Mistress of the Empire (12 page)

Mara forced her knees not to give way. She used every shred of her strength to draw breath and find her voice. ‘Your will, Great One.’

She bowed. Her armor dragged at her shoulders, and the plumes of her helm seemed to weigh down her neck, yet she lowered herself until her knees and forehead touched soil, and the feathers of a Hadama Warchief became sullied with dust.

The young magician inclined his head in perfunctory acknowledgment of her obeisance, then withdrew a round metal device from his robe. He depressed a switch with his thumb. A whining sound cut the stillness. With an audible pop and an inrushing of air, the Black Robe vanished.

The magician named Tapek lingered, studying the woman who was folded on the ground at his feet. His lips twitched as if he enjoyed her groveling. ‘See that the object of this lesson is well learned by all others in your Clan, Good Servant.
Any
who defy the Assembly will face the same fate as the Petcha.’ He withdrew another of the round devices and a moment later, disappeared. The other Black Robes vanished after him, leaving the hilltop bare but for the circle of Mara’s shocked officers.

Below, shouts rang across the vale as officers called orders to confused soldiers. Warriors crowded back up the hillsides, some in a hurry to put space between themselves and the carnage wrought by magic, others reluctant to turn their backs upon the enemy, who marched to the same edict given to Lady Mara. Saric gathered himself to his feet, while her Force Commander helped his Lady, in the encumbrance of her armor, to do the same. Hoarsely, she said to Lujan, ‘Hurry and dispatch more messengers. We must make haste to disperse the clan, lest further mishap provoke an incident.’

Swallowing hard, and still feeling sickened, Mara gestured to Saric. ‘And, Gods grant us mercy, order this terrible thing done: obliterate the Petcha.’

Saric nodded, unable to speak. He had a gift for reading character, and the memory of Tapek’s intensity gave him chills. Mara had been dealt the worst punishment imaginable, the utter destruction of a loyal clan family for no worse offense than youthful impetuosity. All for his mistress’s Call to Clan, the young Lord had died in lingering agony; before nightfall his young wife and baby sons would be dead, as would cousins and relations who bore his name. That Mara must herself be the instrument of that unjust decree cut through her grief for Ayaki. For the first time since the great black gelding had toppled upon the body of her son, her eyes showed the spark of awakened feeling for others beyond herself.

Saric saw this as he trudged off to complete the horrifying task set upon the Acoma by the Great Ones. Hokanu observed as he steadied his Lady’s steps on her return to the command tent. The fires of the Assembly’s magic had cauterised the wounds to her spirit. In place of the obsession for revenge against Jiro, a fierce anger now commanded her mind.

Mara had recovered herself. Hokanu knew bittersweet relief at the change. He regretted the Petcha’s loss; but the woman he loved was once again the most dangerous player of the Game of the Council the Empire had ever known. With a gesture, she dismissed the servants who rushed to neaten the disorder left in the tent. When the last of them had retreated a discreet distance away, she called Irrilandi to unlace the door flaps and restore her a measure of privacy.

Keyoke entered as the last flap slapped down. He performed servant’s task lighting the lanterns, while Mara paced. Vibrant, even jagged with nerves, she regarded those of her house who were present, arrayed in semicircle before her. Her voice seemed flat as she said, ‘They dare …’

Keyoke stiffened. He glanced askance at Hokanu, who stood as mute as the others. Mara reached the fallen tangle of her privacy curtains, then spun around. ‘Well, they will learn.’

Irrilandi, who knew her moods less well than the others, gave her a fist-over-heart salute. ‘Lady, surely you do not speak in reference to the magicians?’

Mara seemed tiny, in the lantern light that held the shadows in the cavernous tent at bay. A moment passed, filled by the muffled shouts of the officers still mustering troops outside. Bowstring-taut, Mara qualified. ‘We must do what has never been done since the Empire came into existence, my loyal friends. We must discover a way to evade the will of the Great Ones.’

