The Complete Empire Trilogy (115 page)

Mara flicked her hand, and her runner departed for the kitchen, where the Midkemian had gone for hot chocha. Already returning up the stairs, the barbarian slave entered almost immediately. ‘What’s the excitement?’ he asked as he set down a tray laden with a pot and assorted cups. ‘A bit of spiced chocha hardly seems cause for getting nearly knocked flat by your runner.’

Kevin’s back was turned to Mara as he bent to pour the first cup, and he had not noticed Arakasi, who habitually sought the least conspicuous corner.

‘First, the barbarians –’ the Spy Master began.

Startled into rattling the china, Kevin spun. ‘You!’ He covered his overreaction with a sour smile. ‘What about the
barbarians?
’

Arakasi cleared his throat. ‘The outworlders have launched a completely unexpected and massive counter-offensive. Our armies on Midkemia have been overwhelmed and routed back to the valley where we control the rift! We have just suffered the worst defeat of the war!’

Tactful for once, Kevin reined back a laugh of joy. But he could not resist a smug look at Arakasi as he handed his Lady her spiced chocha.

‘What else?’ Mara asked, sure there must be more because of her Spy Master’s precipitous entrance.

‘Second,’ Arakasi ticked off, ‘the Emperor has agreed to meet with the barbarian King to discuss peace!’

Mara dropped her cup. ‘What?’ Her exclamation cut across the smash of china, and steaming chocha splashed in a flood across the floor.

Kevin stood rooted. Mara ignored the drenched tiles, and the fine spray of stains that spread slowly through the hem of her robe. ‘Peace?’

Arakasi continued, speaking quickly. ‘My agent in the palace sent word this morning. Before the Warlord’s last major offensive, two agents of the Blue Wheel Party slipped through the rift with the outbound troops. They were Kasumi of the Shinzawai and a barbarian slave, and they left the encampment and carried words of peace to the barbarian King.’

‘That’s why your Shinzawai friend wasn’t at the games,’ Kevin said. ‘He didn’t know if he was going to be a hero or an outlaw.’

Mara pulled wet cloth from her knees, but called no maids to assist. ‘Kasumi. That’s Hokanu’s brother.’ Her
eyes narrowed. ‘But the Blue Wheel Party would never do something this bold without –’

‘Without the Emperor’s approval,’ Arakasi interjected. ‘That’s the gist. Ichindar had to be willing to discuss peace prior to dispatching any envoy.’

Mara turned pale as she considered. ‘So this is why the Light of Heaven was prepared to step in and rule.’ Slowly she added to Kevin, ‘Your appraisal of our Emperor may be more accurate than we gave you credit for, my love. Ichindar meddled in the Great Game, and none knew.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘This goes counter to all tradition.’

Kevin pulled a napkin from the tray and knelt to dam the flow of chocha. ‘You’re one to talk. I seem to recall you’ve bent one or two traditions to the point of twisting them beyond recognition.’

Mara protested. ‘But the Emperor …’ Her awe made it clear she considered the Light of Heaven to be just short of a god.

‘He’s a man,’ said Kevin, the hand with the dripping rag rested on his bent knee. ‘And he’s young. Young men often do unexpected and radical things. But this one’s lived a pampered life, for all his boldness. He’s surely naïve if he thinks he can skip in and order your power-hungry Tsurani Lords to pack up and go home and grow radishes.’

Arakasi said, ‘Mistress, whatever “radishes” may be, I fear Kevin is right.’

‘There’s another hand in this,’ Mara insisted, unsatisfied. She glared at her sodden overrobe, then threw it impatiently off. Fine cloth finished where Kevin’s ministrations had left off, but if a few silk cushions had been saved, Mara never noticed. ‘Had the magician Milamber not caused Almecho’s disgrace, how would things have proceeded?’

If the question was rhetorical, the progression was not hard to trace. Even Kevin could follow that the Blue Wheel
Party would have once more reversed policy and withdrawn from the Alliance for War. This would have left Almecho with only Minwanabi as a major supporter. With the Acoma and the Xacatecas busy worrying the Minwanabi flank, Desio could not afford to increase support. Almecho and his party would have been deadlocked, after thirteen years of near-absolute rule.

