Mistress of the Empire

Chumaka tapped a leathery cheek with the document that had caused the interruption and smiled in his enigmatic way. Typically he would point out a mistake; but in shah he would not advise. He would wait for Jiro to pay for the consequence of his moves. ‘This one,’ he muttered, making a mark upon the parchment with a small quill.

Jiro furiously reviewed strategy. Try as he might, he found no threat. ‘You’re bluffing me.’ He went on to move the piece in dispute.

Chumaka looked faintly disgusted. ‘I don’t need to bluff.’ He advanced another piece and said, ‘Your Warlord is now guarded.’

Jiro saw the trap his First Adviser had set: its subtlety infuriated. Either the master would surrender the center of the board and be forced to play a defensive game, or he would lose his Warlord, the most powerful piece, and exchange position for a weakened offensive capacity. Jiro’s forehead creased as he considered several positions ahead. No matter how many combinations he imagined, he discovered no way to win. His only hope was to try for a stalemate.

He moved his remaining priest.

Chumaka by now was engrossed in reading. Still, at his Lord’s reply, he glanced down, captured the priest with a soldier, and paradoxically allowed his master to free his Warlord.

Warned to caution by the reprieve, Jiro sought to extrapolate as far ahead as possible. Too late, his mind gave him insight: he saw with disappointment that he had been manipulated to the very move his First Adviser had desired. The hoped-for stalemate was now forfeit, with defeat simply a matter of time. Prolonging the match never helped; Chumaka seemed at times to be impervious to human mistakes.

Sighing in frustration, the Lord of the Anasati resigned by turning his Emperor over on its side. ‘Your game, Chumaka.’ He rubbed his eyes, his head aching from the aftermath of tension.

Chumaka gave him a piercing glance over his letter. ‘Your play is steadily improving, Lord Jiro.’

Jiro let the compliments soothe the sting of yet another defeat. ‘I often wonder how you can play so brilliantly with your mind on other matters, Chumaka.’

The First Adviser snapped the document into folds. ‘Shah is but one aspect of the prepared mind, my Lord.’ Holding his master’s attention with heavy-lidded eyes, he added, ‘I hold no trick of strategy, but of knowing my opponent. I have observed you all your life, master. From your third move, I could sense where you were probing. By your sixth move, I had eliminated more than four fifths of the total possibilities in the game.’

Jiro let his hands fall limp to his lap. ‘How?’

‘Because you are like most men in the gods’ creation, my Lord. You can be depended upon to act within a pattern determined by your individual character.’ Chumaka tucked the parchment in a capacious pocket of his robe. ‘You spent a peaceful night. You ate well. You were relaxed. While you were focused, you were not … hungry. By the third move, I extrapolated that your game would reflect directness, and … not boldness and risk.’ Paying Jiro his undivided attention, he summed up, ‘The secret is to ferret out the clues that will reveal the thoughts of one’s opponent. Learn his motives, know his passions, and you need not wait to see what he does: you can anticipate his next move.’

Jiro gave back a humorless smile. ‘I hope that one day a shah master may visit who could humble you, Chumaka.’

The First Adviser chuckled. ‘I have been humbled many times, my Lord. Many times. But you have never seen it.’ His gaze flicked over the disarranged players, in satisfied reminiscence. ‘Play with those who do not know you as I do, and you will emerge victorious. In truth, you have an enviable gift for strategy. I am not a better shah player, master.’ The First Adviser selected another paper from his pouch as he finished his rumination. ‘But I am a far better student of you than you have ever been of me.’

Jiro felt discomforted that anyone, even a servant as loyal as Chumaka, would have subjected him to so detailed a scrutiny. Then he caught himself short: he was fortunate to have the man as a high officer. Chumaka’s job was to act as adviser, confidant, and diplomat. The better he knew his master, the better he would serve the Anasati. To hate him for his supreme skill was a fool’s measure, the mistake of a master too vain to admit shortcoming. Jiro chastised himself for selfish, unworthy suspicions and said, ‘What has you so engrossed this morning?’

