The Complete Empire Trilogy. Janny Wurts
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dismissed him and saw that Nacoya, too, regarded her with a shrewd glint in her eyes. ‘You are deaf, mother of my heart,’ the Lady of the Acoma said softly. ‘And business matters are never conducted in the nursery.’
The nurse bowed promptly, guessing something of her mistress’s intentions; but the full extent of those plans would have terrified the old woman beyond measure. As I am terrified, Mara thought, and silently wondered whether the Goddess of Wisdom would hear the prayers of a wife who knowingly provoked a husband already renowned for his bad temper.
Buntokapi raised his head from rumpled, sweat-damp pillows. The screens were drawn closed, but even the decorations painted in scarlet, maroon, and ochre could not entirely block out the afternoon sun in the garden beyond. A golden glow suffused the chamber, lending warm highlights to tangled sheets and to the sleeping form of his mistress, Teani. The Lord of the Acoma regarded the rounded length of her thigh, his thick lips bent into a smile. This was a woman, he thought. Naked, she took his breath away, as Mara’s slenderness never had. He had felt passion for his wife when he had first wed; but having tasted the delights of Teani’s talents, he now realized that his feelings for Mara arose from desire to dominate the daughter of a great family – and to rectify his own limited experience with women prior to becoming a Lord. Once he had a son, he had tried to do a husband’s duty, but Mara lay like a corpse, and what man could stay interested in a woman who offered no sport?
Mara’s strange intellectual passions, her love of poetry, and her fascination with the cho-ja Queen’s hive gave Buntokapi a general headache. His mistress was another matter. In silent appreciation, he studied Teani’s long legs. A fold in the sheets hid her hips and back, but masses of red-gold hair, rare in the Empire, tumbled down shoulders like fine procelain. Teani’s face was turned away, but Buntokapi imagined her perfection: the full, sensuous mouth that could tease him until he was crazy, and the straight nose, high cheekbones, and eyes almost amber in colour that brought admiring stares from every man when she clung to his arm. Her powers of attraction lent force to the manhood of Buntokapi, and just watching her slow breathing aroused him. With a leer he pressed a hand beneath the sheets to seek her firm, round breast. Someone chose that instant to knock at the door.
Buntokapi’s questing fingers balled into a fist. ‘Who is it?’ His irritable bellow caused Teani to half spin, half sit up, in sleepy disarray.
‘Huh?’ She said, blinking. A toss of her head dislodged a river of loosened hair and the light shone warm on her breasts. Buntokapi licked his lips.
A servant’s muffled voice called from beyond the screen. ‘Master, a messenger from your hadonra brings documents for you to see.’
Buntokapi considered rising for a moment, but Teani levered herself upon her elbows, and her nipples jutted across his line of sight. The ache in his groin intensified. His movement changed to a half-roll that placed his head between those inviting pillows of flesh. The sheets fell away. He ran tickling fingers down Teani’s exposed stomach and she giggled. That decided Buntokapi. Surrendering to lust, he shouted, ‘Tell him to come back tomorrow!’
The servant hesitated from the other side of the screen door. Timidly he said, ‘Master, you’ve told him to come back three days in a row now.’
Shifting expertly under his hands, Teani whispered in Buntokapi’s ear and then nipped at the lobe. ‘Tell him to come back in the morning!’ shouted Buntokapi. Then he remembered he had to wrestle a Strike Leader of the Tuscalora in the morning. ‘No, tell him to come at noon and bring his documents then. Now leave me!’
Buntokapi waited, stiff with annoyance, until he heard the servant hurry away. Sighing at the tremendous responsibilities of his office, he decided he was entitled to his pleasures; otherwise the work load would grind him to a nub. As the ultimate favourite of his pleasures had begun to bite his shoulder, he thought it time to be diverted. With a half laugh, half grunt, the Lord of the Acoma pulled his concubine to him.
Late the following morning, Buntokapi marched through the streets of Sulan-Qu, feeling full of himself. He had easily defeated the Tuscalora Strike Leader and had won a fair amount of money as well, thirty centuries, which, while trivial to him now that he was Ruling Lord, still was a nice amount to have clinking in one’s purse. Accompanied by his escort, two young Acoma guards who shared his passion for wrestling, he left the congestion of the main streets and rounded the corner to his town house. His mood darkened at once, for his hadonra sat on the stoop, the two servants with him burdened with leather carriers stuffed to capacity with parchments.
Dust arose in small puffs as Buntokapi stamped to a stop. ‘What now, Jican?’
The little hadonra scrambled to his feet and bowed with a deference that somehow always annoyed. ‘You instructed my messenger to see you at noon, Lord. As I had other business in town, I thought I would personally bring these papers here.’
Buntokapi sucked air through his teeth and recalled somewhat belatedly the words he had uttered through the screen in the course of his afternoon frolic with Teani. He scowled at his patient hadonra, then waved to the slaves who carried the sheaves of documents. ‘Very well, bring them inside.’
Soon the writing tables, two food trays, and nearly every available area of flooring were tiered with stacks of parchments. Buntokapi laboured through page after page until his eyes stung from squinting at tiny columns of figures, or lists and lists of inventory. The cushions compressed and grew damp with his own sweat, and finally his foot went to sleep. Exasperated, Buntokapi heaved himself to his feet and noticed the sunlight had traversed the length of the garden. The afternoon had almost fled.
Indefatigable, Jican handed him another document. Buntokapi forced watering eyes to focus. ‘What is this?’
‘As it says, Lord.’ Jican tapped gently on the title script with one finger.
‘Estimates on needra droppings?’ Buntokapi jabbed the paper angrily in the air. ‘By all the gods of heaven, what foolishness is this!’
Jican remained unfazed by his Lord’s wrath. ‘No foolishness, master. Each season we must estimate the weight of the dung, to judge whether we have a shortage of fertilizer for the thyza paddies and need to import, or excess to sell to the farm broker.’
Buntokapi scratched his head. Just then the screen leading to the bedchamber slid open. Teani stood in the doorway, inadequately wrapped in a robe sewn with scarlet birds of passion. The tips of her breasts pressed clearly through the cloth, and her hair tumbled sensuously over a shoulder artfully left bare. ‘Bunto, how much longer are you going to be? Should I dress for the theatre?’
The open seduction in her smile left a staring Jican scarlet to the roots of his hair. Teani blew him a teasing kiss, more in sarcasm than fun; and frustration pricked Buntokapi to jealous rage. ‘No longer!’ he roared to his hadonra. ‘Take this list of needra dung, and your tallies of hides ruined by mould and mildew, and the estimates on repairing the aqueduct to the upper meadows, and reports listing damaged from the warehouse fire in Yankora, and give every one of them to my wife. Henceforth you will not come here unless I call you. Is that clear?’
Jican’s flush drained to a yellowed, trembling pallor. ‘Yes, master, but –’
‘There are no buts!’ Buntokapi chopped the air with his hand. ‘These matters can be discussed with my wife. When I ask you, give me a summation of what you have been doing. From now on, if any Acoma servant appears here with a document without my having asked to read it, I’ll have his head over the door! Is that understood?’
The list of needra dung estimates pressed protectively to his chest, Jican bowed very low. ‘Yes, master. All matters of the Acoma are to be given over to the Lady Mara and reports prepared at your request. No servant is to bring a document to your attention unless you ask for it.’
Buntokapi blinked, as if unsure that this was exactly what he intended. Exploiting his confusion, Teani picked that moment to open the front of her robe and fan cool air across her body. She wore nothing underneath. In the sweet rush of blood to his groin, Buntokapi lost all interest in clarifying the point. With an impatient wave