Servant of the Empire (26 page)

Kevin complied, deeply suntanned and freckled over the nose, his blue eyes in startling contrast to his darkened skin. His hair had bleached red-gold, and the untrimmed ends fell curling to his shoulders. He wore no shirt. Hours spent digging with his work crews had left him callused and heavily muscled across the back and arms. The intensity of the summer’s heat had taken its due: his precious Midkemian-style trousers had been hacked short at the thigh, and his knees showed old scars and new scratches from the briers. Absorbed with taking in details, and unprepared for the leap of her heart as she saw him again after so long, Mara did not anticipate his anger.

Kevin bowed with insulting brevity. He locked gaze with her and gestured in his un-Tsurani fashion. ‘What do you want of me, Lady?’ He fairly spat out the title.

Mara stiffened on her cushions and the colour left her face. ‘How dare you speak so to me?’ she whispered, barely able to speak.

‘And why should I not?’ Kevin shot back. ‘You push me about like a chess … shah pawn! Here! There! Now here again, because it suits you, but never one word of why, and never one second of warning! I’ve done as you’ve bid – not for love of you, but to save the lives of my countrymen.’

Startled into the defensive, Mara broke poise and found herself near apology, as she attempted to justify her acts. ‘But I gave you promotion to slave master and allowed you charge of your Midkemian companions.’ She gestured at the slates. ‘You used your authority to see them comfortable. I see they have been eating jigabird and needra steak and fresh fruits and vegetables along with their thyza mush.’

Kevin threw up his hands. ‘If you work your men at heavy labour, you’ve got to feed them, or they weaken and take ill. That’s common sense. And those fields are a lousy place to be, filled with stinging flies and insects, and all manner of six-legged pests. Any kind of cut gets infected in this climate. You think my men have been enjoying banquets – you try sleeping on the ground out there, where the dust chokes your nostrils, and what passes for slugs and snails on this godforsaken world invading your blankets after dark. And when you do rid your kit of guests, you lie awake unable to catch a breath of air.’

Mara’s eyes darkened. ‘You will all sleep wherever I bid, and keep your complaints to yourselves.’

Kevin tossed back his untrimmed bangs, the better to glower at her. ‘Your damned trees got cleared, and the fences are nearly complete – give me another week. That’s something, considering our Tsurani counterparts wilt and take siesta every time the sun crosses the zenith.’

‘That does not give you leave to take liberties,’ Mara snapped. She caught her voice rising, and controlled herself with an effort.

‘Liberties, is it?’ Kevin sat down without permission. Even then she had to look up to him, and that gave him perverse satisfaction.

Mara reached out, picked up one of the slates scattered at her feet, and read: ‘The barbarian’s words to the overseer as follows: “Do that again and I’ll rip off your … balls, you lying son of a ditch monkey.”’ Mara paused, sighed, and added, ‘Whatever a “ditch monkey” is, my overseer took it as an insult.’

‘It was intended that way,’ Kevin interrupted.

Mara’s frown darkened. ‘The overseer is a free man, you are a slave, and it is not permissible for slaves to insult free workers.’

‘Your overseer is a cheat,’ Kevin accused. ‘He steals you blind, and when I found that the new issue of clothing for my men went to the markets to line the man’s pockets, while they continued to wear rags, I –’

‘Threatened to stuff his ripped-off manhood between his teeth,’ Mara interjected. She touched the slate. ‘It’s all here.’

Kevin said something rude in Midkemian. ‘Lady, you had no business spying on me.’

Mara’s brows rose. ‘About my overseer you happened to be right. He has been punished for his thefts, but as to spying, these are my estates, and what happens is certainly my affair. It is not spying to oversee one’s estate operations.’ She paused, about to say more, then changed course. ‘This interview did not begin as I had planned.’

‘You expected me to come back to you with kisses after sending me off like that? After months of breaking my back labouring to get fences built, under a threat of death for men whose only crime was to suffer from heat and malnourishment?’ Kevin said another word in Midkemian, this one short and to the point. ‘Lady, I might be forced to serve as your slave, but that doesn’t make me a mindless puppet.’

Mara bridled again, controlled herself, then threw up her hands in a manner more Kevin’s than her own. ‘I had intended to compliment you on your work team’s efficiency. Your methods might be unorthodox, even rough by our standards, but you got results.’

