Servant of the Empire

7

Culprit

The runner swerved.

Only half mindful of the fact that he had narrowly missed being run down, Arakasi stopped cold in the roadway. The sun stood high overhead, too close to noon for an Acoma messenger to be moving in such haste unless his errand was urgent. Arakasi frowned as he recalled the courier's grim expression. Fast as reflex, the Spy Master spun and sprinted back in the direction of Sulan-Qu.

He was fleet of foot, and dressed as a small-time merchant's errand runner. Still it took him several minutes to overtake the runner, and at his frantic question the man did not break stride.

'Yes, I carry messages from House Acoma,' the runner answered. 'Their content is not your business.'

Fighting the heat, the dusty, uneven footing, and the effort it took to flank a man who did not wish to be delayed, Arakasi held his ground. He studied the runner's narrow eyes, full nose, and large chin and out of memory sought the man's name.

'Hubaxachi,' he said after a pause. 'As Mara's faithful servant, it is certainly my business to know what need sends you racing for Sulan-Qu at high noon. The Lady does not ask her runners to risk heat stroke on a whim.

It follows that something is wrong.'

The runner looked over in surprise. He identified Arakasi as one of Mara's senior advisers, and at last slowed to a jog.

'You!' he exclaimed. 'How could I recognise you in that costume? Aren't those the colors of the Keschai's traders' association?'

'Never mind that,' Arakasi snapped, short of both wind and temper. He tore off the headband that had misled the servant. 'Tell me what's happened.'

'It's the mistress,' gasped the runner. 'She's had a bad childbirth. Her son did not survive.' He seemed to gather himself before speaking the next line. 'She's bleeding, dangerously. I am sent to find a priest of Hantukama.'

'Goddess of Mercy!' Arakasi almost shouted. He spun and continued at a flat run toward the Acoma estate house.

The headband that had completed his disguise fluttered, forgotten, in his fist.

If the Lady's fleetest runner had been sent to fetch a priest of Hantukama, that could only mean Mara was dying.

Breezes stirred the curtains, and servants walked on silent feet. Seated by Mara's bedside, his face an impassive mask to hide his anguish, Hokanu wished he could be facing the swords of a thousand enemies rather than relying upon hope, prayer, and the uncertain vagaries of healers.

He could not think of the stillborn child, its lifeless blue form racked in death. The babe was lost, gone to Turakamu without having drawn breath. The Lady lived yet, but barely.

Her face was porcelain-pale, and the wraps and cold compresses the midwives used to try to lessen her bleeding seemed of little avail. The slow, scarlet seep continued, inexorably. Hokanu had seen fatal wounds on the battlefield that bothered him less than the creeping, insidious stain that renewed itself each time the dressings were changed. He bit his lip in quiet desperation, unaware of the sunlight outside, or the everyday horn calls of the dispatch barge that brought news from Kentosani.

'Mara,' Hokanu whispered softly, 'forgive my stubborn heart.' Though not a deeply religious man, he held with the temple belief that the wal, the inner spirit, would hear and record what the ears and the conscious mind could not. He spoke as though Mara were aware and listening, and not statue-still in a coma on the bed.

'You are the last Acoma, Lady, all because I would not yield to your request to swear Justin in as your heir. Now I regret my selfishness, and my unwillingness to concede the danger to the Acoma name.' Here Hokanu paused to master the unsteadiness in his voice. 'I, who love you, could not conceive of an enemy who would dare reach past me to strike you down. I did not allow for nature herself, or for the perils of childbirth.'

Mara's lashes did not stir. Her mouth did not tremble or smile, and even the frown between her brows was absent. Hokanu fingered her dark, loose hair, spread over the silken pillows, and battled an urge to weep. 'I speak formally,' he added, and now his voice betrayed him. 'Live, my strong, beautiful Lady. Live, that you might swear in a new heir for the Acoma over your family natami. Hear me, beloved wife. I do this moment release Kevin's son, Justin, from his obligations to House Shinzawai. He is yours, to make strong the Acoma name and heritage. Live, my Lady, and together we will make other sons for the future of both our houses.' -,

Mara's eyes did not open to the light of her victory. Limp beneath the coverlet, she did not stir as her husband bowed his head and at last lost his battle to hold his tears. Neither did she start at a near-silent step and a voice like silk that said, 'But she does have an enemy who would strike her down, and the child in her womb as well, in cold blood.'

