meant a council member dead or intimidated into withdrawal. The factions that remained were resolute, and some caucuses fairly bristled with unspoken aggression.

A council runner brought Mara a note. She slit the seal, glanced at the two chops stamped inside, then motioned for the boy to wait while she read. Lord Zanwai entered, along with a dozen warriors. He appeared recovered from his ordeal the night before, and as a blocked aisle forced him to improvise a route, he chose one that brought him close to Mara. He gifted the Acoma Lady with a smile and slight nod as he passed.

She returned his tacit greeting, then penned a response to the note just received and dispatched the runner to another
gallery. To Lujan she said, ‘We’ve gained two more votes, in thanks for Arakasi’s information.’

The morning’s business wore on. Mara exchanged talk with a dozen Lords on seemingly harmless subjects. Although Kevin tried to follow the byplay, he could not discern if the exchanges masked threats or offers of alliance. More and more, he found his eyes drawn to the lower gallery, where Lord after Lord paid court to Tasaio of the Minwanabi. Kevin could not help but notice that the visitors spoke most, while Tasaio largely remained silent. When he did reply, his words were sparse and crisp, as evidenced by the flash of white teeth. The warriors at his sandalled feet moved no muscle all the while, but sat with the inhuman poise of statues.

‘His followers fear him,’ Kevin whispered to Lujan in a stolen moment of confidence.

The Acoma Force Commander returned a barely perceptible nod. ‘With good reason,’ he murmured back. ‘Tasaio is a superb killer, and he keeps his skills sharp by using them.’

His gaze on the figure in the orange-and-black chair, Kevin felt a chill skim his flesh. If the Game of the Council was ruthless, there sat the most merciless player of them all.

Mara returned to her quarters for lunch and a consultation with her advisers. Arakasi had tied his arm in a sling and commandeered her writing desk. By the clutter of notes and quills, he had been busy, and remained so as Mara asked her servants to bring up trays of light food. Kevin watched the Spy Master pen three more missives in the interim, the parchments held braced under his splinted forearm, while he wrote in level, left-handed script.

‘You’re right-handed,’ the Midkemian accused; he had a swordsman’s eye, and noting which hand a man used was part of an ingrained reflex. ‘I would have sworn it.’

Arakasi did not look up. ‘Today I cannot be,’ he said with spare irony.

When Kevin looked to see if the penmanship suffered, he was further awed to find that the handwriting varied like artistry. One of the notes looked as though it had been scribed by a strong male hand; another seemed feminine and delicate; and yet another, as if the author could neither read nor spell with skill, but struggled by with scanty education.

‘Do you ever get confused about who you are today?’ Kevin asked, for he had yet to find an impersonation that the Spy Master would not try.

Arakasi deemed the question beneath notice and went on with enviable dexterity to fold and seal his letters one-handed. By now Mara had slipped out of her overrobe. She did not ask Arakasi to move, but sat instead on the sleeping mat he had vacated.

‘Who is going to deliver those?’ she asked tartly.

The Spy Master acknowledged her annoyance by offering a bow made graceless by the encumbrance of the sling. ‘Kenji volunteered once already,’ he said gently. ‘These are the replies to a good morning’s work.’ As Mara’s look warmed toward outrage, Arakasi raised his brows in reproof. ‘You forbade me to go out, and I have not done so.’

‘So I see,’ Mara said. ‘I should have assumed you could feign sleep as well as you shape your disguises.’

‘The effects of the wine were quite genuine,’ Arakasi objected, faintly hurt. He looked at the papers scattered around his knees. ‘You do wish to know what I’ve learned?’

‘Tasaio,’ Mara cut in. ‘He’s here.’

‘More than that.’ Arakasi’s air of lightness disappeared. ‘Most of the struggles so far have been tactical sparring. Tonight that will change. Entire sections of the palace are being set up as staging areas for large numbers of warriors and assassins. Some prior battles were fought simply to gain quarters from which to launch assaults.’

