Servant of the Empire (32 page)

Silence followed, then Keyoke heard the screen swept back and someone step through.

Keyoke opened one eye and looked in the direction of the disturbance. Entering the room was the tall barbarian. His hair blazed like fire in the candlelight, and his height threw dark shadows on the wall. He shoved determinedly through the musicians, then shot a glance of disgust at the poet. ‘Get out,’ he said imperiously. ‘I want to talk with the old man and see what he thinks about dying.’

Keyoke looked up into the face of the barbarian slave, his eyes dark with fury. He forced his voice to be as firm as his condition permitted. ‘You are impertinent,’ he echoed Lujan. ‘And you intrude upon matters of honour. Were I armed, I would kill you where you stand.’

Kevin shrugged and sat down at the old warrior’s side. ‘If you had the strength to kill me, old man, I wouldn’t be here.’ He crossed his arms, leaned his elbows upon his knees, and regarded Keyoke who was very much a general of armies, even propped like a figurehead amid a sea of cushions. His flesh might be drawn with illness, but his face was still that of a commander. ‘Anyway, you are not armed,’ Kevin observed with his shattering, outworld bluntness. ‘And you’ll need a crutch to rise from that bed. So maybe your
problems can’t be answered with a blade anymore, Force Commander Keyoke.’

The pain dragged at his belly as the old man drew breath to reply. He could feel the weakness sucking at him, the darkness in the wings that waited to draw him in, but he gathered himself and managed to speak with the tone that had stopped many a young warrior from cockiness. ‘I have served.’

The words were delivered with unassailable dignity. Kevin shut his eyes for a moment, and inwardly seemed to flinch. ‘Mara still needs you.’

He did not look at Keyoke. Apparently his rudeness had limits; but his hands tightened white against his forearms, and Lujan, in the doorway, turned away his face.

‘Mara still needs you,’ Kevin grated out, as if he struggled for other words that eluded him. ‘She is left with no great general for her armies, no master tactician to take your place.’

No sound and no movement issued from the man in the cushions. Kevin frowned and, with obvious discomfort, tried again. ‘You need no legs to train your successor, nor to advise in matters of war.’

‘I need no legs to know that you have overstepped yourself,’ Keyoke interrupted. The effort taxed him. He sagged back against his pillows. ‘Who are you, barbarian, to judge me in my service to this house?’

Kevin flushed darkly and rose to his feet. Embarrassed, in his transparent way, but also unknowably stung, he clenched his fists and added, ‘I did not come to hound you, but to make you think.’ Then, as if angry, the huge redhead stalked from the bedside. At the doorway he half turned, but still would not meet Keyoke’s eyes. ‘You love her too,’ he added accusingly. ‘To die without a fight is to deprive her of her finest commander. I say you seek an easy way out; your service is not discharged, old man. If you die now, you desert your post.’

He was gone before Keyoke could summon the strength for rejoinder. The candles seemed suddenly too bright, and the pain intense. Quietly the musicians resumed their play. Keyoke listened, but his heart found no ease. The poet’s verses lost their lustre and became just empty words, recounting events long done and mostly forgotten as he lapsed into sleep.

Mara waited outside in the hallway. No attendants were with her, and she stood so still that Kevin almost missed her in the shadows. Only quick reflexes stopped him as, wiping moisture from his eyes, he saw her barely in time to prevent crashing into her.

‘You will answer to me for this,’ she said, and although her poise was perfect, and her tone even, Kevin knew her well enough to read the anger in her stance. Her hands twisted in the fabric of her sleeves as she went on. ‘Keyoke has led our soldiers into battle for more years than I’ve been alive. He has faced enemies in situations the rest of us would have nightmares just contemplating. He left a war, and his own Lord to die, though the orders broke his heart, to keep the Acoma name alive by coming to take me from Lashima’s temple. If we have a natami in the glade to hold our honour sacred, Keyoke is worthy of the credit. How dare you, a slave and a barbarian, imply that he has not done enough!’

‘Well,’ said Kevin, ‘I admit that I have a big mouth, and also that I don’t know when to keep it shut.’ He smiled in that sudden spontaneous way that never failed to disarm her.

Mara sighed. ‘Why must you continually interfere with things you do not understand? If Keyoke wishes a warrior’s death, it is his right, and our honour, to grant him his passage in comfort.’

