The house servant in charge regarded him with no sense of humility; no matter how fine the embroidery on Kevin’s Midkemian-style shirt, he was still a slave, inferior in station, and not worthy of courtesy from a free man. ‘The Lady has gone to the front entrance.’ He fell silent, and a small battle of wills ensued. At last, seeing that Kevin would neither demean himself further by speaking, nor go about his business, but would stand staring down from his immense height with unblinking blue eyes, the servant sniffed. ‘A messenger has arrived.’
‘Thanks,’ Kevin muttered with dry irony, wishing as always that the Tsurani caste system were less rigid, and that someone in the whole bowing and scraping lot had thought to inform him of the arrival. Even Mara, but she had worries enough. He pulled on his sandals in hopping leaps through the door and hurried down the corridor to join her.
The messenger proved to be one of Arakasi’s, dust-covered and travel-worn. A boy in his teens, he had plainly run through the night, and from a distance much farther than Sulan-Qu.
‘We are committed to three shrines,’ he was saying as Kevin drew close. ‘One must be stone. And we must also build a prayer gate on your estate, to the Gods of Fortunate Aspect.’
This meant Chochocan, Lashima, Hantukama, and half a dozen others Kevin could not separate, their names and their qualities being strange to one of foreign origins. In Kelewan there was even a god who governed the concept of honour.
‘The facing must be of corcara,’ the messenger ended, in pointed reference to the prayer gate.
The promised structure would become a costly undertaking, Kevin realized, as he sorted through his growing Tsurani vocabulary and identified corcara to be a shell resembling abalone.
But matters of finance and debt left Mara surprisingly unconcerned. ‘When will the healer priest arrive?’
The messenger bowed. ‘Noon today, Lady. Arakasi’s man arranged for hired bearers and paid the premium for haste.’
Mara closed her eyes, her face delicately pale in the thinning mists of dawn. ‘Pray to the Gods of Fortunate Aspect that we have that long.’ Then she seemed to notice the messenger’s weariness as if for the first time. ‘Rest and refresh yourself,’ she said quickly. ‘You have done well, and your master’s pledge to Hantukama shall be met. I will speak to Jican at once, and by the time the priest arrives we will have artists at work on drawings for the shrines and prayer gate.’
She would need to sell some outlying holdings to pay her account to the healer priest, but that was of decreased concern, with the Dustari campaign in the offing. Some of the outlying properties must be sacrificed, anyway, and their garrisons brought home to deter any threat to the estate. But although Mara usually attended to such important matters personally, this time she delegated responsibility to Jican. She heard and granted a list of requests from Lujan concerning immediate outfitting needs for her soldiers. Then, without a thought for the breakast she had forgotten, she continued onward to the chamber where Keyoke lay, surrounded by candles and eased by servants, but unconscious beyond recall, and breathing so shallowly that it seemed impossible he was alive. Kevin waited respectfully in the doorway while Mara crossed the lit expanse of the floor and fell to her knees on the cushion by Keyoke’s side.
‘Honoured one, stay with us,’ she murmured. ‘Help will be coming by noon today. Arakasi has found a priest of Hantukama, who travels even now to aid the Acoma.’
Keyoke lay utterly still. Not even his eyelids flickered, and his skin remained white as nut paste.
Inescapably, he was a man at death’s door. Kevin had observed enough battle wounds and their aftereffects to recognize the facts. In pity, he left the doorway and crouched down behind his mistress. His hands locked solidly around her waist, and he said, ‘Dear one, he cannot hear you.’
Mara shook her head stubbornly, and her unbound hair filled his nostrils with its scent. ‘We believe differently. The Wheel of Life is many-sided, so say our priests. Keyoke’s fleshy ears may not hear, but his spirit, resting within his wal, never sleeps. His spirit will know I have spoken, and will take strength from Hantukama to hold Turakamu at bay.’
‘I hope your faith bears fruit,’ Kevin murmured. But he looked at Keyoke’s wasted flesh, and the hands upon which past sword scars showed like a white intaglio design, and he felt his own hope falter. His hands tightened upon the Lady to share comfort, and also sadness, and a fear he lacked the courage to face. Should he lose her, he thought – and banished the idea at once. An uneasy discovery followed, that should he be offered the chance for free return to his homeworld, he might not wish to leave her side.
‘Live, Keyoke,’ he said. ‘You are needed.’ And whether or not the wal of the warrior could hear him, the tall Midkemian spoke the words equally for himself.