Servant of the Empire

Hokanu felt irritation. Too many events in this Empire twisted in upon themselves, until centuries of unbending customs led their society toward stagnation and entropy.

This inbred cycle he and Mara and Ichindar, the Emperor of the Nations, had dedicated themselves to overturn.

Ayaki's untimely end was more than sorrow and grief; it could become a major setback and be turned into a rallying cry for all those Ruling Lords who were disgruntled by recent changes. If the Acoma showed any sign of irresolution, there would be strife; and at the heart of the faction that had begun to form in rigid adherence to old traditions^, the Anasati voice would be loudest.

The funeral guests would not be here to observe the ashes of the departed as they spiraled in their smoky ascent to heaven; no: they would be watching one another like starving dogs, and Lady Mara would be subjected to the most thorough scrutiny of all. Weighed down by dread, for he knew his Lady was too lost in her pain to handle peripheral matters, Hokanu pushed open the ornamental gate and started across the garden. He forgot the two men who walked with him until Incomo said, 'First Adviser Saric has all in readiness, master. Entertainments have been arranged to divert the guests, and the honor guards of all but the greatest Ruling Lords will be quartered in the garrison across the lake. The pyre has been soaked in oils, and all has been done to keep the ceremony as brief as possible.'

Hokanu found no reassurance in Incomo's words; that the adviser felt need to stress such points bespoke a sharing of concern. The game would go on, whether or not Lady Mara could rally and cope.

'We shall not stint in our honors to the departed young master,' added Irrilandi, 'but it is my suggestion that you stay by your Lady's side, and be prepared to interpret her instructions.'

Politely, tactfully, the high officers of House Acoma acknowledged that their mistress remained incapacitated.

Hokanu felt a surge of gratitude to these men, who were quietly and staunchly prepared to try to cover for her lapse. He tried to reassure them that House Acoma would not flounder with the currents of misfortune like some rudderless ship. 'I shall be with my Lady. She is touched by your devotion and would have me say that you should not hesitate to approach if you have any difficulties or concerns.'

A knowing glance passed between master and servants.

Then Irrilandi bowed. 'More than a thousand soldiers have made prayers to Turakamu to take them in the young master's place.'

Hokanu nodded in respect. Those soldiers would wear arms throughout the funeral ceremony in token of their vow, a strong deterrent to any visiting Lord who might contemplate causing trouble, in breach of Acoma hospitality.

The number was a great honor to Ayaki, the men's dedication also demonstrated that barracks rumor recognised the political ramifications of what was far more than a personal tragedy. The Lords who came today would gather and circle like jaguna, the eaters of dead meat, to see what prizes could be snatched from the teeth of misfortune.

Hokanu received the departing bows of the two officers, then looked over his shoulder at the lake, where barges were now heading rapidly toward the docks. Banners flew from their poles, and the chant of the oarsmen carried across the water. Very shortly now the quiet estate would become a political arena. Hokanu considered the great stone house that had been the hall of the Minwanabi for centuries.

The place had been designed as a fortress, but today even enemies must be invited inside. The priest of Chochocan, the Good God, had blessed the estate, and Mara had seen the Minwanabi natami placed in a dedicated glade, so that a once great house should be remembered. Yet despite these measures and the assurances of the priests that the Good Servant's acts had earned divine favor, Hokanu swallowed ~i back a feeling of dread. The depths of the eaves seemed to hold shadows in which the spirits of enemies peered out in silent laughter at Mara's grief.

Hokanu wished for a moment he had overridden her bolt choice and opted to adhere to the customs of conquest that would have seen this house tom down, each stone carries to the lake and thrown into the deep, each timber and fidt burned, and the soil of all these lush acres sown with salt.

Unlucky ground should nurture nothing, according to the ways adhered to over the centuries, that the cycle of curses events might be broken for eternity. Despite the beauty of this estate, and the near-impregnable location of its grounds and holdings, Hokanu repressed the cold premonition that he might be doomed never to find happiness with Mara as long as they lived under this roof.