Kevin’s smile vanished. ‘If I have any quarrel with your culture, Lady, it is that you count life much too lightly. Keyoke is a brilliant tactician. His mind is his genius, not his
sword arm, which a younger man can beat anyway. Yet all of you stand back, and send poets and musicians! And wait for him to die his warrior’s death, and waste the years of experience that your army so sorely needs to –’

‘And you suggest?’ Mara interrupted. Her lips were white.

Kevin shivered under the intensity of her gaze, but continued. ‘I would appoint Keyoke to the position of adviser, make up a new office if necessary, and then call in the most skilled of your healers. The wound in his abdomen might kill him still, but I believe that human nature between your culture and mine cannot differ so widely that a man, even a dying one, wants to let go of life feeling useless.’

‘You presume to a great deal of knowledge for a commoner,’ Mara observed acidly.

Kevin stiffened and all at once fell into one of his strange, inexplicable silences. He locked eyes with her, still unwilling to end the discussion; and so wrapped up was she in trying to read why he should suddenly become secretive, Mara did not notice the runner slave at her elbow until the second time he addressed her.

‘Mistress.’ The boy bowed diffidently. ‘My Lady, Nacoya bids you come at once to the great hall. An imperial messenger awaits your attendance.’

The flush of anger drained out of Mara’s cheeks. ‘Find Lujan and send him to me at once,’ she instructed the runner. As though she had forgotten Kevin’s existence and the fact she had been deadlocked in an argument only seconds before, she spun on her heel and departed down the corridor in almost unseemly haste.

Kevin, predictably, followed after. ‘What’s going on?’

She didn’t answer, and the runner slave had dashed beyond earshot. Undeterred, Kevin lengthened stride until he overtook his diminutive mistress. He tried another tack. ‘What’s an imperial messenger?’

‘Bad news,’ Mara returned shortly. ‘At least, this close upon the heels of a Minwanabi attack, a message from the Emperor, the Warlord, or the High Council speaks of a great move in the game.’

Mara skirted the bows of a cluster of house slaves bent over buckets and brushes, scrubbing the lacquered wood floor. She crossed the atrium that led toward the great doubled doors to the hall, and Kevin followed. His Lady’s poise had seemed brittle since the return of Lujan’s companies. The purpose of the Minwanabi raid, she insisted, had not been simply to ruin her silk in the marketplace. Being unable to follow every twist of Tsurani politics, which to his Kingdom mind still seemed convolutedly illogical, Kevin was determined to stay at Mara’s side. What threatened her threatened him, and his feelings toward her were protective.

The great hall held the damp in the mornings, and the old stone floor transmitted chill even through the soles of leather sandals. Crossing the echoing expanse of empty space, shuttered into gloom by closed screens, Kevin saw Nacoya awaiting on the dais and heard Lujan’s step enter from the passage behind. But the barbarian’s attention stayed riveted ahead where, even in the dimness, the sparkle of gold stood out, an unexpected and unnerving sight in a land where heavy metals were a rarity.

The messenger sat on a fine, threadworked cushion, and even his posture was imposing. He was a young man, powerfully muscled, and beautiful to look upon in a simple kilt of white cloth. Cross-gartered sandals hugged his dusty legs, and his skin sparkled with perspiration. Binding shoulder-length black hair from his brow was his badge of rank, a cloth in alternating bands of gold and white that sparkled and flashed through the shadows. The thread of the weave was metallic, true gold, the symbol of the Emperor of Tsuranuanni, whose bonded word he carried.

Upon Mara’s entrance, he rose from his seat and presented himself with a bow. The gesture denoted arrogance, for although he was a servant and she a noble Lady, his master’s word was the law of the land, to which all great houses must submit. The head badge made this man sacrosanct within the Empire. He could safely run through a battlefield, between warring houses, and no soldier would dare impede his passage, upon pain of the Emperor’s wrath. The messenger knelt with beautifully studied poise and presented a gilt-edged scroll, tied also with ribbons of gold, and sealed with the imprint of Ichindar.

Mara accepted the weighty missive, her hands looking fragile against the parchment. She broke the seal, unrolled the scroll, and began to read, while Lujan took his place on the side once occupied by Keyoke, and Nacoya visibly restrained herself from craning her neck to make out words over her mistress’s shoulder.