Irrilandi gasped. Even Keyoke, who had faced death through a lifetime of campaigns, seemed shaken to the core. But Mara continued grimly: ‘We have no choice. I have shamed the Acoma name before Jiro of the Anasati. We are forbidden expiation by means of war; I will not fall upon my sword. This is an impasse for which tradition has no answer. The Lord of the Anasati must die by my design,
and I will not stoop to hiring assassins. Jiro has already used my disgrace to whip up enemies. He has turned the dissatisfied Lords in the Nations into a cohesive party of traditionalists, and Ichindar’s reign is imperiled along with the continuance of the Acoma name. My only heir is dead, so my ritual suicide offers us no alternative. If all that I have lived to achieve is to be salvaged, we must spend years in the planning. Jiro must die by my hand, if not in war, then in peace, despite the will of the Assembly of Magicians.’

Someone moved.

Atop a stack of baled cloth, partially hidden by the cant of a crooked bale, Arakasi heard what might be the grate of a footstep on the gritty boards of the floor. He froze, uneasy at the discovery he was not alone in the murk of the warehouse. Silently he controlled his breathing; he forced his body to relax, to stave off any chance of a muscle cramp brought on by his awkward position. From a distance, his clothing would blend with the wares, making him seem like a rucked bit of fabric fallen loose from its ties. Up close, the deception would not bear inspection. His coarse-woven robe could never be mistaken for fine linens. Mindful that he might have trapped himself by taking refuge in this building to shake a suspected tail, he shut his eyes to enhance his other senses. The air was musty from spilled grain and leakage from barrels of exotic spices. The scented resins that waterproofed the roof shingles mingled with those of moldered leather from the door hinges. This particular warehouse lay near enough to the dockside that its floors submerged when the river crested in spring and overran the levee.

Minutes passed. Noise from the dock quarter came muffled through the walls: a sailor’s raucous argument with a woman of the Reed Life, a barking cur, and the incessant rumble of wheels as needra drew the heavy drays of wares away from the riverside landings. The Acoma Spy Master strained to sort the distant hubbub; one by one, he tagged the sounds, while the day outside waned. A shouting band of street urchins raced down the street, and the bustle of
commerce quieted. Nothing untoward met his ears beyond the calls of the lamplighters who tended the street at the end of the alley. Long past the point where another man might conclude he had imagined the earlier disturbance – that what seemed a footstep was surely the result of stress and imagination – Arakasi held rigidly still.

The flesh still prickled warning at the base of his neck. He was not one to take chances. Patience was all, when it came to any contest of subterfuge.

Restraint rewarded him, finally, when a faint scrape suggested the brush of a robe against wood, or the catch of a sleeve against a support beam. Doubt fled before ugly certainty: someone else was inside the warehouse.

Arakasi prayed silently to Chochocan, the Good God, to let him live through this encounter. Whoever had entered this dark building had not done so for innocent reasons. This intruder was unlikely to be a servant who had stolen off for an illicit nap in the afternoon heat, then overslept through supper into night. Arakasi mistrusted coincidence, always; to presume wrongly could bring his death. Given the hour, and the extreme stealth exhibited by his stalker, he had to conclude he was hunted.

Sweating in the still air, he reviewed each step that had brought him to this position. He had paid an afternoon call upon a fabric broker in the city of Ontoset, his purpose to contact a factor of a minor house who was one of his many active agents. Arakasi made a habit of irregular personal visits to ensure that such men remained loyal to their Acoma mistress, and to guard against enemy infiltrations. The intelligence network he had built upon since his days as a servant of the Tuscai had grown vast under Acoma patronage. Complacence on his part invited any of a thousand possible mishaps, the slightest of which could spell disaster for his Lady’s welfare.

His visit today had not been carelessly made; his guise as
an independent trader from Yankora had been backed up by paper work and references. The public announcement of the Assembly’s intervention between the Acoma and the Anasati had reached this southern city days later; news tended to travel slowly across provinces as the rivers fell and deepwater trade barges were replaced by landborne caravans. Aware that Lady Mara would require his updated reports by the fastest possible means to guard against possible countermoves by the Anasati or other foes made bold by the Assembly’s constraints, Arakasi had shortened his stay to a hurried exchange of messages. On leaving the premises, he had suspected he was being followed.