Hokanu coiled like a spring and turned to confront a shadowy presence: Arakasi, recently arrived from the message barge, his eyes impenetrable as onyx.

'What are you talking about?' Hokanu's tone was edged like a blade. He took in Arakasi's dusty, exhausted, sweating appearance, and the rust-and-blue headband still clenched in a hand that shook. 'Is there more to this than a bad miscarriage?'

The Spy Master seemed to gather himself. Then, without flinching, he delivered the news. 'Jican told me as I came in. Mara's poison taster did not awaken from his afternoon nap. The healer saw him and says he appears to be in a coma.'

For an instant Hokanu seemed a man made of glass, his every vulnerability evident. Then the muscles in his jaw jerked taut. He spoke, his voice unyielding as barbarian iron. 'You suggest my wife was poisoned?'

Now it was Arakasi who could not speak. The sight of Mara Lying helpless had unmanned him, and he could only mutely nod.

Hokanu's face went white, but every inch of him was composed as he whispered, 'There was a spice dealer from beyond the rift who came yesterday, offering Mara trade concessions on exotic drinks brewed from luxury herbs and ground plantstuffs from Midkemia.'

Arakasi found his voice, 'Mare tasted them?'

Her consort choked out an affirmative, and, as one, both men sprang for the doorway.

'The kitchens,' Hokanu gasped as they almost bowled over the midwife who had returned to change Mara's compresses.

'My thought exactly,' Arakasi said, swerving to avoid the runner slave^who waited at his post in the hallway. 'Is there any chance the utensils may not have been washed?'

The estate house was huge, with rooms jumbled together from centuries of changing tastes. As Hokanu ran full tilt through the maze of servants' passages, archways, and short flights of stone stairs, he wondered how Arakasi could know the shortest route to the kitchens, since he was so seldom home; and yet the Spy Master ran without taking any cue from Mara's consort.

As the two crossed a foyer that had a five-way intersection between wings, Arakasi unerringly chose the correct doorway.

Hokanu forgot his fear enough to be amazed.

Even through his concern, Arakasi noticed. 'Maps,' he gasped. 'You forget, this was once the dwelling of Mara's greatest enemy. It would be a poor Spy Master who did not know the lay of such a man's house. Agents had to be told which doors to listen at, not to mention the time that a guild assassin had to be given explicit directions as to which five servants were to be killed-'

Arakasi broke off his reminiscence, his eyes turned deep with thought.

'What is it?' Hokanu demanded as they ran down a stone-flagged portico, silk curtains rippling with the wind of their passage. 'What are you thinking? I know it pertains to Mara.'

Arakasi shook his head in a clipped negative. 'I had a hunch. When I can substantiate it, I will tell you more.'

Respectful of the man's competence, Hokanu did not press for answer. He poured his heart and energy into running, and reached the kitchen a half step ahead of the Spy Master.

Startled servants looked up from preparing supper for the field hands. Wide-eyed, they took in the disheveled presence of the master, then instantly fell prostrate upon the floor.

'Your will, master,' cried the head cook, his brow pressed to the tiles.

'Dishes, cups,' Hokanu gasped disjointedly. 'Any utensil my Lady used when the foreign spice dealer was here. Have everything out for the healer's inspection.'

The back of the chief cook's neck turned white. 'Master,'

he murmured, 'I have-already failed in your request. The cups and the dishes from yesterday were cleaned and put away, as always, at sundown.'

What garbage had not been thrown to the jigabirds would have been burned, to discourage insects.

No trace remained of what variety of poison the spice seller from Midkemia might have carried. And unless they could discover what potion had stricken Mara, there could be no hope of finding an antidote.

Instinctively knowing Hokanu was on the verge of explosive, useless action, Arakasi gripped him hard by the shoulders. 'Listen to me!' the Spy Master said in a tone that made the prone servants flinch upon the floor. 'She is dying, yes, and the baby is dead, but all is not yet lost.'

