Mistress of the Empire (37 page)

A stinging in his shoulder marked a hit by an assassin’s dart. It would be poisoned, surely, yet he had no choice but to ignore it. The antidotes he had brought on the chance he might get hit lay with his stores, hidden outside the perimeter. He rushed across the garden, leaped into a tree, and flung himself over the first wall. Poised for a moment, he heard darts and the heavier rattle of arrows flying through the branches above his head.

He looked frantically for opportunity. A panicked party of servants hurried past. Attempting to steal from the estate, they hugged the wall in silence as they sought a clear avenue to freedom.

Arakasi insinuated himself into their midst, causing one woman to scream and a man to throw himself on his knees and beg mercy. The Spy Master’s black clothing had caused them to mistake him for an assassin, he realised with near-hysterical glee. Drawing a deep breath, Arakasi screamed, ‘The servants have murdered the Obajan! Kill them all!’ His ragged shout sent the menials scattering in all directions, and he sprinted as they did, toward the outer wall. Let the tong trackers pick out his spoor from this confusion, he thought as he skinned his palms leaping over.

At the edge of physical and mental exhaustion, he made his way to a sheltered place he had selected against the faint chance he would complete his mission. There he had hidden his antidotes, and a cache of drugs that would force him to continued alertness and energy, until safety or death greeted him. He would pay a terrible price for their use, and weeks of rest would be needed, but survival would be worth the price. He dosed himself quickly and stripped off his bloodied clothing. He left them under a large rock. From another of his vials, he poured a pungent liquid that
caused his eyes to water. It was the essence of a slu-leeth, a large swamp creature that other beasts found repellent. No dog known would track one, and indeed, exposure to its musk would ruin the animals’ sense of smell for days. As he rubbed the stinking ointment on his skin, the sting in his shoulder reminded him he still had a dart in his flesh. He drew the barbed shaft out and slipped on a fresh shirt. The bitten knuckles he could do nothing for, and he cursed at the certainty that the hand would swell and infect.

He could do nothing more but trust that the antidote he had swallowed would counteract the poison. He had made a fair guess at those required, a legacy of the knowledge gained from his inspection of Korbargh’s shelves.

Arakasi began to lope through the night, sandal-clad feet slapping steadily over the rocky trail that led to safety. Now as he coursed through dew drenched grasses, memories of Korbargh’s end, and another death, made him acknowledge the changes in himself. Never again could he take such measures against a man, not for Mara, not for duty, not for honor. Not since he had held a dying courtesan and confused her, for a moment, with another girl. Irrevocably, he had perceived his own heart. If Korbargh’s antidotes, and the poison in his body were not a match … Arakasi was fatalistic – until another memory surfaced: the mad girl in the Obajan’s chamber. Her tearful hysterics replayed in his mind, her mumbling resolved with frightening clarity. She had said, ‘
He knows Kamini!
’

Kamini who was but one half of a pair of twins, one belonging to an impotent old man, and the other dead with the Obajan. Arakasi began to run then, out of breath and hurting before he started. For the first time ever, he prayed with fervor to the gods of Kelewan, begging Sibi, who was Death, not to call him to her brother Turakamu’s halls. He needed luck, or a miracle, most likely both. For his lapse into distraction back in the Obajan’s chamber was sending death
to Kamlio’s door. He had left the mad girl, alive, and still babbling, and a search was on for an assassin. The Obajan’s guards who remained alive might not cover every cranny of the estate grounds in the dark. But come daylight, when the Tiranjan arrived to direct the aftermath, a more methodical hunt would begin. The courtesan would be questioned.

