The imperial messenger departed with Mara’s written acquiescence to the High Council’s demands. After that, her household factors and advisers hurried off to initiate a frenzied list of preparations. Lujan detailed officers to make an inventory, then he and Kevin departed for Keyoke’s bedside, neither with enthusiasm.
Jican arrived as they departed, summoned from the needra fields by the runner slave.
‘I need a full accounting of Acoma assets,’ Mara demanded before the little man had entirely risen from his bow. ‘How many centis we have in cash, and how many more we might borrow. I need to know how many weapons our master armourers can turn out in two months, and how many more we might purchase.’
Jican’s brows went up. ‘Lady, did you not already decide to send our new arms to the markets? We will need the sale to balance our deficit in the silk.’
Mara frowned and restrained a sharp impulse to snap. ‘Jican, that was yesterday. Today we must outfit four companies to relieve Lord Xacatecas in Dustari.’
The hadonra was adept at figures. ‘You’ll be bargaining for more warriors from the cho-ja, then,’ he surmised. His straight brows tightened into a frown. ‘We’ll have to sell off some prime stock from your needra herds.’
‘Do it,’ Mara said at once. ‘I’ll be with Ayaki. When you have the accounting complete, bring your slates to the nursery.’
‘Your will, Lady,’ said Jican unhappily. Wars were the perpetual ruin of good finance, and that Mara must indulge in one through the plotting of dangerous enemies made him frightened. So had great houses fallen in the past; and the disaster of Sezu’s betrayal and death had happened too recently for any servant on the estate not to feel the threat of annihilation. Word did not take long to spread among the servants, and in a household that was bustling with activity, the talk was ominously hushed.
Mara spent an hour with her son that seemed all too terribly brief. He would soon be five, and had a temper that occasionally burned to rages that defeated the skills of his nurses. Now, lying on his stomach with his ankles crossed in the air, playing at soldiers, he pushed his plumed officers to and fro and cried commands in a treble child’s voice. Mara watched him with a winching in her heart and tried to memorize the small face, shadowed by a fall of dark bangs. She clasped cold hands and wondered if she would live to see her child grow to manhood. That he very well might not was a possibility she forced out of her thoughts. She, who had come into power too young, burned with the wish that her son might have the chance to grow, and learn, and have years to be guided into preparedness for the ruling Lordship that awaited him. She must live and return from the desert, and make sure that this became so.
Until Jican arrived with his figures, she prayed long and desperately to Chochocan. At her feet, Ayaki obliterated company upon company of Minwanabi enemies, while his mother racked her mind for solutions to impossible equations.
Jican arrived and presented his slates, their columns impeccably neat despite the haste in Mara’s command. The hadonra looked hollow-eyed and worn as he bowed. ‘Lady. I have done as you commanded. Here are three calculations on your liquid financial assets. One depends upon the remaining silk arriving safely to market. The other two include what you might spend comfortably, and what you might call on, with variable lists of consequences. If you go by the last slate, be warned. Your herds will take another four years to build back to their present levels of productivity.’
Mara flipped through the slates, then unhesitatingly selected the final one. She glanced down at Ayaki, who watched her with liquid dark eyes. ‘The needra are replaceable,’ she pointed out, and briskly sent her servants to fetch retinue and litter. Til be visiting the cho-ja Queen for the rest of the afternoon.’
‘Can I come?’ Ayaki shouted, springing up and scattering toy warriors in a bounding rush toward his mother.
She reached out and ruffled his hair with the hand clutching the slate. ‘No, son. Not this time.’
The boy scowled, but did not talk back. At last his nurse was succeeding in teaching him the manners his dead father had never acquired. ‘Kevin will take you for a wagon ride,’ she consoled, then remembered: Lujan and her barbarian had not reported back from Keyoke’s chamber. ‘If he has time for you,’ she amended to the son who tugged at her elbow. She cupped his tiny face gently in her hand. ‘And if you allow the bath maid to wash the fruit juice off your chin.’ She gave his face a playful shake.