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 position. Jingu will be prevailed upon to offer financial assistance, and anything which discomforts that jaguna is a benefit.’
‘Daughter of my heart, fate seldom works with such simplicity.’ Nacoya stepped closer, and for the first time Mara looked up and saw the scroll clutched between her old hands. The ribbons and seal were orange and black, colours she never thought to see under her roof in her lifetime. ‘This just arrived,’ said her First Adviser. With an air of stiff-backed reluctance, she passed the parchment into the hands of her mistress.
Mara snapped the ribbons and seal with hands that trembled beyond control. The scroll unrolled with a crackle against the silence that gripped the chamber. Mara read, her face expressionless as an image in wax.
Nacoya held her breath; Keyoke found what comfort he could in his statue-still military bearing; and at last Mara raised her eyes.
She rose, suddenly seeming fragile in the glare of the sun. ‘As you guessed,’ she said to the two oldest retainers in her service, ‘the Lord of the Minwanabi requests my attendance at a formal celebration of the birthday of our august Warlord.’