The Complete Empire Trilogy. Janny Wurts
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this man, Bruli.’ The words were no question.
Shocked by a tone of voice he had never heard from the Lady of the Acoma, but not by the barbarity upon his plate, Bruli paled. ‘He was one of my porters, Lady. What has occurred?’
The shadow of the officer fell across him, and the sunny chamber suddenly seemed cold. Mara’s words were metal-hard. ‘Assassin, not porter, Bruli.’
The young man blinked, for an instant blank-faced. Then he slumped, a lock of black hair veiling his eyes. The admission came grudgingly. ‘My father’s master,’ he said, naming Jingu of the Minwanabi.
Mara granted him a moment of respite, while she bade her Force Commander to sit at her side. When Bruli summoned presence enough to meet her gaze, she nodded. ‘The man was without a doubt a Minwanabi agent. As you were for your father.’
Bruli managed not to protest what he knew to be futile. His eyes lost their desperate look and he said, ‘I ask a warrior’s death, Mara.’
Mara set her two hardened fists upon the tablecloth. ‘A warrior’s death, Bruli?’ She laughed with bitter anger. ‘My father and brother were warriors, Bruli. Keyoke is a warrior. I have faced death and am more of a warrior than you.’
Sensing something he had never known in a woman, the young man pushed gracelessly to his feet. Cups rocked on the table. With Minwanabi involvement, the grisly remnant of the porter became doubly significant. Bruli pulled a dagger from his tunic. ‘You’ll not take me to hang like a criminal, Lady.’ Keyoke’s hand shot to his sword to defend his Lady, but as Bruli reversed the dagger, pointing it at his own breast, the Force Commander understood that the Kehotara son intended no attack.
Mara shot upright, her voice a whip of command. ‘Put away that dagger, Bruli.’ He hesitated, but she said, ‘No one is going to hang you. You’re a fool, not a murderer. You will be sent home to explain to your father how his alliance with Jingu led his house into jeopardy.’
Shamed, silent, the handsome suitor stepped back before the impact of her statement. Slowly he worked through its implications, until he reached the inevitable conclusion: he had been used, ruthlessly, even to his innermost feelings. Deadly serious, with no hint of his former affection, he bowed. ‘I salute you, Lady. You have caused me to betray my father.’
If his impulsive nature were permitted to run its course, he would probably restore his damaged honour by falling on his sword the moment he crossed the border of Acoma land. Mara thought quickly; she must forestall him, for his suicide would only inflame the Kehotara to more strident support of the Minwanabi Lord’s wish to obliterate all things Acoma. She had plotted, but not for this boy’s death. ‘Bruli?’
‘My Lady?’ He delayed his departure more from resignation than from hope.
Mara motioned for him to sit and he did so, albeit stiffly. The smell of food faintly sickened him, and shame lay like a weight upon his shoulders.
Mara could not sweeten the bitter taste of defeat; Buntokapi had taught her not to gloat when the game brought her victory. Gently she said, ‘Bruli, I have no regret for doing what is needed to protect what is mine to guard. But I have no wish to cause you undue difficulty. That your father serves my most hated enemy is but an accident of birth for both of us. Let us not be contentious. I will return most of your exotic gifts in exchange for two promises.’
In his difficulty, Bruli seemed to find himself. ‘I will not betray Kehotara honour.’
‘I will not ask that of you.’ Mara leaned earnestly forward. ‘Should you succeed your father and brother as Lord of the Kehotara, I ask that you not embrace the tradition of Tan-jin-qu. Will you agree to keep your house free of Minwanabi vassalage?’
Bruli gestured deprecatingly. ‘The chances of that happening are slim, Lady Mara.’ His elder brother was heir, and his father enjoyed robust health.
Mara indicated herself, as if that answered his observation; who, among mortals, could know what fate would bring?
Ashamed of the hope that quickened his breath, Bruli asked, ‘And the second condition?’
‘That if you do come to rule, you will owe me a favour.’ Mara elaborated with the care of a diplomat. ‘Should I die, or should I no longer wear the mantle as Ruling Lady, your promise shall not pass to my successor. Yet if I live and you sit as Lord of the Kehotara, then once, and only once, you must do as I bid. I may ask you to support some action of mine, in commerce or in matters of arms, or in the Game of the Council. Grant this, and you shall be free of future obligations.’
Bruli stared blankly at the tablecloth, but the tension in his pose betrayed the fact that he was weighing his options. Mara waited, motionless in the glow of sunlight through the screen. She had added the second condition on impulse, to distract the young man’s thoughts from suicide; but as he sat thinking the matter through, her own mind raced ahead; and she saw that she had opened yet another avenue of possibilities for gain in the Game of the Council.
Given the choice of death and financial shame for his family, or respite from his folly and the possibility of a promise he might never be required to keep, Bruli chose swiftly. ‘Lady, I spoke impulsively. Your bargain is a hard one, yet I will choose life. If the gods bring me the mantle of Kehotara lordship, I shall do as you require.’ He stood slowly, his manner changed to scorn. ‘But as the possibility of my inheriting in place of my brother is remote, you have acted the fool.’
Hating the moment for its cruelty, Mara silently motioned to the servant who waited by the screen. He bowed and set a paper with a torn seal in her hand. ‘This has come to us, Bruli. It was meant for you, but since your father saw fit to send assassins in your retinue, out of need for my personal safety my hadonra chose to read it.’
The paper was bound with ribbons of red, the colour of Turakamu. Cold, suddenly, as he had never thought to be in life, Bruli raised an unwilling hand. The paper seemed too light to carry the news he read penned in the script of his father’s chief scribe. Cut to the heart by new grief, Bruli crumpled the parchment between shaking fists. Somehow he retained his self-control. ‘Woman, you are poison, as deadly and small as that of the keti scorpion that hides under the petals of flowers.’ She had known when she bargained that Mekasi’s eldest son had been killed upon the barbarian world, victim of the Warlord’s campaign. She had shaped her snare for Bruli, aware he had already inherited the title of heir. Now honour forbade him to take back his sworn word.
Shivering now from anger, Bruli regarded the woman he had once been fool enough to love. ‘My father is a robust man with many years before him, Acoma bitch! I gave you my promise, but you shall never live long enough to see the keeping of it.’
Keyoke stiffened, prepared to reach for his sword, but Mara responded only with soul-weary regret. ‘Never doubt I shall survive to exact my price. Think on that as you take back the gifts you sent. Only leave me the songbird, for it will remind me of a young man who loved me too well to be wise.’
Her sincerity roused memories now soured and painful. Cheeks burning from the intensity of his warring emotions, Bruli said, ‘I take my leave of you. The next time we meet, the Red God grant that I view your dead body.’
He spun on his heel, aware that every Acoma soldier within earshot stood ready to answer this insult. But Mara placed a restraining hand on Keyoke’s arm, silent while the young man departed. In time the tramp of the Kehotara retinue faded from the dooryard. Nacoya came in looking rumpled, her mouth a flat line of annoyance. ‘What an importunate young man,’ she muttered and, seeing Mara’s stillness, changed tack in the same breath. ‘Another lesson, child: men are easily injured over matters of the heart. More often than not, those wounds are long in healing. You may have won this round of the game, but you have also gained a deadly enemy. None are more dangerous than those in whom love has changed to hate.’
Mara gestured pointedly at the head of the dead porter. ‘Someone must pay the price of Minwanabi’s plotting. Whether or not Bruli finds other passions to occupy his mind, we have gained. Bruli has squandered enough of his father’s wealth to place Kehotara in a vulnerable