Chumaka shuffled through the pouch, selected several more missives, and pushed the shah board aside to make space to array the papers around his knees. ‘I have been pursuing that lead we had into the Acoma spy network, and keeping watch upon the contacts as you requested. News has just arrived that I’m attempting to fit in.’ His voice fell to a mutter intelligible only to him as he reshuffled his piles, then resolved to thinking aloud: ‘I’m not quite yet sure –’ He twitched another paper from one pile to the next. ‘Forgive the disarray, master, but such visualizations help me keep track of relationships. Too often one is tempted to consider events in a straight line, in a particular order, when actually life is rather … chaotic.’ He stroked his chin with thumb and forefinger. ‘I have often thought of having a table constructed of sticks, so I might place notes at different heights, to further dramatise interconnections …’

Experience had taught Jiro not to be nettled by his First Adviser’s idiosyncrasies. He might grumble over his work, but he seemed to produce the most valuable results at such times. The Anasati spy network that Jiro had spent all the wealth he could spare to expand was providing more useful information each year. Other great houses might employ a spy master to manage such an operation in his own right; yet Chumaka had urged against allowing another to oversee his works. He insisted on first-hand control of those agents he had placed in other houses, guild halls, and trading centers. Even when Tecuma, Jiro’s father, had ruled House Anasati, Chumaka had occasionally left the estate to oversee some matter or another in person.

While Jiro showed a young man’s impatience at his First Adviser’s foibles, he knew when not to interfere. Now, while Chumaka pored over the gleanings of his agents, the Lord of the Anasati noticed that some of the reports on the stacks dated back as much as two years. A few seemed nothing more than the jottings of a grain factor’s secretary who used the margins to figure his accounts. ‘What is this new information?’

Chumaka did not glance up. ‘Someone’s tried to kill Mara.’

This was momentous news! Jiro sat up straight, irked that he had not been told at once, and maddened that some other faction, rather than the Anasati, had discommoded the Lady. ‘How do you know this?’

The wily Chumaka hooked the folded paper out of his robe and extended it toward his master. Jiro snatched the message and read the opening lines. ‘My nephew Ayaki’s dead!’ he exclaimed.

The Anasati First Adviser interrupted before his master could launch into a tirade. ‘Official word will not reach us until tomorrow, my Lord. That gives us today and tonight to weigh the manner in which we shall respond.’

Distracted from chastising his officer for withholding information unnecessarily, Jiro diverted to consider the course of thought Chumaka desired: for politically, the Anasati and the Acoma had been bitterest enemies until Mara’s marriage to Buntokapi; since Bunto’s ritual suicide, her heir Ayaki represented a blood tie between the two houses. Family duty had provided the only reason for suspension of hostilities.

Now the boy was in Turakamu’s halls. Jiro felt no personal regret at the news of his nephew’s death. He knew anger, that his closest male kin should have been born to the Acoma name; he had long chafed under the treaty that compelled him as Anasati to provide the Acoma with an alliance in the cause of that same child’s protection.

That constraint was ended at long last. Mara had signally failed in her duty as guardian. She had gotten the boy killed. The Anasati had the public excuse, no, the honorable duty, of exacting reprisal for the boy’s untimely end.

Jiro could barely keep from reveling in the knowledge that he could at last begin to avenge himself on Mara. He asked, ‘How did the boy die?’

Chumaka shot his master a look of unveiled rebuke. ‘Had you read to the end of what you hold, you would know.’

Lord Jiro felt moved to assert himself as Ruling Lord. ‘Why not tell me? Your post is to advise.’

The hot black eyes of the First Adviser dropped back to his papers. He did not show any overt irritation over Jiro’s correction. If anything, he replied with unctuous complacence. ‘Ayaki died of a fall from a horse. That’s made public. What is not widely known, what has been garnered by our agent near her estates, is that the horse died as well. It fell and crushed the child after being struck by a poisoned dart.’

Jiro’s mind pounced on pertinent bits of earlier conversation. ‘A tong assassin,’ he surmised, ‘whose intended target was Lady Mara.’

Chumaka’s expression remained ferociously bland. ‘So the paper in your hand spells out clearly.’

Now Lord Jiro inclined his head, half laughing in magnanimous spirits. ‘I accept the lesson, First Adviser. Now, rather than your using this news as a whip to instruct me, I would hear what conclusions you have drawn. The son of my enemy was, nevertheless my blood kin. This news makes me angry.’

Chumaka gnawed on the thumbnail he did not keep sharpened, to break the seals off his correspondence. His eyes stopped tracking the cipher on the page in his hand as he analysed his master’s statement. Jiro showed no outward emotion, in traditional Tsurani fashion; if he said he was angry, he was to be taken at his word. Honor demanded the servant believe the master. But Jiro was less enraged than excited, Chumaka determined, which did not bode well for Mara. Young yet at ruling, Jiro failed to grasp the longer-range benefits of allowing the alliance between Anasati and Acoma to dissolve into a state of laissez-faire.

