Servant of the Empire (99 page)

Left alone with the mournful song of the butana, Incomo lingered behind. He could not imagine how Mara might contrive to shift the course of events yet to come. But he knew this conflict was far from over. At best, Mara had bought herself the gift of a few months more in which to plot; at worst, she would have some trap in mind, and the Minwanabi would be swallowed by it. Chilled by a heavy gust, Incomo caught his flapping robes about him and hurried to overtake his master. As he picked his path downhill in the darkness, he mulled over the most prudent course: to send inquiries to his agents for the latest information they might uncover about Mara’s intentions, or to complete his unfinished last testament and death poem. Caught by a deepening sense of finality, Incomo decided to do both.

The night’s progression of events did not end with the meeting on the hilltop. Mara arrived back at her town house feeling tired to her bones. She shed her outer robe and pushed back strands of hair torn loose by the incessant wind, and only then came out of her daze long enough to understand what Saric was telling her.

An imperial messenger had called in her absence.

‘What did he say?’ Mara asked dully, and by the concern on Saric’s face, she realized she had asked him to repeat himself.

Tactful, Saric explained; and the particulars of Ichindar’s latest proclamation struck Mara like a blow to the heart.

Her mind went numb after the first words: that the Emperor of Tsuranuanni was buying up all Midkemian
slaves belonging to subjects of the Empire. The words ‘fair price’ and ‘Imperial Treasury’ seemed sounds made by cold winds, an evil extension of the nightmares brought by the butana. Reeling as if the underpinnings of her life had all been torn asunder, Mara did not feel Saric’s hands help her from the hallway into the sitting room. The cushion that supported her did not seem real, and the tears that sprang into her eyes seemed those of somebody else.

Her body, her mind, her heart – all seemed open wounds of anguish.

‘Why?’ she asked dully. ‘Why?’

Saric had not released her hand, mostly because she clung still to the warmth of his touch. He offered what comfort he could, though he guessed the futility of such efforts. In the gentlest of tones, he tried to soften the insupportable. ‘It is said that the Light of Heaven will sell Kevin’s countrymen back to the Midkemian King. All slaves who were prisoners of the war will be shipped downriver and sent through the rift. The original rift has been reopened outside the City of the Plains.’

Flinching outright at the mention of her beloved’s name, Mara could not prevent brimming eyes from spilling over. ‘The Emperor makes free men of slaves?’

Calmly, Saric qualified. ‘Out of respect for our gods, one could say that act would be the province of Lyam, King of Isles.’

Mara regarded the whitened fingers twined with those of her adviser. Her resolve to keep nerves of steel had availed nothing! She felt defeated down to her core. The threat posed by the Minwanabi had at last overtaken her scant resources, and now she was to lose Kevin. The fact she had already resolved to send him away into freedom made no difference. The immediacy of the moment devastated.

‘When does the Light of Heaven require the slaves to be surrendered?’ she asked, surprised that her tongue could shape words.

Saric answered with profound sympathy. ‘By noon tomorrow, my Lady.’

There had been no warning of this, none. Mara choked back a sob. Shamed by her show of emotion, and hearing the shade of Nacoya scolding her for ignoble sentiment, she grasped for one single thought upon which to bolster her courage; for bravery alone would see her through the ruins of her only happiness, and the hopes she had dared to cherish concerning the continuance of the Acoma name.

Only one hint of good came to mind amidst the bleakness: Kevin would be spared the disaster that must follow her support of Tasaio for the Warlordship. If the barbarian’s recitations of Kingdom Law and the Great Freedom were truths, then his King Lyam would free him. He would live out his days honourably in Zun, and escape the madness and carnage to come.