Arakasi recognised a second ugly truth: because of Kamlio he could be made to talk should he be taken. He choked back anguish. The only way to save the twin that he loved was through Mara; and the only way to protect his Lady was through the girl, who knew he had worked for a powerful mistress with great wealth. There were few such Ruling Ladies in the Empire. The tong would redouble their attacks upon Mara. Where once the tong struck for honor, now they would attack for survival. Arakasi would be only minutes ahead of the assassins in his race to reach Kamlio. If he could find one of his new operatives in Ontoset he might pass along his precious burden, but he had no moment to delay. From the instant the fact came to light that the Obajan’s murderer had recognised Kamini, the brotherhood would investigate, working back along the trail from the estate to the slave broker, to the surviving twin. They would leave corpses after their inquiries. If their agents in Kentosani received word before he could recover Kamlio …

Sweating, Arakasi increased his pace, through fields and gardens, and over the beaten earth of a game trail that led in the direction of the main thoroughfare. Ah, if he could have one of Hokanu’s accursed horses, now …

Even in his affirmation of service to Lady Mara, he also moved as he must, to meet his own need. Arakasi became filled by a strange exhilaration, as if only now had it registered that he was alive. His insane assault upon the Obajan had succeeded, and he held the tong’s records in his possession. That victory made him giddy. The jarring
of the road under his feet, the sting of splinters in his skin, the burning of each labored breath, were all sensations to be cherished. Part of his mind recognised the effects of the drugs he had taken, but he also knew this preternatural awareness arose from his discovery of the true stakes at risk for him.

As he hurried through the night, he analytically examined this epiphany. As son of a woman of the Reed Life, he had never regarded love between man and woman as any sort of mystery. He had lived, always, by his wits, his perception, and his skills derived from level-headed study of his fellow human beings. He had seen Mara’s involvement with the barbarian, Kevin, and been intrigued. He had attributed the fire in his mistress’s eyes when the man had been present to a female’s need to romanticise relationships. Why else go through the encumbrance and the bother of childbearing, he had coldly rationalised.

Now, running as if his heart would burst, his throat congested with unshed tears, he thought of a honey-haired girl, still living, and her dead identical twin sister. He saw, as he bashed through dew-drenched branches and stumbled with startling carelessness into the open moonlight on the road, that he had been wrong. Stupidly, pitifully wrong.

Half a lifetime he had lived, and almost missed the significance of the magic that poets called love. He skidded to a stop, and glanced in both directions to locate the litter pre-arranged to wait for him.

He pondered, as he gasped for breath, whether if he survived to spare the other, living girl from the tong’s vengeance as this night’s work was traced back to her – he wondered if the cynical nature, born of crushed dreams, would ever permit her to teach him what he now most wished to know. He ached to see whether the emptiness he had discovered within himself could ever be fulfilled.

He spun around and, in the empty road, realised a second
thing, as fearful as any other in this night of reckoning: this was the last mission he could undertake in the belief there would not be personal consequences. For, irrevocably, he had lost the detachment that had set him apart from his fellows, and had given rise to the ice-clear objective vision that had made him a genius in his craft.

A need had wakened in him that changed him from what he was; no longer could he look upon others through his lens of unfeeling indifference. No longer could he mimic their ways, and assume any identity at will. The pale-haired courtesan had forever changed that.

A night bird sang, somewhere off in the wood. The foliage overhung the thoroughfare, dimming moonlight, and the fine-grained scattering of stars. Left in drifting mist, with an empty roadway and no clue, not even a flag of dust to determine which way the litter might be waiting, Arakasi chose a direction at random. Tortured to wry observation, he considered whether his opponent at the game of intrigue, Chumaka of the Anasati, had also possessed that flaw of human nature, and lived in the absence of love. Or if he had not, would Arakasi’s newfound vulnerabilities leave him open to attack by a man that already had an uncanny penchant for spycraft, and who was Mara’s implacable enemy?

Arakasi agonised, as the sound of night creatures seemed to mock him. Feeling more anguish in minutes than he had known all the years of his life, the exhausted, frightened, yet exultant Spy Master hurried on, toward a future and a goal more fearful than any he put behind him.

The fog lifted.

