Mistress of the Empire (55 page)

‘Lady?’ Kamlio’s eyes were open, watching. She had not been asleep at all, but only shamming. ‘Lady Mara, what will happen to us?’

Leaving the lamp alight, Mara snuggled the furs around her chin and studied the girl who regarded her with eyes like luminous jewels. No wonder Arakasi had been overtaken by desire! Kamlio was appealing enough to bewitch any man, with her creamy skin and fine, fair coloring. As badly as the Lady of the Acoma wished to offer reassurance, she knew better than to lie. If her Spy Master had been thawed into discovery of emotion by the allure of this courtesan, what might the Thuril with their tradition of taking women by raiding do to keep her? ‘I don’t know, Kamlio.’ Mara’s uncertainty showed through despite her best efforts.

The ex-courtesan’s delicate fingers tightened over the bed furs. ‘I don’t want to stay among these people.’ For the first
time when dealing with her personal wishes, her gaze did not shy away when she spoke.

‘What would you do, then?’ Mara seized upon the vulnerability that their straits as prisoners had created. ‘You are too intelligent to remain in my service as a maid, Kamlio, and too uneducated to assume a post of more responsibility. What would you like to do?’

Kamlio’s green eyes flashed. ‘I can learn. Others have risen to rank in your service who were not born to it.’ She bit her full lip and after a moment, some of the tension seemed to leave her, as if she let down some inner barrier by expressing ambition. ‘Arakasi,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Why did he insist upon asking you to buy my freedom? Why did you grant his request, if not to leave me to him?’

Mara briefly shut her eyes. She was too tired for this! One wrong word, one insufficient answer, and she risked all that her Spy Master hoped for happiness. Honesty was her best course, but how to choose the best phrases? Beaten down by a headache and by pain in every muscle – stiff from the day’s forced march – the Lady of the Acoma found that in fact Isashani’s tact was beyond her. The bluntness she had learned from Kevin of Zun must suffice. ‘You remind him of his family, who also were born to a life that did not suit them, and who also never learned how to love.’

Kamlio’s gaze widened. ‘What family? He told me that you were all of his family and all of his honor.’

Mara accepted the burden of that statement. ‘I may have become so. But Arakasi was born masterless to a woman of the Reed Life. He never knew the name of his father, and he saw his only sister killed by a lustful man.’

The courtesan absorbed this news in silence. Watching, fearful that she might have said too much, but unable to stop short, Mara added, ‘He wants your freedom from the past, Kamlio. I know him well enough to vow to you this:
he would ask you for nothing more than you would give him freely.’

‘You love your husband that way,’ Kamlio said, in her words a cutting edge of accusation, as if she distrusted the existence of such relations between a man and a woman.

‘I do.’ Mara waited, wishing she could lay her head down and close her eyes, to lose this and all other problems in the oblivion of sleep.

But Kamlio’s need prevented that. She picked nervously at the furs, and in an abrupt change of subject, said, ‘Lady, do not leave me here among these Thuril! I beg you. If I were forced to become the wife of such a foreigner, I would never find out who I am, what sort of life would please me. I think I would never understand the meaning of the freedom you have given me.’

‘Have no fear, Kamlio,’ Mara said, losing her battle against her overwhelming exhaustion. ‘If I leave this land at all, I will bring all of my people out with me.’

As if she could trust this reassurance with her life, Kamlio reached out and snuffed the light. After that, Mara could only suppose that the girl shared no more words in confidence, for the Lady of the Acoma slept without dreams in the close, herb-scented cubicle.

When morning came, Lady Mara and her servant woman found themselves well treated to a warm bath in the women’s quarters, followed by a breakfast of fresh breads and querdidra cheese. Kamlio appeared pale but composed. Yet Mara noted a fragility to her manner that she believed stemmed from worry rather than bitterness. Outside the hut, a great commotion of shouting and laughter issued from the vicinity of the village square, but Mara could not make out the cause through the blurry, translucent windows of oiled hide. When she inquired, the young women who were her hostesses gave her blank stares. Without Ukata present to translate, little else could be done but endure
through the simple meal in politeness until an escort of highlander warriors arrived at the door and demanded that the two Tsurani women come out.

Kamlio whitened. Mara touched her hand in reassurance, then raised her chin high and stepped outside.

A wagon waited by the low stair beyond the door. It had high sides woven of withe, and was drawn by two querdidra and the recalcitrant donkey. Its scrawny grey hide was flecked with spittle from the six-legged beasts’ spite, and in vain it tried to kick at the traces to retaliate. The querdidra blinked their absurdly long lashes and wrinkled their lips as if laughing.

