Arakasi reached for his pen. He dipped the nib, slipped a sheet of fresh parchment under his splint, and said, ‘You will loan me Kenji and two warriors for the task?’ Without looking up between lines, he added, ‘They need only go to the city and leave the notes with a certain sandal maker in the river stalls. From there the deliveries will be accomplished by other hands.’
Mara closed her eyes as though she suffered from a headache. ‘You can have the use of half my company, if you need them.’ To Kevin she added, ‘See what Jican has ready for us to eat. We must be back in council shortly.’
While the Midkemian moved off to investigate the trays, Lujan left to review the state of his garrison. ‘Have the men rest,’ he instructed his Patrol Leaders. ‘Tonight we shall fight.’
When Kevin returned with a plate and juice, he found Mara still motionless on the mat. Her brows were gathered into a frown, her gaze distantly intense. ‘Are you all right?’
Mara focused on him as he laid the meal by her knees. ‘I’m just tired.’ She looked at the food without interest. ‘And worried.’
Kevin heaved an exaggerated sigh. ‘Gods, I’m glad to hear you say that.’
Mara smiled at his japery. ‘Why?’
‘Because I’m scared senseless.’ Kevin stuck a two-tine Tsurani fork through a slab of cold jigabird as if he skewered an enemy. ‘It’s good to know you’re human under all that hard-boiled Tsurani stoicism. When I set out to do something foolhardy, the last thing I feel is complacent.’
From the next room came the rasp of warriors sharpening laminated-hide swords.
‘That sound makes me want to commit suicide,’ Kevin added. He looked at Arakasi, who worked over his notes with economical lack of nerves. ‘Don’t you ever want to throw something?’
The Spy Master looked up, utterly bland. ‘A knife,’ he said with ice-cold lack of inflection. ‘Through Tasaio of the Minwanabi’s black heart.’ He was unarmed, bandaged, a man in tired clothes writing letters in a crowded apartment. But at that moment, through chills, Kevin could not have said which was the more dangerous: Tasaio of the Minwanabi or the man who served Mara as Spy Master.
Warriors stood at the ready. The rooms of the Acoma apartment had become an armed camp, with fourteen additional soldiers in the purple and yellow of the Xacatecas joined to the ranks. Lord Hoppara had seen sense almost immediately when Mara approached him in council. Having too few warriors to fortify his larger quarters, and with Minwanabi already set against him, he saw no point in standing behind an appearance of neutrality that by morning might see him coldly dead. Some of the Xacatecas garrison had fought in Dustari, and Force Commander Lujan was known to them. Warriors sought old companions, or made new, as they waited through the first hours of evening.
Behind furniture barricades in the central room of the apartment, amid a ring of warriors and the last few cushions and sleeping mats, Mara fretted. ‘They should have been back by now.’
Hoppara swirled a finger in his wineglass to stir up the spices and fruit that had been added in accordance with his taste. ‘Lord Iliando has always been a man to look upon logic with suspicion.’
Mara resisted an urge to seek Kevin’s comfort as the gloom of twilight deepened, and the first thuds and cries of distant combat echoed through trje corridors outside. Against her better wishes, she had granted Arakasi’s request to take Kenji and a patrol of five in a final attempt to convince Iliando of the Bontura to see reason. As the muffled clatter of swordplay resounded through the palace, Mara worried that her men had delayed their return until too late.
Then came the signal she longed for, a coded knock at the door. Lujan’s men swiftly slid barriers aside and lowered the heavy bar. The portal opened, and Kenji hurried in, a Force Commander in violet and white plumes at his shoulder.
‘Thank the gods,’ Mara murmured, as more warriors entered, the heavyset Lord Iliando of the Bontura in their midst. Last came warriors in Acoma green, and after them, at a flat run, Arakasi. He slipped in just as the door was closing, his helm with its Patrol Leader’s badge shadowing a face pale as parchment.
Mara left the inner circle of protection to meet him. ‘You should not have been running,’ she accused her Spy Master, aware that his poor colour was solely due to pain.