Servant of the Empire (69 page)

Breathing hard, and running with sweat, Kevin took stock. An insane three-way battle raged in the tiny
apartment. Knots of black warriors and robed Hamoi tong thrashed and strained and wrestled to tear down beleaguered defenders. A tong assassin broke free of the fray, spied Mara, and snapped a hand to his belt sash. A knife was going to follow, Kevin knew with a rise of the hair at his nape.

Even as the assassin moved to throw, the Midkemian had a handful of Mara’s robe. He let himself collapse, and his weight dragged her down, just as the assassin let fly. The knife thudded into the wall, kicking up grains of burst plaster. Kevin felt a yank at his shirt. He saw the pinned fold of his robe, then felt his left arm slung up at an awkward angle.

Mara lay beneath him, gasping for breath against the press of his weight. The assassin saw his opening. He leaped in, and his raised sword flicked shadow across both victims’ faces. Kevin twisted. Cloth tore with a scream as he threw his sword, point first, at the assassin. The blade caught the man in the stomach. He doubled, slammed to his knees, and pitched forward. The sword flew from his hand and skidded to stab into the skirting board. Kevin freed the last shred of his robe, then jerked the still-quivering blade from the wood.

He reached his feet just as another assassin shouldered through the window and bounded into the room. Kevin’s stroke decapitated him in midair. The corpse slammed down, spraying blood, while the head bounced with a sick, wet thump across the floor.

The head rolled on and slapped into a black-armoured warrior who charged through the rear doorway. Kevin spun to meet him. The warrior hesitated only an instant, then levelled his weapon at Kevin. The Midkemian braced for the sword blow, but belatedly realized: the man would not cross blades with a slave. In bull-mad Tsurani outrage, he chose to use his armoured bulk to smash an upstart barbarian to a pulp.

Too late, Kevin tried to sidestep. The enemy rammed him, knocking breath from his lungs and driving him backwards into the gloom of the hall. His back met heaving bodies. A vicious struggle raged between an invading mass of tong and Lujan’s most disciplined defenders. Kevin rolled left as the heavily armoured warrior crashed atop him. Half-crushed by his opponent’s sword arm, and aware by a repeated jerk beneath his flank that he had managed to fall on the flat of his enemy’s blade, Kevin struggled. He could not win free, and his own sword and hand were pinned against the wall. But neither could the other man succeed in grappling his weapon back. The warrior had no choice but to let go of the hilt and slam ineffectively at the slave’s exposed face. Kevin tried to chop at the man’s neck, but his efforts won him only a skinned elbow.

Then Kevin saw his opening. He threw his weight into his assailant and rolled him onto his back. Pulling upward, Kevin dragged his arm across the man’s throat; the sword followed, slicing deep. Throat strap, gristle, and cartilage parted. The warrior thrashed and died.

Buffeted by other fighters, Kevin extricated himself from the corpse. He ducked an assassin, raced back into the main room, and tried to locate Mara. Hoppara battled an armoured man by the furniture barricade. A Hamoi assassin was besting the fatigued Lord of the Bontura. Kevin slashed the man’s black-clothed flank and stepped past. Mara was nowhere to be seen. Leaving Lord Iliando to dispatch the wounded assassin, Kevin raced into the hallway that connected the suite to the garden. Two rooms proved empty. A corpse twitched in the third; another black-armoured soldier stared with blank eyes from the bed.

Kevin all but hurled himself through the screen into the last room. There he found Mara backed against a wall, holding a dagger, her robes spattered with fresh blood. His panic found no time for outcry. Two men in black armour
were closing in, leaving her no gap to flee. One man showed a nasty cut on his sword arm; already Mara had taught them to treat her with respect.

An animal cry of outrage erupted from Kevin as he surged into the room. The first warrior died before he had time to turn. The second backed a half-step, then stiffened as Mara drove her dagger into the gap between neck and helm.

Kevin spun left, then right, seeking the presence of more opponents. A warm weight crashed into his chest: Mara. She did not weep, but simply clung inside the circle of his arm, trembling with fear and exhaustion. He held her tightly, his sword still angled to fight.

