The night passed in terrible, restless torment for Mara. While the butana wailed across the rooftree, she made frantic love to Kevin, the last time ending in tears in his arms. He stroked her with a tenderness that threatened to break her heart. Hurt by her silence, her unwillingness to speak her fears, he nevertheless ignored his own pain in a profound effort to comfort her.
Mara clung to him in a mounting tide of hysteria. Her world seemed unhinged and she could not conceive of a life without the solid presence of the man who had caused her to re-examine every aspect of her beliefs, and forced her to see the deficiencies of her culture. Kevin had become more than lover, more than a man she could confide in: he was the taproot of the tree of her resolve. She had to rely upon his strength to change the Empire and make it honourable in a new and moral way. Without him, the power, the goals, and the shining vision she held for a future now shadowed by her recent vow to Tasaio seemed things devoid of joy. Mara lay in the warmth of Kevin’s embrace and listened as the soft, steady beat of his heart blended with the hollow dirge of the winds that rattled the screens.
Somehow, against his volatile barbarian nature, Kevin sensed that her turmoil would not support questions. His sensitivity wounded her, robbed her of a perverse excuse to fly into anger and send him away. Mara endured the tender caress of his hands, cut by the knowledge that this was the last night she could touch him. At last, exhausted, she fell into restless dreams. He lay awake, her head cradled in the hollow of his shoulder.
Through all the years he had known her, he had never seen her so distraught. Open in revealing his own passions, it never occurred to him that her love for him might be the hidden cause of her anguish.
Dawn came, unwanted as an executioner’s arrival. Mara found a grain of courage amid the wreckage of her nerves and ordered Kevin away, before the onset of her morning sickness. She spent a miserable interval torn between tears that would not flow from swollen eyes, and dry heaves. Her maids worked tirelessly to restore her to a semblance of proper appearance. By the time she was fit to be seen in public, noon had already drawn nigh. Mara emerged from her quarters to find the escort quietly arranged by Saric already waiting by the door. Unaware of the Emperor’s proclamation, Kevin waited in his usual place by her litter, his red hair familiarly tousled, and a concerned expression on his face. At the sight of his blue eyes on her, Mara all but broke down.
Then the stern fibre of her warrior forebears sustained her. Drawing upon all her temple-taught training, she shut off her clamour of emotions and forced herself to step forward, one foot after another, until finally she reached her litter. Of desperate necessity, she chose Saric to assist her to her seat. Then, in a voice unrecognizable as her own, she said, ‘We must leave.’
She named no destination; this detail Saric had already attended to, and Lujan knew what lay ahead. But the anomaly roused Kevin to suspicion. ‘Where are we bound for this day?’ he asked on a fixed note of sharpness.
Mara dared not try speech. Aware that her eyes were flooding, she quickly snapped her curtains closed, and it was Lujan who waved her bearers to rise, and her honour guard of soldiers to march out of the town house courtyard, as Saric held his gaze upon the Midkemian with something resembling regret.
‘Will somebody please tell me why everyone acts as though we were going to a funeral?’ Kevin demanded plaintively. He received only Tsurani blankness for reply and resorted to a spectacular attempt at banter.
His extravagance at any other time would have sorely tried the deportment of her warriors, but today the most devastating of his repartee fell upon deaf ears. No one so much as hinted at a smile, far less indulged in a laugh.
‘Gods, but everyone’s as lively as a corpse.’ Mournful that some of his best jokes had been wasted, Kevin lapsed into silence as the escort crossed the bustle of Kentosani and took a turn toward the less fashionable district by the south-facing riverside.
Ahead lay a palisade constructed of wide, thick planks. Kevin stopped dead in the roadway, and only their fighters’ reflexes prevented the warriors behind from slamming into him. ‘I’ve seen the likes of this place before,’ he accused in a tone that snapped with reckless insolence. ‘Why are we going to the slave markets, Mara?’
The Acoma warriors did not wait for any signal; Kevin’s reactions were far too unpredictable for such nicety. Firmly, swiftly, and in force, they closed around the Midkemian and caught him back by the wrists.
Pinioned, and startled into rage, Kevin twisted, half an instant too late. The warriors grunted at the effort, but managed to keep their grip.
Traffic in the street was stopped by the commotion, and heads turned to stare.
‘Gods!’ Kevin exploded in a tone of blistering betrayal. ‘You’re selling me!’
The cry all but shattered Mara’s heart. She whipped aside the curtains of her litter and looked up into blue eyes that burned with fathomless rage. Words failed her.