Hokanu said nothing, but his body stayed taut as strung wire in Arakasi's grasp.

More gently, the Spy Master continued. 'They used a slow poison-'

'They wanted her to suffer!' Hokanu cried, anguished.

'Her murderers wanted us all to watch, and be helpless.'

Daring unspeakable consequences, both for laying hands on a noble and also for provoking a man near to breaking with fury and pain, Arakasi gave the master a rough shake. 'Yes and yes!' he shouted back.

'And it is that very cruelty that is going to save her life!'

Now he had Hokanu's attention; and much of that warrior's rage was directed at himself. Sweating, aware of his peril, Arakasi pressed on. 'No priest of Hantukama can be found in time. The nearest-'

Hokanu interrupted. 'The bleeding will take her long before the poison is finished working.'

'Pity her for it- no,' Arakasi said brutally. 'I spoke with the midwife on the way in. She has sent to Lashima's temple for golden crown flower leaves. A poultice made from them will stop the bleeding. That leaves me a very narrow span of time to track the spice merchant.'

Reason returned to Hokanu's eyes, but he did not soften.

'That merchant had barbarian bearers.'

Arakasi nodded. 'He dressed ostentatiously, also. All that gold would have drawn notice.'

Through his overwhelming concern, Hokanu showed surprise. 'How did you know? Did you pass the man on the road?'

'No.' Arakasi returned a sly grin as he released his hold on Mara's consort. 'I heard the servants gossiping.'

'Is there any detail you don't miss?' Mare's husband said in wonder.

'Many, to my everlasting frustration.' Arakasi glanced, embarrassed, toward the floor, both he and the master that moment recalling that the kitchen staff still abased themselves at their feet.

'For the good gods' sake!' Hokanu exclaimed. 'All of you, please, get up and go about your duties. The mistress's ills are not your fault.'

While the slaves and servants arose from the floor and turned back to tasks at chopping block and cooking spit, Arakasi dropped to his knees before Hokanu. 'Master, I request formal leave to pursue this seller of alien spices and find an antidote for my Lady Mara.' -, Hokanu gave back the curt nod a commander might give a warrior on the field. 'Do so, and waste no more time on obeisance, Arakasi.'

The Spy Master was back on his feet in an eye's blink and moving for the door. Only when he was safely past, at one with the shadows in the corridor, did his rigid control slip. Openly anxious, he considered the probabilities of the situation he had not disclosed to Hokanu.

The spice seller had been conspicuous indeed, with his barbarian bearers and his ostentatious jewelry; and certainly not by chance. A man born in Kelewan would never wear metal on a public roadway without a driving reason. Already Arakasi knew that the man's trail would be easy to follow: for the man had intended to be tracked.

The Spy Master would find only what the man's master wished, and the antidote for Mara would not be part of that knowledge.

In the portico between the great hall and the stairways to the servants' quarters, Mara's Spy Master broke into a run. Already he had a suspicion: he expected to find the spice seller and his bearers all dead.

In a tiny, wedge-shaped room in the attic over the storerooms, Arakasi opened a trunk. The leather hinges creaked as he rested the lid against the thin plaster wall, then rummaged within and pulled forth the hwaet-colored robes of an itinerant priest-of a minor deity, Alihama, goddess of travelers. The fabric was smudged with old grease stains and road dust. Swiftly Mara's Spy Master flung the garment over his bare shoulders, and fastened the cord loops and pegs. Next he dragged up a cracked pair of sandals, a purple-striped sash, and a long, hooded headdress with tassels. Lastly he selected a ceramic censer, strung with earthenware bells and twine clappers.

His guise as a priest of Alihama was now complete; but as Spy Master, he added seven precious metal throwing knives, each keenly balanced and thin as a razor. Five of these he tucked out of sight under the broad sash; the last two were slid between the soles of his needra-hide sandals, under rows of false stitching.

When he passed through the doorway from his narrow dormer room, he walked with a lanky, rolling stride and peered about carefully as he took the stair, for one of his eyes appeared to have developed a cast.