Mara tried to convince herself that her beloved was better off gone, but logic did not appease the lacerating pain in her heart. She found the hand not gripping Saric’s cradled over the small spark of life engendered deep in her womb. Like a spill of light through a doorway, revelation came. She realized that all she had done this night had been for Kevin’s unborn child. She and Ayaki were Tsurani-born, dedicated to centuries-old tradition that held to honour before life, and they would unhesitatingly choose death before disgrace. But the spirit that quickened in her womb was half-Midkemian; somehow she had acknowledged its future right to live and prosper with the values the father would have accorded such things. Recognition dawned, with no small portion of fear, as Mara of the Acoma understood she had again stepped beyond the bounds of her culture. She had accorded the common folk of the Empire consideration before her family name; once she would have believed such a concept would have shamed her father and her ancestry, even earned the wrath of Tsuranuanni’s many gods.

Now she could conceive of no other viable choice.

Torn between tears and the sense of relief that soon, very soon, the years of tribulation would be ended, Mara came back to herself. She loosened her fingers from Saric’s and blotted awkwardly at her eyes. ‘I will need the services of my maid,’ she managed tremulously. ‘Kevin must not see that I have been upset.’

Saric made to rise and bow, but a small shake of Mara’s head detained him. ‘Send word back to Keyoke that all of our outworld slaves are to be sent forthwith to the City of the Plains. Then choose our strongest warriors to escort Kevin to whatever staging area the Emperor has set aside for the Midkemians. Say nothing of this to anyone save Lujan, lest word of this development be carelessly mentioned by the servants.’ Here Mara paused to wrestle past a catch in her throat. ‘For my lover has a contrary and stubborn nature. Although he longs for his freedom, he may have a mind to argue over the manner in which it is bestowed upon him.’

Here the Lady was unable to continue, but Saric understood. Kevin had never submitted to orders, except through choice, or brute force. He had proved himself a formidable fighter, and where Mara was concerned, no man might predict how he would react to being parted from her. For his own safety’s sake and the lives of the warriors who must deliver him into the care of the Emperor, he must not hear of the fate that awaited him beforehand.

Saddened, for he had come to like the Midkemian’s odd humour, and his decidedly strange views of life, Saric bowed to his mistress’s wisdom. But as he hurried off to send in her maids, he reflected that he had never seen a more bleak expression in the eyes of any woman he had known.

The night passed in terrible, restless torment for Mara. While the butana wailed across the rooftree, she made frantic love to Kevin, the last time ending in tears in his
arms. He stroked her with a tenderness that threatened to break her heart. Hurt by her silence, her unwillingness to speak her fears, he nevertheless ignored his own pain in a profound effort to comfort her.

Mara clung to him in a mounting tide of hysteria. Her world seemed unhinged and she could not conceive of a life without the solid presence of the man who had caused her to re-examine every aspect of her beliefs, and forced her to see the deficiencies of her culture. Kevin had become more than lover, more than a man she could confide in: he was the taproot of the tree of her resolve. She had to rely upon his strength to change the Empire and make it honourable in a new and moral way. Without him, the power, the goals, and the shining vision she held for a future now shadowed by her recent vow to Tasaio seemed things devoid of joy. Mara lay in the warmth of Kevin’s embrace and listened as the soft, steady beat of his heart blended with the hollow dirge of the winds that rattled the screens.

Somehow, against his volatile barbarian nature, Kevin sensed that her turmoil would not support questions. His sensitivity wounded her, robbed her of a perverse excuse to fly into anger and send him away. Mara endured the tender caress of his hands, cut by the knowledge that this was the last night she could touch him. At last, exhausted, she fell into restless dreams. He lay awake, her head cradled in the hollow of his shoulder.

Through all the years he had known her, he had never seen her so distraught. Open in revealing his own passions, it never occurred to him that her love for him might be the hidden cause of her anguish.

Dawn came, unwanted as an executioner’s arrival. Mara found a grain of courage amid the wreckage of her nerves and ordered Kevin away, before the onset of her morning sickness. She spent a miserable interval torn between tears
that would not flow from swollen eyes, and dry heaves. Her maids worked tirelessly to restore her to a semblance of proper appearance. By the time she was fit to be seen in public, noon had already drawn nigh. Mara emerged from her quarters to find the escort quietly arranged by Saric already waiting by the door. Unaware of the Emperor’s proclamation, Kevin waited in his usual place by her litter, his red hair familiarly tousled, and a concerned expression on his face. At the sight of his blue eyes on her, Mara all but broke down.

