Mistress of the Empire. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ though he disdained to step in the puddles. The Obajan of the Hamoi Tong nodded, the scalplock that hung from his otherwise shaved head twisting down his back. ‘Good.’ He raised a hugely muscled arm and plucked a vial from the breast of his robe. ‘You are certain she drank?’

      ‘As did I, master.’ The erstwhile trader bowed low yet again. ‘I placed the potion in the chocolate, knowing that drink to be the most irresistible. Her hadonra escaped, by luck of a burned tongue. But the Lady drank hers to the dregs. She swallowed enough slow poison to kill three men.’ This speech ended, the assassin licked his lips. Anxious, sweating, he controlled his nerves and waited.

      The Obajan rolled the vial containing the antidote for the rare poison mixed with the chocolate between his thick palms. He watched with stony gaze as the eyes of his minion followed it; but the afflicted held in his desperation. He did not crack, and beg.

      The Obajan’s lips parted in a smile. ‘You did well.’ He surrendered the vial, which was colored green, symbol of life. The man who had called himself Janaio of LaMut took the promise of reprieve in shaking hands, snapped off the wax seal, and drank the bitter draft down. Then he smiled also.

      A second later, his expression froze. Fear touched him, and what at first appeared to be a spasm of uncertainty. His eyes widened as pain stabbed through his abdomen, and he glanced down at the emptied vial. Then his fingers lost their grip. The container with its false offer of life dropped and his knees wobbled. A groan escaped his lips. He fell to the floor, doubled over.

      ‘Why?’ His voice emerged as a croak, pinched between spasms of agony.

      The Obajan’s reply was very soft. ‘Because she has seen your face, Kolos, as have her advisers. And because it suits the needs of the Hamoi. You die with honor, serving the tong. Turakamu will welcome you to his halls with a great feast, and you will return to the Wheel of Life in a higher station.’

      The betrayed man fought his need to thrash in agony. Dispassionately the Obajan observed, ‘The pain will pass quickly. Even now life is departing.’

      Beseeching, the dying man rolled his eyes up to seek the other’s face in the darkness. He fought a strangled, gasping breath. ‘But … Father …’

      The Obajan knelt and laid a red-stained hand upon the forehead of his son. ‘You honor your family, Kolos. You honor me.’ The sweating flesh under his touch shuddered once, twice, and fell limp. Over the stink as the bowel muscles loosened in death, the Obajan stood up and sighed. ‘Besides, I have other sons.’

      The master of the Hamoi Tong signaled, and his black-clad guard closed around him. Swiftly, silently, they slipped from the warehouse at his order, leaving the dead where they lay. Alone amid the carnage, unseen by living eyes, the Obajan took a small bit of parchment from his robe and cast it at the feet of his murdered son. The gold chain on the corpse would draw the notice of scavengers; the bodies would be found and pilfered, and the paper would surface in later investigation. As the tong chief turned on his heel to leave, the red-and-yellow chop of House Anasati fluttered down onto floorboards sticky with new blood.

      

      The first pain touched Mara just before dawn. She awoke curled into a ball and stifled a small cry. Hokanu jerked out of sleep beside her. His hands found her instantly in concerned comfort. ‘Are you all right?’

      The discomfort passed. Mara levered herself up on one arm and waited. Nothing happened. ‘A cramp. Nothing more. I am sorry to have disturbed you.’

      Hokanu looked at his wife through the predawn greyness. He stroked back her tangled hair, the smile that had been absent for so many weeks lifting the corners of his mouth. ‘The baby?’

      Mara laughed for joy and relief. ‘I think. Perhaps he kicked while I slept. He is vigorous.’

      Hokanu let his hand slide across her forehead and down her cheek, then softly let it rest on her shoulder. He frowned. ‘You feel chilled.’

      Mara shrugged. ‘A little.’

      His worry deepened. ‘But the morning is warm.’ He brushed her temple again. ‘And your head is soaked in perspiration.’

      ‘It is nothing,’ Mara said quickly. ‘I will be all right.’ She closed her eyes, wondering uneasily whether the alien drinks she had sampled the evening before might have left her indisposed.

      Hokanu sensed her hesitation. ‘Let me call the healer to see to you.’

      The idea of a servant’s intrusion upon the first moment of intimacy she had shared with Hokanu in weeks rankled Mara. ‘I’ve had babies before, husband.’ She strove to soften her sharpness. ‘I am fine.’

      Yet she had no appetite at breakfast. Aware of Hokanu’s eyes on her, she made light conversation and ignored the burning tingle that, for a moment, coursed like a flash fire down her leg. She had pinched a nerve from sitting, she insisted to herself. The slave who had served as her taster seemed healthy as he carried out the trays, and when Jican arrived with his slates, she buried herself in trade reports, grateful, finally, that the mishap over the cramp before dawn seemed to have banished Hokanu’s distance. He checked in on her twice, as he donned his armor for his morning spar with Lujan and again as he returned for his bath.

      Three hours later, the pain began in earnest. The healers hurried to attend the Lady as she was carried, gasping, to her bed. Hokanu left a half-written letter to his father to rush to her side. He stayed, his hand twined with hers, and flawlessly kept his composure, that his fear not add to her distress. But herbal remedies and massage gave no relief. Mara’s body contorted in spasms, wringing wet from the cramps and pains. The healer with his hands on her abdomen nodded gravely to his helper.

      ‘It is time?’ Hokanu asked.

      He received a wordless affirmative as the healer continued his ministrations, and the assistant whirled to send Mara’s runner flying to summon the midwife.

      ‘But so early?’ Hokanu demanded. ‘Are you sure nothing is amiss?’

      The healer glanced up in harried exasperation. His bow was a perfunctory nod. ‘It happens, Lord Consort. Now, please, leave your Lady to her labor, and send in her maids. They will know better than you what she needs for her comfort. If you cannot stay still or find a diversion, you may ask the cooks to prepare hot water.’

      Hokanu ignored the healer’s orders. He bent over, kissed his wife’s cheek, and murmured in her ear, ‘My brave Lady, the gods must surely know how I treasure you. They will keep you safe, and make your labor light, or heaven will answer to me for their failing. My mother always said that babes of Shinzawai blood were in a great rush to be born. This one of ours seems no different.’ Mara returned his kindness with a squeeze of her hand, before his fingers were torn from hers by servants who, at the healer’s barked directive, firmly pushed the consort of the Acoma out of his own quarters.

      Hokanu watched his wife to the last instant as the screens were dragged closed. Then, abandoned to himself in the hallway, he considered calling for wine. He instantly changed his mind as he recalled Mara’s telling him once that her brutish first husband had drunk himself into a stupor upon the occasion of Ayaki’s birth. Nacoya had needed to slap the oaf sober to deliver the happy news of a son.

      Celebration was called for, certainly, but Hokanu would not cause Mara an instant of unhappy memory by arriving at her side with the smell of spirits on his breath. So he paced, unable to think of any appropriate diversion. He could not help listening avidly, to identify each noise that СКАЧАТЬ