But from the hallway the sounds of struggle had lessened. The crack and clang of sword strokes ended in a scraping thump, and silence descended, ringingly strange after the din of chaos and death. Kevin let out a pent-up breath. He lowered his dripping blade, stroked Mara’s hair with fingers that were hardly less sticky, and noticed the sting of cuts and grazes that had passed unnoticed in the action.

After a moment a call came from the outer rooms: ‘Mistress!’

Mara licked dry lips, swallowed, and forced herself to speak. ‘Here, Lujan.’

The Acoma Force Commander burst into the chamber, snapped to a stop, and said, ‘Mistress!’ His relief was a tangible wave. ‘Are you injured?’

Belatedly, Mara regarded her smeared and spattered clothing. Her hands, even her cheeks, were covered with blood. She still held the knife in slippery fingers. She dropped it in distaste and absently dragged her knuckles on her soiled robe. ‘I am all right. Someone fell on me. This is a dead man’s blood.’

As if aware that she still clung like a child to her slave, she released her hold and straightened. ‘I’m all right.’

Sickened by the thick stink of death, Kevin stepped to the
window. The frame was a savaged mass of splinters, and across the small garden he could see a gaping hole in the brick wall. ‘They came from the next-door apartment,’ he said dully. ‘That’s why there were so many pouring in from the rear.’

Lujan held a sword out for Mara’s inspection. ‘Some of the assassins carried steel.’

‘Gods!’ exclaimed Mara. ‘That is the blade of a dynasty!’ She examined the weapon more carefully and frowned. ‘But it bears a plain hilt. No clan or house markings.’ She gestured briskly toward the passage. ‘Have your men inspect the dead. See if any more such blades are found.’

‘What’s the significance?’ Kevin pushed away from the ruined sill and lent his arm to Mara, who still seemed to be shaking. He steered her gently around the fallen and into the corridor beyond.

A step ahead, Lujan answered, ‘Few true steel swords exist in the Empire. Each house that traces lineage back to the dawn of our history owns one, or is rumoured to. Only the master of the house, the Ruling Lord, has access to such a blade. They are priceless, second only to the natami in importance to a house’s honour.’

Mara agreed. ‘There is an Acoma family sword that was my father’s before me, and that I hold in trust for Ayaki. It is a rare weapon of steel.’

They reached the juncture of the corridor and the blood-soaked central room. Already Acoma warriors worked to clear the floor of the dead. Five more steel swords lay lined up against one wall, with Kevin’s bringing the number to six. ‘These were found among the dead assassins, Force Commander.’

Lujan looked upon the blades in awe. ‘Where can they have come from?’

‘Minwanabi?’ asked Kevin.

The Lords of the Xacatecas and the Bontura entered from
the front chamber, both as blood-streaked as Mara, but little the worse for wear. Drawn by the glint of steel in the flickering lamplight, they also examined the weapons.

Kevin drew his blade clean between a fold of his slave robe. ‘This is new,’ he said quietly. ‘It still bears faint marks from the grinder’s wheel, and the stamp of the armourer’s mallet.’ He inspected it closely one last time and added, ‘It bears no maker’s mark.’

All eyes turned to the slave. Iliando inflated his chest in the beginnings of offence, but Hoppara’s curiosity forestalled his response. ‘Who has the skill to make ancient weapons?’

Kevin shrugged. ‘Among my people, the art is commonplace. Any one of a dozen good smiths would be able to duplicate this, I think.’

Unwilling to be shown up as graceless by a younger Lord, Iliando lifted a blade and stiffly offered comment. ‘It’s sharp, but I think not so finely fashioned as the ones made by our ancestors. These could be copies, made with inferior metals.’

‘But where would a man get such wealth?’ asked Hoppara.

‘My world,’ suggested Kevin.

The Lords exchanged glances, the stouter one taken aback by the slave’s forthright manner. Yet no one interrupted as Kevin said, ‘After a battle, your warriors pick up swords and armour as spoils. Someone gets his hands on enough iron and a good smith, then shows them one of your ancestral blades …’ He made a pass with the weapon. ‘Say he duplicates it. This blade is not so unlike those used by the Hadati mountain people in my homeland. A smith from Yabon could forge its like, and there could easily be such a captive working for one of your Lords.’