The silence as his adviser pondered rasped at Jiro’s nerves. ‘Who?’ he demanded peevishly. ‘Which of Mara’s enemies desires her death? We could make ourselves an ally out of this, if we are bold.’

Chumaka sat back and indulged in a deep sigh.

Behind his pose of long-suffering patience, he was intrigued by the unexpected turn events had taken, Jiro saw. The Anasati First Adviser was as enamored of Tsurani politics as a child craving sweets.

‘I can conceive of several possibilities,’ Chumaka allowed. ‘Yet those houses with the courage to act lack the means, and those with the means lack courage. To seek the death of a Servant of the Empire is … unprecedented.’ He chewed his thin lower lip, then waved one of the servants over to stack the documents into piles to be gathered up and conveyed to his private quarters. To Jiro’s impatience, he said at last, ‘I should venture a guess that Mara was attacked by the Hamoi Tong.’

Jiro relinquished the note to the servant with a sneer. ‘Of course the tong. But who paid the death price?’

Chumaka arose. ‘No one. That’s what makes this so elegant. I think the tong acts for their own reasons.’

Jiro’s brows rose in surprise. ‘But why? What has the tong to gain by killing Mara?’

A runner servant appeared at the screen that led into the main estate house. He bowed, but before he could speak, Chumaka second-guessed the reason behind his errand. ‘Master, the court is assembled,’ he said directly to his Lord; Jiro waved the servant off as he rose from his cushions. As master and First Adviser fell into step toward the long hall in which the Lord of the Anasati conducted business, Jiro surmised aloud, ‘We know that Tasaio of the Minwanabi paid the Hamoi Tong to kill Mara. Do you think he also paid them to attempt vengeance upon her should he fall?’

‘Possibly.’ Chumaka counted points on his fingers, a habit he had when ordering his thoughts. ‘Minwanabi revenge might explain why, seemingly from nowhere, the tong chose to act after months of quiet.’

Pausing in the shadow of the corridor that accessed the double doors of the great hall, Jiro said, ‘If the tong acts on behalf of some pledge made to Tasaio before his death, will it try again?’

Chumaka shrugged, his stooped shoulders rising like tent poles under his turquoise silk robe. ‘Who can say? Only the Obajan of the Hamoi would know; he alone has access to the records that name those deaths bought and paid for. If the tong has vowed Mara’s death … it will persevere. If it merely agreed to make an attempt on her life, it has fulfilled its obligation.’ He gestured in rueful admiration. ‘The Good Servant has her luck from the gods, some might argue. For anyone else, an agreement to send an assassin is a virtual guarantee of success. Others have avoided the tong, once, even twice before; but the Lady Mara has survived five assassins that I know of. Her son was not so lucky.’

Jiro moved on with a step that snapped on the tiles. His nostrils flared, and he barely saw the two servants who sprang from their posts to open the audience hall doors for him. Striding past their abject bows, Jiro sniffed. Since getting his First Adviser to act with proper subservience was a waste of time, Jiro sniffed again. ‘Well, it’s a pity the assassin missed her. Still, we can seize advantage: the death of her son will cause much confusion in her household.’

Delicately, Chumaka cleared his throat. ‘Trouble will transfer to us, master.’

Jiro stopped in his tracks. His sandals squeaked as he pivoted to face his First Adviser. ‘Don’t you mean trouble for the Acoma? They have lost our alliance. No, they have spit on it by allowing Ayaki to come to harm.’

Chumaka stepped closer to his Lord, so the cluster of factors who awaited Jiro’s audience at the far end of the hall might not overhear. ‘Speak gently,’ he admonished. ‘Unless Mara finds convincing proof that it is Tasaio of the Minwanabi’s hand reaching from the halls of the Dead in this matter, it is logical for her to place blame upon us.’ Acerbically, he added, ‘You took pains when Lord Tecuma, your father, died to make your hostilities toward her house plain.’

Jiro jerked up his chin. ‘Perhaps.’

Chumaka did not press chastisement. Caught again into his innate fascination for the Game, he said, ‘Her network is the best I’ve seen. I have a theory: given her adoption of the entire Minwanabi household –’

Jiro’s cheeks flushed, ‘Another example of her blasphemous behavior and contempt for tradition!’