But this was an ill time to brood, with the state guests already arriving. The consort to the Servant of the Empire stiffened his shoulders, prepared for the coming ordeal.

Mara must show the proper Tsurani bearing in the face of her overwhelming grief. The death of her father and brother, who were warriors, had been one dining; the loss of her own child, far worse. Hokanu intuitively senses that this was the ugliest fate that could have befallen the woman he loved more than life. For her he must be strong today, armor against public dishonor, for while he was still the dedicated heir of the Shinzawai, he embraced Acoma honor as if it were his own.

Secure in his resolve, he returned to the terrace outside his Lady's sleeping quarters. As the screens were not yet opened, he knew that the servants had allowed her undisturbed rest. He slid the panel soundlessly in its track and entered. He did not speak but let the gentle warmth of daylight fall upon his wife's cheek.

Mara stirred. Her hands closed in the twisted sheets, and her eyes fluttered open. She gasped and pushed herself up.

Her eyes swept the room in terror until Hokanu knelt and captured her in his embrace.

Her complexion looked as if she had not slept at all. 'Is it time?'

Hokanu stroked her shoulder, as servants who had waited outside hurried in at the sound of their mistress's voice. He said, 'The day begins.'

Gently he helped raise his Lady to her feet. When he had steadied her, he backed away and gestured for the servants to perform their offices. Mara stood with a bleak expression as her maids bustled to arrange her bath and her dress. Hokanu endured the sight of her lackluster manner without showing the anger in his heart. If Jiro of the Anasati was responsible for causing this pain to his Lady, the heir to the Shinzawai vowed to see the man suffer. Then, recalled to his own state of undress by the admiring stare of one of Mara's handmaids, he put aside thoughts of revenge. He clapped for his own servants, and suffered their fussing in silence as they arrayed him in the formal robes required for Ayaki's funeral.

The throng mended the hills surrounding the Acoma estate house, clothed in the colors of a thousand houses, with red sashes, red ties, or red ribbons worn in homage to the Red God, brother to Sibi, who was Death, and lord of all lives.

The color also symbolised the heart's blood of the boy that no longer flowed to clothe the spirit. Six thousand soldiers stood in columns flanking the hollow where the bier awaited. In front, in polished green armor, stood the Acoma warriors who had dedicated their lives; behind these, the ranks in the blue of Mara's Shinzawai consort; and after them, the gold-edged white of the Imperial Guard sent by Ichindar to carry the Emperor's condolences. Next came Kamatsu of the Shinzawai, Hokanu's father, and then the families who made up the Hadama Clan, all who had blood ties to the dead boy. After them, in a great, sprawling crows, stood the houses who had come to pay their respects

.or to indulge in the next round of the Great Game.

The warriors were statue-still, heads bowed, shields held with edges resting upon the ground. Before each lay a sword, points facing the bier, empty scabbard placed crosswise beneath. Behind the soldiers, up the hillside, members of the household kept a respectful distance from the line of march, for the great of the Empire had come to bid farewell to a boy.

~Trumpets blew to begin the procession. In the shade of the outer portico where the Acoma advisers and officers gathered to march, Mara fought the weakness in her knees.

She felt Hokanu's grip on her elbow, but the meaning of the sensation did not register. The eyes half hidden behind her red veil of mourning were locked on the litter that held her motionless son. His body was encased in fine armor; his white hands clasped the grip of a rare metal sword.

The hand that had been crushed in the fall was decently clothed in a gauntlet; the mashed chest, hidden behind a breastplate and shield emblazoned with a shatra bird in rare gold leaf.

To the eye, he seemed a sleeping warrior, prepared at a call to arise and fight in the glory and honor of his youth.

Mara felt her throat dose. No prior event, not placing the mementos of her father and brother in the family's glade to mourn them, not enduring her first husband's brutality, not losing the first man with whom she had discovered the passion of love, not the death of her beloved foster mother-nothing compared to this moment for sheer horror.

