Читать книгу Mistress of the Empire - Raymond E. Feist, Janny Wurts - Страница 10

Two years passed.

No renewed attempts to assassinate the Lady of the Acoma came, and while all remained watchful, the sense of immediate risk had diminished.

The tranquility that settled over the estate house as predawn light rinsed the sleeping chamber was all the more to be treasured. Pressures brought on by recent unfavorable developments in trade and the friction between political factions steadily brought more stresses to bear upon House Acoma’s resources.

But now, only patrols were stirring, and the day’s messengers bearing news had yet to arrive. A shore bird called off the lake. Hokanu tightened his arms around his beloved Lady. His hands touched the ivory-smooth skin over her belly and a slight fullness there alerted him. Suddenly, the mornings she had closeted herself away from him and even her most trusted advisers made sense. An ecstatic flush of pleasure followed the obvious deduction. Hokanu smiled, his face pressed into the sweet waves of her hair.

‘Have the midwives told you yet whether the new Acoma heir is to be a son or a daughter?’

Mara twisted in his arms, her eyes wide with indignation. ‘I did not tell you I was pregnant! Which of my maids betrayed me?’

Hokanu said nothing; only his smile widened.

The Lady reached down, grasped his two wrists, which were locked around her still, and concluded, ‘I see. My maids were all loyal, and I still cannot keep any secrets from you, husband.’

But she could; as clear as the rapport between them could be, there were depths to her that even Hokanu could not fathom, particularly since the death of her firstborn, as if grief had laid a shadow on her. Although her warmth as she laid her face against her husband was genuine, and her pleasure equally so as she whispered formally into his ear that he was soon going to be a father by blood, as well as through adoption, Hokanu sensed a darker undertone. Mara was troubled by something, this time not related to Ayaki’s loss, or to the Assembly’s intervention in her attempt to bring vengeance on Jiro. Equally, he sensed that this was not the moment to broach any inquiry into her affairs.

‘I love you, Lady,’ he murmured. ‘You had better accustom yourself to solicitude, because I’m going to spoil you shamelessly every day until the moment you give birth.’ He turned her in his arms and kissed her. ‘After that, we both might find I had acquired a habit too fine to break.’

Mara snuggled against him, her fingers trailing across his chest. ‘You are the finest husband in the Empire, beloved – far better than I deserve.’

Which was arguable, but Hokanu held his peace. He knew she loved him deeply and gave him as much care and satisfaction as any woman was capable of; the profoundly sensed certainty that something indefinable was missing from her side of the relationship was a feeling he had exhausted himself trying to fathom. For the Lady never lied to him, never stinted in her affections. Still she had moments when her thoughts were elsewhere, in a place he could never reach. She needed something his instincts warned him he lacked the means to provide.

A pragmatic man, he did not try to force the impossible, but built upon their years together a contentment and a peace that were enduring and solid as a monument. He had succeeded in giving her happiness, until the dart struck the horse that killed her son.

She shifted against him, her dark eyes apparently fixed upon the flower garden beyond the opened screen. Breezes caused her favorite kekali blossoms to nod, and their heavy perfume swirled through the chamber. Far off, the bread cook could be heard berating a slave boy for laziness; the sounds of the dispatch barge being loaded at dockside reached here, strangely amplified by still water and the mist-cloaked morning quiet.

Hokanu caught Mara’s fingers and stroked them, and by the fact that they did not immediately respond knew she was not thinking of ordinary commerce.

‘Is it the Assembly on your mind again?’ he asked, knowing it was not, but also aware that an oblique approach would break the cold space around her thoughts and help her make a start at communicating.

Mara closed her grip on his hand. ‘Your father’s sister has two boys, and you have a second cousin with five children, three of them sons.’

Unsure where this opening was leading, but also catching her drift, Hokanu nodded. He reflexively followed up on her next thought. ‘If something were to happen to Justin before your child was born, my father could choose among several cousins and relations to find a successor after me for the Shinzawai mantle. But you should not worry, love; I fully intend to stay alive and keep you safe.’

