Mistress of the Empire (22 page)

Hokanu was about to offer companionable sympathy when Mara’s scream cut the air like a blade.

He tensed, then spun without a word and sprinted off
down the corridor. The entrance to his Lady’s chamber lay half opened; had it not, he would have smashed the screen. Beyond, lit to clarity by the brilliance of lamps, two midwives held his wife as she convulsed. The fine white skin of her wrists and shoulders was reddened from hours of such torment.

Hokanu dragged a sick breath of fear. He saw the healer bent on his knees at the foot of the sleeping pallet, his hands running red with her blood. Panic jolted him from concentration as he glanced up to ask his assistant for cold rags, and he saw who stood above him in the room.

‘Master, you should not be here!’

‘I will be no place else,’ Hokanu cracked back in the tone he would have used to order troops. ‘Explain what has gone amiss. At once!’

‘I …’ The healer hesitated, then abandoned attempt at speech as the Lady’s body arched up in what seemed a spasm of agony.

Hokanu raced at once to Mara. He shouldered a straining midwife aside, caught her twisting, thrashing wrist, and bent his face over hers. ‘I am here. Be at peace. All will be well, my life as surety.’

She wrenched out a nod between spasms. Her features were contorted in pain, the flesh ashen and running with perspiration. Hokanu held her eyes with his own, as much to reassure her as to keep from acknowledging damage he could do nothing about. The healer and midwives must be trusted to do their jobs, though his beloved Lady seemed awash in her own blood. The bedclothes pushed up around her groin were soaked in crimson. Hokanu had seen but had not yet permitted himself to admit the presence of what the sobbing servants had been too slow to cover up: the tiny blue figure that lay limp as rags near her feet. If it had ever been a child, it was now only a torn bit of flesh, kicked and bruised and lifeless.

Anger coursed through him, that no one had dared to tell him when it happened, that his son, and Mara’s, was born dead.

The spasm passed. Mara fell limp in his grasp, and he tenderly gathered her into his arms. She was so depleted that she lay there, eyes closed, gasping for breath and beyond hearing. Swallowing pain like a hot coal, Hokanu turned baleful eyes toward the healer. ‘My wife?’

The servant quietly shook his head. In a whisper, he said, ‘Send your fastest runner to Sulan-Qu, my Lord. Seek a priest of Hantukama, for’ – sorrow slowed him as he ended – ‘there is nothing more I can do. Your wife is dying.’

The runner swerved.

Only half mindful of the fact that he had narrowly missed being run down, Arakasi stopped cold in the roadway. The sun stood high overhead, too close to noon for an Acoma messenger to be moving in such haste unless his errand was urgent. Arakasi frowned as he recalled the courier’s grim expression. Fast as reflex, the Spy Master spun and sprinted back in the direction of Sulan-Qu.

He was fleet of foot, and dressed as a small-time merchant’s errand runner. Still it took him several minutes to overtake the runner, and at his frantic question the man did not break stride.

‘Yes, I carry messages from House Acoma,’ the runner answered. ‘Their content is not your business.’

Fighting the heat, the dusty, uneven footing, and the effort it took to flank a man who did not wish to be delayed, Arakasi held his ground. He studied the runner’s narrow eyes, full nose, and large chin and out of memory sought the man’s name.

‘Hubaxachi,’ he said after a pause. ‘As Mara’s faithful servant, it is certainly my business to know what need sends you racing for Sulan-Qu at high noon. The Lady does not ask her runners to risk heat stroke on a whim. It follows that something is wrong.’

The runner looked over in surprise. He identified Arakasi as one of Mara’s senior advisers, and at last slowed to a jog. ‘You!’ he exclaimed. ‘How could I recognise you in that costume? Aren’t those the colors of the Keschai’s traders’ association?’

‘Never mind that,’ Arakasi snapped, short of both wind and temper. He tore off the headband that had misled the servant. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’

‘It’s the mistress,’ gasped the runner. ‘She’s had a bad childbirth. Her son did not survive.’ He seemed to gather himself before speaking the next line. ‘She’s bleeding, dangerously. I am sent to find a priest of Hantukama.’

‘Goddess of Mercy!’ Arakasi almost shouted. He spun and continued at a flat run toward the Acoma estate house. The headband that had completed his disguise fluttered, forgotten, in his fist.

If the Lady’s fleetest runner had been sent to fetch a priest of Hantukama, that could only mean Mara was dying.

Breezes stirred the curtains, and servants walked on silent feet. Seated by Mara’s bedside, his face an impassive mask to hide his anguish, Hokanu wished he could be facing the swords of a thousand enemies rather than relying upon hope, prayer, and the uncertain vagaries of healers. He could not think of the stillborn child, its lifeless blue form racked in death. The babe was lost, gone to Turakamu without having drawn breath. The Lady lived yet, but barely.