So thorough was his transformation as he made his exit from the estate house that Hokanu nearly missed him. But the broad, gaudy sash caught the Shinzawai heir's eye, and since he had seen no priest of Alihama being fed in the kitchens, he realised with a start that Arakasi had almost slipped past him.

'Wait!' he called.

The Spy Master did not turn but continued to shuffle down toward the landing, with intent to catch the next dispatch barge to Kentosani.

Dressed in the high boots and close-fitting breeches that Midkemians wore while riding horses, Hokanu had to run in discomfort and catch up. He caught the Spy Master by the shoulder, and was startled into a warrior's leap back as the man whirled under his touch, almost too fast for credibility.

Arakasi's hand fell away from his sash. He squinted walleyed at Hokanu and said, soft as velvet, 'You startled me.'

'I see that.' Uncharacteristically awkward, Hokanu gestured toward the priest's robe. 'The barge and the roads on foot are too slow. I am coming with you, and both of us are going to ride horses.'

The Spy Master stiffened. 'Your place is by your Lady's side.'

'Well I know it.' Hokanu was anguished, and his hand twisted and twisted at the leather riding crop thrust through his sash. 'But what can I do here but watch as she wastes away? No. I am coming.' He did not say what lay upon both of their minds - that Arakasi was an Acoma servant. As Mara's consort, Hokanu was not his legal master; Arakasi's loyalty was not his to command.

'I am reduced to asking,' he said painfully. 'Please, allow me to come along. For our Lady's sake, let me help.'

Arakasi's dark eyes assessed Hokanu without mercy, then glanced away.

'I see what it would do to you to refuse your request,'

he said quietly. 'But horses would not be appropriate. You may travel, if you wish, as my acolyte.'

Now Hokanu was sharp. 'Outside of these estates how many have seen a horse from the barbarian lands beyond the rift? Do you think anyone will have eyes for the riders?

By the time they have finished staring at the beasts, we will have passed by in a great cloud of dust.'

'Very well,' Arakasi allowed, though the incongruity between his costume and Hokanu's preference for transport worried him. All it would take was one clever man to connect his face with a priest who behaved outside of doctrine, and with an exotic creature from beyond the rift, and all of his work would be compromised. But as he considered the risks to Mara, he realised: he loved her better than his work,- better than his own life. If she died, his stake in the future, and in the formation of a better, stronger Empire, was as dust.

On impulse, he said, 'It shall be as you wish, my Lord.

But you will bind me to the saddle, and I shall be driven before you as your prisoner.'

Hokanu, already starting briskly for the stables, glanced in surprise over his shoulder. 'What? For your honor, I could never abuse you like that!'

'You will.' In a stride, Arakasi caught up with him.

The cast was still in his eye; it seemed no distraction could make him break out of his disguise. 'You must.

I will need these-priest's robes for later; thus, we must tailor our circumstances to fit. I am a holy man who was dishonorable enough to try thievery. Your servants caught me. I am being escorted back to Kentosani to be delivered to temple justice.'

'That's reasonable enough.' Hokanu impatiently waved away the servant who hurried to open the gate, and climbed the fence to gain time. 'But your word is sufficient. I will not see you bound.'

'You will,' Arakasi repeated, faintly smiling. 'Unless you want to stop six times every league to pick me up out of the dust. Master, I have tried every guise in this Empire, and more than a few that are foreign, but I sure as the gods love perversity never tried straddling a beast. The prospect terrifies me.'

They had reached the yard, where at Hokanu's orders a hired Midkemian freeman stood with two horses, saddled and ready for mounting. One was a strapping grey, the other chestnut, and though they were less spirited than the flashy black that had belonged to Ayaki, Hokanu watched Arakasi eye the creatures with trepidation. Through his worry for Mara, still he noticed: the Spy Master's squint stayed pronounced as ever.

'You're Lying,' the Shinzawai accused, affection in his tone robbing the words of insult. 'You have ice water for blood, and if you weren't so inept with a sword, you would have made a formidable commander of armies.'

'Fetch out some rope,' Arakasi replied succinctly. 'I am going to instruct you how sailors make knots, Master Hokanu. And for both of our sakes, I hope you will tie them tightly.'