Kevin regarded her keenly, his mouth a compressed line. ‘Lady, I can’t believe, after being silent so long, you called me all the way back here to give me a pat on the head.’

Now Mara felt confused. Why had she called him back? Had she forgotten how much of a distraction he could be, with his outspoken barbarities and headstrong manners? She felt his anger toward her, and his bleak and frustrated resentment. Having smoothed over the intensity of him in her memories, she tried to distance his presence, and the appalling havoc he was playing with her heart and mind.

‘No, I did not call you back here for compliments. You are here because’ – she glanced around, apparently seeking something, while she calmed herself, then reached out and selected another slate, the one that had touched off her fury in the first place – ‘of fence rails.’

Kevin rolled his eyes, his hands clamped hard enough to bring white marks out on his forearms. ‘If I’m going to build a fence, I’m not going to do it with rotten posts that will fall down in the wet season sure’s there are flies in the fields. I can see me sitting here being lectured for shoddy “barbarian” workmanship. Not to mention the fact that next year I’ll be stuck with repairing the miserable job.’

‘What you’ll be doing next year is not your concern.’ Mara fanned herself with the slate. However she tried, she could not seem to control this conversation. ‘But taking the merchant who sells us the posts and tying him upside down over the river by the feet is an outrage.’

Kevin unlocked his hands, folded his arms across his chest, and looked smug. ‘Oh? I thought it was perfect justice. If the post held, the merchant stayed dry. If the wood was unsound, he got a dunking. Made him think twice, when we pulled him out of the water, about selling us inferior lumber.’

‘You shamed my name!’ Mara broke in. ‘The man you dunked happened to come from a guild house, and an
honourable family, even if they are not noble. Jican had to pay significant compensation to redress the injury done to the man’s dignity.’

Now Kevin sprang to his feet with the sudden wild grace that always startled Mara. He paced the floor. ‘That’s what I don’t understand about you Tsurani,’ he shouted, shaking an accusatory finger in the air. ‘You’re obviously cultured, educated, and the factors you have in your service aren’t stupid. But this confounded honour code you have, it makes me crazy. You cut off your toes to spite your feet with it, keep lying, lazy, or just plain incompetents in positions of authority because they happen to be born to an honourable house while better men are wasted in jobs of low demand and reward.’ He spun in a tight stride and faced Mara. ‘No wonder your father and brother got killed! If your people thought in straight logic, instead of in tangles of duty and tradition, your loved ones might still be alive.’

Mara went white. Kevin didn’t notice, but went on shouting, ‘And my people from the Kingdom might not be in such straits were your generals to play a straight war. But no, they advance here, savage a town without mercy, then retreat for no apparent reason and go off and ravage someplace else. Then they camp for months and do nothing.’

Mara fought to hold her ebbing composure. ‘Are you saying my people are fools?’ Vivid in her mind were the memories of the family killed through Minwanabi treachery. The thought that fate might have provided means to bring them home alive, if Tsurani honour had been somehow ignored, was cause for unanticipated anguish. Though the loss by now was six years past, the grief still lingered.

Kevin drew breath to answer, but Mara interrupted. ‘Say no more.’ Her voice broke over the words, and tears welled in her eyes. Daughter of a proud heritage, she tried to rein
them in, but did not succeed. She averted her face to hide this shame, but not quite quickly enough.

Kevin saw the sparkle in her eyes, and his anger abruptly drained away. He knelt down and reached an awkward hand toward her shoulder. ‘Lady,’ he said, his tone gone gritty with honesty. ‘I never intended to hurt you. Mostly I was mad because I thought I pleased you, before you sent me away.’ He took a deep breath and shrugged. ‘I am only a man, and like most, I don’t like to find out I’m wrong.’

‘You weren’t wrong.’ Mara spoke softly, without turning her head. ‘But you frightened me. Many of your ideas are constructive, but others are an affront to the gods – to what I believe in. I would not see the Acoma be ground down into the dust because I listened to your outworld “logic” to the exclusion of wisdom, and spurned divine law.’