Whoever had tailed him had been good. Three times he had tried to shed his pursuit in the teeming crush of the poor quarter; only a caution that approached the obsessive had shown him a half-glimpsed face, a tar-stained hand, and twice, a colored edge of sash that should not have been repeated in the random shuffle of late-day traffic.

As well as the Spy Master could determine, there were four of them, a superbly trained team who were sure to be agents from another network. No mere sailors or servants in commoners’ clothing could work with such close coordination. Arakasi inwardly cursed. He had blundered into just the sort of trap he had set for informants himself.

His backup plan could not be faulted. He had quickly crossed the busy central market, where purchase of a new robe and sudden movement through an inn packed with roisterers had seen the trader from Yankora vanish and a house messenger emerge. His skill in altering his carriage, his movements, the very set of his bones as he walked had confused many an opponent over the years.

His back trail had seemed unencumbered as he jogged back to the factor’s quarters and let himself in through a hidden door. There he had changed into the brown of a
common laborer, and taken refuge in the warehouse behind the trade shop. Crawling atop the cloth bales, his intent had been to sleep until morning.

Now he cursed himself for a fool. When those following had lost sight of him, they must have dispatched one of their number to backtrack to this warehouse, on the off-chance he might return. It was a move that a less cocky man might have anticipated, and only the gods’ luck had seen the Acoma Spy Master inside and hidden before the enemy agent slipped in to wait and observe. Sweat trickled down Arakasi’s collar. The opponent he faced was dangerous; his entrance had almost gone undetected. Instinct more than sure knowledge had roused Arakasi to caution.

The gloom was too deep to reveal his adversary’s location. Imperceptibly slowly, the Acoma Spy Master inched his hand down to grasp the small dagger in his belt. Ever clumsy with handling a sword, he had a rare touch for knives. If he had clear view of a target, this nerve-rasping wait might be ended. Yet if a wish was his for the granting, he would not ask the Gods of Tricks and Fortune for weapons, but to be far from here, on his way back to Mara. Arakasi had no delusions of being a warrior. He had killed before, but his preferred defense relied more on wits, surprise tactics giving him the first strike. This was the first time he had been truly cornered.

A scuffle sounded at the far end of the warehouse. Arakasi stopped breathing as a loose board creaked, pulled aside to allow a second man to slip inside.

The Spy Master expelled his pent air carefully. The hope of a stealthy kill was lost to him. Now he had two enemies to consider. Light flared as a hand-carried lantern was unshuttered. Arakasi squinted to preserve his night vision, his situation turned from tense to critical. While he was probably concealed from the first agent, the new arrival at the back of the warehouse could
not help but discover him as he walked past holding a light.

Out of alternatives, Arakasi probed for the gap that should exist between the stack of bales where he rested and the wall. Cloth needed space for air circulation, lest mildew cause spoilage in the dark. This merchant was not overly generous in his habits; the crack that met the Spy Master’s touch was very narrow. Prickling in awareness of his peril, he slid in one arm to the shoulder and wiggled until the bale shifted. The risk could not be avoided, that the stack might topple; if he did not act, he was going to be discovered anyway. Forcing himself flat against the wall, and nudging on the bale, Arakasi wedged himself into the widening gap. Splinters from the unvarnished boards gouged into his bare knees. He dared not pause, even to mouth a silent curse, for the light at ground level was moving.

Footfalls advanced on his position, and shadows swung in arcs across the rafters. He was only halfway hidden, but his position was high enough that the angle of illumination swept above him; had he waited another heartbeat, his movement would have been seen. His margin for error was nonexistent. Only the steps of his adversary covered the slither of his last furtive shove as he nestled downward into the cranny.

A mutter arose from beyond the bale. ‘Look at that!’ As if summarising an inspection, the man rambled on, ‘Tossing good cloth as if it were straw bales, and unworthy of careful packing … Someone should be beaten for this –’

The musing was interrupted by the original stalker’s whisper. ‘Over here.’

Arakasi dared not raise himself to risk a glance.

The lantern crept on in the hand of its unseen bearer. ‘Any sign of him?’

‘None.’ The first stalker sounded irritable. ‘Thought I
heard something a bit ago, but it was probably vermin. We’re surrounded by grain warehouses here.’

