The Complete Empire Trilogy (59 page)

Aware he was in no position to bargain, Mara swished her fan with a studied show of indifference. ‘I might give thirty centuries for these barbarians,’ she said slowly. ‘If the big one bleeds too much, I might not.’

At this, even Lujan raised his brows. He, too, questioned his Lady’s wisdom in purchasing unruly slaves, but it was not the place of a warrior to advise. He held his silence while, in the compound, the factor turned on the tally keeper and sent the man scurrying off for cloths and water. The man returned and was immediately assigned the humiliating task of bathing the redhead’s cuts.

But the barbarian ringleader would endure no solicitude. He reached with one huge fist and, despite the restraint of cuffs and strap, moved fast enough to catch the tally keeper’s wrist. What he said could not be overheard from the gallery, but the servant abandoned both rag and basin, as if his fingers were burned.

The factor glossed over this disobedience with a smile of nervous improvisation. He had no wish to try Mara’s patience by ordering reprisal against the slave. He tried to behave as if everything had gone according to plan as one of the barbarian’s fellows stepped forward and briskly began cleansing the whip wounds of his companion.

‘Lady, the purchase papers can be drawn up at once, in the private comfort of my office. I’ll send for iced fruit for your thirst while you wait to sign. If you would be so kind as to join me in my office …’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Mara said crisply. ‘Send your scribe to me outside, for I wish that these slaves be removed to my estates at once. The instant I have a bill of sale, my warriors will take them into custody.’ She made a last study of the compound and added, ‘That is, I will sign for my purchase after these slaves have been provided with proper clothing.’

‘But –’ spluttered the factor in dismay. The tally keeper looked sour. Although the hamper brought out from the storerooms had originally held enough trousers and shirts to clothe three incoming coffles from Jamar, many of these men still stood naked or half-clothed. There should be a proper inquiry over that, and no doubt a round of beatings, but the Lady’s impatience ended the matter. She wanted to sign and buy at once. With a furious gesture, the factor urged the tally keeper to overlook the lapse and be done. At thirty centuries, these slaves would bring little profit, but worse was the risk that they would linger unsold, swelling the holding pens and eating thyza that might be better used to fatten more amenable slaves – each worth five to ten centuries alone.

Aware of which shortfall he would rather report to his investors, the factor regained his poise. ‘Send my runner for a scribe to draw up the Lady’s document.’ He snapped something under his breath as his underling began to protest, surely an urge to make haste lest the Lady come to her senses and change her mind.

The assistant rushed off. The Lady in the gallery paid his departure no heed; her own gaze turned toward the redheaded barbarian acquired on impulse and intuition. He in his turn stared back, and something about the intentness
of his blue eyes caused her to blush as Hokanu of the Shinzawai had not.

Mara suddenly turned away and without a word to her Strike Leader hurried down the steps from the gallery to the street level. The Strike Leader needed but a step to overtake her and resume his position. He wondered if the speed of her departure resulted from her impatience to return to her home or from another discomfort.

Putting aside speculation, Lujan bent to assist Mara into her litter. ‘Jican’s going to be thrown into a dither.’ Mara studied her officer’s face and found none of his usual amusement. In place of mocking humour she saw only concern – and perhaps something more.

Then the factor’s scribe appeared with documents to finalize the sale. Mara signed, impatient to be away.

A noise of alien chatter and grumbling, and the slaves were herded out of the gate from the holding area. Lujan gave the barest motion of his head, and Mara’s company of guards busied themselves with readying two dozen Midkemians for the journey back to the Acoma estates. The task was made difficult by the slaves’ poor comprehension of the language and an unbelievable tendency to argue. No slave of Tsurani birth would ever think of demanding sandals before being required to march. Stymied by seemingly irrational defiance, the soldiers first threatened and finally resorted to force. Their tempers grew shorter by the minute. Soldiers were not overseers, and beating slaves was beneath their station. To be seen manhandling chattel in a public street shamed them and reflected no honour upon the mistress now ready to depart.