Her shoulder spasmed with a sob, and Kevin’s heart went out to her. Had he stopped to think, he would have hesitated, but analysing emotions was not his habit. He gathered her small, tense form into his arms. ‘Mara,’ he spoke softly, into her hair. ‘Sometimes powerful, greedy men interpret the laws of heaven to suit themselves. I’ve learned a bit of your gods from your countrymen. Your Lashima is much like our Kilian, and Kilian is a kind and loving goddess. Do you think Lashima in her generosity would shrivel the hands on your wrists if you took pity and gave coins to the poor?’

Mara shivered in his grip. ‘I don’t know. Please say no more. Keyoke and Lujan lead our warriors to counter a Minwanabi offensive, and at such a time the Acoma must not tempt the gods’ anger.’

His hands gentled her, pulled her around to face him. His calluses felt rough, and his person and his hair smelled of sun-warmed sweat and meadow grass. Yet the feel of his skin upon hers made her heart race. Finding a calm in his presence that until now had eluded her, Mara wrinkled her nose. ‘You need a bath.’

‘Do I?’ Kevin drew her closer and lingeringly kissed her lips. ‘I missed you, though I’m foolish to admit it.’

Mara’s body burned in response and she leaned into him, feeling his strength. The pressure of his hands on her flesh made her throw caution, and Nacoya’s advice, to the winds. ‘I missed you also. Maybe we both need a bath.’

Kevin’s face split into a grin. ‘Here? Now?’

Mara clapped her hands, and servants rushed in, ready to answer whatever request she might choose. Impishly, the Lady of the Acoma looked up at the tall barbarian who held her. ‘Call my attendants and have them draw bath water.’ As an afterthought, she added, ‘And erase these slates. They contain information that could start a rebellion, and I don’t want my other slaves to learn impertinence, as this one has.’ As the servants hurried about their assigned tasks, she reached up and touched the scratch of stubble that grew on Kevin’s cheeks and chin. ‘I don’t know what it is that I see in you, dangerous man.’

Unaccustomed to sharing intimacies in a room filled with bustling activity, Kevin flushed beneath his tan. One by one he pulled out the pins that bound up Mara’s hair. When the rich locks fell free, he reached into the midnight mass and used it to screen both of their faces from public view. ‘You’re quite the Ruling Lady,’ he murmured into the scented gloom, and their next kiss swept away reason. Letting his hands slide playfully along the curve of her neck, he felt her shiver in delight and anticipation. Whispering in her ear, he said, ‘And, sorry sod that I am, I have missed you … Lady.’

Mara moved far enough away to see if his expression was mocking, but instead she read something in his eyes that caused a weakness to flow through her. Leaning against his hard body, the sunburn on his chest hot against her cheek, she answered back, ‘And I have missed you, my barbarian. Gods, how I’ve missed you.’

Keyoke motioned a halt.

Behind him, the first heavily laden silk wagons creaked to a standstill, the stamp of the needra teams scattering ochre dust on the breeze. Keyoke blinked grit from his eyes. The weight of his much-used battle armour made his knees ache and his back cramp; getting too old for campaign in the field, he thought.

Yet the warrior within him prevailed. Neither age nor fatigue reflected in Keyoke’s stance as he turned keen eyes toward the crest of the hill and scanned the roadway ahead. To the men who stood in neat ranks behind their officers, Keyoke was as he had always been: a craggy, sun-beaten figure that seemed carved from indestructible rock.

Ahead, the trail wound like a looped cord through promontories of cracked granite; dirt lay rutted where the rainy season had gouged away soil loosened by needra hooves and caravan wheels. But the rise ahead of the pass was not empty, as it should have been. Against a sky fogged with dust, Keyoke perceived movement, and a sparkle of sunlit green armour. A trailbreaker had lingered in wait for the caravan, sure sign that something was amiss.

Keyoke motioned to his newly promoted Strike Leader, a short man with a scar that marred an eyebrow, named Dakhati. ‘Pass the word to be ready.’

The order was superfluous. Warriors stood poised in their lines, hands rested lightly on sword hilts. They had marched at the ready since leaving friendly borders. Not one had been lulled by the uneventful passage of days or the fatigue of levering wagon wheels mired in the ruts of ill-kept mountain
roads. These lands were rife with bandits, and laid out by the gods for ambush.