Habiba extended his hand in a gesture that took in the orchard and the surrounding camp, demonstrating the unstated. The army that held it possessed the land they stood upon and that army owed its loyalty to Thousand Lakes Province.
“And Lord Yueh?” Llesho asked. “Master Markko did not pursue us to offer safe passage to the borders of her ladyship's lands. What claim has Lord Yueh made?”
“Yueh is dead.” Stipes answered that one, which surprised Llesho. He'd wondered why Stipes had joined their counsel; now he knew. “Poison, I think, in his wine.
“I had already decided that I would run, if I could find Bixei, but I didn't kill Lord Yueh,” he added when all eyes turned on him. The penalty for a slave who killed his master was skinning alive, a painstaking process in which the skin was removed slowly beginning at the feet and moving up his legs to his torso before the very eyes of the horrified victim. There were stories of executioners who could peel the skin off a man in one piece, toes to crown, and leave his victim still alive and bleeding in the sawdust when he was done. The sun got any survivors soon enough, or the cold. Or the vultures and the bugs.
Knowing her ladyship's feelings on the matter of slavery and adding that to what she must feel at the murder of her husband, Llesho didn't believe she would condemn Stipes to a horrible death for killing Yueh. Still, he could not suppress the shudder that passed through him at the thought of the terrible execution that awaited one who would commit such a crime.
Fortunately, Llesho was pretty sure the man was telling the truth and hadn't killed his master. “Did Markko have access to Lord Yueh's wine?” he asked. Master Jaks must know the story, and Habiba, if they had permitted the gladiator to join them, but Llesho looked to Stipes, who had been there, to tell it.
“Not that night. Markko learned from his spies that you had split from the main party. He took a couple of foot units and a few horse to find you, and Lord Yueh followed her ladyship's train. Her ladyship traveled slowly, with the aged and the young in her care, and we were soldiers on a forced march. We caught up to her easily enough, but Yueh hadn't counted on Master Jaks.
“He stood us off after the first attack failed, waiting for Master Markko to return with you. I think he planned to put her champions to the sword and take her husband's place as governor and as mate, but he fell ill soon after he dined, and never left his bed. In the morning, Yueh was delirious, his army in disarray. Few among Lord Yueh's forces fought for him willingly, and many surrendered without raising a weapon that day. I was lucky to find Bixei; he took me to Master Jaks, and I offered my weapons and my service.”
There was something left unsaid in that last, and Llesho wanted it, down to the last promise: “To whom?”
Stipes dipped his head, acknowledging the hit. “To Master Jaks, actually. Don't know much about lords and such, but that Chin-shi was a foolish one and Yueh a bad one. And yours was a dead one,” he added sullenly when Habiba turned a threatening eye on him. “By then, Yueh was a dead one, too; the healers could do nothing.
“But I trusted Master Jaks, had done so for more years than I care to consider. And Master Jaks says you are a king, so here we are.” He shrugged, admitting he didn't understand what had gone on while they had belonged to different camps, but that he was willing to take some thingsâeven outlandish things like a skinny pearl diver being a long-lost kingâon faith from the right person.
Llesho turned thoughtfully to Master Jaks, who returned his level gaze from across the table. Master Jaks was his teacher, and he had trusted the man just as Stipes had. But Llesho had grown wary since the poison arrow had felled him. Master Jaks had served Lord Chin-shi, who was dead, under the direction of Overseer Markko, who now sought to capture or kill Llesho. Master Jaks had followed Llesho to Farshore, but now took into his escort Stipes, who was Lord Yueh's man, or had been until his lordship's timely death. Most damning, Jaks was an assassin; Llesho's eyes returned again to the six rings tattooed on Jaks' upper arm. Why was an assassin so interested in an exiled prince of Thebin?
Master Jaks followed the gaze. “They trouble you?” he asked, nodding his chin at the rings on his arm.
Llesho waited, while the assassin returned his study, looking for a crack in the stone of Llesho's eyes and finding none. With a little shrug, a tiny smile that Llesho did not understand, Master Jaks rested his arm on the table, palm up, the gesture of surrender. “If my arm offends you,” he said, “cut it off.”
