Servant of the Empire. Janny Wurts

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       • Chapter Five • Entanglement

      Breezes rustled the leaves.

      The perfume of akasi flowers and trimmed greens filled Mara’s personal quarters. Only one lamp was lit against the coming night, and that had but a small flame. The flicker painted a changing picture, as, each moment, details emerged from shadow: a gemstone’s glint, highlights on polished jade fittings, fine embroidery or enamel work. Just as the eye beheld the splendid aspect, the gloom returned. Although surrounded by beauty, the Lady of the Acoma was oblivious to the richness of her furnishings; her mind was elsewhere.

      Mara reclined amid a nest of cushions, while a maid worked out the tangles in her unbound hair with a scented shell comb. The Lady of the Acoma wore a green silk robe, shatra birds worked in wheat-coloured thread around the collar and shoulders. The low lighting touched her olive skin to soft gold, an effect a more self-aware woman would have noticed. But Mara had finished her girlhood as a novice of Lashima, and as Ruling Lady she had no time for feminine vanity. Whatever beauty a man might find in gazing upon her was simply another weapon in her arsenal.

      With a directness any Tsurani nobleman would have found disconcerting, she questioned the barbarian who sat before her on his homeworld’s customs and cultures. Kevin seemed utterly unaffected by the lack of social protocol, plunging directly to the heart of matters. By this, Mara judged his people blunt to the point of rudeness. She watched as he struggled to describe concepts alien to her language; haltingly groping to express himself, he spoke about his land and people. He was a quick study, and his vocabulary improved daily. Right now he attempted to amuse her by telling a joke that had been ‘making the rounds’ in Zun, whatever that meant.

      Kevin wore no robe. The servants had tried in vain to outfit him, but nothing on hand had been large enough. In the end they had settled for a loincloth, and had substituted fineness for the garment’s brevity. Kevin wore russet silk with midnight-blue borders, tied at the waist by a knotwork sash and obsidian beads. Mara failed to notice the effort. She had weighed Nacoya’s advice the night before and realized something troubling: this slave in some way recalled her dead brother, Lanokota. Irritation at this discovery had given rise to resentment. While the slave’s outrageous behaviour had seemed amusing the day before, now she wanted only information.

      Wearied after a day of meetings, Mara remained alert enough to measure the man she had ordered into her presence. Properly groomed, he looked much younger, perhaps only five years her senior. Yet where early struggles with great enemies had given her a serious manner, this barbarian had a brow unlined by responsibility. He was tightly wound but self-contained rather than overwrought. He laughed easily, with a sly sense of the ridiculous that alternately fascinated and annoyed Mara.

      She kept the topics innocuous, a discourse upon festival traditions and music, jewellery making and cooking, then metalworking and curing furs, undertakings rare on Kelewan. More than once she felt the barbarian’s eyes on her, when he thought she was not paying heed. He waited for her to reveal the purpose behind her interest; the fact he cared at all was curious. A slave could gain nothing by matching wits with an owner – no bargaining between the two stations was possible. Yet this barbarian was obviously trying to divine Mara’s intent.

      Mara reoriented her thinking: this outworld slave had repeatedly shown that his view of Tsurani institutions was alien to the point of incomprehensibility. Yet that very different perspective would allow her to see her own culture through new eyes – a valuable tool if she could but grasp how to use it.

      She needed to assess this man – slave, she corrected herself – as if he were her most dangerous opponent in the Game of the Council. She was committed to these dialogues regarding his people so she might shift the chaff from the grain and discover useful intelligence. As it was, she hardly knew when Kevin was being truthful and when he was lying. For five minutes he had adamantly insisted that a dragon had once troubled his village, town, or whatever the place called Zun might be. Exasperated, Mara had ceased to dispute him, though every child knew that dragons were mythical creatures, with no basis in reality.

      Seeing him tire, she motioned for a fruit drink to be served, and he swallowed greedily. When he sighed, indicating his satisfaction, she changed the subject to board games and, against her usual wont, listened without making observations of her own.

      ‘Have you ever seen a horse?’ the slave asked unexpectedly in the pause as servants stepped in to brighten the lamps. ‘Of all things from home, horses are among those I miss most.’

      Beyond the screen, full darkness had fallen, and the copper-gold face of Kelewan’s moon rose over the needra meadows. Kevin drew a deep breath. His fingers twisted in the cushion fringes, and a wistful gleam touched his eyes. ‘Ah, Lady, I had a mare that I raised from a filly. Her coat was the colour of fire, and her mane as black as your own.’ Caught up in reminiscence, the barbarian sat forward. ‘She was fleet, both in the sprint and the long ride, fine-spirited, and a perfect witch on the field. She had a kick that could fell an armed warrior. She stopped swords at my back more times than a brother.’ He glanced up suddenly and ceased speaking.

      Where before Mara had listened with relaxed interest, she now sat stiffly on her cushions. To Tsurani warriors, horses were not animals of admiration and beauty but creatures that inspired terror. Under the alien sun this slave knew as his own, Mara’s father and brother had died, their life’s blood soaked into foreign soil, trampled under horses ridden by Kevin’s countrymen. Perhaps this same Kevin of Zun had been the warrior who wielded the spear that struck her loved ones down. From some deep place, unguarded because of the day’s fatigue, Mara felt a grief she hadn’t experienced for years. And with that painful memory came old fears.

      ‘You will speak no more of horses,’ she said in such a changed tone that the maid ceased her ministrations a moment, then cautiously resumed combing the long, lustrous hair.

      Kevin stopped picking at the fringes, expecting to see some sign of distress, but the Lady showed no emotion. Her face remained blank in the lamplight, her eyes cold and dark.

      He almost dismissed his impression as fancy. But an intuition prompted him to study her closely. With a look that was not the least mocking, he said, ‘Something I said frightened you.’

      Again Mara stiffened. Her eyes flashed. The Acoma fear nothing, she thought, and almost said so. Honour need not be defended before a slave! Shamed that she had nearly forgotten herself, she jerked her head in dismissal to the maid.

      To Tsurani eyes, the gesture offered warning like a shout. The servant knelt and touched her face to the floor, then left the room with close to indecorous haste. The barbarian remained oblivious. He repeated his question, softly, as though she were a child who had not understood.