‘Minwanabi,’ said Mara, her voice almost splitting over the name. ‘All metals taken across the rift as spoils are property of the Empire, some sent as tribute to the temples,
some to the imperial treasury, and the rest to pay the upkeep of the army upon Midkemia. But the collection is overseen by the Warlord and, in his absence, his Subcommander. Tasaio served in that post for five years. That’s ample time for a man without scruples to divert contraband resources back to his cousin’s estates.’ Mara’s tone grew reflective. Or to his own estate, for his private use.’

Iliando’s heavy features showed distaste. ‘If every assassin carried one, the price of this one attack is incredible.’

‘For a raid in the Imperial Palace?’ Hoppara interjected. ‘I would wager five times this many swords would be needed.’ He regarded the red-stained floorboards. ‘No guarantee of success, and every man expected to die. No, Tasaio is the logical one to have hired the tong.’

‘Then,’ said Kevin, kicking the helm of a fallen black warrior with his toe, ‘who sent this lot?’

Hoppara sank tiredly down on an unstained corner of a bed mat. He regarded his sword, the edge of which was chewed with chips, and the tip long since delaminated. ‘Whoever it was, their day’s work was a blessing. The assassins and these warriors caused each other great confusion. I don’t know if we could have withstood the Hamoi tong alone.’

Mara crossed the floor and sat next to the young man. Exhaustion made her sigh. ‘Good men won the day for us, my Lord. You’ve done your house proud.’

Lord Iliando glanced significantly at Kevin, who yet held one of the metal blades. ‘The gods will find ill in this. A slave –’

But Lujan cracked out an interruption. ‘I saw nothing.’

The heavyset Lord turned toward Mara, incensed at her Force Commander’s rudeness. She gave him back his stare with bland eyes. ‘I saw nothing untoward, my Lord of the Bontura.’

Iliando heaved in a great breath, but it was Hoppara who
stepped in with diplomacy. ‘You speak, I believe, of a blade that saved your life?’

The Lord of the Bontura reddened. He cleared his throat, stabbed a glance at Kevin, then shrugged stiffly. ‘I saw nothing,’ he allowed grudgingly; for here, in the Acoma apartments, when Acoma guards had died to spare him, to contradict the word of a Lady and her guest was to insult Mara’s honour.

Kevin grinned. He held out his bloodied blade to Lujan, who accepted the offering with a flatly impassive face. Quick to ease the tension, Mara said, ‘My Lords, it would be appropriate if you each took two of the swords, as spoils of war. I plan on awarding worthy soldiers with the others, as a token of esteemed service.’

The Lords bowed their heads, for her gift was a magnanimous gesture. Hoppara smiled. ‘Your generosity is without precedent, Lady Mara.’

The Lord of the Bontura nodded; and by the flash of his eyes as he considered the enormous gain in wealth, Mara knew greed had won him. Kevin’s transgression would be overlooked.

‘Let us clear these floors of honourless garbage,’ Mara added to Lujan. The surviving warriors went to work. Scabbards were gathered up and swords sheathed, as the dead were examined for any clue that might prove who had ordered the assaults. None was found; tongs earned their pay through anonymity. The black-clothed assassins bore only the blue flower tattoo of the Hamoi tong and the traditionally red-stained hands. The black-armoured soldiers were devoid of any common marking at all.

When Lujan was satisfied nothing incriminating would be found, he had men dump the bodies out the back screen into the garden. Then he set squads of warriors to rebarricade the windows and doors with whatever materials were available, and to see to the care of his wounded.

A soldier brought Lady Mara a bowl of scented water and a cloth. ‘My Lady?’

Mara dabbed at her face and hands, dismayed by the mess that soon discoloured the basin. ‘In the morning, I must have the services of my maid.’ She looked up at the soldier. ‘You do well enough, Jendli. But tomorrow I will need more than the mercies of good warriors to make myself presentable for council.’

Lord Hoppara laughed at the remark, surprised that a woman of such dainty stature should have the fibre to look beyond the harrowing horror of the past hour. ‘I begin to see what my father admired in you,’ he started, and paused as a strange crawling sensation visited everyone in the room.

Kevin whipped around, empty hands groping for the sword he no longer held. A glance at Lujan showed the Force Commander also peering into shadows, seeking the source of this unnameable dread.