Kevin wrung his rag savagely over the chocha tray and voiced the only viable conclusion. ‘So your Emperor would have barged into the High Council to announce a peace proposal, and your Warlord would have lacked enough support to confront him. Very neatly done.’ Kevin finished with a whistle of admiration. ‘Your Ichindar is a very smart boy.’

Arakasi appeared inwardly calculating. ‘Even had things gone as Kevin surmises, I don’t think our Emperor would have risked an open confrontation with the Warlord. Not unless he had some special avenue of appeal.’

Kevin’s eyes widened. ‘The magicians!’

Mara nodded. ‘Almecho has his “pets”, so Ichindar would need allies to counter them.’ To Arakasi she said, ‘Go and speak with your agents. Discover, if you can, who among the Great Ones is a likely candidate to have been involved in this game. See if one has a special relationship to any within the Blue Wheel, especially the Shinzawai. They seem to be at the heart of things.’

As her Spy Master bowed and departed, Mara’s gaze sharpened as if she viewed some private vista from a place of dizzying height. ‘Great changes are coming. I feel this like the breeze that brings the butana,’ she said in reference to the bitter, dry wind that in the old stories raised the spirits of demons and set them free to roam the land. Then, as if thoughts of mythological evils and present-day strife gave her shivers, she ruefully acknowledged her clumsiness. ‘But
one can hardly seize the initiative while swimming in puddles of chocha.’

‘That depends on what sort of initiative,’ Kevin countered, and he rescued her from the disaster by sweeping her into his arms.

The upheaval precipitated by Milamber brought in a few small concessions. As trade resumed, and shortfalls opened opportunities, Mara received word from Lord Keda that her terms for the warehouse space had been accepted. The destruction along the dock front in Kentosani had made her offer the only option, and a premium would reward the first grain shipments to reach the market on the flood. Lord Andero conceded her the Keda vote with a minimum of sureties; with no High Council called to session, such a promise held questionable value.

Yet Mara dispatched a messenger with word of her acceptance anyway. Any promise was worth more than no promise at all, and from the information brought by her Spy Master, the ruling Lords who were not busy exploiting trade advantages were displeased with the Emperor’s machinations. Peace, they said, was a coward’s act, and the gods did not favour weak nations.

The news came thick and heavy after that; Mara spent yet another morning in conference with Arakasi, while Kevin dozed in the shade of a tree in the courtyard. He did not hear until later, when official word came, that the Light of Heaven had departed for the City of the Plains, his intent to cross the rift to Midkemia and negotiate for peace with Lyam, King of the Isles.

Kevin shot bolt upright at the mention of the Midkemian name. ‘Lyam!’

‘King Lyam,’ Mara repeated. She tapped the parchment delivered to her town house by imperial messenger. ‘So it is written here, by the Emperor’s own scribe.’

‘But Lyam is Lord Borric’s son,’ Kevin remembered, a dazed look on his face. ‘If he’s King, that can only mean King Rodric, Prince Erland of Krondor, and Borric himself are all dead.’

‘What do you know of King Lyam?’ Mara asked, choosing a seat by his side.

‘I don’t know him well,’ Kevin admitted. ‘We played together as children one time. I just remember him as a big blond boy who laughed a lot. I met Lord Borric once at a commanders’ meeting.’ He fell silent, wrapped in thoughts of his own land, until curiosity caused him to ask to read the parchment. The Emperor of Tsuranuanni did not believe in travelling without half the nobles in his Empire, it appeared. Kevin’s mouth quirked wryly. By imperial command, the Light of Heaven’s honour guard consisted of the Warchiefs of the Five Great Clans and the eldest sons of half the other Lords in Tsuranuanni.

‘Hostages,’ the Midkemian said outright. ‘The Lords will hardly defy edict and make bloody trouble with their heirs in the Emperor’s field army.’

The arena of politics suddenly paled. Kevin shut his eyes and tried to imagine the brown-haired youth in gilt armour seated across a table with Borric’s son Lyam, who was also young … and it came home to Kevin, like a slam to the heart, that time had passed. The war had gone on, and people had died in his absence. He did not even know if his father and elder brothers were alive. The thought stung, that for years he had forgotten to care. Seated in a beautiful courtyard, surrounded by alien flowers and a woman from a culture that often seemed incomprehensibly cruel, Kevin, third son of the Baron of Zun, took a deep breath and tried to take stock of who he was.