Her face was porcelain-pale, and the wraps and cold compresses the midwives used to try to lessen her bleeding seemed of little avail. The slow, scarlet seep continued, inexorably. Hokanu had seen fatal wounds on the battlefield that bothered him less than the creeping, insidious stain that renewed itself each time the dressings were changed. He bit his lip in quiet desperation, unaware of the sunlight outside, or the everyday horn calls of the dispatch barge that brought news from Kentosani.

‘Mara,’ Hokanu whispered softly, ‘forgive my stubborn heart.’ Though not a deeply religious man, he held with the temple belief that the wal, the inner spirit, would hear and
record what the ears and the conscious mind could not. He spoke as though Mara were aware and listening, and not statue-still in a coma on the bed.

‘You are the last Acoma, Lady, all because I would not yield to your request to swear Justin in as your heir. Now I regret my selfishness, and my unwillingness to concede the danger to the Acoma name.’ Here Hokanu paused to master the unsteadiness in his voice. ‘I, who love you, could not conceive of an enemy who would dare reach past me to strike you down. I did not allow for nature herself, or for the perils of childbirth.’

Mara’s lashes did not stir. Her mouth did not tremble or smile, and even the frown between her brows was absent. Hokanu fingered her dark, loose hair, spread over the silken pillows, and battled an urge to weep. ‘I speak formally,’ he added, and now his voice betrayed him. ‘Live, my strong, beautiful Lady. Live, that you might swear in a new heir for the Acoma over your family natami. Hear me, beloved wife. I do this moment release Kevin’s son, Justin, from his obligations to House Shinzawai. He is yours, to make strong the Acoma name and heritage. Live, my Lady, and together we will make other sons for the future of both our houses.’

Mara’s eyes did not open to the light of her victory. Limp beneath the coverlet, she did not stir as her husband bowed his head and at last lost his battle to hold his tears. Neither did she start at a near-silent step and a voice like silk that said, ‘But she does have an enemy who would strike her down, and the child in her womb as well, in cold blood.’

Hokanu coiled like a spring and turned to confront a shadowy presence: Arakasi, recently arrived from the message barge, his eyes impenetrable as onyx.

‘What are you talking about?’ Hokanu’s tone was edged like a blade. He took in Arakasi’s dusty, exhausted, sweating appearance, and the rust-and-blue headband
still clenched in a hand that shook. ‘Is there more to this than a bad miscarriage?’

The Spy Master seemed to gather himself. Then, without flinching, he delivered the news. ‘Jican told me as I came in. Mara’s poison taster did not awaken from his afternoon nap. The healer saw him and says he appears to be in a coma.’

For an instant Hokanu seemed a man made of glass, his every vulnerability evident. Then the muscles in his jaw jerked taut. He spoke, his voice unyielding as barbarian iron. ‘You suggest my wife was poisoned?’

Now it was Arakasi who could not speak. The sight of Mara lying helpless had unmanned him, and he could only mutely nod.

Hokanu’s face went white, but every inch of him was composed as he whispered, ‘There was a spice dealer from beyond the rift who came yesterday, offering Mara trade concessions on exotic drinks brewed from luxury herbs and ground plantstuffs from Midkemia.’

Arakasi found his voice, ‘Mara tasted them?’

Her consort choked out an affirmative, and, as one, both men sprang for the doorway.

‘The kitchens,’ Hokanu gasped as they almost bowled over the midwife who had returned to change Mara’s compresses.

‘My thought exactly,’ Arakasi said, swerving to avoid the runner slave who waited at his post in the hallway. ‘Is there any chance the utensils may not have been washed?’

The estate house was huge, with rooms jumbled together from centuries of changing tastes. As Hokanu ran full tilt through the maze of servants’ passages, archways, and short flights of stone stairs, he wondered how Arakasi could know the shortest route to the kitchens, since he was so seldom home; and yet the Spy Master ran without taking any cue from Mara’s consort.

As the two crossed a foyer that had a five-way intersection between wings, Arakasi unerringly chose the correct doorway. Hokanu forgot his fear enough to be amazed.

Even through his concern, Arakasi noticed. ‘Maps,’ he gasped. ‘You forget, this was once the dwelling of Mara’s greatest enemy. It would be a poor Spy Master who did not know the lay of such a man’s house. Agents had to be told which doors to listen at, not to mention the time that a guild assassin had to be given explicit directions as to which five servants were to be killed –’

Arakasi broke off his reminiscence, his eyes turned deep with thought.

‘What is it?’ Hokanu demanded as they ran down a stone-flagged portico, silk curtains rippling with the wind of their passage. ‘What are you thinking? I know it pertains to Mara.’

Arakasi shook his head in a clipped negative. ‘I had a hunch. When I can substantiate it, I will tell you more.’

Respectful of the man’s competence, Hokanu did not press for answer. He poured his heart and energy into running, and reached the kitchen a half step ahead of the Spy Master.

Startled servants looked up from preparing supper for the field hands. Wide-eyed, they took in the disheveled presence of the master, then instantly fell prostrate upon the floor.

‘Your will, master,’ cried the head cook, his brow pressed to the tiles.