She could not believe, even now, far less accept the finality of her firstborn's death. A child whose life had made hers endurable, through her unhappy first marriage. An infant whose carefree laughter had weaned her from despair, when she had faced enemies greater than the means of her house to defend. Ayaki had given her the courage to go on. Out of stubbornness, and a fierce desire to see him live to carry on the Acoma name, Mara had accomplished the impossible.

All would be consigned to ashes, this day. This accursed day, when a boy who should have outlived his mother would become a pillar of smoke to assault the nostrils of heaven.

A step behind Mara, baby Justin fretfully asked to be carried. His nurse cajoled him to stand hushing his noise.

His mother seemed deaf to his distress, locked as she was in dark thoughts. She moved like a puppet to Hokanu's guidance as the retinue prepared to start forward.

Drums beat. The tattoo thrummed on the air. An acolyte clad in red thrust a dyed ke-reed into the Lady's unfeeling hands; Hokanu's fingers clasped hers, raising the reed with her lest she drop the religious symbol.

The procession moved. Hokanu "gathered her into the crook of his arm and steadied her into the slow march.

To honor her loss, he had forsaken the blue armor of the Shinzawai for the green of the Acoma and an officer's helm. Vaguely Mara knew he grieved, and distantly she sensed the sorrow of the others - the hadonra, who had so often shouted at the boy for spilling ink in the scriptorium; the nurses and teachers, who had all borne bruises from his tantrums; the advisers, who had sometimes wished for a warrior's sword to knock sense into the boy's mischievous head by whacking the flat on his backside.

Servants and maids and even slaves had appreciated Ayaki's quick spirit.

But they were as shadows, and their words of consolation just noise. Nothing anyone said or did seemed to penetrate the desolation that surrounded the Lady of the Acoma.

Mara felt Hokanu's hand gently upon her arm, guiding her down the low stairs. Here waited the first of the state delegations: Ichindar's, clad in blinding white and gold.

Mara bent her head as the regal contingent bowed to her; she stayed silent behind her veils as Hokanu murmured the appropriate words.

She was moved on, past Lord Hoppara of the Xacatecas, so long a staunch ally; today she presented to him the manner she would show a stranger, and only Hokanu heard the young man's graceful expression of understanding. At his side, elegant as always, the dowager Lady of the Xacatecas regarded the Good Servant with something more magnanimous than sympathy.

As Hokanu made his bow to her, Lady Isashani lingeringly caught his hand. 'Keep your Lady close,' she warned while she outwardly maintained the appearance of offering a personal condolence. 'She is a spirit still in shock. Very likely she will not recognise the import of her actions for some days yet. There are enemies here who would provoke her to gain advantage.'

Hokanu's politeness took on a grim edge as he thanked Lord Hoppara's mother for her precaution.

These nuances passed Mara by, as well as the skill with which Hokanu turned aside the veiled insults of the Omechan. She made her bows at her Lord's cue, and did not care as she roused whispers in her wake: that she had shown more obeisance than necessary to Lord Frasai of the Tonmargu; that the Lord of the Inrodaka noticed that her movements lacked her characteristic fire and grace.

She had no focus in life beyond the small, fragile form that lay in final rest upon the litter.

Plodding steps followed in time to the thud of muffled drums. The sun climbed overhead as the procession wound into the hollow where the pyre had been prepared. Hokanu murmured polite words to the last and least of the Ruling Lords who merited personal recognition. Between the litter and the pyre waited one last contingent, robed in unadorned black.