Mara frowned, more troubled than he had originally guessed. ‘No. We’ve been through this. I will not see the Acoma name merged with that of the Shinzawai.’

Hokanu drew her close, aware now of what lay beneath her tenseness. ‘You fear for the Acoma name, then I understand. Until our child is born, you are the last of your line.’

Her tenseness as she nodded betrayed the depths of a fear she had wrestled with and kept hidden for the intervening span of two years. And after all she had gone through to secure the continuance of her ancestors’ line, only to suffer the further loss of her son, he could not fault her.

‘Unlike your father, I have no remaining cousins, and no other option.’ She sucked a quick breath, and plunged ahead to the heart of the matter.

‘I want Justin sworn to the Acoma natami.’

‘Mara!’ Hokanu said, startled. ‘Done is done! The boy is almost five years of age and sworn already to the Shinzawai!’

She looked stricken. Her eyes were too large in her face, and her bones too prominent, the result of grief and morning sickness. ‘Release him.’

There was an air of desperation about her, of determined hardness he had seen only in the presence of enemies; and gods knew, he was not an enemy. He stifled his initial shock, reached out, and again drew her against him. She was shaking, though her skin was not chilled. Patiently, carefully, he considered her position. He tried to unravel her motivations and achieve an understanding that would give him grounds to work with her; for he realised, for his father’s sake, that he would be doing no one any favors by changing Justin’s house loyalty – least of all the boy. By now the child was old enough to begin to comprehend the significance of the name to which he belonged.

The death of an elder brother had fallen hard enough on the little one without his becoming the pawn of politics. Much as Hokanu loved Mara, he also recognised that Jiro’s enmity was more threat than he would wish to place on the shoulders of an innocent child.

The rapport shared between the Lady and her consort cut both ways; Mara also had the gift of tracking Hokanu’s inner thoughts. She said, ‘It is a lot more difficult to murder a boy who is able to walk, talk, and recognise strangers than an infant in a crib. As Shinzawai heir, our new baby would be safer. A house, a whole line, would not be ended by one death.’

Hokanu could not refute such logic; what cost him peace and prevented his agreement was his own affection for Justin, not mentioning that his foster father, Kamatsu, had come to dote on the boy. Did a man take a child old enough to have tasted the joys of life, and thrust him into grave danger? Or did one set an innocent infant at risk?

‘If I die,’ Mara said in a near whisper, ‘there will be nothing. No child. No Acoma. My ancestors will lose their places on the Wheel of Life, and none will remain to hold Acoma honor in the eyes of the gods.’ She did not add, as she might have, that all she had done for herself would have gone for nothing.

Her consort pushed himself upright against the pillows, drew her to lean against him, and combed back her dark hair. ‘Lady, I will think on what you have said.’

Mara twisted, jerking free of his caress. Beautiful, determined, and angry, she sat up straight and faced him. ‘You must not think. You must decide. Release Justin from his vows, for the Acoma must not go another day without an heir to come after me.’

There was an edge of hysteria to her. Hokanu read past that, to another worry, one she had not yet mentioned, that he had missed in the turmoil. ‘You are feeling cornered because Arakasi has been so long at the task you set him,’ he said on a note of inspiration.

The wind seemed to go out of Mara’s sails. ‘Yes. Perhaps I asked too much of him, or began a more perilous course than I knew when I sent him to attempt to infiltrate the affairs of the Assembly.’ In a rare moment of self-doubt, she admitted, ‘I was hotheaded, and angry. In truth, things have gone more smoothly than I first feared. We have handled the upsurge of the traditionalist offensive without the difficulty I anticipated.’

Hokanu heard, but was not deceived into belief that she considered the affair settled. If anything, the quiet times and the minor snarls that erupted in trade transactions were harbingers of something deeper afoot. Tsurani Lords were devious; the culture itself for thousands of years had applauded the ruler who could be subtle, who could effect convoluted, long-range plotting to stage a brilliant victory years later. All too likely, Lord Jiro was biding his time, amassing his preparations to strike. He was no Minwanabi, to solve his conflicts on the field of war. The Assembly’s edict had effectively granted him unlimited time, and license to plot against the Acoma through intrigue, as was his penchant.