:

i

. _

The horses thundered at a gallop, dust billowing in ocher clouds on the noon air. Traffic on the roadway suffered.

Needra pulling goods wagons huffed and shied in a six-legged scramble for the safety of the verge. Their drivers shouted in rage, and then in awed fear, as the four-legged beasts from beyond the rift shot past. Runners sprang aside, wide-eyed, and trade caravans scattered out of formation, their drovers and road masters gaping like farmers.

'You've never had these creatures off the estates,' Arakasi surmised in a tight voice. Bound by his wrists to the saddle horn and by his ankles to a cord that looped underneath the gelding's girth, he endured indescribable discomfort as he tried to keep his posture and his dignity. His priest's robe flapped like a flag against the restriction of his sash, and the censer whacked him in the calf at each thrust of the gelding's stride.

'Try to relax,' Hokanu offered in an attempt to be helpful. He sat his saddle with what seemed liquid ease, his dark hair blowing free and his hands steady on the reins. He did not look like a man chafed by blisters in unmentionable places. If not for his concern for his wife, he might have enjoyed the commotion his outlandish beasts were causing on the roadway.

'How do you know to start in Kentosani?' Hokanu asked as he drew rein along a forested stretch of roadway to give the horses a breather.

Arakasi closed his eyes as he endured the jolt while his gelding responded to the jerk on the leading rein and shifted from a canter, to a long trot, and finally to a smoother walk. The Spy Master sighed, knocked the censer away from his bruised ankle, and gave a sideways look that spoke volumes. But his voice held no disgust as he answered Hokanu's question.

'The Holy City is the only place in the Empire that already has Midkemians in residence, where Thuril and even desert men walk about in native costume. I expect that our spice dealer wished to be conspicuous, and then blend his trail into one more difficult to follow, so that we find him, but not too soon. For I believe he has a master who gave him his orders concerning your Lady, and that man, that enemy, will not want to keep his secrecy.'

The Spy Master did not add a second, more telling conjecture. Best not to voice his suspicions until he had proof. The two men rode on in silence, beneath a canopy of ulo trees. Birds swooped from the branches at the sight and smell of the alien beasts. The horses switched at flies, and ignored them.

Hokanu's comfort in the saddle stayed deceptively at odds with the emotion he wrestled inside. At each bend in the road, under the shadow of every tree, he imagined threat. Memory haunted him, of Mara's pale face against the pillow, and her hands so unnaturally still on the coverlet. Often as he chastised himself for the worry that wasted his energy, he could not marshal his thoughts. He fretted in his warrior's stillness, that he could do nothing more than provide horses to hurry Arakasi on his errand. The Spy Master was competent at his art; companionship in all likelihood hindered his work. Yet, had Hokanu remained behind, he knew the sight of Mara Lying helpless would have enraged him. He would have mustered warriors and marched against Jiro, and be damned to the Assembly's edict. A frown marred his brows. Even now he had to restrain himself from grasping his crop and lashing the animal under him. To give free rein to his inner rage, his guilt, and his pain, he would make the beast gallop until it dropped.

'I am glad you are with me,' Arakasi said suddenly, unexpectedly.

Hokanu recoiled from his unpleasant thoughts and saw the Spy Master's enigmatic gaze fixed upon him. He waited, and after an interval filled with the rustle of wind through the trees, Arakasi qualified.

'With you along, I cannot afford to be careless. The added responsibility will steady me, when, for the first time in my life, I feel the urge to be reckless.' Frowning, self-absorbed, Arakasi regarded his bound hands.

His knuckles flexed, testing the knots. 'Mara is special to me. I feel for her as I never did for my former master, even when his house was obliterated by his enemies.'

Surprised, Hokanu said, 'I did not realise you had served another house.'

As if wakened to the fact that he had shared a confidence, Arakasi shrugged. 'I originally established my network for the Lord of the Tuscai.'

'Ah,' Hokanu nodded. That stray fact explained much.

'Then you took service with the Acoma at the same time as Lujan and the other former grey warriors?'