Touched by awe, Hokanu forced his next step, his hand tightening upon Mara. If she realised she confronted five Great Ones, magicians of the Assembly, she gave no sign. That their kind was above the law and that they had seen fit to send a delegation to this event failed to give her pause. Hokanu was the one to ponder the ramifications, and to connect that of late the Black Robes seemed to have taken a keener interest than usual in the turnings of politics. Mara bowed to the Great Ones as she had to any other Lord, unmindful of the sympathy offered by the plump Hochopepa, whom she had met at the occasion of Tasaio's ritual suicide. The always awkward moment when Hokanu faced his true father was lost on her. The iq regard of the red-haired magician who stood behind the more taciturn Shimone did not faze her. Whether hostile or benign, the magicians'

words could not pierce through her apathy. No life their powers could threaten meant more than the one Turakamu and the Game of the Council had already seen fit to take.

Mara entered the ritual circle where the bier lay. She watched with stony eyes as her Force Commander lifted the too still form of her boy and laid him tenderly on the wood that would be his final bed. His hands straightened sword and helm and shield, and he stepped back, all his rakishness absent.

Mara felt Hokanu's gentle prod. Numbly she stepped forward as around her the drums boomed and stilled.

She lowered the ke-reed across Ayaki's body, but it was Hokanu's voice that raised in the traditional cry: 'We are gathered to commemorate the life of Ayaki, son of Buntokapi, grandson of Tecuma and Sezu!'

The line was too short, Mara sensed, a vague frown on her face. Where were the lists of life deeds, for this her firseborn son?

An awkward stillness developed, until Lujan moved at a desperate glance from Hokanu and nudged her around to face the east.

The priest of Chochocan approached, robed in the white that symbolised life. He shed his mantle and danced, naked as at birth, in celebration of childhood.

Mara did not see his gyrations; she felt no expiation for the guilt of knowing her laxity had caused disaster.

As the dance,,` bowed to earth before the bier, she faced west when prompted, and stood, dull-eyed, as the whistles of Turakamu's followers split the air, as the priest of the Red God began his dance for Ayaki's safe passage to the halls of the Red God. He had never needed to represent a barbarian beast before, and his idea of how a horse might move had been almost laughable had it not ended in the fall to earth that had crushed so much young promise.

Mara's eyes stayed dry. Her heart felt hardened to a kernel incapable of being renewed. She did not bow her head in prayer ?s the priests stepped forward and slashed the red cord that bound Ayaki's hands, freeing his spirit for rebirth. She did not weep, or beg the gods' favor, as the white-plumed tirik bird was released as symbol of the renewal of rebirth.

The priest of Turakamu intoned his prayer for Ayaki. 'In the end, all men come before my god. The Death God is a kind Lord, for he ends suffering and pain. He judges those who come to him and rewards the righteous.' With a broad wave of his hand and a nod of his skull mask, the priest added, 'He understands the living and knows of pain and grief.' The red wand pointed to the armored boy on the pyre. 'Ayaki of the Acoma was a good son, firmly upon the path that his parents would have wished for him. We can only accept that Turakamu judged him worthy and called him so that he might be returned to us, with an even greater fate.'

Mara clenched her teeth to keep from crying.

What prayer was there to be said that would not be tainted with rage, and what rebirth beyond being son of the Light of Heaven himself could await that was more honorable than heirship of the Acoma? As Mara shivered in pent fury, Hokanu's arms dosed around her. He murmured something she did not hear as the torches were lifted from their brackets around the circle and the aromatic wood was set alight. A cold band twisted itself around her heart. She watched the red-yellow flames lick upward, her thoughts very far from the present.

As the priest of Juran the Just approached to give her blessing, only Hokanu's surreptitious shake prevented her from screaming curses at him, demanding to know what sort of justice existed in a world where little boys died before their mother's eyes.

The flames crackled skyward, then sheeted over the pyre with a roar of disturbed air. The treated wood spared the sight of the boy's body twisting and blackening in its embrace. Yet Mara looked upon the sight with every fiber of her body braced in horror. Her imagination depicted what lay at the heart of a brightness too dazzling for sight; her mind supplied the screams the boy had never uttered.

'Ayaki,' she whispered. Hokanu's hold upon her tightened with enough force to recall her momentarily to propriety: to the stiff-faced mask that as Servant of the Empire she was expected to show in public grief. But the effort of holding her features immobile was enough to cause her to tremble.