Arakasi walked through the river quarter of Jamar in bone numbing fatigue. Although he had shed all signs of pursuit nights past, he dared not stop for rest. The tong was behind him somewhere, following him like hounds on a game trail. They would lose him in this city, among ten thousand strangers, only to turn to their other lead – the clue that led to Kamini’s sister. He had only a matter of days before they found Kamlio.

With Mara still in residence at the Imperial Palace, he would forfeit what precious lead time he had gained. The fastest commercial litter, with two extra crews of runners, had carried him from Ontoset to Jamar in a week. He could not sleep though the jouncing ride, but his drug depleted body had fallen into a stupor for the few hours a day the bearers required to rest.

Now, six days after he had killed the Obajan, he had paid off the exhausted crew of litter bearers by the entrance to Jamar’s main market, then lost himself amid the workers who set up the merchant’s stalls and laid out the day’s wares. Jamar was the busiest trading port in the Empire and the dockside quarter formed a small community on its own, where seagoing ships met river craft. Arakasi found a beggar boy sitting before a brothel, closed at this early hour of morning. He held up a shell worth a hundred centis, more wealth than the boy would beg in a year. ‘What is the fastest way upriver?’

The boy sprang to his feet and with gestures indicated he had no voice. Arakasi motioned for the boy to show him.
Darting through the early morning crowd that collected by the sausage seller’s shack, the boy led him upriver to a pier where a half-dozen small craft were tied up. There in plain view of a stout riverman, the boy pantomined that this was where Arakasi wished to be. The Spy Master gave him the shell.

The transaction was not lost upon the riverman, who until that moment had counted the filthy man another beggar. Seeing that shell, he reassessed his evaluation and smiled broadly. ‘You seek quick passage upriver, sir?’

Arakasi said, ‘I need to reach Kentosani in haste.’

The man’s chubby face showed pride. ‘I own the swiftest craft in the city, good sir.’ He pointed toward the river, indicating a low, trim messenger boat, with a tiny cabin, moored some distance from the pier. ‘I call her
River Mistress.
Four banks for eight oarsmen, and full sail.’ Arakasi assessed her lines and efficient lateen sail. She might not be quite as good as her master’s boast, but he would lose any time he might save in looking for one that might be marginally faster.

‘She appears worthy,’ Arakasi said neutrally. ‘Are the rowers aboard?’

The captain said, ‘Indeed. We are waiting for a merchant from Pesh, who desires transport to Sulan-Qu. He has the cabin, sir, but if you are willing to ride on deck, you may take over the accommodations from Sulan-Qu to Kentosani. The price would normally be five hundred centis, but as you are sharing the boat halfway, I’ll take three hundred.’

Arakasi reached into a hidden pocket in his sleeve and withdrew a slug of silver the size of his thumb. At the glint of metal, more wealth than any riverman might expect to see in one place, the captain’s eyes widened. ‘I will have the cabin,’ Arakasi said firmly. ‘And we leave now. The merchant from Pesh can make other arrangements.’

Whatever ethical protestations might have been made
died in the captain’s mouth. Offered incalculable riches, he all but fell over backwards in his hurry to escort Arakasi to the dinghy that bobbed at the bottom of the pier. Down the ladder they went, and the captain cast off and rowed as if ten thousand demons pursued him, lest the discommoded merchant appear and raise outcry.

Arakasi boarded the
River Mistress
while the captain made fast the dinghy and cast off the mooring. The green hull was sloppily painted, but there was no rot or other signs of slack care. The captain might be a frugal man, but he kept his boat sound.

The rowers and tillerman were given their orders and the captain escorted Arakasi to the tiny cabin as the
River Mistress
swung around into the current and began making her way upriver.

Little more than a low shack amidships, the cabin was large enough for two people. The interior was dark, and stale with the smell of lamp oil mixed with the lingering perfume of its previous passenger. The ports to admit light and air were covered with silk curtains and the cushions were worn, but Arakasi had often endured worse.