The Spy Master nodded, his intense eyes following every nuance of Mara's consort's bearing. He seemed to arrive at some inner decision. 'You share her dreams,'

he stated.

Again Hokanu was startled. The man's perception was almost too keen to be comfortable. 'I want an Empire free of injustice, sanctioned murder, and slavery, if that is what you refer to.'

The horses plodded on, making confusion of an approaching caravan as drovers and the reinsman of a cook wagon all started shouting and pointing. Arakasi's quiet reply cut without effort through the din. 'Her life is more important than both of ours. If you go on with me, master, you must understand: I will risk your life as ruthlessly for her as I would my own.'

Aware somehow that the Spy Master spoke from the heart, and that he was uncomfortable sharing confidences, Hokanu did not attempt a direct reply. 'It's time for us to move out again.' He thumped his heels into his gelding's ribs, and dragged both mounts to a canter.

The back alleys of Kentosani reeked of refuse and runoff from the chamber pots of the poor. Spy Master and Shinzawai Lord had left the horses in the care of a trembling hostel owner, who bowed and scraped and stuttered that he was unworthy of caring for such rare beasts. His face showed stark fear as the pair left; and the stir the horses' presence caused among the hostel's staff masked Arakasi and Hokanu's departure=. Every servant was still outside, along with every patron, staring and pointing at the Midkemian horses as stablehands used to dull-tempered needra fumbled with the much more active animals.

In a change of roles like irony, now the Spy Master affected the upper hand, and Hokanu, wearing only his loincloth, played the part of a penitent on a pilgrimage as the priest's servant, to appease the minor deity he had reputedly offended. They blended into the afternoon crowd.

On foot instead of carried in a litter, and for the first time in his life not surrounded by an honor guard, Hokanu came to realise how much the Holy City had changed since the Emperor had assumed absolute rule in place of the High Council. Great Lords and Ladies no longer traveled heavily defended by warriors, for Imperial Whites patrolled the streets to keep order. Where the main thoroughfares had generally been safe, if crowded with traffic - farm carts, temple processions, and hurrying messengers - the darker, narrow back lanes where the laborers and beggars lived, or the fish-ripe alleys behind the warehouses at the wharf, had not been a place for a man or woman to venture without armed escort.

And yet Arakasi had a knowledge of these dim byways acquired years before Ichindar's abolishment of the War lord's office. He led a twisted path through moss-damp archways, between tenements too close-packed to admit sunlight, and, once, through the malodorous, refuse-choked channel of a storm culvert.

'Why such a circuitous route?' Hokanu inquired in a pause when a shrieking mob of street children raced by, in pursuit of a bone-skinny dog.

'Habit,' Arakasi allowed. His smoking censer swung at his knee, its incense only a partial palliative against the assault of stinks from the gutter. They passed a window where a wrinkled crone sat peeling jomach with a bone-bladed knife. 'That hostel where we left the beasts is an honest enough house, but gossipmongers congregate there to swap news. I didn't wish to be followed; when we left there was an Ekamchi servant on our.tail. He saw the horses at the main gate, and knew we were of the Acoma or Shinzawai households.'

Hokanu asked, 'Have we lost him?'

Arakasi smiled faintly, his slim hand raised in a sign of benediction over the crown of a beggar's head. The man was wild-eyed and mumbling, obviously touched to madness.,by the gods. With a twirl of the cord that spun the censer and clouded the air with incense, the Spy Master replied, 'We lost him indeed. Apparently he did not wish to soil his sandals in the garbage pit we crossed two blocks back. He went around, lost sight of us for a second . . .'

~ 'And we ducked through that culvert,' Hokanu concluded, chuckling.

They passed the shuttered front of a weaver's shop, and paused at a baker's, while Arakasi bought a roll and spread sa jam in zigzags across the buttered top. The bread seller attended another customer and waved to his apprentice, who showed the apparent priest and penitent into a curtained back room. A few minutes later, the bread seller himself appeared. He looked the pair of visitors over keenly and finally addressed Arakasi. 'I didn't recognise you in that garb.'

The Spy Master licked jam off his fingers and said,

'I want news. It's pressing. A spice seller ostentatiously dressed, and wearing metal jewelry. He had barbarian bearers. Can you find him?'