Mara’s too-straight back as she sat motionless on her cushions showed her discomfort at this coarse display. She gestured for her bearers to shoulder the litter poles. The pace she commanded from them at least assured that passage through the streets of Sulan-Qu would be brief.

Mara motioned to Lujan and, after the briefest conference, determined that she and her party should drive the Midkemian slaves by the least conspicuous route. This involved crossing the poorer quarters by the river, over streets rutted with refuse and puddles of sewage and wash water. Now the warriors drew swords and shoved laggard slaves on their way with the flats of their blades. Footpads and street thieves were little threat to a company of their vigilance and experience, but Mara wished for haste for other reasons.

Her enemies always took interest in her movements, no matter how insignificant, and gossip would arise about her visit to the slave pen. Even now the factor and his handlers were probably heading for the local wine shop, and if just one trader or merchant overheard their speculation upon Mara’s motives in buying outworld slaves, rumours would instantly begin to spread. And once her presence in the city was widely known, enemy agents would be racing to overtake her and track her movements. Since the Midkemians were intended for the clearing of new needra meadows, Mara wished that fact kept secret as long as possible. No matter how trivial, any information gained by her foes weakened the Acoma. And Mara’s supreme concern, since the day she became Ruling Lady, was to preserve the house of her ancestors.

The litter bearers turned into the street that flanked the riverfront. Here the byway narrowed to an alley between ramshackle buildings, providing scant room for the litter on either side. Atop the walls, galleries with rough hide curtains loomed above the streets, their roof beams crowding together, swallowing sunlight. Successive generations of landlords had added additional floors, each new storey overhanging the previous one, so that to look upward was to view a narrow slice of the green Kelewanese sky, brilliant against the oppressive dimness. Mara’s soldiers strained to
see in the sudden gloom, always watchful for threats to their mistress; this warren provided ample opportunity for ambush.

The river breeze could not penetrate this tight-woven maze of tenements. The air hung motionless and humid, fetid with garbage, waste, and the pungency of decaying timbers. Many foundations were eaten away with dry rot, causing walls to crack and roof beams to sag. Despite the repellent surroundings, the streets teemed with humanity. The inhabitants hurried clear of Mara’s retinue, commoners ducking into doorless hovels at the sight of an officer’s plume. Warriors of great Lords would instantly beat any wretch slow to clear their path. Only throngs of shouting and filthy urchins tempted such misfortune, pointing at the Lady’s rich litter and darting clear of the soldiers who jabbed spear butts to clear them away.

The Midkemians had ceased their chattering, much to Lujan’s relief. At present his warriors had enough to occupy them without that added irritation. No matter how often the barbarians were ordered to silence, as befitted slaves, they tended to disobey. Now, as the Acoma retinue passed between the overcrowded tenements, the spicy, smoke-scented air that issued from the dens of the drug-flower sellers became prevalent. The eaters of the kamota blossom resin lived in dreams and hallucinations, and madness came upon them in fits. The warriors carried their spears in readiness, prepared for unexpected attack, and Mara sat behind closed curtains, her scented fan pressed close to her nostrils.

The litter slowed before a corner, its occupant jostled as the bearers shifted grip and jockeyed their load past the posts of a sagging doorway. One of the poles caught upon the dirty curtain that hung across the entrance, pulling it askew. Within huddled several families, crowded one upon another. Their clothes were filthy and their skins wretched
with sores. A pot of noisome thyza was being shared out among them, while another, similar pot collected the day’s soil in one corner. The stench was choking, and on a tattered blanket a mother suckled a limp infant, three more toddlers lying across her knees and ankles. They all showed signs of vermin, ill health, and starvation. Inculcated since birth to know that poverty or wealth was bestowed as the gods willed – in reward for deeds in past lives – Mara gave their wretchedness no consideration.

The bearers cleared the litter from the doorway. As they regrouped, Mara caught a glimpse of the new slaves who followed behind. The tall redhead muttered something to another slave, a balding, powerfully built man who listened with the respect of one deferring to a leader. Outrage, or maybe shock, showed in both men’s expressions, though what might inspire such depths of emotion within a public place, before individuals almost as honourless as the slaves themselves, seemed a mystery to the Lady.

