20 – Disquiet
Mara watched.
Through the opened screen of her study, she could see a runner dashing up the road from the distant Imperial Highway. The muscular young man wore only a breech-cloth and a red cloth headcovering bearing the mark of a commercial messengers’ guild. Lacking the power of a major house, the guilds could nonetheless provide sanctions enough to guarantee that their couriers moved through the Empire untroubled.
As the runner reached the front of the estate house, Keyoke hobbled down on his crutch to offer greeting. ‘For the Lady of the Acoma!’ cried the messenger.
The Adviser for War accepted the sealed parchment, and in turn gave the messenger a token, a shell coin cut with the Acoma chop, to serve as proof the man had discharged his duty.
The runner bowed in respect. He did not linger to take refreshment, but turned back down the road, his pace only marginally more sedate.
Mara noted his departure with a stab of concern. Couriers from the Red Guild were seldom the bearers of good news. When Keyoke arrived in her study, she held out her hand for the message with trepidation.
The identifying mark on the parchment was the one she feared, the chop of the Anasati. Before she cut the ribbons and read, she knew the worst had happened: Tecuma was dead.
In the doorway, Keyoke looked with troubled eyes. ‘The old Lord has died?’
‘Not unexpectedly.’ Mara sighed as she put down the short message. She glanced over the accounts of her flourishing silk enterprise that had worn at her patience only minutes before; now, as if they represented a haven against difficulties, she longed with all her heart to return to them. ‘I’m afraid we will need Nacoya’s counsel.’
Mara called her servant to tidy up her documents, then led her Adviser for War through the estate house to the chamber across from the nursery that the old woman had adamantly refused to give up, even when promotion to First Adviser had entitled her to better.
As Mara set her hand to the floral painted screen at the entry, a querulous voice called out, ‘Go away! I require nothing!’
The Lady of the Acoma glanced hopefully to her Adviser for War, who shook his head. He would rather have braved a frontal charge on a battlefield than lead the way into the old woman’s quarters.
Mara sighed, shoved back the screen, and flinched at the outraged cry that emerged from the piled blankets and pillows on the mat.
‘My Lady!’ Nacoya said sharply. ‘Forgive me, I thought you were the healer’s servant, bringing remedies.’ She sniffed, rubbed at a reddened nose, then added, ‘I wish no visitors to offer pity.’ Abed with a congestion of the chest and a fever, the old woman found her annoyance overcome by a spasm of coughing. Her white hair stood up in stray locks, and her eyes were red-rimmed in a face like crumpled wet parchment. The hands that clutched the blankets looked devastatingly fragile. And yet, at the sight of Keyoke, Nacoya rallied to outrage. ‘Mistress! You’ve a cruel heart, to bring a man to a sick woman’s bedside, and without warning.’ The Acoma First Adviser flushed scarlet with embarrassment, but remained too stubbornly proud to avert her face. Her stormy gaze fastened next on Keyoke.
‘You, old campaigner! You should be wise enough to know better! I’ll not suffer myself to be stared at.’
Mara knelt by her First Adviser’s bedside, the sympathy Nacoya so stoutly disdained hidden deep in her heart. The old woman’s age made even small illnesses more hazardous, as today’s news made clear. Always before, Nacoya’s frail appearance had hidden a whipcord resilience, a fibre of staunchness that made her seem indestructible. But now she was miserable with her cold, and shrunken with years to a husk of her former vitality, her mortality became frightemngly apparent.
Mara patted one of the wrinkled hands. ‘Mother of my heart, I am here only because your counsel is sorely needed.’
The tone of Mara’s voice jolted the old woman from self-pity. Nacoya sat up and coughed. ‘Daughter, what is it?’
‘Tecuma of the Anasati has died.’ Mara’s fingers tightened on her First Adviser’s hand. ‘He succumbed to the illness that kept him abed this last six months.’
Nacoya sighed. Her eyes turned distant and fixed inward on what might have been a memory, or a thought only she could discern. ‘He refused to fight any longer, poor man. He was a worthy warrior and a generous and honourable opponent.’ Under the blankets, Nacoya’s thin body was racked by another fit of coughing.
As she struggled to regain breath, Mara spared her the need to speak first. ‘Do you think it wise for me to approach Jiro?’