Servant of the Empire (11 page)

Onlookers could not help but gasp, for the priest made clear the Red God’s price for failure. Desio embraced the same destruction for his entire house, from himself down to his most distant relative – the same ruin he promised the Acoma – should he fail. Even should both sides come to desire truce in the future, no quarter was now possible. Within the near future one of two ancient and honourable houses would cease to exist.

‘Turakamu hears your offering,’ the priest cried. As Desio released the relic, the priest spun and gestured to the incomplete gate, which arose like blackened pillars against the sky of sunset. ‘Let this gate stand incomplete, from this day forth. Its posts shall be carved into columns with the promise of the Minwanabi inscribed on each side. Neither shall this monument be changed or taken down until the Acoma are ashes pledged to the glory of Turakamu!’ Then he looked at Desio. ‘Or the Minwanabi are dust!’

Desio dragged himself to his feet. He seemed shaken, overwhelmed by a poor beginning to the grandiose oath he had sworn. Incomo’s lips thinned with anger. If there was an Acoma spy in the Minwanabi household, he had more to worry about than rumours as aftermath from this day’s affairs. The First Adviser studied the expressions of the family members as they departed; most showed strain, a few looked frightened, and here and there a noble swaggered with his chin jutted aggressively. Many would seek to advance themselves in the family hierarchy if Desio proved a weak ruler, but no one seemed particularly satisfied by the terrible turn of the day’s events. Abandoning the attempt to divine the spy by naked will, Incomo sought his master.

Tasaio stood at the side of his Lord, supporting Desio’s elbow. Although the Lord was the one wearing armour,
there was no mistaking which was the warrior. Tasaio’s carriage held the unthinking and deadly grace of the sarcat. Incomo hurried closer. Words reached his ears, blown on the rising winds of an incoming storm.

‘My Lord, you must not look back upon the mishaps of today as ill-omened. You have sworn our family to a powerful oath. Now let us see what we can do about fulfilling it.’

‘Yes,’ Desio agreed woodenly. ‘But where to begin? Mara has cho-ja warriors guarding her estate house; outright assault is folly without the Warlord’s favour. Besides, even should we be victorious, we would be weakened, and a dozen other houses would rush to seek advantage over us.’

‘Ah, but, cousin, I have ideas.’ Tasaio sensed an approaching step, looked around, and identified Incomo. His quick, flashing smile seemed calculated to the First Adviser, despite its spontaneity. ‘Honoured First Adviser, I urge that we convene a meeting. If our Lord can fulfil his oath to the Red God, much glory may be gained for our house.’

Incomo searched the words for irony – to fail a promise to the Death God would bring the Minwanabi to final ruin – and saw that Tasaio was sincere. Then he examined the usually stern face for any hint of deceit, but found none. ‘You have a plan?’

Tasaio’s smile widened. ‘Many plans. But first I understand we have to flush out an Acoma spy.’

While Desio’s soiled face showed muddled astonishment, Incomo struggled to conceal suspicion. ‘How could you know about that, honoured cousin?’

‘But we have no Acoma spies in our midst!’ Desio broke in, suddenly and righteously outraged.

Tasaio laid a calming hand on the young Lord’s arm, his words directed mostly toward Incomo. ‘But we must. How else could that stripling bitch know our last Lord intended to kill her?’

Incomo inclined his head as if acknowledging a victory. That Tasaio had also surmised the cause of Mara’s survival at the Warlord’s celebration showed the depth of his thinking. ‘Honoured cousin, for the good of us all, I think we should listen to your plans.’ With a withered scowl, he reached out and helped the tall warrior shepherd his Lord back to the shelter of the estate house.

Ancient parquet floors creaked as servants hustled about, adjusting screens and drapes against rising breezes from the south. An approaching storm scudded clouds over the lake’s silvered face, offering early but unmistakable presage of the wet season. The smell of rain mingled with the indoor scents of furniture oils and dust that ingrained the small study, a private chamber used by Jingu and his predecessors to formulate their deepest plots. The painted window screens were small, to discourage observers from the outside, yet the air was never stifling.