Mara looked silently to Lujan, who said, ‘Mistress, our soldiers are still two days away by forced march. We must rely upon the forces we have here to defend you.’

These words left a difficult silence, through which the arrival of the servant with the lunch trays seemed a clattering, alien intrusion. Mara sighed. ‘Arakasi?’

The Spy Master grasped her meaning by instinct. ‘Intelligence will not be necessary. Tasaio is preoccupied with gaining support for his own claim to the Warlord’s throne. He expects you will throw Acoma support to whichever of his opponents is strongest. Even if he overestimates your courage, and you try to bury your enmity under a show of neutrality, he will still move to obliterate you. Your death would satisfy his family’s blood vow to the Red God, and additionally throw your allies into disarray. Your popularity is on the rise. To cut you down would bring notice, perhaps give the Minwanabi enough edge to claim the white and gold over whoever emerges intact from the infighting of the Omechan Clan.’

By now Mara had recovered her wits. ‘I have a plan. Who else is likely to be attacked tonight?’

Arakasi did not need to consult any notes. ‘Hoppara of the Xacatecas and Iliando of the Bontura seem high on the list.’

‘Iliando of the Bontura? But he’s one of Lord Tecuma’s best friends and an Ionani stalwart.’ Mara noticed the servant hanging uncertainly by the food trays. She motioned for the man to resume his duties. ‘Why would an Ionani Lord be singled out as a target?’

‘As a warning to the Tonmargu and other Ionani Clan Lords not to oppose Tasaio or the Omechans,’ Arakasi supplied.

Kevin said, ‘A polite note would be sufficient, I should think.’

Lujan broke in with dry humour. ‘Killing Lord Iliando is a Tsurani polite note.’

Mara gave the interruption short shrift; she asked Arakasi, ‘Could your contacts get word to the Lords you judge to be highest on Minwanabi’s list? I need to ask them for time in council this afternoon.’

Arakasi reached for his pen. He dipped the nib, slipped a sheet of fresh parchment under his splint, and said, ‘You will loan me Kenji and two warriors for the task?’ Without looking up between lines, he added, ‘They need only go to the city and leave the notes with a certain sandal maker in the river stalls. From there the deliveries will be accomplished by other hands.’

Mara closed her eyes as though she suffered from a headache. ‘You can have the use of half my company, if you need them.’ To Kevin she added, ‘See what Jican has ready for us to eat. We must be back in council shortly.’

While the Midkemian moved off to investigate the trays, Lujan left to review the state of his garrison. ‘Have the men rest,’ he instructed his Patrol Leaders. ‘Tonight we shall fight.’

When Kevin returned with a plate and juice, he found Mara still motionless on the mat. Her brows were gathered into a frown, her gaze distantly intense. ‘Are you all right?’

Mara focused on him as he laid the meal by her knees. ‘I’m just tired.’ She looked at the food without interest. ‘And worried.’

Kevin heaved an exaggerated sigh. ‘Gods, I’m glad to hear you say that.’

Mara smiled at his japery. ‘Why?’

‘Because I’m scared senseless.’ Kevin stuck a two-tine Tsurani fork through a slab of cold jigabird as if he skewered an enemy. ‘It’s good to know you’re human under all that hard-boiled Tsurani stoicism. When I set out to do something foolhardy, the last thing I feel is complacent.’

From the next room came the rasp of warriors sharpening laminated-hide swords.

‘That sound makes me want to commit suicide,’ Kevin added. He looked at Arakasi, who worked over his notes with economical lack of nerves. ‘Don’t you ever want to throw something?’

The Spy Master looked up, utterly bland. ‘A knife,’ he said with ice-cold lack of inflection. ‘Through Tasaio of the Minwanabi’s black heart.’ He was unarmed, bandaged, a man in tired clothes writing letters in a crowded apartment. But at that moment, through chills, Kevin could not have said which was the more dangerous: Tasaio of the Minwanabi or the man who served Mara as Spy Master.