Neither Mara nor Hokanu chose to belabor this point, which both of them feared. An interval of quiet stretched between them, filled with the sounds of the estate beginning to wake. The light through the screen changed from grey to rose-gold, and birdsong filtered in over the call of officers overseeing the change in the guard – warriors who had not patrolled so near the estate house before Ayaki’s death.

Unspoken also was the understanding that the Anasati might in fact have been the target of the faked evidence carried by the tong. Jiro and the old-line traditionalists wished Mara dead, which made his enmity logical. Yet a third faction might be plotting unseen, to create this schism between the Acoma and Anasati alliance that had been sealed with Ayaki’s life. The attempt had been against Mara; had she died according to plan, her son would have inherited, as heir. Hokanu, in the vulnerable position of regent, would have been left to manage a sure clash between the Acoma, in an attempt to retain their independence as his Lady would have desired, and the Anasati, who would seek to annex that house on the strength of their blood tie to the boy.

But if the contract with the tong that had seen Ayaki killed had not been under Jiro’s chop, all that had transpired since might be playing into the hands of some third party, perhaps the same Lord whose spy net had breached Arakasi’s security.

‘I think,’ said Hokanu with gentle firmness, ‘that we should not resolve this issue until we have heard from Arakasi, or one of his agents. If he has made headway in his attempt to gain insight into the Great Ones’ council, his network will send word. No news is best news, for now.’

Looking pale and strained, and feeling chilled as well, Mara nodded. The discomforts of her pregnancy were shortly going to make conversation difficult, in any event. She lay, limp in her husband’s arms, while he snapped his fingers and called for her maids. It was part of his singular devotion that kept him at her side through her early hours of illness. When she offered protest that he surely had better things to do with his time, he only smiled.

The clock chimed. Mara pushed damp hair from her brow and sighed. She closed her eyes a moment, to ease the ongoing strain of reviewing the fine print of the trade factor’s reports from Sulan-Qu. Yet her interval of rest lasted scarcely seconds.

A maid entered with a tray. Mara started slightly at the intrusion, then resigned herself to the interruption as the servant began laying out a light lunch on the small lap table beside the one she had left cluttered with unfinished business.

As the mistress’s regard turned her way, the maid bowed, touching forehead to floor in obeisance very near to a slave’s. As Mara suspected, the girl wore livery trimmed in blue, Shinzawai colors.

‘My Lady, the master sent me to bring you lunch. He says you are too thin, and the baby won’t have enough to grow on if you don’t take time to eat.’

Mara rested a hand on her swollen middle. The boy child the midwives had promised her seemed to be developing just fine. If she herself looked peaked, impatience and nerves were the more likely cause rather than diet. This pregnancy wore at her, impatient as she was to be done with it, and to have the question of heirship resolved. She had not realised how much she had come to rely upon Hokanu’s companionship until strain had been put upon it. Her wish to name Justin as Acoma heir had exacted a high cost, and she longed for the birth of the child, that the altercation with Hokanu could be set behind them both.

But the months until her due date seemed to stretch into infinity. Reflective, Mara stared out the window, where the akasi vines were in bloom and slaves were busy with shears trimming them back from the walk. The heavy perfume reminded her of another study, on her old estate, and a day in the past when a red-haired barbarian slave had upset her concept of Tsurani culture. Now, Hokanu was the only man in the Empire who seemed to share her progressive dreams and ideas. It was hard to speak to him, lately, without the issue of progeny coming between.

The maid slipped out unobtrusively. Mara regarded the tray of fruit, bread, and cold cheeses with little enthusiasm. Still, she forced herself to fill up a plate and eat, however tasteless the food seemed on her tongue. Past experience had taught her that Hokanu would come by to check on her, and she did not wish to face the imploring tenderness in his eyes if she followed her inclinations and left the meal untouched.