Tied to the wagon were Mara’s warriors. They did not smell of the dung that had been their last night’s camp, but were clean, if drenched. Lujan, as he saw his Lady descend the stair, looked flushed with some inward satisfaction, and Saric was stifling a smile. Startled by her warriors’ neat appearance, Mara looked further and realised that the Thuril highlanders who swaggered about on guard detail were eyeing her captive retinue with what seemed a newfound respect.

Suspect though she might that somehow the pandemonium she had heard through the walls of the house might be connected, she had no chance to inquire. The Thuril warriors closed around, and she and Kamlio were bundled up over the wagon’s crude backboard into a bed lined with straw. The withe rose up on either side, too tightly woven for Mara to see out. The warriors lashed the tailgate firmly closed. Captives still, the women felt the jolt as the drover leaped up and gathered the reins, and then the creak of withe and wheels as he slapped his team with his goad and hastened them forward.

The donkey and the querdidra pulled badly together. The wagon swayed and jolted over ruts, and the straw smelled of livestock, taken, as it was, from some goodman’s byre.
Kamlio looked so sick with fear that Mara bade her lie down in the straw. She offered the girl her overrobe, for the wind cut down off the heights in chilly gusts. ‘I will not see you abandoned, Kamlio,’ she assured. ‘You did not come here to become some rough Thuril’s wife.’

Then, too restless to sit still, Mara leaned against the withe on the side nearest to Lujan and demanded to know how her warriors had gotten their soaking.

As before, the Thuril guard set over them did not care whether their captives talked. Lujan was permitted to step close to the painted spokes of the wheel and answer his mistress all he liked.

‘We complained that we did not care to march into their capital smelling of dung,’ the Acoma Force Commander said, his voice deep with choked-back amusement. ‘So they allowed us to go under guard to bathe in the river.’ Now a chuckle escaped Lujan’s control. ‘Of course, our armor and clothing were soiled, so we stripped to clean that also. This caused a great commotion among the highlanders. Iayapa said it was because they do not go naked except to battle. There was much pointing and shouting. Then someone called out in bad Tsurani that we were no sport for insults, being unable to understand the rasping grunts these folk call a language.’ Here Lujan paused.

Mara leaned her cheek against the creaking withe. ‘Go on.’

Lujan cleared his throat. Plainly, he was still having difficulty suppressing amusement. ‘Saric took up that challenge, shouting to Iayapa to translate everything, no matter how ugly the words were, or how obscene.’ The wagon jolted over a particularly bad rut, and Lujan broke off his narrative, presumably to jump across. ‘Well, the words got very personal indeed. We were told by these Thuril how we got all of our battle scars. If they are to be believed, the women of the Reed Life in our land are
practiced at putting our best soldiers to rout with their fingernails. Or our sisters all lie with dogs and jigabirds, and we scratched each other with our nails all vying to have the best view.’

Here Lujan broke off again, this time grimly. Mara gripped the withe tightly enough to whiten her knuckles. The insults Lujan had mentioned were shame enough to a man’s honor to require vengeance, and the Lady doubted her Force Commander had repeated the worst slander. Hoarsely, for she was sorrowful and angry that she had brought such brave warriors to such a disgraceful pass, she said, ‘This must have been terrible to endure.’

‘Not so terrible.’ A toughness like barbarian iron entered Lujan’s voice. ‘I and the others, we took example from Papewaio, Lady.’

Mara closed her eyes in remembered pain for brave Pape – who had saved her life many times over, and come as a consequence to wear the black rag of a condemned man for her sake, and then equally for her sake, to forgo the death by his own blade that he had earned, and to live on, his dark headcloth symbolic of a triumph that only his Lady and those who knew him might understand. Lastly, he had died to save her life, in an attack by a Minwanabi enemy. Mara bit her lip, jostled from her remembrance by the sway and jolt of the wagon. She hoped that these warriors, the finest and best of her honor guard, would not suffer the same untimely end. Old Keyoke, her Adviser for War, had taught her well that death in battle on strange soil was not, as old custom held, the best end a warrior could earn.

‘Go on,’ she said, hiding the tears in her voice from Lujan.