Not what Llesho had expected. He turned to Habiba for an explanation, or advice, but the witch said nothing, merely gestured to a guard who raised his unsheathed sword and set it lightly across the muscle, just above the first, and oldest, ring.
“Why?” Llesho asked.
“I wasn't always an assassin,” Master Jaks answered, and gave the rings on his own arm a look of such loathing and hunger that Llesho would have drawn his own Thebin knife had a guard not already held the man in check with a sword resting on flesh. “A long time ago, I served Thebin as a hired defender.”
“A mercenary,” Llesho corrected. He had seen the device on Master Jaks' wrist guards long ago, that time with blood splashed on them from the Harn. Mercenaries, yes, but his guard had died like a Thebin to protect a young prince.
“A mercenary.” Master Jaks accepted the correction. “My clan is poor; her sons serve others for pay. The less skilled take contracts as foot troops in the border wars of strangers. Those of breeding and skill hold positions in the great houses of the wealthy. My own squad served the Royal House of Kungol. My brother swore his life to the protection of the young prince, but could not save him.”
He met Llesho's stony gaze with fire in his eyesâgrim, grim fire. “I was, myself, sworn to the young prince's mother. I lay as the dead on the floor of her temple while the men of Harn tormented her and dragged her away. To my shame, I did not die of my wounds that day.”
“You loved my mother.”
It wasn't in the words but in the longing when Master Jaks said them, and in the despair that crossed the landscape behind his eyes when he spoke of her torment.
“Everyone loved her. How could they not?”
Llesho saw in the rueful smile that Master Jaks had never overstepped his place at the foot of his mistress: no dishonor to the queen or her husband had ever been contemplated. The self-loathing at his failure would have been the greater for his feelings, however. Llesho understood about failure and regret. He didn't understand how one could honor the holy queen of Thebin with the rings of an assassin on his arm, and he said so.
“You prove your love of that holy woman of peace with the taking of lives for pay, as an assassin?”
Master Jaks flinched, as even the sword resting on his arm had not made him do. “There are few professions open to a member of the elite guard who has failed so disastrously in his charge. But I have kept myself alive, when I could wish only to join my brother in death, for the day when I might restore honor to my family and my clan, If I have dishonored my quest, I offer my death. Let my blood wash away the stain upon her pure honor that I served. You would be doing me a favor, one I have wished for many years. If you want to win in the coming battle, however, I can offer my service. With two arms or with one, I pledge my life, and the lives of those men who follow me, to restore her house to its rightful place, and for my brother's honor to protect her son in all things.”
“You will do with one arm what you could not manage nine cycles ago with two?”
A glint behind the fire, a deepening of the lines around Master Jaks' eyes, told more than the words: “I know more now.” He hadn't been a paid assassin then. With rueful, dangerous humor, Master Jaks followed the length of the sword with his eyes. He'd abased himself enough with his confession. Llesho wasn't ready to fight this war on his own, and he thought maybe the boy even knew it. “Better with two, of course.”
Llesho gave the slightest flick of dismissal with his fingers, and the sword lifted. No emotion broke the impassive obedience of the guard, but the man's whole body eased. So it hadn't been just for show. Some, though. And it wasn't over yet.
“By the laws of Shan, I cannot take your pledge, “ Llesho pointed out with ice in his tone. “I am a slave.”
He had his manumission papers in his tunic, of course, but, until his seventeenth birthday, her ladyship could free him only by adopting him. When offered the opportunity, she had declined. Now, having recognized his lineage, any such act on the part of Thousand Lakes Province must appear as a first move in a political game neither her ladyship nor her father could afford. Shan itself would move against the province. And Llesho would be no closer to freeing his brothers than when he was diving for pearls off Pearl Island.
Too much had happened. Llesho knew, in his head, that he had come a long way in more than physical distance from the bay where the spirit of Lleck, his teacher, had appeared to him and sent him to free his home. But he was no wizard-king, and in his heart, he felt only the weight of his losses. Given his track record on this quest, he doubted he'd live long enough to see Kungol and his beloved mountains again.