The report that had occupied her was far more serious than it appeared at first glance. A warehouse by the river had burned, causing damage to the surplus hides held off the spring market. The prices had not been up to standard this season, and rather than sell leather at such slight profit, Jican had consigned them for later delivery to the sandalmaker’s. Mara frowned. She set her barely touched plate aside, out of habit. Although it was no secret that, of all the houses in the Empire, hers was the only one to provide sandals for its bearer slaves and field hands, until now the subject only made her the butt of social small talk. Old-line traditionalist Lords laughed loudly and long, and claimed her slaves ran her household; one particularly cantankerous senior priest in the temple service of Chochocan, the Good God, had sent her a tart missive cautioning her that treating slaves too kindly was an offense against divine will. Make their lives too easy, the priest had warned, and their penance for earning heaven’s disfavor would not be served. They might be returned on the Wheel of Life as a rodent or other lowly beast, to make up for their lack of suffering in this present life. Saving the feet of slaves from cuts and sores was surely a detriment to their eternal spirits.

Mara had returned a missive of placating banalities to the disaffected priest, and gone right on supplying sandals.

But the current report, with her factor’s signature and impression of the battered chop used on the weekly inventories, was another matter. For the first time an enemy faction had sought to exploit her kind foible to the detriment of House Acoma. The damaged hides would be followed, she was sure, with a sudden, untraceable rumor in the slaves’ barracks that she had covertly arranged the fire as an excuse to spare the cost of the extra sandals. Since possession of footwear gave not only comfort, but also considerable status to the slaves in Acoma service, in the eyes of their counterparts belonging to other houses, the privilege was fiercely coveted. Though no Tsurani slave would ever consider rebellion, as disobedience to master or mistress was against the will of the gods, even the thought that their yearly allotment of sandals might be revoked would cause resentment that would not show on the surface but would result in sloppy field work, or tasks that somehow went awry. The impact on Acoma fortunes would be subtle, but tangible. The sabotage to the warehouse could become an insidiously clever ploy, because in order to rectify the shortage of leathers, Mara might draw the attention of more than just an old fanatic in the temple likely to write a protest to her. It could be seen in certain quarters that she was vulnerable, and temples that were previously friendly to her could suddenly become ‘neutral’ to a point just short of hostility.

She could ill afford difficulties from the priesthood at this time, not with the Emperor’s enemies and her own allied in common cause to ruin her.

The lunch tray remained neglected as she took up clean paper and pen and drew up an authorisation for the factor in Sulan-Qu to purchase new hides to be shipped to the sandalmaker’s. Then she sent her runner slave to fetch Jican, who in turn was ordered to place servants and overseers on the alert for rumors, that the question of footwear for the slaves might never become an issue.

By the time the matter was resolved, the fruit sat in a puddle of juices, and the cheeses had warmed on the plate in the humid midafternoon air. Involved with the next report in the file, this one dealing with a trade transaction designed to inconvenience the Anasati, Mara heard footsteps at the screen.

‘I am finished with the lunch tray,’ she murmured without looking up.

Presuming the servant would carry out the remains of her meal with the usual silent solicitude, she held her mind on its present track. But however many caravans were robbed, however many Anasati hwaet fields burned, no matter how many stacks of cloth goods were diverted on their way to market, or ships were sent to the wrong port, Mara found little satisfaction. Her heartache did not lessen. She gripped the parchments harder, searching the penned lines for some way to make her enemy feel her hatred in the place that would hurt the most.

Hands reached over her shoulder, pulled the report from her grip, and gently massaged her neck, which had grown sore from too little movement. ‘The cooks will be asking to commit suicide by the blade when they see how little you cared for their lunch tray, my Lady,’ Hokanu said in her ear. He followed the admonition with a kiss on the crown of her head, and waited while Mara reddened with embarrassment at mistaking him for a servant.