Almost, she could imagine her Force Commander’s shrug. ‘Lady, there is nothing more to tell. Your warriors agreed not to take umbrage at empty words from the Thuril. And the highlanders seemed surprised by this. They called
down and asked why we did not bother to defend our honor. And Vanamani called right back that we were
your
honor, Lady. We would hear no word that was not spoken from your lips, or the lips of an enemy. At that point Saric broke in and added that the Thuril were not enemies, but foreigners, and that the words of such were empty as the howl of wind over stones.’ Lujan delivered his last sentence in wry amusement. ‘You know, the highlanders stopped slanging us then. Our loyalty impressed them, I think, that we would not be baited, even when under command of a woman who was out of sight and a captive as we were. Iayapa said that many Tsurani in the times of the wars were taunted to take foolish charges, and so were killed off by highlanders hidden in the rocks.’

‘Lujan,’ Mara said, her voice tremulous with gratitude despite her wish to seem impassive, ‘all of your men are to be commended for their valor. Tell them I said so, as you can.’ For each and every one of them had stood firm beyond the call of duty, beyond the tenets of Tsurani culture that held honor above even life. Each of these men had given over their personal honor into her hands. Mara studied her palms, red-marked from her grip on the withe. She prayed to her gods that she would prove worthy of such trust, and not get them all sold into slavery that would be the nadir of dishonor.

The hours dragged.

Confined to the wicker wagon, exposed to buffeting winds and the sun that appeared and disappeared between the clouds that brooded over the highlands, Mara strove to keep her patience. But the uncertainty, and the boisterous shouts of the Thuril escort warriors, wore at her nerves. To pass the time, she asked Iayapa to describe the lands they were crossing. He had little to tell. There were no villages, only a few isolated hamlets clinging to rocky hillsides, surrounded by scrub grazed thin by the herds. Over the purple hills at the horizon larger mountains loomed, rock-crowned where they were not covered by cloud. Darabaldi, the city of the high council of chieftains, was said to lie in the foothills of the great range. When Mara asked Iayapa to inquire on the length of their journey, she received in return only laughter and ribald comments. Driven at last to useless exasperation, she turned to teaching Kamlio the calming techniques of meditation she had learned as a temple novice.

Gods knew, the poor girl might need all the solace she could learn to give herself, before their fates were determined at the hands of these people, Mara thought.

The highlanders paused only to eat sausage, sour querdidra cheese, and bread, washed down with a light, sour beer that was surprisingly refreshing with the meal. These breaks were enlivened by loud boasts and sometimes wagers, when warriors would contest at arm wrestling.

Darkness fell, and fog settled in cold layers over the land. The donkey grew too tired to kick at the querdidra that
shared its traces, even if the six-legged beasts still curled their lips at it and spat. Mara curled close to Kamlio for warmth. Perhaps for a while she slept.

The stars formed a brilliance of pinpoint patterns overhead when she roused to the barking of many dogs. Herd dogs, Iayapa identified, not the larger, heavier breed of hound used for hunting. By the smoke on the air, and the pungent smell of confined livestock, rotting garbage, and curing hides, Mara presumed their party approached a village or larger habitation.

‘Darabaldi,’ she received in gruff-voiced reply when she inquired. But when she pressed for information concerning when she might speak with the council of chieftains, her escort returned only coarse comment. ‘What does it matter, woman, or are you eager to learn what man will buy you? Maybe you worry that he will be old and have no manhood left in him to rise?’

To this outrageous statement, Saric ventured a rough term in the Thuril’s own language, perhaps learned by the bathing pool that morning. The highlanders were not offended in the least, but laughed back and, grudgingly, appeared to allow her First Adviser some respect.

Torchlight spilled across the wagon. Mara looked up at a tall gatehouse topped by fat-soaked cressets that gave off greasy smoke. From battlements of stone and log, Thuril warriors in drab plaids called down challenge to the approaching party.

Antaha shouted back, then launched into rapid-fire speech accompanied by gesticulations, some of which were crude. From the evident amusement of the sentries, and their glances in her direction, Mara presumed their captor gave account of her capture. The bathing scene by the river was apparently not omitted, for the sentries elbowed one another in the ribs and hooted at Lujan and Saric.

Then the guards and their Tsurani captives were waved
on through, and the wagon jerked forward with a bray from the donkey and shrill squeals from the querdidra. ‘Well,’ Mara commented to Kamlio, ‘everyone in town will know we are here, by the fanfare of our draft beasts.’