“His lordship the governor has interpreted the manumission status of a young royal under the law that governs the succession to the governorship.” Habiba reached out a hand and a secretary set a sheaf of papers into it. “If a governor should die before his orphaned heir reaches the legal age of majority, the law allows for the appointment of a regent.
“His lordship did not wish to be seen as motivated by political ambitions in the appointment of the young prince's regent. Accordingly, he has charged me to invite your own recommendations for the role of your adviser.”
No one stirred at the table. The silence was so complete that Llesho could imagine no one stirred in the whole camp. He studied the faces of his companions, but each kept his eyes downcast and his counsel to himself. He could have wished for Kwan-ti then, or Mara, or Master Den, or Lleckâany one of the people he had grown to depend on for their wisdom who had died or disappeared from his life, leaving him storm-tossed without an anchor. He sorely needed their advice now; if any one of them had been at the conference table, he would have landed the regency in their laps and been done with it. But they weren'tâeven Lleck the bear had not followed him to this campâand Habiba, while clever and deep, was too much her ladyship's creature. And Master Jaks. Master Jaks, with the six rings tattooed on his upper arm, one for each paid murder he'd committed, would be no fit regent for the spiritual leader of the Thebin people, even if Llesho never had another spiritual thought in his life. Stipes was a fighter, not a thinker, and he was Yueh's anyway, or Bixei's, if he had his choice. The rest of them were no older than he was, or not by much, and no smarter.
The more he thought about it, though, the more he rejected the notion of anyone making his decisions for him, law or no law. It was his quest, his country he had promised to free. The decision was easy after all.
“Adar,” he said. “My brother.”
Habiba smiled and handed him the papers. “Her ladyship thought you would decide as much. She persuaded her father to complete the appropriate forms appointing Adar as your regent in absentia.”
Adar. Llesho brushed the sheaf of papers with his fingertips. He needed to find his brother, to prove to himself that he was on the true path to the liberation of his people and not on a fool's journey. The papers appointing his brother regent until succession should be decided at Kungol reminded Llesho of Farshore's own problems.
“His lordship the governor left no heir, did he?”
“He did not,” Habiba answered. “His family line having failed, the emperor will appoint a new governor in his place. Lord Yueh would have petitioned for the post if he had lived, I am sure.”
Llesho nodded, thinking. The emperor, far away in Shan and with only the word of easily bribed advisers to guide him, had awarded Lord Yueh the governorship of Pearl Island. Yueh had received clear title to all the holdings that belonged to the island, including the dying oyster beds of Pearl Bay, in payment of debts left owing after the death of Lord Chin-shi. With Lord Chin-shi's overseer Markko as his adviser, Lord Yueh had attacked Farshore. Now Lord Yueh was dead, and Markko had turned back after his defeat at the jaws of the dragon on Golden Dragon River. Llesho didn't think the deaths of three governors were coincidence.
“Lord Yueh had a young son, did he not?”
“Still does,” Stipes confirmed. “At least, the son still lives, though just a babe.”
“Will the Emperor name his mother regent?” Llesho directed his question to Habiba. As the adviser to a murdered governor himself, the witch would know better than any of them what would happen next in the matter of continued government.
“I doubt it.” Habiba considered his answer. “Her ladyship of Farshore produced no heir for the governor. If Markko acts true to form, he will lay a claim against Farshore in the name of Lord Yueh's young son, and petition to be named regent under the guidance of the boy's mother. Everyone knows that Lady Yueh was much younger than her husband, and that she was a quiet, shy creature. Markko's deference to her wishes will be seen for what it is: an opportunity offered the mother to visit her child upon state occasions. She will have no say in his upbringing, and certainly none in the rule of Farshore, which Markko will want to consolidate with Pearl Island in his own name.”
“And how long will the boy live?”
“At least a year,” Master Jaks suggested. “It will take Markko that long to marry the widow and get her with child. Then Yueh's child will die, and Markko will petition to claim the post in his own name, for the son his wife carries.”