Chumaka held up a placating hand. There were times when Jiro’s thinking became clouded; having lost his mother to a fever at the tender age of five, as a boy he had clung irrationally to routine, to tradition, as if adherence to order could ward off the inconsistencies of life. Always he had tended to wall off his grief behind logic, or unswerving devotion to the dutiful ideal of the Tsurani noble. Chumaka did not like to encourage what he considered a weakening flaw in his Lord. The ramifications of allowing such traits to become policy were too confining for his liking. The perils, in fact, were paramount; in a bold move of his own, Chumaka had seized the initiative to take in more than two hundred soldiers formerly sworn to Minwanabi service. These were disaffected men whose hatred of Mara would last to their dying breath. Chumaka had not housed such for his own entertainment; he was not a disloyal man. He had secretly accommodated the warriors in a distant, secret barracks. Tactful inquiry had shown Jiro to be adamant in his refusal to consider swearing them to Anasati service; ancient custom held that such men were anathema, without honor and to be shunned lest the displeasure of the gods that had seen the unfortunate house fall be visited upon their benefactor. Yet Chumaka had refrained from sending these men away. He had no hope of a change in attitude from his master; but a tool was a tool, and these former Minwanabi might someday be useful, if the Ruling Lord of the Anasati could not be weaned from his puerile hatred of Mara.

If the two Houses were going to be enemies, Chumaka saw such warriors as an advantage to be held in trust for the day their service might be needed. Mara had proven herself to be clever. She had ruined one house far larger than her own. Guile would be needed to match guile, and Chumaka was never a man to waste an opportunity.

Indeed, he saw his secret as a loyal act, and what Jiro did not know, could not be forbidden.

The warriors were not all. Chumaka had to restrain himself from the desire to rub his thin hands together in anticipation. He had spies as well. Already a few factors formerly in the Minwanabi employ were now working on behalf of the Anasati and not the Acoma. Chumaka gained the same pleasure in co-opting these people to his master’s service that he might in isolating an opponent’s fortress or priest upon the shah board. He knew eventually the Anasati would benefit. Then his master must see the wisdom of some of Mara’s choices.

And so the Anasati First Adviser smiled, and said nothing; to a fine point, he knew just how far he could go in contradicting Jiro. Pressing his Lord toward his meeting with the factors, he said quietly, ‘Master, Mara may have flouted tradition by taking on responsibility for her vanquished enemy’s servants, but rather than merely removing her greatest enemy, she has gained immeasurable resources. Her strength has grown. From being a dangerous, dominant player in the Game of the Council, at one stroke Mara has become the single most powerful Ruling Lord or Lady in the history of the Empire. The Acoma forces, alone, now number more than ten thousand swords; they surpass several smaller clans. And Clan Hadama and its allies together rival the Emperor’s Imperial Whites!’ Chumaka turned reflective as he added, ‘She could rule by fiat, I think, if she had the ambition. The Light of Heaven is certainly not of a mind to oppose her wishes.’

Disliking to be reminded of the Lady’s swift ascendance, Jiro became the more nettled. ‘Never mind. What is this theory?’

Chumuka raised up one finger. ‘We know Tasaio of the Minwanabi employed the Hamoi Tong. The tong continues to pursue Mara’s death.’ Counting on a second finger, he listed, ‘These facts may or may not be related. Incomo, Tasaio’s former First Adviser, was effective in discovering some or all of the Acoma agents who had infiltrated the Minwanabi household. There was a disruption after that, and a mystery remains: our own network reported that someone killed every Acoma agent between the Minwanabi Great House and the City of Sulan-Qu.’

Jiro gave an offhand wave. ‘So Tasaio had all her agents killed as far back as he could trace her network.’

Chumaka’s smile became predatory. ‘What if he didn’t?’ He flicked up a third finger. ‘Here is another fact: the Hamoi Tong killed those servants inside the Minwanabi household who were Acoma agents.’

The Lord’s boredom intensified. ‘Tasaio ordered the tong –’

‘No!’ Chumaka interrupted, verging on disrespect. Swiftly he amended his manners by turning his outburst into prelude for instruction. ‘Why should Tasaio hire tong to kill his own staff? Why pay death price for lives that could be taken by an order to the Minwanabi guards?’

Jiro looked rueful. ‘I was thinking carelessly.’ His eyes shifted forward to where the factors were fidgeting at the delay, as Lord and adviser continued to equivocate just inside the doorway.