She went on to ruefully regard the uneaten meal. ‘Forgive me. I became so involved that I forgot.’ With a sigh, she turned in her husband’s embrace and kissed him back.

‘What was it this time, more mildew in the thyza sacks?’ he asked, a twinkle in his eyes.

Mara rubbed her aching forehead. ‘No. The hides for the sandalmaker’s. We’ll purchase replacements.’

Hokanu nodded, one of the few men in the Empire who would not have argued that sandals for slaves were a waste of good funds. Aware how lucky she was to have such a husband, Mara returned his embrace and heroically reached for the food tray.

Her husband caught her wrist with a firmness beyond argument. ‘That meal is spoiled. We’ll have the servants bring a fresh tray, and I’ll stay and share it with you. We’ve spent too little time together lately.’

He moved around her cushion, his swordsman’s grace as always lending beauty to what Mara knew were a lethal set of reflexes. Hokanu wore a loose silk robe, belted with linked shells and a buckle inlaid with lapis lazuli. His hair was damp, which meant he had come in from the bath he customarily took after working out with his officers.

‘You might not be hungry, but I could eat a harulth. Lujan and Kemutali decided to test whether fatherhood had made me complacent.’

Mara returned a faint smile. ‘They are both soaking bruises?’ she asked hopefully.

Hokanu’s reply was rueful. ‘So was I, until a few minutes ago.’

‘And are you complacent?’ Mara pressed.

‘Gods, no,’ Hokanu laughed. ‘Never in this house. Justin ambushed me twice on the way to my bath, and once again when I got out.’ Then, unwilling to dwell on the subject of the son that had become a bone of contention between them, he hurried to ask what kept the frown line between her eyes so prevalent. ‘Unless you’re scowling to test my complacency also,’ he ended.

Mara was surprised into a laugh. ‘No. I know how lightly you sleep, dear heart. I’ll know you’re getting complacent on the night you stop starting up and tossing pillows and bedclothes at the slightest hint of a strange noise.’

Happy to see even a moment of mirth from her, Hokanu clapped for a servant to attend to the spoiled lunch tray, and to send to the kitchen for a fresh one. By the time he had disposed of even so brief a detail, he looked back at Mara and, by the faraway look in her eyes, knew he had lost her to contemplation. Her hands had gone tense in her lap, interlocked in the habitual way she assumed when thinking upon the task she had laid for her Spy Master.

His hunch was confirmed presently when she said, ‘I wonder how far Arakasi has gotten in his attempt to infiltrate the City of the Magicians.’

‘We shall not discuss the question until after you have eaten,’ Hokanu said in mock threat. ‘If you starve yourself anymore, there will be nothing left to you but an enormous belly.’

‘Filled with your son and future heir!’ Mara retorted, equally playful, but not at all her unusually perceptive self, by her reference to a sensitive topic.

Hokanu let the reference pass, in favor of keeping her peaceful enough to enjoy the fruits and light breads and meats he had sent for. On second thought, Arakasi’s attempt upon the security of the Assembly of Magicians was probably the safer choice of conversation.

Arakasi at that moment sat in a noisy roadside tavern in the north of Neshka Province. He wore the striped robe of a free caravan drover, authentically scented with needra, and his right eye seemed to have acquired a cast. The left squinted to compensate, and also to disguise the tendency it had to water at the burning taste of the spirits reputedly brewed by Thun from tubers that grew in the tundra. Arakasi wet his tongue again with the vile liquor, and offered the flask to the caravan master he had spent the last hours attempting to cajole into intoxication.

The caravan master had a head for spirits like a rock. He was a bald man, massively muscled, with a thunderous laugh, and a regrettable tendency to slap his companions on the back: probably the reason why the benches on either side of him stayed empty, Arakasi reflected. He had bruises across his rib cage from being slammed against the table edge by the man’s boisterous thumps. He could have chosen a better subject to pump for information, he realised in hindsight. But the other caravan masters tended to band together with their crews, and he needed one who stood apart. To insinuate himself among a tight-knit group, and to pry a man away from his fellows was likely to take too much time. He had the patience, had many times spent months gaining the confidence of targeted individuals to gain the intelligence Mara required. But here, in the deserted northern tavern, a man with close-knit friendships would be apt to remember a stranger who asked things that a local driver would already know.