Damp made Incomo’s bones ache. Concealing an urge to frown, he folded himself neatly onto the cushions opposite the Lord’s seat, an elaborate nest of pillows atop a two-inch-high dais. Some long-past Minwanabi ancestor had decided that a Lord should at all times be raised above his retainers, and most rooms in the older portions of the estate house bore the token of his belief.

Incomo had been reared to the inconvenience of multilevel floors and of flagstones on certain walkways that were a half-step higher than those adjacent; but a new servant was always conspicuous by the number of times that he tripped. Sourly, his thoughts preoccupied by spies, Incomo considered which factors and servants had been clumsiest while serving his late-departed Lord; none came immediately to mind, which added to the First Adviser’s discomforts. In frustration, he awaited his master.

The servants had departed by the time Desio could be
unlaced and divested of his ceremonial armour and be wrapped in an orange silk robe sewn with black symbols connoting prosperity. He did not dally longer with bathing, as his father had been wont to do; smelling faintly of nervous sweat, he entered with his cousin in attendance and levered his bulk onto the precious gilt-edged cushions that his predecessor had worn thin before him. Desio was agitated. Incomo decided he looked as if he was coming down with a cold, pale as reed paper about the face, except for his nose, which was pink. Beside him, his cousin looked tanned and lean and dangerous.

While Desio squirmed his way into a comfortable position, Tasaio settled and rested his elbows on his knees. Beside Desio’s fidgeting, Tasaio owned the taut stillness of a predator while it tests the air.

Tasaio had lost nothing by serving in the barbarian wars for the past four years, Incomo concluded. Although the war had not advanced as well as the Warlord had promised, the time away from the Game of the Council had only sharpened the young man’s wits. He had risen to the position of First Subcommander to the Warlord, Almecho, and had gained great advantages for the Minwanabi – until Jingu’s death had humbled them.

‘My esteemed cousin and my First Adviser,’ Desio opened, struggling to mask his inexperience and at least act the part of Ruling Lord, ‘we are gathered here to discuss the possibility of an Acoma spy in our midst.’

‘No possibility, but a certainty,’ Incomo snapped. What the household needed was action, swiftly and decisively carried out. ‘And we must not assume there is only one.’

Desio opened his mouth in outrage, both against his First Adviser’s impertinence and also to rebut the idea that the Acoma could have infiltrated Minwanabi ranks more than once.

Tasaio’s lips tightened in barely withheld contempt; but
no disparagement showed through his tone as he smoothly and gently interjected. ‘Your father was a great player of the game, Desio. If not through underhanded treachery, how else could a girl child have come to best him?’

‘How could a girl child, as you call her, have managed to place such a masterful network of spies?’ Desio spluttered. ‘Damn her to Turakamu’s pleasures – and may he take her to his bed of pain for ten thousand years – she was in Lashima’s convent until the day she came into her inheritance! And her father had no such penchant for implanting agents. He was too straightforward in his thinking to have much use for spies.’

‘Well then, cousin, those are things we must find out.’ Tasaio made a gesture, symbolic of the sword’s thrust. ‘You speak as if the girl leads a charmed life. She does not. I arranged to have the outworld barbarians kill her father and brother on our behalf – rather neatly if I may say so. Sezu and Lanokota bled and died as other men do, clutching their opened guts and squirming in the mud.’ Passion lent fire to Tasaio’s words. ‘If the Acoma claim the Mad God’s luck, it certainly didn’t serve Mara’s father and brother very well!’

Desio almost smiled, before he recalled that his father had ended the same way, in agony on his own sword. Petulantly he poked at the pillows that crumpled under his weight. ‘If there are spies, then, how shall we flush them out?’

Incomo drew breath to answer, then deferred to a glance from Tasaio. ‘If my Lord permits, I would offer a suggestion.’

Desio waved his assent. Interested enough to forget his various aches, Incomo leaned forward to hear the young warrior’s advice.

Instinctively, Tasaio made use of the wind that rattled the screens. Timing the gusts to mask his voice against the chance he might be overheard, he said, ‘A spy is of little use if
his information is not employed. So we turn that fact to our advantage.