Chumaka ignored their discomfort. They were underlings, after all, and it was their place to wait upon their Lord. ‘Because there is no logical reason, my master. However, we can make a surmise: if I were the Lady, and I wished to insult both the tong and Tasaio, what better way than to order the tong, under false colors, to kill her spies?’

Jiro’s expression quickened. He could follow Chumaka’s reasoning on his own, now he had been clued in to the first step. ‘You think the Hamoi Tong may have cause to declare a blood debt toward Mara?’

Chumaka’s answer was a toothy smile.

Jiro resumed walking. His steps echoed across the vast hall, with its paper screens drawn closed on both sides, and its roof beams hung with dusty war relics and a venerable collection of captured enemy banners. These artifacts reminded of a time when the Anasati were at the forefront of historical battles. Theirs was an ancient tradition of honor. They would rise as high again, Jiro vowed; no, higher yet. For Mara’s defeat would be his to arrange, a victory that would resound throughout the Empire.

He alone would prove that Mara had incurred the gods’ displeasure in granting reprieve to conquered enemy servants. Single-handedly, he would exact vengeance for her flouting of the old ways. She would look into his eyes as she died, and know: she had made her worst mistake on the day she had chosen Buntokapi for her husband. Unlike the grandeur of the Minwanabi great hall that Mara had inherited, the Anasati great hall was as reassuring in its traditional design as the most time-honored ritual in the temple. Jiro luxuriated in this; no different from the halls of a hundred other Ruling Lords, this chamber was nevertheless unique; it was Anasati. Along both sides of the center aisle knelt petitioners and Anasati retainers. Omelo, his Force Commander, stood at attention to one side of the dais upon which Jiro conducted the business of his court. Arrayed behind him were the other officers and advisers of the household.

Jiro mounted his dais, knelt on the Lord’s cushions, then settled back on his heels as he adjusted his formal robe. Before he signaled his hadonra to begin the day’s council, he said to his First Adviser, ‘Find out for certain if the tong pursues Mara on its own. I would know, so we can make better plans when this news of Ayaki’s death becomes official.’

Chumaka clapped his hands and a servant came to his shoulder. ‘Have two runners in my quarters by the time I reach them.’ While the servant bowed and hastened away, he made his own obeisance to the master. ‘Lord, I shall begin at once. I have some new sources that may provide us with better information.’ Then, seeing the hardened glint in Lord Jiro’s eyes, Chumaka touched his master’s sleeve. ‘We must show restraint until Mara’s messenger reaches us with formal announcement of Ayaki’s death. Speak now, and your staff will gossip. We would ill be served by giving our enemy proof, that we have spies in sensitive places.’

Jiro snapped away from Chumaka’s touch. ‘I understand, but do not ask me to be complacent! All in Anasati service will mourn. Ayaki of the Acoma, my nephew, has been slain, and every man of ours who is not a slave will wear a red band upon his arm in token of our loss. When this day’s business is finished, you will ready an honor guard for travel to Sulan-Qu.’

Chumaka bit back annoyance. ‘We attend the boy’s funeral?’

Jiro bared his teeth. ‘He was my nephew. To stay home when his ashes are honored would be to admit responsibility or cowardice, and we are guilty of neither. He may have been the son of my enemy, and I may now destroy his mother without constraint, but he shares Anasati blood! He deserves the respect any grandson of Tecuma of the Anasati is entitled. We shall carry a family relic to be burned with him.’ Jiro’s eyes flashed as he finished, ‘Tradition demands our presence!’

Chumaka kept his reservations about this decision as he bowed in acknowledgment of his master’s wishes. While it was a First Adviser’s place to shepherd his Lord through decisions that affected house policy, Chumaka was wont to chafe at the more mundane responsibilities of his office. The Game of the Council had changed dramatically since Mara of the Acoma first entered the arena; yet it was still the game, and nothing in life captured the adviser’s fascination like the puzzle of Tsurani politics. Taut as a coursing hound, he rose up in excitement for the chase.

Almost happy despite the prospect of unfortunate developments on the horizon, the First Adviser left the great hall, muttering over the lists of instructions he would need to dispatch with his runners. Substantial bribes would be necessary to pry loose the information he desired, but if the gathered bits of intelligence could prove his morning’s theory, the gains would outweigh the cost. As Chumaka paused for the servants to open the door to let him out, his lips reflected an unholy smile.