The poor quarter of Sulan-Qu was not large; still, passage through the jammed streets was painfully tedious. Finally the tenements fell behind as the road crooked with the bend in the river Gagajin. Here the gloom lessened, but only slightly. In place of the mildewed tenements were warehouses, craft sheds, and factories. Dye shops and tanneries, butchers’ stalls and slaughterhouses crowded the way, and the blended stinks of offal, dye vats, and steam from the tallow Tenderer’s left a reeking miasma in the air. Smoke from the resin makers’ fires coiled in clouds from the chimneys, and at the riverside, docked to weathered pilings, lay commerce barges and other floating house-shacks. Vendors vied for any cranny that remained, each crowded, tiny stall serving its wares to clusters of wives and off-duty workers.

Now Lujan’s warriors were forced to shove the crowds aside, shouting, ‘Acoma! Acoma!’ to let the commoners
know a great Lady was passing. Other warriors closed tightly against the sides of Mara’s litter, placing their armoured bodies between their mistress and possible danger. The slaves they kept herded together, and the press became so tight that no man could look down to check his footing. The soldiers wore hardened leather sandals, but the slaves, including the bearers, had no choice but to tread on bits of broken crockery and rivulets of sewage and other refuse.

Mara lay back against her finely embroidered cushions, her fan pressed hard to her face. She closed her eyes in longing for the open meadows of her estate, perfumed with summer grass and sweet flowers. In time the factory quarter changed, became less odorous and crowded, more inclined toward industries of the luxury trade. Here weavers, tailors, basket makers, cordwainers, silk spinners, and potters toiled. An occasional jeweller’s stall – guarded by armed mercenaries – or a perfumer’s, frequented in this less fashionable quarter by painted women of the Reed Life, was nestled between shops offering less luxurious merchandise.

The sun had climbed to midday. Drowsy behind her curtains, Mara fanned herself slowly, thankful that, at last, the bustle of Sulan-Qu fell behind. As her retinue continued down roads shaded by evergreens, she was lying back, attempting to sleep, when one of the bearers developed a limp. At each step she was jostled uncomfortably on her cushions, and rather than cause a man needless pain, she ordered a halt to look into the matter.

Lujan detailed a soldier to inspect the bearers. One had cut his foot in the poor quarters. Tsurani, and aware of his place, he had striven to continue his duty to the verge of fainting with pain.

Mara was still nearly an hour from her estate house, and, maddeningly, the Midkemians were once again speaking among themselves in the nasal braying that passed for their
native language. Irked by their jabbering as much as by the delay, she motioned to Lujan. ‘Send that redheaded barbarian over to replace my lame bearer.’ Slave he might be, but he acted like a ringleader, and since the stinks of the poor quarter had left Mara with a headache, she was willing to consider almost any expedient to make the barbarians less quarrelsome.

The warriors immediately brought the chosen slave. The bald one called out in protest and had to be cuffed aside. Knocked to his knees, he continued to shout, until the redhead bade him be silent. Then, blue eyes fixed in curiosity on the elegant Lady in the litter, he came forward to shoulder the vacant left front pole.

‘No,’ snapped Lujan at once. He waved for the slave to the rear to come forward and assigned the redhead to stand behind. This way a warrior with an unsheathed sword could march at the barbarian’s back, insurance against trouble or threat to their mistress.

‘Home,’ she ordered her retinue, and her bearers crouched to shoulder their burden, the redheaded barbarian among them.

The first steps forward were unmitigated chaos. The Midkemian was over a head taller than the other bearers, and as he straightened with his load, and strode ahead, the litter canted forward. Mara found herself starting to slide. The silk trappings and cushions offered no resistance to her motion. Lujan’s fast reflexes spared her an unceremonious spill onto the ground, and a slap of his hand warned the barbarian to hold his pole level. This the huge man could do only by hunching his back and shoulders, which placed his curly head just inches from his mistress’s curtains.