Then the stern fibre of her warrior forebears sustained her. Drawing upon all her temple-taught training, she shut off her clamour of emotions and forced herself to step forward, one foot after another, until finally she reached her litter. Of desperate necessity, she chose Saric to assist her to her seat. Then, in a voice unrecognizable as her own, she said, ‘We must leave.’

She named no destination; this detail Saric had already attended to, and Lujan knew what lay ahead. But the anomaly roused Kevin to suspicion. ‘Where are we bound for this day?’ he asked on a fixed note of sharpness.

Mara dared not try speech. Aware that her eyes were flooding, she quickly snapped her curtains closed, and it was Lujan who waved her bearers to rise, and her honour guard of soldiers to march out of the town house courtyard, as Saric held his gaze upon the Midkemian with something resembling regret.

‘Will somebody please tell me why everyone acts as though we were going to a funeral?’ Kevin demanded plaintively. He received only Tsurani blankness for reply and resorted to a spectacular attempt at banter.

His extravagance at any other time would have sorely tried the deportment of her warriors, but today the most devastating of his repartee fell upon deaf ears. No one so much as hinted at a smile, far less indulged in a laugh.

‘Gods, but everyone’s as lively as a corpse.’ Mournful that some of his best jokes had been wasted, Kevin lapsed into silence as the escort crossed the bustle of Kentosani and took a turn toward the less fashionable district by the south-facing riverside.

Ahead lay a palisade constructed of wide, thick planks. Kevin stopped dead in the roadway, and only their fighters’ reflexes prevented the warriors behind from slamming into him. ‘I’ve seen the likes of this place before,’ he accused in a tone that snapped with reckless insolence. ‘Why are we going to the slave markets, Mara?’

The Acoma warriors did not wait for any signal; Kevin’s reactions were far too unpredictable for such nicety. Firmly, swiftly, and in force, they closed around the Midkemian and caught him back by the wrists.

Pinioned, and startled into rage, Kevin twisted, half an instant too late. The warriors grunted at the effort, but managed to keep their grip.

Traffic in the street was stopped by the commotion, and heads turned to stare.

‘Gods!’ Kevin exploded in a tone of blistering betrayal. ‘
You’re selling me!
’

The cry all but shattered Mara’s heart. She whipped aside the curtains of her litter and looked up into blue eyes that burned with fathomless rage. Words failed her.

‘Why?’ cried Kevin, with such terrible lack of inflection she felt clubbed. ‘Why should you do this to me?’

It was Lujan who answered, and roughly, for his own voice threatened to show feeling unseemly for a warrior, far less an officer of his status. ‘She does not part with you willingly, Kevin, but by the Emperor’s order!’

‘Damn the Light of Heaven,’ Kevin exploded. ‘Damn your sod of an Emperor to the deepest pit of the Seventh Hell!’

Gawkers poked their faces out of windows, and more
passersby stopped to stare. Several farm matrons made a sign against blasphemy, and a sour-faced merchant on the verge expressed thoughts of sending for a priest. Unwilling to be tried by the temples for the mouthing of a miscreant barbarian, a warrior less well acquainted with Kevin reached out a hand to cover his mouth.

The barbarian exploded into violence. He wrenched a fist free, knocking two of Mara’s guards aside before any others could move. The men were under orders to refrain from drawing blades, but as Lujan joined the heaving knot of struggle that centred around the Midkemian, he prayed no one would forget. Kevin battled as if possessed, and with his great height, no one watching from the sidelines could miss that he transgressed sane limits. He was irate enough to forget protocols, and should he succeed in his attempt to snatch a sword from one of the warrior’s scabbards, the Emperor himself could not keep him from dying.

Lujan glimpsed the fear on Mara’s face Then he dared a fury more focused than any harulth’s, and dived headlong into the press.

The wrestler’s move he employed prevailed and he struck Kevin squarely off balance. Lujan bore him over backward onto the cobbles of the street, while another soldier added his weight to the Force Commander.