A pragmatic man, he did not try to force the impossible, but built upon their years together a contentment and a peace that were enduring and solid as a monument. He had succeeded in giving her happiness, until the dart struck the horse that killed her son.
She shifted against him, her dark eyes apparently fixed upon the flower garden beyond the opened screen. Breezes caused her favorite kekali blossoms to nod, and their heavy perfume swirled through the chamber. Far off, the bread cook could be heard berating a slave boy for laziness; the sounds of the dispatch barge being loaded at dockside reached here, strangely amplified by still water and the mist-cloaked morning quiet.
Hokanu caught Mara’s fingers and stroked them, and by the fact that they did not immediately respond knew she was not thinking of ordinary commerce.
‘Is it the Assembly on your mind again?’ he asked, knowing it was not, but also aware that an oblique approach would break the cold space around her thoughts and help her make a start at communicating.
Mara closed her grip on his hand. ‘Your father’s sister has two boys, and you have a second cousin with five children, three of them sons.’
Unsure where this opening was leading, but also catching her drift, Hokanu nodded. He reflexively followed up on her next thought. ‘If something were to happen to Justin before your child was born, my father could choose among several cousins and relations to find a successor after me for the Shinzawai mantle. But you should not worry, love; I fully intend to stay alive and keep you safe.’
Mara frowned, more troubled than he had originally guessed. ‘No. We’ve been through this. I will not see the Acoma name merged with that of the Shinzawai.’
Hokanu drew her close, aware now of what lay beneath her tenseness. ‘You fear for the Acoma name, then I understand. Until our child is born, you are the last of your line.’
Her tenseness as she nodded betrayed the depths of a fear she had wrestled with and kept hidden for the intervening span of two years. And after all she had gone through to secure the continuance of her ancestors’ line, only to suffer the further loss of her son, he could not fault her.
‘Unlike your father, I have no remaining cousins, and no other option.’ She sucked a quick breath, and plunged ahead to the heart of the matter.
‘I want Justin sworn to the Acoma natami.’
‘Mara!’ Hokanu said, startled. ‘Done is done! The boy is almost five years of age and sworn already to the Shinzawai!’
She looked stricken. Her eyes were too large in her face, and her bones too prominent, the result of grief and morning sickness. ‘Release him.’
There was an air of desperation about her, of determined hardness he had seen only in the presence of enemies; and gods knew, he was not an enemy. He stifled his initial shock, reached out, and again drew her against him. She was shaking, though her skin was not chilled. Patiently, carefully, he considered her position. He tried to unravel her motivations and achieve an understanding that would give him grounds to work with her; for he realised, for his father’s sake, that he would be doing no one any favors by changing Justin’s house loyalty – least of all the boy. By now the child was old enough to begin to comprehend the significance of the name to which he belonged.
The death of an elder brother had fallen hard enough on the little one without his becoming the pawn of politics. Much as Hokanu loved Mara, he also recognised that Jiro’s enmity was more threat than he would wish to place on the shoulders of an innocent child.
The rapport shared between the Lady and her consort cut both ways; Mara also had the gift of tracking Hokanu’s inner thoughts. She said, ‘It is a lot more difficult to murder a boy who is able to walk, talk, and recognise strangers than an infant in a crib. As Shinzawai heir, our new baby would be safer. A house, a whole line, would not be ended by one death.’
Hokanu could not refute such logic; what cost him peace and prevented his agreement was his own affection for Justin, not mentioning that his foster father, Kamatsu, had come to dote on the boy. Did a man take a child old enough to have tasted the joys of life, and thrust him into grave danger? Or did one set an innocent infant at risk?
‘If I die,’ Mara said in a near whisper, ‘there will be nothing. No child. No Acoma. My ancestors will lose their places on the Wheel of Life, and none will remain to hold Acoma honor in the eyes of the gods.’ She did not add, as she might have, that all she had done for herself would have gone for nothing.
Her consort pushed himself upright against the pillows, drew her to lean against him, and combed back her dark hair. ‘Lady, I will think on what you have said.’
Mara twisted, jerking free of his caress. Beautiful, determined, and angry, she sat up straight and faced him. ‘You must not think. You must decide. Release Justin from his vows, for the Acoma must not go another day without an heir to come after me.’
There was an edge of hysteria to her. Hokanu read past that, to another worry, one she had not yet mentioned, that he had missed in the turmoil. ‘You are feeling cornered because Arakasi has been so long at the task you set him,’ he said on a note of inspiration.
The wind seemed to go out of Mara’s sails. ‘Yes. Perhaps I asked too much of him, or began a more perilous course than I knew when I sent him to attempt to infiltrate the affairs of the Assembly.’ In a rare moment of self-doubt, she admitted, ‘I was hotheaded, and angry. In truth, things have gone more smoothly than I first feared. We have handled the upsurge of the traditionalist offensive without the difficulty I anticipated.’
Hokanu heard, but was not deceived into belief that she considered the affair settled. If anything, the quiet times and the minor snarls that erupted in trade transactions were harbingers of something deeper afoot. Tsurani Lords were devious; the culture itself for thousands of years had applauded the ruler who could be subtle, who could effect convoluted, long-range plotting to stage a brilliant victory years later. All too likely, Lord Jiro was biding his time, amassing his preparations to strike. He was no Minwanabi, to solve his conflicts on the field of war. The Assembly’s edict had effectively granted him unlimited time, and license to plot against the Acoma through intrigue, as was his penchant.
Neither Mara nor Hokanu chose to belabor this point, which both of them feared. An interval of quiet stretched between them, filled with the sounds of the estate beginning to wake. The light through the screen changed from grey to rose-gold, and birdsong filtered in over the call of officers overseeing the change in the guard – warriors who had not patrolled so near the estate house before Ayaki’s death.
Unspoken also was the understanding that the Anasati might in fact have been the target of the faked evidence carried by the tong. Jiro and the old-line traditionalists wished Mara dead, which made his enmity logical. Yet a third faction might be plotting unseen, to create this schism between the Acoma and Anasati alliance that had been sealed with Ayaki’s life. The attempt had been against Mara; had she died according to plan, her son would have inherited, as heir. Hokanu, in the vulnerable position of regent, would have been left to manage a sure clash between the Acoma, in an attempt to retain their independence as his Lady would have desired, and the Anasati, who would seek to annex that house on the strength of their blood tie to the boy.
But if the contract with the tong that had seen Ayaki killed had not been under Jiro’s chop, all that had transpired since might be playing into the hands of some third party, perhaps the same Lord whose spy net had breached Arakasi’s security.
‘I think,’ said Hokanu with gentle firmness, ‘that we should not resolve this issue until we have heard from Arakasi, or one of his agents. If he has made headway in his attempt to gain insight into the Great Ones’ council, his network will send word. No news is best news, for now.’
Looking pale and strained, and feeling