The merchant grimaced, for the pole bore down unmercifully and he could not reach around it to scratch an itch. ‘I dared trust no one else with the task. When my Lord’s barge left the city last night, we simply poled upriver a few miles and tied up. He supposed you would still be at the town house; hence my disguise. None of us guessed the Lady Mara would be so quick to rid herself of Bunto’s city property. She only quit the contemplation glade yesterday.’
Teani glanced towards the well where the bearers sat gossiping. She inclined her head in their direction. ‘I think you had better order them all killed. One might mention this encounter.’
The merchant considered the eight men by the well. ‘It will be messy, but worse if we risk discovery. Besides, if you are attacked by robbers along the highway, how can the Commercial Guild of Bearers fault you? I will make arrangements just before you reach the Minwanabi estates, so you can rush to the safety of Jingu’s arms. Now, our master’s instructions: despite all that has transpired, the Lady Mara is to be left untroubled.’
Teani stiffened in surprise. ‘After Buntokapi’s murder?’
‘Our master commands this. We must not speak longer.’ With an unfeigned grimace of distaste, the merchant shifted his clanking wares to his other shoulder.
Teani sat silently as he left, her professional detachment lost. Mara of the Acoma inspired a personal rage and hatred deeper than any she had previously known. The concubine did not trouble to analyse the cause. Born to a woman of the Reed Life, and cast into the streets at the age of six, she had survived by wits alone. Her unusual beauty had brought her quickly to the attention of men and she had barely escaped slavers on several occasions, despite having committed no crime to warrant such a conviction; in the dirtier alleys of the Empire, the niceties of the law might occasionally be put aside for enough money. Teani discovered early that to some men honour was negotiable. She learned abuse before love, and at twelve sold herself for the first time, to a man who kept her in his home for two years. He had been a twisted soul who took pleasure inflicting pain upon beauty. Teani had struggled at first, until suffering taught her to ignore her discomfort. In time she had killed her tormentor, but the memory of pain stayed with her, a familiar thing she understood. After that she had used beauty and natural wit to rise up society’s ladder, choosing one benefactor after another, each more rich and powerful than the last. For seven years she had served her present employer, though never in bed as with previous masters. Beneath her soft beauty and cruel passions this Lord saw the stony hatred that motivated Teani; he had set those qualities to use against his enemy, the Lord of the Minwanabi, never once tempted to make the relationship other than professional for his own use. For this the concubine conceded her loyalty, for this master was unique among those she had met along the road of her life.
But only Buntokapi had touched her as a person. Before him Teani had taken little personal interest in the men she slept with or murdered. Though the Lord of the Acoma had been like a porina boar in a wallow, even to the point where he stank like one, rushing to take her with the sweat from his wrestling still rank on his body, he had understood her. Buntokapi had given her the pain she needed to survive, and the love she had never known in all twenty-eight years of her life. Teani shivered slightly at the memory of his hands, tearing at her soft flesh at the height of his passion; she had dug her nails into his back, even taught him to enjoy the pain himself. But Mara of the Acoma had ended that.
Teani’s fingers tightened on the bright enamel of the slop jar, while anger built in her heart. Buntokapi had been tricked to his death, ruined by his natural tendency to count honour over life. Teani understood nothing of honour . . . but rivalry, that was a thing she knew well.