‘Argh,’ the huge caravan master bawled, entirely too loudly for Arakasi’s liking. ‘Don’t know why any man would choose t’drink such piss.’ The man hefted the flask in one ham fist and squinted dubiously at the contents. ‘Tastes poisonous enough to sear out yer tongue.’ He ended his diatribe by taking another huge swallow.

Arakasi saw another comradely slap coming, and braced his palms against the plank table barely in time. The blow struck him between the shoulder blades, and the trestle shook, rattling cheap clay crockery.

‘Hey!’ shouted the owner of the hostelry from behind the counter bar. ‘No brawling in here!’

The caravan master belched. ‘Stupid man,’ he confided in a spirit-laden whisper. ‘If we were of a mind to wreck things, we’d heave the tables through the walls and bring the stinkin’ roof down. Wouldn’t be losing much. There’s web-spinners in the rafters and biting bugs in the loft bedmats, anyway.’

Arakasi regarded the heavy lumber that made up the trestle’s construction, and conceded that it could serve as a battering ram. ‘Heavy enough to crack the gates to the City of Magicians,’ he murmured on a suggestive note.

‘Hah!’ The burly man slammed the flask down so hard the boards rattled. ‘Fool might try that. You heard about the boy who hid out in a wagon, last month? Well, I tell you, the servants of those magicians searched though the goods, and didn’t find the kid. But when the wain rolls through the arches of the gates nearside o’ the bridge to the island, well, this beam of light shoots down from the arch an’ fries the cover off the wool bale the boy was huddled in.’ The drover laughed and hit the table, causing the crockery to jump. ‘Seven hells! I tell you. The magicians’ servants are all running around yelling out a warning, shoutin’ death ’n’ destruction. Next we know, the boy’s ahowlin’ loud enough to be heard clear to Dustari, and then he’s sprintin’ down the road back into the forest like his butt’s on fire. Found him later, hiding out in a charcoal burner’s shed. Not a mark on him, mind, but it was days before he’d stop crying.’ The caravan master put his finger to his temple and winked knowingly. ‘They scrambled his head, you see. Thought he was being eaten by fire demons or some such.’

Arakasi digested this while the caravan master took another pull from the flask. He wiped his lips on his hairy wrist and peered at Mara’s Spy Master. His voice lowered to a tone of menace. ‘Don’t even joke about trying to cross the gate to the magician’s city. Mess with the Assembly, and all of us lose our jobs. I’ve got no wish to end my life as a slave, none at all.’

‘But the boy who tried to sneak in as a prank did not lose his freedom,’ Arakasi pointed out.

‘Might as well have,’ the caravan master said morosely. He drank another draught. ‘Might as well have. He can’t sleep for getting nightmares, and days he walks around like one already dead – still got a scrambled head.’

Lowering his voice out of fear the caravan master said, ‘I hear they have ways of knowing what’s in the minds of those who try to come to the island. ’Cause it was this prankish lad, they let him live. But I’ve heard tales that if you mean them harm –’ he held his hand out, thumb turned down – ‘you find yourself at the bottom of that lake.’ Now whispering, he went on, ‘The lake bottom is covered with bodies. Too cold down there for them to bloat up and rise. The dead just stay down there.’ With a nod to affirm his statement, the caravan master concluded in normal tone, ‘Magicians don’t like to be messed with, there’s a fact.’

‘Here’s to letting them be,’ Arakasi hooked back the flask and drank in an unusual fit of pique. The assignment Mara had set him was damned near impossible. Caravans traveled only as far as the gate to the river bridge. There, the crews surrendered their reins to servants from the inner city, and each load was vigorously searched before the goods rolled forward. The bridge did not go all the way across the lake, but ended in a water landing, where inbound supplies were offloaded into boats, and inspected a second time. Then polemen ferried them across, into the City of the Magicians.

