Calmly, Saric qualified. ‘Out of respect for our gods, one could say that act would be the province of Lyam, King of Isles.’
Mara regarded the whitened fingers twined with those of her adviser. Her resolve to keep nerves of steel had availed nothing! She felt defeated down to her core. The threat posed by the Minwanabi had at last overtaken her scant resources, and now she was to lose Kevin. The fact she had already resolved to send him away into freedom made no difference. The immediacy of the moment devastated.
‘When does the Light of Heaven require the slaves to be surrendered?’ she asked, surprised that her tongue could shape words.
Saric answered with profound sympathy. ‘By noon tomorrow, my Lady.’
There had been no warning of this, none. Mara choked back a sob. Shamed by her show of emotion, and hearing the shade of Nacoya scolding her for ignoble sentiment, she grasped for one single thought upon which to bolster her courage; for bravery alone would see her through the ruins of her only happiness, and the hopes she had dared to cherish concerning the continuance of the Acoma name.
Only one hint of good came to mind amidst the bleakness: Kevin would be spared the disaster that must follow her support of Tasaio for the Warlordship. If the barbarian’s recitations of Kingdom Law and the Great Freedom were truths, then his King Lyam would free him. He would live out his days honourably in Zun, and escape the madness and carnage to come.
Mara tried to convince herself that her beloved was better off gone, but logic did not appease the lacerating pain in her heart. She found the hand not gripping Saric’s cradled over the small spark of life engendered deep in her womb. Like a spill of light through a doorway, revelation came. She realized that all she had done this night had been for Kevin’s unborn child. She and Ayaki were Tsurani-born, dedicated to centuries-old tradition that held to honour before life, and they would unhesitatingly choose death before disgrace. But the spirit that quickened in her womb was half-Midkemian; somehow she had acknowledged its future right to live and prosper with the values the father would have accorded such things. Recognition dawned, with no small portion of fear, as Mara of the Acoma understood she had again stepped beyond the bounds of her culture. She had accorded the common folk of the Empire consideration before her family name; once she would have believed such a concept would have shamed her father and her ancestry, even earned the wrath of Tsuranuanni’s many gods.
Now she could conceive of no other viable choice.
Torn between tears and the sense of relief that soon, very soon, the years of tribulation would be ended, Mara came back to herself. She loosened her fingers from Saric’s and blotted awkwardly at her eyes. ‘I will need the services of my maid,’ she managed tremulously. ‘Kevin must not see that I have been upset.’
Saric made to rise and bow, but a small shake of Mara’s head detained him. ‘Send word back to Keyoke that all of our outworld slaves are to be sent forthwith to the City of the Plains. Then choose our strongest warriors to escort Kevin to whatever staging area the Emperor has set aside for the Midkemians. Say nothing of this to anyone save Lujan, lest word of this development be carelessly mentioned by the servants.’ Here Mara paused to wrestle past a catch in her throat. ‘For my lover has a contrary and stubborn nature. Although he longs for his freedom, he may have a mind to argue over the manner in which it is bestowed upon him.’
Here the Lady was unable to continue, but Saric understood. Kevin had never submitted to orders, except through choice, or brute force. He had proved himself a formidable fighter, and where Mara was concerned, no man might predict how he would react to being parted from her. For his own safety’s sake and the lives of the warriors who must deliver him into the care of the Emperor, he must not hear of the fate that awaited him beforehand.
Saddened, for he had come to like the Midkemian’s odd humour, and his decidedly strange views of life, Saric bowed to his mistress’s wisdom. But as he hurried off to send in her maids, he reflected that he had never seen a more bleak expression in the eyes of any woman he had known.