As if his unspoken thoughts brought her worry to a head, the Lady of the Acoma beckoned to Arakasi. ‘I would enjoy a chilled fruit drink.’
The Spy Master bowed and departed; Kevin suppressed a reflexive flash of hurt, and only belatedly realized that his mistress would hardly send Arakasi off just to fetch refreshments. On his way to seek a vendor, the Spy Master would doubtless be contacting informants and gauging the activities of enemies. As Mara turned back to face the events below, she paused the briefest moment to catch Kevin’s eye. That one glance let him know she was glad of his presence.
Mara inclined her head casually to Lujan. ‘Have you noticed? Most of the nobles are hanging back this afternoon.’
Caught off guard by this unexpected public conversation, the Acoma Force Commander replied without banter. ‘Yes, my Lady. There seems an unusual quality to this festival.’
Kevin peered at their surroundings and determined there was something odd in the crowd rhythm. But he, with his alien viewpoint, had been slow to sense such strangeness.
Distracting peals of laughter drifted up from lower courses of seats as other doors opened and short figures scurried out into the arena. Kevin’s eyebrows arose in surprise as a cluster of diminutive insectoids raced back and forth across the sand, waving their forearms in agitation and clicking small mandibles this way and that. From the opposite end of the sand, a group of warriors hurried to meet them, dwarves by all appearances.
Most wore mock body armour and makeup that ranged from the comic to the grotesque. They waved brightly painted wooden swords, formed up for a loose-ranked charge, and sounded war calls in surprisingly deep voices.
The timbre of those cries was all too fresh in Kevin’s memory. ‘They’re desert men!’
At Mara’s permissive nod, Lujan said, ‘Many were our captives, I expect.’
Wondering that such a fiercely proud race should submit to a demeaning act of comedy, Kevin marvelled further that cho-ja, who were allies, should be included in such honourless display.
‘Not cho-ja,’ Lujan corrected. ‘Those are chu-ji-la – from the forests north of Silmani — smaller, and without intelligence. They are essentially harmless.’
The dwarves and the insectoids met in a clash of shields and chitin. Kevin soon reassured himself that the combat was impotent, with blunt wooden swords unable to pierce the armoured insectoids, while tiny mandibles and blunt forearms closed and tussled without any injury to the dwarves.
This farcical spectacle drew laughter and jeers from the crowd until a sudden, electrical sense of presence turned all heads away from the field. Kevin’s gaze followed everyone else’s, like metal after a lodestone, to the entrance nearest the imperial box. There a short man in a black robe made his way to the area set aside for Great Ones.
Lujan said, ‘Milamber.’
Kevin’s eyes narrowed to bring his distant countryman into better focus. ‘He’s a Kingdom man?’
Lujan shrugged. ‘So the rumours say. He wears a slave’s beard, which is enough to mark him as barbarian.’
Short by Kingdom standards, and quietly unremarkable, the man took his place next to a very stout magician and another, slender Great One. Struck by a sense of deja vu, Kevin said, ‘There’s something familiar about him.’
Mara turned. ‘Was he a companion from your homeland?’
‘I would have to get closer to see . . . my Lady.’
But Mara forbade him the liberty, since he would attract too much attention were he to venture off by himself.
Like all in Mara’s immediate service, Strike Leader Kenji knew of the relationship between the barbarian and his Lady, but their unaccustomed familiarity left him feeling uncomfortable. ‘My Lady, your slave should be reminded that no matter what the Great One was before, he is now in service to the Empire.’
Kevin found his tone abrasive, just as Mara’s had been, and though he knew her pose was necessary in public, it still rankled. ‘Well, I wouldn’t have much to say to a traitor to his own people, anyway.’
A swift glance from Mara stilled his tongue before his brashness could demand the punishment that would become necessary should any passing stranger chance to overhear.
Ghost-quiet, and suddenly there, Arakasi bowed and presented a large cool drink to his mistress. Under his breath he said, ‘The Shinzawai are conspicuous by their absence.’ He glanced around. Satisfied to find the crowd still absorbed by the mysterious outworld Great One, the Spy Master added, ‘There’s something highly abnormal afoot, my Lady. I urge vigilance.’