The document was not lengthy. Kevin, who was the tallest, could see that the sentences were brief. Yet Mara paused a lengthy interval before she raised her face and spoke.

‘Thank you. You may go,’ she said to the messenger. ‘My servants will see you refreshed and housed, if you wish to rest while my scribes take dictation and prepare my return message.’

The imperial messenger bowed and departed, the tap of his nail-studded sandals loud in the closed hall. The moment he passed beyond the doorway, Mara sank down upon the nearest empty cushion.

‘Tasaio’s hand is at last revealed,’ she said, and her voice sounded hollow and small.

Nacoya took the scroll and read its lines with a steadily deepening scowl. ‘The devil!’ she exclaimed when she finished.

‘Pretty Lady,’ Lujan interjected, ‘what are the Emperor’s wishes?’

It was Nacoya who answered, her aged voice like acid. ‘Orders, from the High Council. We must, with all haste, send our army to lend support to Lord Xacatecas in his war against the nomad raiders in Dustari. Lady Mara has been commanded to appear in person with a levy of four companies of troops, to be ready to depart within two months.’

Lujan’s eyebrows jerked up and froze. ‘Three companies would be too many,’ he said, and his hand tapped furiously on his sword hilt. ‘We’re going to have to buy favours of the cho-ja.’ His gaze shifted significantly to Kevin. ‘And you’re right, damn your barbarian ideas. Keyoke cannot be granted the luxury of dying, else the estate will be left stripped of its last experienced officer.’

‘That’s surely what Desio intends. We must balk him.’ Mara turned her head. Her eyes were black sparks, and her cheeks were flushed in shock as she voiced her orders. ‘Lujan, you are now promoted to the post of Force Commander. Take Kevin and go to Keyoke. Tell him I wish to appoint him as First Adviser for War, but will do so only with his permission.’ Her voice went distant with memory or maybe tears as she added, ‘He will think other warriors will ridicule him for carrying a crutch, but I will see his name is honoured. Remind him that Pape once found pride in wearing the black rag of the condemned.’

Lujan bowed, a suggestion of sorrow in his own stance. ‘I doubt Keyoke would leave us in such perilous straits, my Lady. But the gods might overrule his will. The wound in his abdomen is not the sort that a man is likely to recover from.’

Mara bit her lip. As if the words pained her, she said, ‘Then, with his permission, I will send runner slaves and messengers throughout the Empire, to seek a healing priest of Hantukama.’

‘The offering such a priest will demand for healing will be great,’ Nacoya pointed out. ‘You may have to build a large shrine.’

Mara came close to losing her temper. ‘Then speak to Jican about rescuing the remnants of our silk from the mountains and getting it to market at Jamar! For we need our Keyoke alive, or all will be lost. We cannot afford to slight the Lord of the Xacatecas.’ Even for Kevin’s sake, this statement needed no elaboration. The promise of Lord Xacatecas’ alliance had held many enemies at bay; should the Acoma give a family that powerful any cause whatsoever for enmity, they would beg a swift ruin, engaged as they were in their blood feud with the Minwanabi. ‘The estate here must not be left in jeopardy,’ Mara finished.

‘Dustari is a trap,’ Nacoya said, voicing a point all except Kevin were aware of. ‘Tasaio will be there, and no move you or your four companies can make will not be anticipated in advance. You and the men you take with you will go the way of Lord Sezu, betrayed to your deaths on foreign soil.’

‘All the more reason why Keyoke must hold these lands secure for Ayaki,’ Mara finished. And the last high colour fled her face.

The imperial messenger departed with Mara’s written acquiescence to the High Council’s demands. After that, her household factors and advisers hurried off to initiate a frenzied list of preparations. Lujan detailed officers to make an inventory, then he and Kevin departed for Keyoke’s bedside, neither with enthusiasm.

Jican arrived as they departed, summoned from the needra fields by the runner slave.

‘I need a full accounting of Acoma assets,’ Mara demanded before the little man had entirely risen from his bow. ‘How many centis we have in cash, and how many more we might borrow. I need to know how many weapons our master armourers can turn out in two months, and how many more we might purchase.’