More than ever she wished that the withes were low enough to allow her a view, but changed her mind a moment later at a pattering sound that might have been thrown stones, or dried dung, striking the sides of the cart. Shouts in Thuril blended with the screech of children caught at mischief, and the barrage stopped. Looming over the top of the withes, Mara saw two-storied stone buildings, and signboards painted in dull colors swinging in the wind. The galleries and sills of the windows all had carved totem posts, and peaked gable roofs that looked strange to Tsurani eyes. The eaves were also carved in what looked like runes or writing, beneath roofs of weathered thatch. Windows seemed to be shuttered and barred, except for ones stuffed with plump-cheeked women who called out and made obscene gestures of welcome.

‘Whores,’ Kamlio judged in edged bitterness. Mara could see her unspoken fear that such a garret might become her future home.

Mara bit her lip. She knew that Kamlio was far more likely to become the woman of a chieftain’s son, but she could not stop herself from wondering: if her Spy Master were to find himself masterless again, would he swear service to the Shinzawai, as Hokanu must surely request, or would he remain a free agent, and come to these hostile hills, searching a succession of Thuril towns for the girl who had stolen his heart? Given a wager, Mara would have guessed he would come searching for Kamlio.

The wagon jounced over what might have been a stretch of cobbles or stone paving, then lurched to a halt. The withe tailgate was opened by a blond highlander who grinned to show missing teeth, and Mara and Kamlio were beckoned
to step down. Beyond the Thuril guard and onlookers who clustered around, a long house backed up to the village wall; to Mara’s quick glance, it seemed a small fortress. The bossed wood doors of the structure stood open, but the entrance was hung with cloths woven of animal wool into patterns of squares and lines. Before Mara could observe more, a Thuril warrior shoved her toward the blanket flap. Kamlio, Saric, Lujan, and Iayapa were singled out to follow.

As she reached the threshold, Mara marveled at the softness of the fabric she brushed past. Then, the others clustered at her heels, she was inside, blinking at the sting of smoky air in a windowless room.

The gloom was pierced by the reddish gleam of banked embers, kept more for cooking than for warmth in close air that was pungent with wool, boiled stew, and pent humanity. Upon an upraised settle before that immense stone hearth, an old woman sat cleaning querdidra wool on a card of bone nails. Little more than a silhouette on the floor below, an older man crouched cross-legged on a woven withe stool. As Mara’s eyes adjusted, she saw he had grey hair. His mouth was deep-cut and sullen, framed by a long mustache that hung down his pouched jaw. The ends flashed with colored beads that rattled as he lifted his chin.

Iayapa spoke quickly in a hushed voice to Saric, who in turn murmured, ‘This one wears the face hair of a chieftain. By the talismans of rank dangling from it, he could be the high chief himself.’

Mara smothered her surprise. She had expected a great personage, not an ordinary-seeming fellow in an unadorned green kilt. The bowl he ate from was crude wood, his spoon a battered implement of corcara shell. Taken aback by his lack of ceremonial trappings, the Lady of the Acoma almost missed noticing the other men, seated as they were in
shadow, in a semicircle, their conversation fallen to a hush at the entrance of her party.

For an interval, the incoming Thuril and their captives regarded those seated, who stared back silently, unmindful of the meal they had been eating scarcely a moment before.

Astonishingly, it was the old woman who stopped her carding and broke the silence first. ‘You might ask them what they want.’

The man with the chief’s mustache spun in his seat, jabbing in her direction with his spoon. Gravy flew in spatters from the bowl and struck with a hiss into the coals. ‘Shut up, old hag! I don’t need you telling me what to do!’

As Mara again raised her brows, startled by both the lack of propriety or any sort of formal ceremony, the chief of the Thuril spun back. His beads and his mustache whipped outward with a clatter as he jerked his chin at Saric, who was closest. ‘What do you want, Tsurani?’

When Saric wished, he could be masterful at misleading expressions. The half-light thrown off by the coals showed him stone-still, as if the Tsurani high chief had addressed the empty air.

Mara took her adviser’s cue and stepped forward. Into silence, she said crisply, ‘I have come to your land seeking information.’

The Thuril chief stiffened as if slapped. His eyes jerked to the Lady who stood before him, then flinched away. He seemed to stare over her head, and so could not miss the wide grins of Antaha and the other warrior escorts.

‘You stand there and allow a woman captive to speak out of turn,’ he roared in a battlefield bellow.

Not the least nonplussed, although his ears stung from the shout, Saric pushed forward. Despite his bound hands, he executed a creditable bow. ‘Antaha does so, worthy chief,
because the Lady is Mara of the Acoma, Servant of the Empire, and family to the Emperor of all Tsuranuanni.’