Warriors stood at the ready. The rooms of the Acoma apartment had become an armed camp, with fourteen additional soldiers in the purple and yellow of the Xacatecas joined to the ranks. Lord Hoppara had seen sense almost immediately when Mara approached him in council. Having too few warriors to fortify his larger quarters, and with Minwanabi already set against him, he saw no point in standing behind an appearance of neutrality that by morning might see him coldly dead. Some of the Xacatecas garrison had fought in Dustari, and Force Commander Lujan was known to them. Warriors sought old companions, or made new, as they waited through the first hours of evening.

Behind furniture barricades in the central room of the apartment, amid a ring of warriors and the last few cushions and sleeping mats, Mara fretted. ‘They should have been back by now.’

Hoppara swirled a finger in his wineglass to stir up the spices and fruit that had been added in accordance with his taste. ‘Lord Iliando has always been a man to look upon logic with suspicion.’

Mara resisted an urge to seek Kevin’s comfort as the gloom of twilight deepened, and the first thuds and cries of
distant combat echoed through the corridors outside. Against her better wishes, she had granted Arakasi’s request to take Kenji and a patrol of five in a final attempt to convince Iliando of the Bontura to see reason. As the muffled clatter of swordplay resounded through the palace, Mara worried that her men had delayed their return until too late.

Then came the signal she longed for, a coded knock at the door. Lujan’s men swiftly slid barriers aside and lowered the heavy bar. The portal opened, and Kenji hurried in, a Force Commander in violet and white plumes at his shoulder.

‘Thank the gods,’ Mara murmured, as more warriors entered, the heavyset Lord Iliando of the Bontura in their midst. Last came warriors in Acoma green, and after them, at a flat run, Arakasi. He slipped in just as the door was closing, his helm with its Patrol Leader’s badge shadowing a face pale as parchment.

Mara left the inner circle of protection to meet him. ‘You should not have been running,’ she accused her Spy Master, aware that his poor colour was solely due to pain.

Arakasi bowed. ‘Mistress, it was necessity.’ The splinted arm under his officer’s cloak was flawlessly hidden; no one would think that the warrior before her was not fully able to defend himself. As Mara began to voice recriminations, the Spy Master quickly cut in. ‘Lord Iliando was obdurate until, at the last, we gave him a detailed picture of his own forces, their deployment, and four ways he was vulnerable to attack.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘It was his own weakness that convinced him, not our belief that he is the obvious object lesson for Clan Ionani and Lord Tonmargu.’

Arakasi glanced to the doorway, where warriors replaced the bar and barricades, and the Lord of the Bontura and his Force Commander stood in conference with Lujan and Hoppara to formulate a combined defence. ‘We were none too soon,’ the Spy Master allowed. His gaze flicked back to
Mara. ‘Lord Bontura’s apartment was already under assault when I left, and the chests I shoved under the door will not detain his attackers very long. When they find the rooms empty, they will be coming here.’ At Mara’s slight frown he added, ‘I escaped out the back, through the gardens.’

She dared not ask how he had climbed walls in his condition; only his breathlessness told how hard he had run to overtake Lord Iliando’s escort. Now firmly the Ruling Lady, Mara addressed her Spy Master. ‘Get out of that armour,’ she commanded. ‘Find a servant’s robe, and hide in the cupboards with the scullions. That’s an order,’ she snapped out as Arakasi drew breath in protest. ‘When this is over, if I am alive, I will have need of your services more than ever.’

The Spy Master bowed. But before he disappeared in the direction of the kitchen he used his Patrol Leader’s badge to collar a pair of warriors in Bontura and Acoma colours. ‘Get your master and mistress back into the fortified room, and convince them to stay there. Attack will be upon us any moment.’

Minutes later, the solid ring of axes bit into the outer window frames. Warriors in the rooms on the garden side sprang to the ready, while in the room that faced the corridors a thundering crash hammered at the barricaded front portal. Lujan shouted, ‘A battering ram!’