Reassured enough to be bored, the newcomer lifted his lantern. ‘Well, he’s around somewhere. The factor’s slave insisted he’d come back and gone into hiding. The others are watching the residence. They’d better find him before morning. I don’t want to be the one to tell our master he’s escaped.’

‘You get wind of the gossip? That this fellow’s been seen before, in different guise? He’s got to be a courier, at least, or even a supervisor.’ Cheerfully the stalker added, ‘He’s not from this province, either.’

‘You talk too much,’ snapped the lantern bearer. ‘And you remember things you should forget. If you want to keep breathing, you’d best keep that sort of news to yourself. You know what they say: “Men have throats and daggers have sharp edges.”’

The advice was received with a sigh. ‘How long must we keep watch?’

‘Unless we’re told to leave, we’ll stay until just before daybreak. Won’t do to be caught here, and maybe killed by guards as common thieves.’

An unintelligible grumble ended the conversation.

Arakasi resigned himself to a long, uncomfortable wait. His body would be cramped by morning, and the splinters an additional aggravation, but the consequences if he should be captured did not bear examination. The loose tongues of his trackers had confirmed his worst surmise: he had been traced by another spy net. Whoever commanded the pair who hunted him, whoever they reported to, the master at the top of their network worked for someone canny, someone who had constructed a spy system that had escaped notice until now. Arakasi weighed this fact and knew fear. Chance and intuition had spared him when intricate advance precautions had
failed; in discomfort, in warm darkness, he agonised over his assessment.

The team who sought to capture him were skilled, but not so polished that they refrained from indulging in idle talk. It followed that they had been set to catch what their master presumed must be a low-ranking link in the operation he sought to crack. Arakasi suppressed a chill. It was a mark of the deep distrust that drove him, that he preferred when he could to accomplish occasional small errands in person. His unseen enemy must have the chance to know who he was, how highly he was placed, or the name of the mistress he reported to. Possibly he faced the most dangerous opponent he had ever encountered. Somewhere Lady Mara had an enemy, whose subtleties posed a threat greater than anything she had confronted in her life. If Arakasi did not escape alive from Ontoset, if he could not get a message home, his mistress might be taken unwarned by the next strike. Reminded by the ache in his chest that his breathing had turned swift and shallow, the Spy Master forced control.

His security had been compromised, when he had no inkling of impending trouble. The breach spoke of intricate planning. The factor’s second role must have been discovered; precisely how could not be surmised, but a watch had been set over the traffic at Ontoset’s docks closely enough to differentiate between regular traders and those who were strangers. That the team that lay in had been clever enough to see through two of Arakasi’s disguises, having marked him as a courier or supervisor, boded ill.

Arakasi counted the cost. He would have to replace the factor. A certain slave was going to die of what must seem natural causes, and the trade shop must be shut down, a regrettable necessity, for while it doubled as part of his network, it was one of the few profitable
Acoma undertakings used by the spy ring. It paid for itself and provided extra funds for other agents.

Grey light filtered through a crack in the wall. Dawn was nigh, but the men showed no sign of stirring. They had not fallen asleep, but were waiting against the chance the man they sought might show himself at the last hour.

The minutes dragged. Daybreak brightened outside. Carts and wagons rumbled by, the costermongers bringing produce to be loaded at the riverside before the worst of the heat. The chant of a team of barge oarsmen lifted in tuneless unison, cut by the scolding of a wife berating a drunken husband. Then a shout raised over the waking noise of the city, close at hand, and urgent. The words were indistinct to Arakasi, wedged behind muffling bales of linen, but the other two men in the warehouse scrambled immediately into motion. Their footfalls pattered the length of the building, and the board creaked aside.

Most likely they made good their escape; were they clever, they might have used the sound of their leaving as opening gambit for a ruse. A partner could yet be lingering to see if their quarry flushed in response.

Arakasi held still, though his legs were kinked into knots of spasming muscle. He delayed a minute, two, his ears straining for signs of danger.

Voices sounded outside the doubled door, and the rattle of the puzzle lock that held the warehouse secure warned of an imminent entry. Arakasi twisted to free himself, and found his shoulders wedged fast. His arms were pressed flat to his sides; his legs had slipped too low to gain purchase. He was trapped.