Yet even ignorant of his past, Mara did not discount his opinion entirely; though she was the more impetuous of the two family rulers charged with border patrol in Dustari, it was Lord Chipino who brought up the need for aggressive tactics at the last.
He came into her tent just past twilight, bringing the smell of charcoal fire and roast chal nuts that he had been sharing over coals with his Strike Leader. ‘I’ve had word from the desert companies,’ he opened without bothering with social ceremony. ‘They captured a nomad trader, and I think we have a lead. At least, we know where large caravans from the other side of the desert have been leaving off grain parcels.’
Mara snapped her fingers for servants to set out warm tesh. ‘My cho-ja say the same, but add that the sand smells of footsteps.’ By now all had learned to trust the fact that the insects could scent traces of the oils the nomads used to cure their sandal leather. ‘The caravans are no falsehood sent to lead us astray.’
She gestured to her sand table, which through nearly two weary years had come to dominate the front chamber of her command tent. Over the course of the campaign, the mountains had been levelled and re-formed to one side, allowing space for the broad, undulating valleys of desert dunes that lay beyond the border. The topography was done by a wizened old man with a squint, paid exorbitant rates to be absent from his large family and trade in llama. But on that table, paid out in pins with beaded heads, Mara knew the location of every one of her soldiers. ‘Let us compare what we know,’ she invited Lord Chipino in what had lately become an evening ritual.
But, in a departure from the routine, she and the Lord began a parley that lasted deep into the night. Their voices rose and fell with planning, over the moan of the wind across the tent ridges, and around the sigh of the draughts that rippled the hangings and fanned the embers in the light sconces scarlet. Lord and Lady reached an accord without argument: come the morning, they would each call up another company. Leaving two companies of mixed troops to keep the border, they would journey with the rest into the desert and join the army there. A faster patrol would hasten ahead, with orders to pursue the newest leads and locate the nomads’ main supply caches.
‘When we arrive with the two new companies,’ Lord Chipino concluded, ‘we will have an army of a thousand with which to formulate our attack.’
He rose, his multiple shadows thrown by the cho-ja lights swooping across flame-patterned carpets. ‘Better we attack in force than sit like poets in the heights. To wait out the year is to give those barbarian nomads more honour than they justly deserve.’
That night, Kevin lay sleepless in the dark. He listened to Mara’s breathing and the endless moan of the winds, and the creaking of the lines that lashed the tent. To leave the mountains with an army would be a mistake; he knew it. But a slave in the Empire was accorded no honour, and his voice would not be heard. But where the Lady of the Acoma went, so he would go also. He loved her too well to stay behind.
The huge centre pole crashed down, and what seemed acres of canvas billowed slowly down to the ground. Kevin dashed, tripping, over a mound of rolled throw rugs and all but knocked over Mara.
‘You’je taking the command tent?’ he asked, using his own clumsiness as an excuse to capture her in an embrace.
Mara raised her eyebrows in reproof. ‘But of course.’ She sounded as if carting chests of tapestries, carpets, sconces, and braziers into a hostile and barren desert were a foregone conclusion. ‘The Acoma are not barbarians. We do not sleep on the ground like peasants, unless we are travelling in disguise.’ She waved at the swarms of servants who laboured to dismantle her dwelling. ‘Lord Chipino’s tent is far larger. By the size of our pavilions, the nomads will know they reckon with great families.’
Kevin pulled a face. ‘And seeing the size of your respective tents, they will run like jigabirds from trouble?’
Mara’s brows rose a notch higher. ‘They are not civilized.’
‘Meaning if they were, they’d run like jigabirds,’ Kevin qualified.
‘You have a habit of repeating the obvious.’ Mara pushed impatiently at his hands, which were stroking her intimately through her thin robes. ‘Not now, busy man. When I insisted that you stay at my shoulder, I did not mean bed sport in plain view of gods and sky.’
Kevin backed off, smiling. ‘The querdidra drivers have rounded up their herds.’ He glanced at the growing piles of chests, carpets, and cushions. ‘Are you certain you have enough pack saddles for all this stuff?’
Mara looked exasperated. ‘One more comment, and I’ll have you carrying a share like a bearer slave. Very likely you belong with them anyway, as punishment for incurable insolence.’