The bread seller scrubbed sweat off his fat jowls. 'If you can wait until sundown, when we toss the dough scraps out for the beggar children, I could have an answer for you.'

Arakasi looked irked. 'Too late. I want the use of your messenger runner.' Like sleight of hand, a twist of parchment appeared in his fingers. Perhaps the Spy Master had hidden it all along in his sleeve, Hokanu thought, but he could not be sure.

'Get this delivered to the sandalmaker's on the comer of Barrel Hoop Street and Tanner's Alley. The proprietor is Chimichi. Tell him your cake is burning.'

The bread seller looked dubious.

'Do this!' Arakasi said in an edged whisper that raised hairs on Hokanu's neck.

The bread seller raised floury hands, palms out in submission, then bellowed for his apprentice. The boy left with the parchment, and Arakasi paced like a caged sarcat the entire interval he was gone.

The leather worker Chimichi proved to be a whip-thin man with desert blood, for he wore sweat-greasy tassels with talismans under his robe. His lank hair fell into his eyes, which were shifty. His hands had scars that might have been made by a slip of the knife at his craft, but more likely, Hokanu thought, from their number and location, by the skilled hand of a torturer. He ducked through the curtain, still blinking from sunlight, a roll decked with jam in the precise pattern of Arakasi's gripped in one fist.

'Fool,' he hissed at the priest. 'You risk my cover, sending an emergency signal like that, and then summoning me here. The master will see you bum for such carelessness.'

'

The master will certainly not,' Arakasi said drily.

The leather craftsman jumped. 'It's you yourself! Gods, I didn't recognise you in those temple rags.' Chimichi's brows knotted into a scowl worthy of his Tsubarian heritage. 'What's amiss?'

'A certain spice seller, decked with a gold chain and carried by Midkemian bearers.'

Chimichi's expression lightened. 'Dead,' he stated flatly.

'His bearers with him. In a warehouse on Hwaet Broker's Lane, if the footpad who tried to exchange chain links for centis at the money changers can be relied on to tell the truth. But that such a man had gold at all belies the chance he fabricated his tale.'

'Does the imperial patrol know about the corpses yet?'

Arakasi broke in.

'Probably not.' Chimichi laid his roll aside, and rubbed a jammy knuckle on his apron. The deepset, shifty eyes turned to the Spy Master. 'Ever see a money changer report what he didn't have to? The taxes on metals are not small, these days, with our Light of Heaven needing to increase his army against the threat of the hard-line traditionalists.'

Arakasi cut short the man's rambling with a raised hand.

'Seconds count, Chimichi. My companion and I are going on to that warehouse to inspect the bodies. Your task is to stage a diversion that will occupy the Emperor's patrol long enough to see us in and out of the building. I don't want an Imperial White left free to investigate chose murders beforetime.'

Chimichi flipped back dark hair to reveal a grin, and startlingly perfect white teeth. The front ones had been filed into points, deep desert fashion. 'Keburchi, God of Chaos,' he swore in evident delight. 'It's been long time since we had a good riot. Life was starting to get boring.'

Yet by the time he had finished his sentence, he was speaking to an empty room. He blinked, startled, and muttered, 'The man's mother was a damned shadow.'

Then his face knitted in concentration. He hurried off about the business of turning an ordinary, peaceful day of business in the trade quarter into unmitigated chaos.

Dusk fell, deepening the gloom in the already dim warehouse.

Hokanu crouched beside Arakasi, a burning spill in his hand. Outside, shouts and the sounds of breakage echoed from the adjacent streets; someone howled obscenities over the din of shattering crockery.

'The wine merchants' stores,' Hokanu murmured. 'In a very few minutes we're going to have company.' He paused to shift the rolled cloth spill, which had burned nearly down to his fingers. 'The doors on this building were not very stout.'

Arakasi nodded, his face invisible beneath his priest's cowl. His fingers moved, furtively fast, over the body of the bearer, which was well past rigor mortis and already starting to bloat. 'Strangled,' he murmured. 'All of them.'