He said, ‘This will do. Now, one thing I demand: no one is to disturb me. Anyone who enters the cabin before we reach Kentosani will die.’

Arakasi was not the first strange passenger the boat owner had accommodated, and given the price he had paid, no objections were raised over conditions.

Arakasi sat and closed the louvered doors, then removed the bundle he carried inside his robe. The tong’s journal had never been out of touch of his skin from the moment he had fled the Obajan’s estate. Now, as he had his first chance to scan the pages, he began his study of the encoded entries. But the strange characters blurred before his eyes. With his head bent over yellowed parchment, he fell into exhausted sleep.

When he next regained consciousness, a glance through a porthole showed that they were halfway to the Holy City. He had slept for two days and a night. Snacking from a basket of fruits presumably left for the merchant from Pesh, he began to unravel the tong’s cipher. It was a clever code, but not beyond Arakasi’s gifts to solve, given that he had nothing else to do for three more days. He saw four columns, and surmised that each entry was comprised of four pieces of information: the date of the contract, the price agreed upon, the name of the target, and the name of the person buying the contract. Next to all but the last few were checkmarks.

Arakasi scanned backward through the records until he found another entry without a checkmark. He assumed this to be the name Mara of the Acoma, and the person paying the price, Desio of the Minwanabi. Another missing checkmark, farther back in the record, would be Mara’s name again, with Desio’s father Jingu beside it. Comparison of the characters revealed that the code was a complex substitution, using a key that was modified with each use.

For hours Arakasi studied the pages, attempting one solution, then another, discarding a third. But after a day and a half of work, he began to identify the pattern of change.

By the time he reached Kentosani, he had translated the journal, and reviewed its entirety several times. He secured pen and paper from the captain, and made a key for Mara, not trusting to transcribe the text lest the journal fall into other hands. But he did mark one entry he had disclosed in some distress, for its ramifications demanded his Lady’s attention.

When the boat reached the Holy City, Arakasi leaped from deck to pier before the owner had fully tied up the craft, disappearing into the press of the crowd without
a word. He paused only long enough to acquire suitable clothing, and made his way to the palace. There he sent word, enduring the torment of waiting with the Imperial Guards as his message made its way from servant to servant, at last reaching Lady Mara. Had he more wits or time, he might have devised a disguise to approach her more directly. But the scroll he carried was too important, and he could not risk being killed as an assassin by the Imperial Whites.

When at last he was escorted into Mara’s presence, in her private garden, she smiled, though her gravid condition prevented her from rising to greet him.

An afternoon breeze blew, whipping dust across the stones between the planters, as the Spy Master arrived before Mara and bowed.

With emotion that belied his usual dry manner, Arakasi said, ‘Lady, the task is done.’

Mara did not miss the change in her Spy Master. Her eyes widened, and she motioned for the servants to leave, then indicated that her Spy Master should sit beside her upon the bench.

Arakasi obeyed and handed his mistress a bundle, wrapped in silk. She opened it and saw the scroll with its red ribbons and Hamoi flower stamping.

Mara said, ‘The tong is destroyed?’

Arakasi’s voice reflected unprecedented weariness. ‘Nearly. There is a small matter left to resolve.’

Mara glanced at the cipher, saw the key, and put the journal aside for later study. ‘Arakasi, what is wrong?’

The Spy Master found words difficult. ‘I discovered … something about myself … on this journey, mistress.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I may not be the man I once was … no, I
am
not the man I once was.’

Mara resisted the impulse to look into his eyes. She did not try to read his doubts, but waited for him to continue.

‘Mistress, at the time when we are most challenged, by the Assembly and by Jiro of the Anasati … I am not sure I am equal to the tasks before us.’

