‘What do you wish to discuss?’ Fumita asked.
‘A matter weighs upon me, Great One,’ Mara began. She took a deep breath and searched for a proper beginning. ‘Like many, I was in attendance at the Imperial Games.’
If the Great One had any feelings left over from that day, he kept them masked. His piercing attentiveness unnerved her worse than Hokanu’s directness. He was not unapproachable, but neither did he warm into welcome. ‘Yes?’
‘It is said that the Great One who was . . . the centre of the disruption freed the combatants who refused to fight.’
‘This is true.’ Noncommittal still, Fumita waited for Mara to continue.
He could not have made himself more plain had he spoken. She would have to plunge ahead on her own and risk the consequences. ‘This is my concern,’ Mara said, if a Great One may free slaves, then who else may? The Emperor? The Warlord? A Ruling Lord?’
The magician said nothing for some time. During an interval that felt as strange as the isolation a fish might feel in a pond, Mara was aware of the breeze across the porch, and of a servant making the rounds of the estate house. Down the path, the broom strokes of a slave who was sweeping sounded preternaturally loud. These things were part of her world, yet somehow seemed sealed away as the eyes of the magician remained pinned unwaveringly upon her. When Fumita spoke at last, his tone had not altered; the words remained inflectionless and bitten off sharply. ‘Mara of the Acoma, your question shall be raised in the Assembly.’
Without further words, and before she could proffer reply, he reached into the pocket at his belt and removed a small metal object. Mara had no chance to express curiosity, even had she dared, before he ran his thumb across the surface of the talisman. The gesture seemed like one he had made many times. A faint buzzing suddenly surrounded him. Then the magician vanished. The stone bench stood empty, and an eddy of air teased the trappings of Mara’s robe.
Left open-mouthed, and distinctly at a loss, Mara shivered slightly. She frowned, as if the space where the magician had sat might answer her dissatisfaction. She had never tried dealing with a Great One, beyond that single encounter which had finalized Lord Jingu’s demise. This was the first time she had tried an overture on her own initiative, and the aftermath left her unsettled. There was no fathoming the ways of the Assembly. She shivered again, and wished herself back in her blankets with Kevin.
21 – Keeper of the Seal
The barge docked.
Seated on cushions beneath the canopy with a cup of fruit juice in her hand, Mara squinted against the morning sunlight reflected off the water. Rocked by the rhythm of the polemen as they expertly manoeuvred her craft through the press of commercial boats at the wharf, the Lady recalled Nacoya’s disapproval of her trip to Kentosani. Yet, looking over the traffic that jammed the dockside, and counting the merchant barges at anchor waiting to unload, Mara judged Arakasi’s assessment was the correct one. At least on the streets and public squares, the city had recovered from the chaos let loose upon it at the Imperial Games six months before.
To Mara, this seemed an opportune time to return to the Holy City. Nacoya was right to suspect that Mara’s motive — visiting a minor political opponent to change his alliance — was deeper, but Mara revealed her thoughts to no one.
Once her barge tied up to the wharf, she surrendered her abandoned fruit juice to a servant, called for her litter, and assembled her honour guard. She had brought only twenty-five warriors in her retinue; her stop was intended to be brief, and she was not worried about assassins. Both the Assembly and the Emperor were likely to look disfavour-ably on public disorder; any killing by a tong in the Emperor’s city would bring a much deeper investigation than any family would risk at this time. Except for a minimum of servants, and her boat crew, Mara had only Kevin and Arakasi in attendance.
The heat was already stifling. As the Acoma guards began the chore of clearing traffic from the Lady’s intended path, Kevin pushed back damp hair from his brow. ‘So why did you really make this trip?’
Dressed in a finer robe than she usually chose for street travel, Mara looked between the curtains of her litter, which were cracked open to admit the relief of the passing breeze. ‘You asked Arakasi that scarcely an hour ago.’
‘And he told me the same lie, that we’re going to pay a social call on Lord Kuganchalt of the Ginecho. I don’t believe it.’