‘But why should Ichindar go there?’ Mara mused, unmindful of his turmoil. ‘Such a risk to our Light of Heaven.’

Her thoroughly Tsurani viewpoint sparked shock, and
Kevin bridled. ‘Do you think our King would come here? After your warriors have been ravaging his lands for nine years? “Forget we’ve burned your villages, Your Majesty. Just step through this gate into our world!” Not bloody likely. Remember, this King has been a field commander with his father’s army almost since the start. He knows whom he faces. Trust will be a very thin commodity in the Kingdom of the Isles until your people prove otherwise.’

Mara conceded that Kevin was right on all points. ‘I would guess from your perspective we would be worthy of distrust.’

Her equanimity struck a nerve, mostly because he expected a fight. Kevin laughed, a cold and bitter sound. ‘I love you as the breath of my life, Mara of the Acoma, but there is just one of me. Thousands of my countrymen know the Tsurani only upon the battlefield. What they see are men who have invaded their homeland for bloody conquest. There will be no easy peace in all this.’

Framed by an arching trellis of akasi vines, Mara frowned. ‘Do you infer that Ichindar will be asked to surrender the lands the Warlord has gained?’

Kevin laughed again. ‘You Tsurani. You believe that everyone thinks as you do. Of course the King will demand that you depart. You’re invaders. You’re alien. You don’t belong on the Midkemian side of the rift.’ Caught by an upwelling tide of irony, Kevin looked into Mara’s face. She looked worried, even hurt, but uppermost was her concern for him. That wrenched. She did not share his concept of cruelty, could never grasp what it cost him to beg for the concessions that had given Patrick and his fellow slaves the most basic sustenance. Torn by his improbable love and his inborn sense of justice, Kevin rose precipitately and left.

The trouble with the Kentosani town house was that it had no vast yards to get lost in. Mara found Kevin within a few minutes, crouched on their bed mat, casting small
pebbles into the fish pool that separated the outer screen from the wall shared with the building next door. She knelt and circled his waist with an embrace from behind. With her cheek against his back she said, ‘What do you see in the fish pool, beloved?’

Kevin’s reply held flinty honesty. ‘I see years of pretence. I let myself become lost within your love, and for that I am grateful, but upon hearing of this coming peace …’

‘You remember the war,’ she prompted, hoping he would talk.

Mara sensed bitterness behind the fine tremors of rage that coursed through him as he said, ‘Yes. I remember. I remember my countrymen, my friends, dying trying to defend their homes from armies we knew nothing of, warriors who came for reasons we could not understand. Men who asked for no parley, but who just came and butchered our farmers, took our villages, and occupied our towns.

‘I remember fighting your people, Mara. I didn’t think of them as honourable foes. I thought of them as murdering scum. I hated them with every fibre of my being.’

She felt him sweat with the memories, but when she did not withdraw, he made an effort to calm himself. ‘In all this I have come to know you, your people. I … can’t say I find some of your ways pleasant. But at least I understand something of the Tsurani. You have honour, though it’s a different thing from our own sense of justice. We have our honour, too, but I don’t think you understand that fully. And we have things in common, as all people do. I love Ayaki as if he were my own.

‘But we’re people who have both suffered, you at the hands of my countrymen, me at the hands of yours.’

Mara soothed him with her touch. ‘Yet I would change nothing.’

Kevin turned within the circle of her arms and looked
down at a face shining with tears that were considered an unconditional weakness in her culture. Immediately he felt shamed. ‘You’d not save your brother and father if you could?’

Mara shook her head. ‘Now I would not. Most bitter of all is that knowledge, my beloved. For to alter my past griefs, I would never have had Ayaki, or the love I share with you.’ Behind her eyes were other, darker realizations: she would never have ruled, and so would never have known the intoxicating fascination she found in the power of the Great Game.

Stunned by her soul-bearing honesty, Kevin felt his throat constrict. He held Mara close, letting her tears wet his shoulder through his shirt. Half-choked by emotion, he said, ‘But as much as I love you, Mara of the Acoma …’