The chief stroked his mustache, twirling the beads at the ends. ‘Is she so?’ His pause extended through a clatter of wooden plates and spoons as his cronies all set down their meals. ‘If this woman is indeed the Good Servant, where are her banners? Her army? Her great and illustrious command tent?’ A sneer developed in the chief’s deep baritone. ‘I have seen how Tsurani nobles travel in foreign territory! They carry half their possessions along with them, like merchants! I say you lie, outlander. Or why is she’ – he made a derogatory gesture toward Mara – ‘attended by so few guards? We are enemy countries, after all.’

At this, the old woman by the settle tossed down her carding, her face crinkled in disgust. ‘Why don’t you ask her yourself? She said she came seeking information. It must be very important to her.’

‘Shut your great cave of a mouth, old woman!’ Explosive in his indignation, the chief jabbed a hand that still clutched a crust of bread at Mara’s party, not at all willing to address the Lady directly. ‘We are not the barbarians you Tsurani suppose, you know.’

Mara’s composure snapped. ‘Are you not?’ How she wished she could speak the Thuril language. As it was, her own must suffice. ‘And do you call bedding my honor guard down in a livestock pen
civilised?
In my land, not even slaves live so meanly!’

Taken aback, and embarrassed by stifled chuckles from Antaha and his warriors, the chief cleared his throat. ‘You were asking me about information …’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Enemy, by what right do you come here making demands?’

But before Mara could answer this, Iayapa thrust between her and Saric, bristling with purpose. ‘But Lady Mara did not come here as our enemy. Her warriors disarmed at her
command, and not once did they call back in insult, though the villagers and the guards at the Loso did their best to revile them.’

‘He speaks truth,’ Mara cut in, unwilling to accede to the silly Thuril custom that a man should not acknowledge public speech from a female. As if in admiration of her spunk, the old woman by the settle smiled. Mara continued, ‘Now as to the information I seek …?’ She left her question hanging.

While the chieftain looked uncertain, the old woman thumped him from behind with her toe. ‘She is waiting for you to tell her who you are, you wool-brained fool.’

Turning to glare at the woman, who could only be his wife to escape punishment for such liberties, the chieftain shouted, ‘I know that, woman!’ He twisted back to Mara, sucking himself up straight in self-importance. ‘Yes, it must be important information –’

‘Your name,’ the old woman prodded calmly.

Still unmindful of his morsel of bread, the chieftain shook his fists. ‘Shut up, woman! How many times must I tell you to keep silent in the lodge hall? Plague me again, and I’ll beat your fat backside with a thorn switch!’ The woman ignored the threat and took up her neglected carding.

The chieftain puffed up his chest, which only displayed to plain view the gravy stains of varied ages on his vest. ‘My name is Hotaba. I am chieftain of the Five Tribes of the Malapia, and, for this season, high chief of the council here in Darabaldi.’ Pointing at the man sitting farthest from him, also wearing a warrior’s scalp lock and mustache, he said, ‘This is Brazado, chieftain of the Four Tribes of the Suwaka.’ Then pointing at the last man, who wore no mustache, he said, ‘This is Hidoka, his son.’ His eyes shifted past Mara’s shoulder to fix upon Saric, as he finished, ‘My own son, Antaha –’

Acerbically Mara cut in, ‘We’ve met.’

Now the high chief crashed his fists to his knees in anger. Crumbs flew as his crust broke to bits under the blow, and his brows lowered into a fearsome frown. Mara resisted a shaky urge to step backward; she had gone too far, in her boldness, and this time these Thuril would retaliate for her interruption.

But the old woman on the hearth cleared her throat loudly.

Hotaba’s glare shifted in her direction, then vanished as he shrugged in resignation. ‘That loud-mouthed interfering female is Mirana, my wife.’ As if in afterthought, he added, ‘If she were not so good at cooking and sweeping, I’d have had her cut up for dog meat years ago.’

Antaha said, ‘The chief at Loso thought it best to send these captives directly to you rather than await the next trading caravan, Father.’

The chieftain tapped his mustache, to a clink of beads. ‘Little need for guards these days, eh? What with the Tsurani being meek like little gachagas.’ Mara recognised the term and knew it was unflattering even before the worried glance Iayapa shot toward Lujan and Saric. But after what they had endured at the river pool that morning, both showed indifference to being compared to grain-stealing rodents.

While the high chief was still waiting for reaction to his derogatory comment, Mirana interjected, ‘You still haven’t asked Lady Mara what she wishes to know.’