This was the third man to relate the fate of intruders: no one infiltrated the City of Magicians, and any who tried were transported magically to a watery grave or else driven mad.

Confronted by a bleak conclusion, Arakasi sucked from the flask to fortify himself. Then he surrendered the remains of the liquor to the hairy caravan master, and slipped unobtrusively out to use the privy.

In the stinking dimness of the road hostel’s privy, Arakasi studied the coarse board walls where passing caravan teams had scribbled or scratched a motley assortment of initials, derisive comments on the quality of the hostel’s beer, the names of favored ladies of the Reed Life left behind in bordellos to the south. Among them was the mark he sought, done in white chalk: a simple stick figure, standing. By the drawing’s knees was what looked to be a stray line, as if the artist’s hand had skipped a beat, in his haste. But seeing this, Arakasi closed tired eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

His agent, who happened to be a charcoal burner’s errand boy, had been by, and the news was good. The warehouse operation where he had nearly been netted by enemies had been out of the message network for two and half years and at long last the dyer across the street had promoted his eldest apprentice. The tradesman’s son who applied for the now vacant position would be an Acoma agent. At last Arakasi could begin to rebuild his network. The warehouse had been operating solely as a business since the disaster of his near capture. The proprietor had accepted his demotion from spy to business factor with stone-faced resignation. Both he and Arakasi were anxious to start laying off various staff members and stevedores, but this could not be done in too much haste; the men were valuable, some useful as agents in some better distant post, but not if the trade house was still under enemy scrutiny. And, judging by the smoothness of the net that had nearly caught him, Arakasi dared not assume otherwise. Slowly, painstakingly, he must come at the problem from another angle. An agent at the dyer who could observe who still watched the warehouse would tell him much.

Abruptly aware that he must not spend overlong in the privy, he performed the expected ablutions and departed through the creaky wooden door. It occured to him, on unpleasant intuition, that the vacancy in the dyer’s shop might not be so fortuitous, after all. If he were that clever enemy, might he not be trying to set his own agent into the position? What better way to keep watch on the warehouse, after all, since loiterers and beggars on corners were far more conspicuous as plants.

Chilled by cold certainty, for he believed his enemy to be as clever as himself, Arakasi cursed and spun around. Muttering as if he had forgotten something, he barged past the drover’s boy who crossed the yard toward the privy, and slammed back in through the door.

‘There it is, gods be praised,’ he muttered, as if misplacing important items in stinking public facilities were an everyday occurrence. With one hand he twisted a mother-of-pearl button off his cuff, and with the other he erased the head of the chalk figure and scratched an obscene mark beside it with his nail.

He hurried out and, confronted by the furious boy whose errand he had interrupted, shrugged. He flashed the button in apology. ‘Luck charm from my sweetheart. She’d kill me if I lost it.’

The drover’s boy grimaced in sympathy and rushed on toward the privy; he’d had more of the hostel’s beer than was healthy, by the look of him. Arakasi waited until the door banged fully closed before he slipped off into the wood by the roadside. With any luck, the charcoal burner’s lad would happen by within the week. He would see the altered chalk mark, and the obscenity that signaled for an abort on the placement of the agent as dyer’s apprentice. As Arakasi moved soundlessly through tree needles, under an unseasonally grey sky, he ruminated that it might indeed be more profitable to have the lad who finally took the apprenticeship watched; if he was innocent of any duplicity, no harm would result, and if he was a double agent, as Arakasi’s intuition told him, he might lead back to his master …

Later, Arakasi lay belly down in dripping bushes, shivering in the unaccustomed chill of northern latitudes. Light rain and a wind off the lake conspired to make him miserable. Yet he had spent hours here, on several different occasions. From this vantage point in the forest, on a jutting peninsula, he could observe both the bridge gate and the boat landing where servants loyal only to the magicians loaded inbound goods into skiffs and ferried them across to the city. He had long since concluded that a smuggled entry by way of the trade wagons was a doomed enterprise. The caravan master’s tale had only confirmed his suspicion that inbound goods were also surveyed by magical means for intruders. What he looked for now was a way to gain entrance to the city by stealth, avoiding the apparently all-seeing arch over the bridgeway.