Mara touched his hand in gentle affection. ‘Arakasi, I have always admired your resourcefulness and the amusement I took whenever you would appear mysteriously, in this garb or that.’ She regarded him with seriousness underneath her light warmth. ‘But for each curious garb there was a story, a mission in which you endured danger and pain.’

Arakasi said, ‘A girl died.’

Mara said, ‘Who was she?’

‘The sister to another.’ He hesitated, painfully unsure of himself.

‘She is important to you, this other girl?’

Arakasi stared at the green sky above the garden, inwardly recalling a face that seemed to shift from that of a taunting courtesan to a dying, frightened girl’s. ‘I don’t know. I have never known anyone like her.’

Mara was silent a moment. ‘I have said that I admired you the most among those in my service.’ Her eyes looked into his. ‘But of my closest officers, you have always seemed the least in need of affection.’

Arakasi sighed. ‘In truth, my Lady, I also thought myself without that need. Now I wonder.’

‘You feel that the Spy Master of the Acoma cannot afford friendships?’

Arakasi emphatically shook his head. ‘No, he cannot, which leaves us with a problem.’

‘How much of a problem?’ she asked.

Arakasi rose, as if giving rein to restlessness might ease his turmoil. ‘The only man I would trust to have the skill to keep you safe in my place is, unfortunately, the one who is trying to destroy you.’

Mara looked up at him, a spark of humor in her eyes. ‘Chumaka of the Anasati?’

Arakasi nodded. ‘I must continue to seek out his agents and destroy them.’

‘What of this unfinished matter of the tong?’

Arakasi saw at a glance that she would have all the tale, so he told her of his trip to the South that had led to the death of the Obajan. He mentioned the risk the courtesan Kamlio posed to them. ‘As long as the tong holds out any hope of regaining their journal, its assassins will torture and kill anyone they suspect of having information. Only after their honor is compromised publicly will they begin to wither and die.

‘That scroll is the only means they have of ascertaining who they are contracted to kill. Once it is learned that the journal has been stolen, any man may claim the tong owes him a death, and they have no way to prove him a liar. More, it is their natami, and its absence shows that Turakamu no longer looks upon their efforts with favor.’

Arakasi tucked his fingers in his sash. He paused as if choosing words, then said, ‘Once you have reviewed the records to your satisfaction, I will insure that every rumormonger in the Holy City is aware of the theft. As word spreads, the tong will disburse like smoke.’

Mara once again was not diverted from the underlying issue. ‘This courtesan. She’s the one who has … caused such a change in you?’

Arakasi’s eyes betrayed confusion. ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps she is but a symptom of it. Either way, she is … a danger to your safety. Out of prudence, she should be … silenced.’

Mara observed her Spy Master’s posture and manner, then made a judgment. ‘Go and save her from the tong,’ she ordered. ‘Silence her by bringing her under Acoma protection.’

‘It will require a great deal of money, mistress.’ His voicing a practical concern barely hid his relief and embarrassment.

‘More than you have asked for before?’ she said with mock alarm. Arakasi had been her most expensive retainer over the years, and the lavish provisions she had allowed him had earned her many a scolding from Jican.

‘This is not something I do on behalf of the Acoma,’ he revealed, an implied plea that somehow won past his iron control. He was not the sure servant, but a supplicant. Only once before had Mara seen him like this, when he had thought himself a failure and begged her permission to take his own life with the sword. She arose and gripped his hand tightly. ‘If you do this for yourself, you act also for the Acoma. That is my will. Jican is inside. He will provide whatever funds you need.’

Arakasi started to speak, but found no words. So he simply bowed and said, ‘Mistress.’

She watched him depart, and as he entered her apartment in the palace, she beckoned to a servant hovering in the doorway. She needed a cool, soothing drink. As the maid came to attend her, Mara pondered upon the consequences of countermanding Arakasi’s judgment. She took a risk, encouraging him to spare the courtesan. Then, she thought with a bitterness left over from past losses, what would the future bring for any of them if she made no allowance for matters of the heart?