‘Why?’ cried Kevin, with such terrible lack of inflection she felt clubbed. ‘Why should you do this to me?’
It was Lujan who answered, and roughly, for his own voice threatened to show feeling unseemly for a warrior, far less an officer of his status. ‘She does not part with you willingly, Kevin, but by the Emperor’s order!’
‘Damn the Light of Heaven,’ Kevin exploded. ‘Damn your sod of an Emperor to the deepest pit of the Seventh Hell!’
Gawkers poked their faces out of windows, and more passersby stopped to stare. Several farm matrons made a sign against blasphemy, and a sour-faced merchant on the verge expressed thoughts of sending for a priest. Unwilling to be tried by the temples for the mouthing of a miscreant barbarian, a warrior less well acquainted with Kevin reached out a hand to cover his mouth.
The barbarian exploded into violence. He wrenched a fist free, knocking two of Mara’s guards aside before any others could move. The men were under orders to refrain from drawing blades, but as Lujan joined the heaving knot of struggle that centred around the Midkemian, he prayed no one would forget. Kevin battled as if possessed, and with his great height, no one watching from the sidelines could miss that he transgressed sane limits. He was irate enough to forget protocols, and should he succeed in his attempt to snatch a sword from one of the warrior’s scabbards, the Emperor himself could not keep him from dying.
Lujan glimpsed the fear on Mara’s face Then he dared a fury more focused than any harulth’s, and dived headlong into the press.
The wrestler’s move he employed prevailed and he struck Kevin squarely off balance. Lujan bore him over backward onto the cobbles of the street, while another soldier added his weight to the Force Commander.
Most men would have been stunned by the fall. The Midkemian seemed unfazed. Driven by a rage that dulled physical pain, and goaded by emotions that no line of reason might stay, he tore into Lujan with a ferocity well capable of killing. Narrowly avoiding a knee in the groin, the Acoma Force Commander grappled a whirlwind of moving flesh. Somehow he managed to rap out orders to his men. ‘Close in! Use your shields and bodies to hide this fracas from public view.’
A fist grazed his cheek. Feeling the burn of torn skin, Lujan indulged in a rare curse. ‘Damn it, man, will you stop, or must I be forced to hurt you?’
Kevin snarled an obscenity.’. . . if you had a mother!’ he finished.
Aware that the slave he sought to subdue had not hesitated to pitch himself weaponless against armed ranks of enemy warriors, Lujan reacted by reflex. Desperate, and moved by care and admiration for Kevin, he employed the honourless, brutal tactics learned in the mountains as a grey warrior. Another criminal might have recognized the moves; any proper Tsurani warrior would have been shamed to employ a fist to an opponent’s groin. Felled by a blow that held nothing of fairness, and blanched dead white with the pain, Kevin rolled into a moaning knot of limbs on the filthy paving of the street.
‘Sorry, old son,’ Lujan murmured, his inflection and choice of phrase borrowed intact from Kevin. ‘You will finish your life in freedom and honour, whether you wish to or not.’
Then, feeling battered inside as well as out, Force Commander Lujan raised himself to his feet. ‘Bind and gag him,’ he said with whiplash curtness to his men. ‘We dare risk no further incident.’
Then, aching for the mistress who watched all from the shadow of her litter, he forced his face back into a semblance of Tsurani impassivity and ordered the party forward on its errand.
At the gate of the compound, the master of Kentosani’s slave guild stepped out of his hut to inquire after the needs of the Lady of the Acoma.
Mara choked words past numbed lips. ‘This slave . . . is to be returned to his homeland, by order of the Light of Heaven.’
A limp weight in the grip of her guardsmen, Kevin turned blue eyes toward her. The light in their depths beseeched, but the child in her womb kept her strong, ‘I am sorry,’ she murmured, heedless that the master of the slave guild stared at her in dumbfounded curiosity. Unable to voice the words, she moved her lips to mouth the phrase ‘my love’. The rest of what she wished to say stuck impossibly in her throat.
The slave broker nodded. ‘He’s very strong, though a bit past prime. I would think a fair price -‘
Mara held up her hand, silencing the man. ‘No. Send him home.’
If the slave master found this behaviour odd, he said nothing. He was having enough difficulty understanding why the Emperor would choose to buy slaves simply to send them away to some-alien palace. The edict had created enough confusion, and if this Lady chose to be generous, he would not object. ‘My Lady,’ he said, bowing deeply.