For long minutes the crackle of flames vied with the voices of the priests who chanted their various prayers.

Mara fought to control her breathing, to stave off the monstrous reality of her dead child vanishing into a roil of smoke.

For the death rite of one of lesser station, this would be time for the guests to file away, leaving those closest to the departed to a time of private mourning. But with the passing of the great, such courtesies were forborne. Mara was allowed no reprieve. At the forefront of the public eye she remained, while the acolytes of Turakamu threw consecrated oil upon the flames. Waves of heat rolled off the pyre, reddening Mara's skin. If she shed any tears, they dried upon her cheeks in the face of that cruel furnace.

Above writhing curtains of flame, the thick black smoke coiled skyward to draw notice from heaven that a spirit of high honor had departed.

The sun added to the blaze, and Mara felt sick and dizzy. Hokanu turned his body to shade her as he could.

He dared not glance at her too often in concern, for fear of betraying her weakness, while the time dragged by as torture. Nearly an hour passed before the flame subsided; then more prayers and chanting followed as the wood-ashes were spread to cool. Mara all but swayed on her feet when the priest of Turakamu intoned, 'The body is no more. The spirit has flown. He who was Ayaki of the Acoma is now here,' he said, touching his heart, 'here' - he touched his head - 'and in Turakamu's halls.'

The acolytes braved the smoking embers as they picked their way to the heart of the mound of decimated fuel. One used a square of thick leather to drag out the warped blade of Ayaki's sword, quickly passing the bundle to another who waited to quench the hot metal in wet rags. Steam rose to mingle with the smoke. Mara endured with deadened eyes as the priest of Turakamu employed an ornate scoop to fill the waiting urn with ashes. More wood than boy, the remains would become the symbol of the body's interment in the glade of his ancestors. For the Tsurani believed that while the true soul traveled to the halls of the Red God, a small part of the spirit, the shade, would rest alongside its ancestors within the stone that was the natami of the house. That way the essence of the child would thus return in another life, while that which made him Acoma would remain to watch over his family.

Hokanu steadied his wife as two acolytes arrived before her. One offered the sword blade, which Mara touched.

Then Hokanu took the twisted length of metal while the other acolyte surrendered the urn. Mara accepted the ashes of her son in trembling hands. Her eyes did not acknowledge what she held but remained fixed upon the scattered, charred wood that remained in the circle.

Hokanu touched her arm lightly and they turned as one.

The drums boomed out as the procession veered around and resumed its march toward the Acoma contemplation glade.

No impression of the walk registered upon Mara beyond the stony cold of the urn in her hands, warmed at the base by the still warm ashes inside. She set one foot before the other, barely aware of her arrival at the scrolled gateposts that marked the glade entrance.

The servants and Hokanu paused in deference to her; for the only one not of Acoma blood who was permitted to step through the arch and make his way along the stone path that led within was the gardener whose life had been dedicated to tend the glade. Here even her husband, who was still a Shinzawai, could not enter, upon pain of death.

To allow any stranger admittance was to offer insult to the shades of Acoma ancestors, and to bring lasting disharmony to the peace that abided in the natami.

Mara stepped away from Hokanu's embrace. She did not hear the murmur of the nobles who watched, pitying or predatory, until she had moved beyond sight behind the hedges. Once before, upon her family's old estate, she had undertaken the terrible task of consecrating the shades of dose family to the natami.

The size of this garden disoriented her. She paused, the urn clutched to her breast in stunned incomprehension. This was not the familiar glade of her childhood, where she had gone as a tiny girl to address the shade of her mother; this was not the known path where she had narrowly escaped death at the hands of a tong assassin while mourning her father and brother. This place was alien, vast, a wide park, in which several streams meandered. For a second a shadow crossed her heart as she wondered whether this garden that had been home to Minwanabi shades for so many centuries might reject the aspect of her son.