He slipped forward through the dark, while lines of bright light from wildfire or torches shone through the gaps in the wall boards. His concentration never wavered.

Hokanu flinched as the flame in his hands crept lower.

He shifted grip, and lit the last wad of linen he could spare from his already scanty loincloth. By the time he looked up, Arakasi was searching the spice seller's corpse.

The man's chain and fine silk robes were all gone, looted by the footpad Chimichi had mentioned. The illumination cast by the spill picked out enough details to establish that the man had not died by strangulation

. His hands were contorted, and blind, dry eyes showed rings of white. The mouth hung open, and the tongue inside had been bitten through. Blood blackened the boards and his still combed and perfumed beard.

'You've found something,' Hokanu said, aware of Arakasi's stillness.

The Spy Master looked up, his eyes a faint glint under his hood. 'Much.' He turned over the man's hand, revealing a tattoo. 'Our culprit is of the Hamoi Tong. He bears the mark. His posing as a man in residence across the rift speaks of long-range planning.'

'Not Jiro's style,' Hokanu summed up.

'Decidedly not.' Arakasi squatted back on his heels, unmindful of the bang of a plank striking the cobbles close outside the warehouse. 'But we're meant to think so.'

Out in the night, a sailor cursed, and somebody else roared back in outrage. The din of an irate populace surged closer, overlaid by the horn call of one of the Emperor's Strike Leaders.

Hokanu also had discarded the parchment with the Anasati seal as a plant. No son of Tecuma's, and no Lord advised by a devil as clever as Chumaka, would ever condescend to the obvious. 'Who?' Hokanu said, the sharpness of his desperation cutting through. Every minute that passed increased the chance that he would never again see Mara alive. Memory of her as he had left her, pale, unconscious, and bleeding, all but paralysed his reason. 'Can the tong even be bought to do more than assassinate? I thought they took on their contracts in anonymity.'

Arakasi was once again busy sorting through the spice seller's underclothes. The fact they were fouled in death did not deter him, nor did the stench upset his thoughts.

'The telling word, I suspect, is "contract." And does any hard-line traditionalist in this Empire have riches enough to toss golden chains to beggars just to make sure we have a trail to follow?' His hands paused, pounced, and came up with a small object. 'Ah!' Triumph colored the Spy Master's tone.

Hokanu caught a glimpse of green glass. He forgot the stink of dead men, hitched closer, and thrust the spill toward the object that Arakasi held.

It proved to be a small vial. Dark, sticky liquid coated the inside; the cork, had there been one, was missing.

'A poison vial?' Hokanu asked.

Arakasi shook his head. 'That's poison on the inside.'

He offered the item for Hokanu to sniff. The odor was resinous, and stingingly bitter. 'But the glass is green.

Apothecaries generally reserve that color container for antidotes.' He glanced at the spice seller's face frozen in its hideous rictus. 'You poor bastard. You thought you were being given your life at your master's hand.'

The Spy Master left off his musing and stared at Hokanu. 'That's why Mara's taster never suspected. This man ingested the very same poison that she did, knowing it was a slow-acting drug and sure that he was going to get the antidote.'

Hokanu's hand trembled, and the spill flickered. Outside, the shouts reached a crescendo, and the snap and rattle of swordplay drew closer.

'We must leave,' urged Arakasi.

Hokanu felt firm fingers close over his wrist, tugging him to his feet. 'Mara,' he murmured in an outburst of uncontrollable pain. 'Mara.'

Arakasi yanked him forward. 'No,' he said sharply. 'We have hope now.'

Hokanu turned deadened eyes to the Spy Master.

'What? But the spice seller is dead. How can you claim we have hope?'

Arakasi's teeth flashed in fierce satisfaction. 'Because we know there's an antidote. And the poison vial has a maker's mark on the bottom.' He tugged again, hauling a numbed Hokanu toward the loosened board by the dockside through which they had originally made entry.

'I know the apothecary who uses that stamp. I have information from him in the past.' The Spy Master bent and ducked out into the steamy, odorous dusk of the alley behind the fishmonger's. 'All we have to do is avoid this ruckus that Chimichi started for our benefit, find the man, and question him.'