‘Dishes, cups,’ Hokanu gasped disjointedly. ‘Any utensil my Lady used when the foreign spice dealer was here. Have everything out for the healer’s inspection.’

The back of the chief cook’s neck turned white. ‘Master,’ he murmured, ‘I have already failed in your request. The cups and the dishes from yesterday were cleaned and put away, as always, at sundown.’

Arakasi and Hokanu exchanged harried, desperate glances. What garbage had not been thrown to the jigabirds would have been burned, to discourage insects.

No trace remained of what variety of poison the spice seller from Midkemia might have carried. And unless they could discover what potion had stricken Mara, there could be no hope of finding an antidote.

Instinctively knowing Hokanu was on the verge of explosive, useless action, Arakasi gripped him hard by the shoulders. ‘Listen to me!’ the Spy Master said in a tone that made the prone servants flinch upon the floor. ‘She is dying, yes, and the baby is dead, but all is not yet lost.’

Hokanu said nothing, but his body stayed taut as strung wire in Arakasi’s grasp.

More gently, the Spy Master continued. ‘They used a slow poison –’

‘They wanted her to suffer!’ Hokanu cried, anguished. ‘Her murderers wanted us all to watch, and be helpless.’

Daring unspeakable consequences, both for laying hands on a noble and also for provoking a man near to breaking with fury and pain, Arakasi gave the master a rough shake. ‘Yes and yes!’ he shouted back. ‘And it is that very cruelty that is going to save her life!’

Now he had Hokanu’s attention; and much of that warrior’s rage was directed at himself. Sweating, aware of his peril, Arakasi pressed on. ‘No priest of Hantukama can be found in time. The nearest –’

Hokanu interrupted. ‘The bleeding will take her long before the poison is finished working.’

‘Pity her for it – no,’ Arakasi said brutally. ‘I spoke with the midwife on the way in. She has sent to Lashima’s temple for golden crown flower leaves. A poultice made from them will stop the bleeding. That leaves me a very narrow span of time to track the spice merchant.’

Reason returned to Hokanu’s eyes, but he did not soften. ‘That merchant had barbarian bearers.’

Arakasi nodded. ‘He dressed ostentatiously, also. All that gold would have drawn notice.’

Through his overwhelming concern, Hokanu showed surprise. ‘How did you know? Did you pass the man on the road?’

‘No.’ Arakasi returned a sly grin as he released his hold on Mara’s consort. ‘I heard the servants gossiping.’

‘Is there any detail you don’t miss?’ Mara’s husband said in wonder.

‘Many, to my everlasting frustration.’ Arakasi glanced, embarrassed, toward the floor, both he and the master that moment recalling that the kitchen staff still abased themselves at their feet.

‘For the good gods’ sake!’ Hokanu exclaimed. ‘All of you, please, get up and go about your duties. The mistress’s ills are not your fault.’

While the slaves and servants arose from the floor and turned back to tasks at chopping block and cooking spit, Arakasi dropped to his knees before Hokanu. ‘Master, I request formal leave to pursue this seller of alien spices and find an antidote for my Lady Mara.’

Hokanu gave back the curt nod a commander might give a warrior on the field. ‘Do so, and waste no more time on obeisance, Arakasi.’

The Spy Master was back on his feet in an eye’s blink and moving for the door. Only when he was safely past, at one with the shadows in the corridor, did his rigid control slip. Openly anxious, he considered the probabilities of the situation he had not disclosed to Hokanu.

The spice seller had been conspicuous indeed, with his barbarian bearers and his ostentatious jewelry; and certainly not by chance. A man born in Kelewan would never wear metal on a public roadway without a driving
reason. Already Arakasi knew that the man’s trail would be easy to follow: for the man had intended to be tracked. The Spy Master would find only what the man’s master wished, and the antidote for Mara would not be part of that knowledge.

In the portico between the great hall and the stairways to the servants’ quarters, Mara’s Spy Master broke into a run. Already he had a suspicion: he expected to find the spice seller and his bearers all dead.

In a tiny, wedge-shaped room in the attic over the storerooms, Arakasi opened a trunk. The leather hinges creaked as he rested the lid against the thin plaster wall, then rummaged within and pulled forth the hwaet-colored robes of an itinerant priest of a minor deity, Alihama, goddess of travelers. The fabric was smudged with old grease stains and road dust. Swiftly Mara’s Spy Master flung the garment over his bare shoulders, and fastened the cord loops and pegs. Next he dragged up a cracked pair of sandals, a purple-striped sash, and a long, hooded headdress with tassels. Lastly he selected a ceramic censer, strung with earthenware bells and twine clappers.

His guise as a priest of Alihama was now complete; but as Spy Master, he added seven precious metal throwing knives, each keenly balanced and thin as a razor. Five of these he tucked out of sight under the broad sash; the last two were slid between the soles of his needra-hide sandals, under rows of false stitching.

When he passed through the doorway from his narrow dormer room, he walked with a lanky, rolling stride and peered about carefully as he took the stair, for one of his eyes appeared to have developed a cast.