Mistress of the Empire. Janny Wurts

hopefully.

      Hokanu’s reply was rueful. ‘So was I, until a few minutes ago.’

      ‘And are you complacent?’ Mara pressed.

      ‘Gods, no,’ Hokanu laughed. ‘Never in this house. Justin ambushed me twice on the way to my bath, and once again when I got out.’ Then, unwilling to dwell on the subject of the son that had become a bone of contention between them, he hurried to ask what kept the frown line between her eyes so prevalent. ‘Unless you’re scowling to test my complacency also,’ he ended.

      Mara was surprised into a laugh. ‘No. I know how lightly you sleep, dear heart. I’ll know you’re getting complacent on the night you stop starting up and tossing pillows and bedclothes at the slightest hint of a strange noise.’

      Happy to see even a moment of mirth from her, Hokanu clapped for a servant to attend to the spoiled lunch tray, and to send to the kitchen for a fresh one. By the time he had disposed of even so brief a detail, he looked back at Mara and, by the faraway look in her eyes, knew he had lost her to contemplation. Her hands had gone tense in her lap, interlocked in the habitual way she assumed when thinking upon the task she had laid for her Spy Master.

      His hunch was confirmed presently when she said, ‘I wonder how far Arakasi has gotten in his attempt to infiltrate the City of the Magicians.’

      ‘We shall not discuss the question until after you have eaten,’ Hokanu said in mock threat. ‘If you starve yourself anymore, there will be nothing left to you but an enormous belly.’

      ‘Filled with your son and future heir!’ Mara retorted, equally playful, but not at all her unusually perceptive self, by her reference to a sensitive topic.

      Hokanu let the reference pass, in favor of keeping her peaceful enough to enjoy the fruits and light breads and meats he had sent for. On second thought, Arakasi’s attempt upon the security of the Assembly of Magicians was probably the safer choice of conversation.

      

      Arakasi at that moment sat in a noisy roadside tavern in the north of Neshka Province. He wore the striped robe of a free caravan drover, authentically scented with needra, and his right eye seemed to have acquired a cast. The left squinted to compensate, and also to disguise the tendency it had to water at the burning taste of the spirits reputedly brewed by Thun from tubers that grew in the tundra. Arakasi wet his tongue again with the vile liquor, and offered the flask to the caravan master he had spent the last hours attempting to cajole into intoxication.

      The caravan master had a head for spirits like a rock. He was a bald man, massively muscled, with a thunderous laugh, and a regrettable tendency to slap his companions on the back: probably the reason why the benches on either side of him stayed empty, Arakasi reflected. He had bruises across his rib cage from being slammed against the table edge by the man’s boisterous thumps. He could have chosen a better subject to pump for information, he realised in hindsight. But the other caravan masters tended to band together with their crews, and he needed one who stood apart. To insinuate himself among a tight-knit group, and to pry a man away from his fellows was likely to take too much time. He had the patience, had many times spent months gaining the confidence of targeted individuals to gain the intelligence Mara required. But here, in the deserted northern tavern, a man with close-knit friendships would be apt to remember a stranger who asked things that a local driver would already know.

      ‘Argh,’ the huge caravan master bawled, entirely too loudly for Arakasi’s liking. ‘Don’t know why any man would choose t’drink such piss.’ The man hefted the flask in one ham fist and squinted dubiously at the contents. ‘Tastes poisonous enough to sear out yer tongue.’ He ended his diatribe by taking another huge swallow.

      Arakasi saw another comradely slap coming, and braced his palms against the plank table barely in time. The blow struck him between the shoulder blades, and the trestle shook, rattling cheap clay crockery.

      ‘Hey!’ shouted the owner of the hostelry from behind the counter bar. ‘No brawling in here!’

      The caravan master belched. ‘Stupid man,’ he confided in a spirit-laden whisper. ‘If we were of a mind to wreck things, we’d heave the tables through the walls and bring the stinkin’ roof down. Wouldn’t be losing much. There’s web-spinners in the rafters and biting bugs in the loft bedmats, anyway.’

      Arakasi regarded the heavy lumber that made up the trestle’s construction, and conceded that it could serve as a battering ram. ‘Heavy enough to crack the gates to the City of Magicians,’ he murmured on a suggestive note.

      ‘Hah!’ The burly man slammed the flask down so hard the boards rattled. ‘Fool might try that. You heard about the boy who hid out in a wagon, last month? Well, I tell you, the servants of those magicians searched though the goods, and didn’t find the kid. But when the wain rolls through the arches of the gates nearside o’ the bridge to the island, well, this beam of light shoots down from the arch an’ fries the cover off the wool bale the boy was huddled in.’ The drover laughed and hit the table, causing the crockery to jump. ‘Seven hells! I tell you. The magicians’ servants are all running around yelling out a warning, shoutin’ death ’n’ destruction. Next we know, the boy’s ahowlin’ loud enough to be heard clear to Dustari, and then he’s sprintin’ down the road back into the forest like his butt’s on fire. Found him later, hiding out in a charcoal burner’s shed. Not a mark on him, mind, but it was days before he’d stop crying.’ The caravan master put his finger to his temple and winked knowingly. ‘They scrambled his head, you see. Thought he was being eaten by fire demons or some such.’

      Arakasi digested this while the caravan master took another pull from the flask. He wiped his lips on his hairy wrist and peered at Mara’s Spy Master. His voice lowered to a tone of menace. ‘Don’t even joke about trying to cross the gate to the magician’s city. Mess with the Assembly, and all of us lose our jobs. I’ve got no wish to end my life as a slave, none at all.’

      ‘But the boy who tried to sneak in as a prank did not lose his freedom,’ Arakasi pointed out.

      ‘Might as well have,’ the caravan master said morosely. He drank another draught. ‘Might as well have. He can’t sleep for getting nightmares, and days he walks around like one already dead – still got a scrambled head.’

      Lowering his voice out of fear the caravan master said, ‘I hear they have ways of knowing what’s in the minds of those who try to come to the island. ’Cause it was this prankish lad, they let him live. But I’ve heard tales that if you mean them harm –’ he held his hand out, thumb turned down – ‘you find yourself at the bottom of that lake.’ Now whispering, he went on, ‘The lake bottom is covered with bodies. Too cold down there for them to bloat up and rise. The dead just stay down there.’ With a nod to affirm his statement, the caravan master concluded in normal tone, ‘Magicians don’t like to be messed with, there’s a fact.’

      ‘Here’s to letting them be,’ Arakasi hooked back the flask and drank in an unusual fit of pique. The assignment Mara had set him was damned near impossible. Caravans traveled only as far as the gate to the river bridge. There, the crews surrendered their reins to servants from the inner city, and each load was vigorously searched before the goods rolled forward. The bridge did not go all the way across the lake, but ended in a water landing, where inbound supplies were offloaded into boats, and inspected a second time. Then polemen ferried them across, into the City of the Magicians.

      This was the third man to relate the fate of intruders: no one infiltrated the City of Magicians, and any who tried were transported magically to a watery grave or else driven mad.

      Confronted by a bleak conclusion, Arakasi sucked from the flask to fortify himself. Then he surrendered the remains of the liquor to the hairy caravan master, and slipped unobtrusively out to use the privy.

      

      In the stinking dimness of the road hostel’s privy, Arakasi studied the coarse board walls where passing caravan teams had scribbled or scratched a motley assortment of initials, derisive comments on the quality of the hostel’s beer, the names of favored ladies of the