Nacoya loosed a deep sigh and plunged. ‘Lady, I would suggest that you be thinking of choosing my successor. Do not think I dislike my duties, or that I feel the honour of my post as a burden. I serve my Lady gladly in all ways. But I am growing old, and it is in my heart to point out that you have no younger servants in training to assume the mantle of adviser when I am gone. Jican is middle-aged, but he lacks canniness in politics. Keyoke has the perception to take on the role of First Adviser, but he and I are of an age, and there will not always be a priest of Hantukama to defer the Red God’s due.’
A breeze sighed through the ulo leaves, and water splashed in the fountain. Mara’s fingers stirred against the loosened folds of her robe and gathered the fabric about her. ‘I hear you, old mother. Your words are wise, and well considered. I have thought upon the issue of your replacement.’ She paused and softly shook her head. ‘You know, Nacoya, that too many of our best people died with my father.’
Nacoya nodded. She gestured to the fountain. ‘Life continually renews itself, daughter of my heart. You must find new minds, and train them.’
That was a risky venture, as both of them knew. To take on new servants and raise them to high levels of responsibility invited the chance for an enemy to infiltrate a new spy. Arakasi’s network was good, but not infallible. Yet the necessity could not be denied. Mara needed trusted people around her, or she would be too encumbered by everyday decisions to maintain her status in the Great Game.
‘I will put effort into finding a new cadre of advisers, but after the campaign in Dustari is completed,’ she concluded at last. ‘If I return home, and the natami remains in the sacred glade, then we will search for new talent. But the risk is too great to be taken beforehand. Ayaki must be surrounded only by servants who were born here, and whose loyalty remains beyond question.’
Nacoya arose and bowed. ‘My Lady’s permission to leave?’
Mara smiled slightly at the stoop-shouldered figure of her adviser. ‘Permission given. Take a nap, old mother. You look as if you could use it.’
‘I just got up!’ Nacoya snapped. ‘Take a nap yourself, and without that needra stud of a barbarian for a change. When he’s there you get no sleep, and you’ll be needing thyza powder to cover the wrinkles that come before you’re thirty.’
‘Sex does not make wrinkles!’ Mara laughed. ‘That’s an old nurse’s tale. Don’t you have duties? The day’s messages to sort through?’
‘I do have that,’ Nacoya conceded. ‘You’re getting more inquiries from suitors.’
‘Opportunists,’ Mara said, suddenly annoyed. ‘They think to marry me as consort and inherit if I fall in Dustari; or else they are agents of Desio, thinking to open my gates to his army. Why else petition the Lady of the house that’s entering into peril?’
‘Yes, Lady,’ Nacoya said quickly, and the smugness behind her meek tone betrayed her satisfaction. Mara might be young, and foolish in the bedchamber; but when it came to politics, she had an excellent grasp indeed. What remained to be seen was whether she was gifted with the mind of a general of armies. Dustari and the desert men were going to offer a swift and perilous education.
11 – The Desert
The journey began.
Mara pulled free of Ayaki’s embrace, trying with all of her will not to cry. She climbed into her litter and looked one last time on the faces of her advisers, whom she might never see again on this side of the Wheel of Life: Nacoya, frowning harder than usual, probably to conceal her grief; Jican, who had a harder time hiding his emotion, since his hands were empty of slates; Arakasi, shadow-still, silent and against his nature looking grim. And Keyoke, dependably expressionless, standing erect on the leg he had left, the crutches leaned unobtrusively against the doorjamb. He wore his sword, but seemed a stranger without armour and warrior’s plumed helm.
‘Guard Ayaki and the natami, and may the Gods of Fortunate Aspect look favourably upon our endeavours,’ Mara said; somehow she managed to finish in the proper firm tone. Her advisers and the house servants arrayed behind them looked on with pride as she waved to Force Commander Lujan to signal her army to march. The tramp of many feet lifted a dust plume over the road, as it had not since Sezu’s time. That army had departed, and only forty had survived to return. An older generation of servants wondered if the past would repeat itself, while the newer generation sensed their fear. They watched three companies in green and a shiny black company of cho-ja march out bravely under the shatra bird banner. The sun burned down through the morning mists and flashed off polished lacquer armour. It caught on the streamered points of spears, and on the feathered crests of Strike Leaders, Patrol Leaders, and officers’ aides.