‘I recommend that you formulate some activities that would be detrimental to Acoma interests. Order your Force Commander to mount a raid against a caravan or outlying holding. Next day you let slip to your grain factor that you intend to undercut the Acoma thyza prices in the markets in the City of the Plains.’ Tasaio paused, lending the appearance that he sat at ease, sharing confidences. And yet Incomo noted with approval that he did not entirely relax; the glitter in his eyes betrayed that he watched, always, for trouble. ‘If Mara defends her caravans, we know we have a spy in the barracks. If she withholds her thyza crop from market, we establish that we have an Acoma disguised as a clerk. After that, it becomes a matter of digging out the informer.’

‘Very clever, Tasaio,’ Incomo said. ‘I had thought of a similar tactic, but there remains one telling flaw. We cannot afford to sell our thyza at a loss; and won’t we reveal our machinations to the Acoma when no attack befalls the caravan?’

‘We would if we failed to attack.’ Tasaio’s eyelids hooded slightly. ‘But we will attack, and be defeated.’

Angered, Desio punched his pillows. ‘Defeated? And lose more position in the council?’

Tasaio raised his hand, thumb and forefinger poised a scant inch apart. ‘Only a little defeat, cousin. Enough to provide proof that we are compromised. I have plans for that spy, when we find him … with your permission, of course, my Lord.’

The moment was smoothly handled, Incomo observed with hidden admiration. Without coming to grips with Desio directly, Tasaio had let slip the assumption that the young Lord would receive his due credit; the other side of the issue being that permission, of course, would be granted.

Desio swallowed the bait, but missed the larger implications. ‘When we catch this traitor, I will see him tortured in the name of the Red God until his flesh is twitching pulp!’ His plump fist pummelled cushions for emphasis, and his nose deepened from pink to purple.

But as if he handled irate nobility on a daily basis, Tasaio showed no alarm. ‘That would be gratifying, cousin,’ he agreed. ‘Yet, to kill that spy, however horribly, would offer the Acoma a victory.’

‘What!’ Desio stopped thumping and shot erect. ‘Cousin, you make my head ache. What could the Minwanabi gain but insult by keeping a miserable spy alive?’

Tasaio settled back on one elbow and casually plucked a fruit from a bowl on a side table. As though its ripe skin were flesh, he stroked his nail down the curve in what seemed almost a caress. ‘We need this spy’s contacts, honoured Lord. It serves our cause to ensure that our Acoma enemies learn only what we wish them to know.’ The warrior’s hands gripped the fruit and gave a vicious twist. The jomach split in half, with barely a splash of red juice. ‘Let the spy set up our next trap.’

Incomo considered, then smiled. Desio looked from his cousin to his First Adviser, and managed not to fumble the catch as his cousin tossed him one piece of the fruit. He bit into the morsel, and then began to laugh, for the first time restored to the arrogant certainty of his family’s greatness. ‘Good,’ he said, chewing with relish. ‘I like your plan, cousin. We shall dispatch a company of men on some useless raid and let the Acoma bitch think she has routed us.’

Tasaio tapped the remaining bit of fruit with his forefinger. ‘But where? Where shall we attack?’

Incomo pondered, then offered, ‘My Lord, I suggest that the raid should be close to her home.’

‘Why?’ Desio wiped juice off his chin with his
embroidered cuff. ‘She will be guarding her estate rigorously, as usual.’

‘Not the estate, itself, Lord, for the Lady needs no spy’s report to maintain vigilance against attack from your army. But she will not expect a raid against a caravan bound for the river port at Sulan-Qu. If we attack between the Acoma lands and the city, and she is prepared for our raid, we can pinpoint the flow of information and find the agent among your household.’

Tasaio inclined his head in an unconscious gesture of command. ‘First Adviser, your counsel is excellent. My Lord, if you will permit, I will oversee preparations for such a raid. A routine trade shipment would warrant little protection, unless the Acoma bitch knows she deals with blood enemies.’ He smiled, and white teeth gleamed against skin tanned dark on the Warlord’s campaign. ‘We should know when such a caravan is due, simply by contacting shipping brokers in Sulan-Qu. A few discreet questions, and maybe a bribe or two to hide our inquiries, and we should know within the hour when Mara’s next caravan is expected.’

Desio met Tasaio’s offer with a lordly air of industry. ‘Cousin, your advice is brilliant.’ He clapped his hands, bringing the errand runner in from his position outside the door. ‘Fetch my scribe,’ he commanded.