The isle lay too far across the water to swim over to it. From where Arakasi hid, its buildings appeared blended together into a mass of pointed towers, one of which was tall enough to pierce into the clouds. Through the ship’s glass he had bought from a shop on the seacoast, he could make out steep-walled houses and looping, arched walkways that cut through the air between. The lakeshore was crammed with stone-fronted buildings, oddly shaped windows, and strange arched doorways. There were no walls and, as far as he could tell, no sentries. That did not rule out defenses of arcane means; but plainly the only way an intruder might enter the city was a night crossing by boat, and then the scaling of some garden wall, or seeking some cranny to gain access.

Arakasi sighed. The job was a thief’s work, and he needed a boat in a place where there were neither habitations nor fishing settlements. That meant smuggling one in on board a wagon, no easy task where inbound caravans were comprised of men who all knew one another intimately. Also, he would require a man trained in stealth, and such were not found in honest trades. Neither problem promised a fast or an easy solution. Mara would have a long wait for information that might, in all honesty, be impossible to acquire.

Ever a practical man, Arakasi arose from his damp hollow and turned into the forest. He rubbed a crick in his neck, shook moisture from his clothing, and made his way back toward the road hostel. As he walked, he pondered deeply, a habit that more times than not had given rise to accurate intuition. He did not press the issue that immediately frustrated him, but pursued instead another problem, one that had not seemed significant at first, but was becoming an increasing aggravation.

Try as he might, he could not seem to get a start at placing new agents in the Anasati household. Only one operative remained active, and that one was elderly, an old confidant of Jiro’s father’s that the young Lord had taken a dislike to. The servant had been relegated to a position of little importance, and what news he heard was only slightly more informative than street gossip. For the first time, Arakasi wondered whether his failed attempts to replace that agent might be significant beyond coincidence.

They had appeared innocuous, certainly, each of seven tries foiled by what had seemed ill luck or poor timing: Jiro in a temper, a factor in too belligerent a mood to grant an old friend favors; and most lately, an illness of the stomach that prevented a trusted servant from making a recommendation for recruiting a newcomer.

Arakasi stopped dead, unmindful of the rain, which had begun to fall much harder. He did not feel the cold and the wet that slid in droplets down his collar, but shivered instead from inspiration.

He had been a fool, not to suspect sooner. But chance may not have been behind such a string of seemingly unrelated misfortunes. What if, all along, his attempts to infiltrate the Anasati household had been blocked by a mind more clever than his own?

Chilled to the bone, Arakasi started forward. He had long admired the enemy’s First Adviser, Chumaka, whose flair for politics had benefited the Anasati since Jiro’s father’s time. Now Arakasi wondered whether it was Chumaka’s cleverness he fenced with, as unseen antagonist.

The thought continued, inexorably: was it possible that an Anasati presence was behind the byplay at the silk warehouse? The elegance of this possibility appealed to Mara’s Spy Master. One gifted enemy made more sense than two unrelated foes with equal brilliance.

Deeply disturbed, Arakasi hurried his step. He needed to get himself warm and dry, and to find a comfortable corner where he could think undisturbed. For each balked effort showed that he faced a rival equal to his best efforts. It was distressing to consider that a connection might exist between such a man and Mara’s gravest enemy, even more by the possibility that this rival might excede his talents.

Getting a spy into the City of the Magicians was an impossible enterprise and its importance paled to insignificance before the threat posed to Mara’s spy network by Jiro’s adviser. For Arakasi had no illusions. His grasp of the Game of the Council was shrewd and to the point. More than a feud between two powerful families was at play here. Mara was a prominent figure in the Emperor’s court, and her fall could touch off civil war.