Again in her memory she saw the horse fall, a blackness like evil stamping out innocent life. Feeling lost, she gulped a breath. She chose a path at random, only vaguely recalling that all of them led to the same site where the ancient rock, the natami of her family, rested at the edge of a large pool.

'I did not bury your natami deep below the Acoma's,'

she said aloud to the listening air; a smaller voice inside her warned that she talked out of madness. Life was mad, she decided, or she would not be here making empty motions over the remains of her young heir. Her extraordinary display of graciousness in insisting that the Minwanabi natami be taken to a distant place and cared for, so that the shades of the Minwanabi might know peace, at this moment seemed empty folly.

She did not have the strength in her to laugh.

Mara curled her lip at the sour taste in her mouth. Her hair smelled of sweet oil and greasy smoke. The stench turned her stomach as she knelt on the sun-warmed ground.

Next to the natami a hole had been dug, the damp soil piled to one side. Mara placed the fire-warped sword that had _been her son's most prized possession in the cavity, then tipped the urn to let his ashes pour over it. With bare hands she sifted the earth back into the hole and patted it down.

A white robe had been left for her beside the pool. On its silk folds lay a vial, and nearby, the traditional brazier and dagger. Mara lifted the vial and removed the stopper.

She poured fragrant oils upon the pool. In the shimmers of fractured light that played upon its surface, she saw no beauty, but only the face of her son, his mouth wide with suffering as he struggled to draw his last breath. The rituals gave no release but seemed a wasting wind of meaningless sound. 'Rest, my son. Come to your home soil and sleep with our ancestors.'

'Ayaki,' she whispered. 'My child.'

She gripped the breast of her robe and pulled, tearing the cloth from her body, but unlike years before, when she had performed the ritual for her father and brother, no tears followed the violence. Her eyes remained painfully dry.

She plunged her hand into the almost extinguished brazier. The sting of the few hot cinders remaining was not enough to focus her thoughts. Grief remained a dull ache inside her as she smeared the ashes across her breasts and down her exposed stomach, to symbolise that her heart was ashes. In truth, her flesh felt as lifeless as the spent wood of the pyre. She slowly lifted the heirloom metal dagger, kept sharp for this ceremony over the ages. For the third time in her life, she drew the blade from its sheath and cut herself across the left arm, the hot pain barely felt in the fog of her despair.

She held the small wound over the pool, letting drops of blood fall to mix with the water, as tradition required.

For more than a minute she sat motionless, until nature's healing staunched the flow. A scab had half dried before she absently tugged at her robe, but she lacked the fierceness of will to fully sunder the garment. In the end, she simply dragged it over her head. It fell to earth, one sleeve soaking up oil and water from the pool.

By rote, Mara unfastened her hairpins, loosening her dark locks over her shoulders. Anger and rage, grief and sorrow should have driven her to pull upon her tresses, yanking handfuls lose. Her emotions only smoldered sullenly, like a spark smothered by lack of air. Boys should not die; to grieve for them in a fullness of passion was to abet the acceptance of their passing. Mara twisted at a few tangles, outwardly listless.

Then she settled back upon her heels and regarded the glade. Such immaculate beauty, and only she among the living could appreciate it. Ayaki would never perform the death rite far his mother. Hot tears erupted unbidden and she felt something of the hardness wedged within break loose. Mara sobbed, abandoning herself to an outpouring of grief.

But unlike before, when such release brought clarity, this time she found herself driven deeper into chaotic thought.

When she dosed her eyes, her mind whirled with images: first Ayaki running, then Kevin, the barbarian slave who had taught her of love, and who had time and again risked his life for her alien honor. She saw Buntokapi, sprawled on the red length of his sword, his great ham fists quivering closed as the life left his body. Again she acknowledged that her first husband's death would forever be marked against her. She saw faces: her father and brother, then Nacoya, her nurse and foster mother.

All of them offered her pain. Kevin's return to his own world was as painful a loss as death, and not one other had died as nature intended; all had been casualties of twisted politics, and of the cruel machinations of the Great Game.

The horrid certainty would not leave her, that Ayaki would not be the last boy to die for the empty ambitions of the nation's Ruling Lords.

That reality struck her like torture: that Ayaki would not be the last. Howling in hysteria born of agony, Mara threw herself headlong into the pool.

The wetness swallowed her tears. Her sobs were wrenched short by a gasp as cold water sucked into her nostrils, and life recalled her to its own. She crawled back on dry earth, choking. Water streamed from her mouth and hair. She dragged in a hacking breath, then reached mechanically for the robe, its whiteness marred by dirt and sweet oil.

As if she were a spirit wearing the body of a stranger, she saw herself drag the fabric over her wet flesh. The hair she left bunched under the collar. Then the body that felt like a living prison gathered itself up and trudged back toward the entrance to the glade, where thousands waited with eyes hostile or friendly.

Their presence took her aback. In this Lord's fatuous smile and that Lord's leering interest, she saw the truth confirmed: that Ayaki's death would happen again and again, and other mothers after her would howl useless outrage at the injustices of the Great Game. Mara glanced down to shut away the acknowledgment of futility. One of her sandals was missing. Mud and dust caked her bared foot, and she hesitated, debating whether to look for the lost footwear, or to fling the remaining sandal into the hedge.

What did it matter, a far-off voice reasoned inside her.

Mara watched her misshod feet with grey detachment as the person that was herself left the glade. Passing between the shielding hedges, she did not look up as her husband hurried forward to take up his station at her elbow. His words did not soothe. She did not want to return from her inward retreat to work at sorting their meaning.

Hokanu shook her gently, forcing her to look up.

A man in red armor stood before her; thin, elegant, poised, he carried his chin at an arrogant angle. Mara stared at him, distracted. His eyes narrowed. He salt something. The hand that held some object in it gestured, and something of the biting scorn that underlay his manner came through.

Mara's gaze sharpened. Her eyes focused on the device upon the young man's helm, and a deep quiver shook her.

'Anasati!' she said, a bite like a whip's crack to her voice:

Lord Jiro gave back a chilly smile. 'The Lady deigns to acknowledge me, I see.'

Wakened to a slow, spiraling rage, Mara stiffened.

She said nothing. Hokanu's fingers wrenched unobtrusively at her wrist, a warning she did not acknowledge.

Her ears rang to a sound like a thousand enraged sarcats spitting in defiance, or torrents of storm-swollen rivers crashing down jagged rock.

Jiro of the Anasati raised the object he held, a small puzzle cleverly cut to a pattern of interlacing wooden hoops. He inclined his head in a formal bow, saying, 'My nephew's shade deserves remembrance from the Anasati.'

'Remembrance!' Mara said, in a high, tortured whisper.

Inside her mind, her spirit howled: Anasati remembrance had sent her firstborn to a bed of ashes.

She did not remember moving; she did not feel the wrench of tendons as she yanked free of Hokanu's restraint. Her scream of rage cut across the gathering like the sound of a drawn metal sword, and her hands rose like claws.

Jiro leaped back, dropping the puzzle in horrified astonishment.

And then Mara was on him, clawing to reach his throat through the fastenings of his armor.

Those Lords standing nearest exclaimed in shock as this small woman, unarmed, dirty, and wet, threw herself at her former brother-in-law in a fit of pure fury.

Hokanu sprang with all his warrior's quickness, fast enough to catch Mara back before she drew blood. He smothered her struggling body in his embrace.

But the damage by then was irrevocable.

Jiro glared around at the circle of stunned onlookers.

ùYou all bear witness!' he cried in an indignation that held an undertone of wild joy. Now he had the justification he had long wished for, to see the Lady Mara ground under his heel in utter defeat. 'The Acoma have offered the Anasati insult!

Let all present be informed that alliance is dead between our two houses. I claim my right to expunge this shame to my honor, and blood will be called for in payment.'