of these tasks. Jican is capable of taking care of the daily operations of the estates. I can give him the benefits of my opinion if you’re too busy.’
Buntokapi shrugged the lacquered plates off over his head and sighed in relief. Unaccustomed to lifting, Mara struggled with the weight, until her husband reached one-handed and tossed the heavy armour to the floor. He tugged the light gambeson over his shoulders, and spoke through a muffling layer of cloth. ‘No. I want you looking after our son.’
‘Or daughter,’ Mara shot back, nettled that a wife might do a body servant’s chores but not tally accounts. She knelt and unbuckled the green leather greaves from her husband’s hairy calves.
‘Bah, it will be a boy. If not, we shall have to try again, heh?’ He leered down at her.
Mara showed none of her revulsion, but untied the cross-gartered sandals, which were as crusted with filth as the broad feet they protected. ‘As my Lord wills.’
Buntokapi peeled away his short robe. Nude except for a loincloth, he unselfconsciously reached under to scratch his groin. ‘Still, I will allow Jican to make decisions about the business matters he has been in charge of since your father’s death.’ The servant arrived with the clean robe, and the Lord of the Acoma quickly donned it without calling for a bath. ‘The hadonra is competent. And he can still come to me for important decisions. Now I plan to spend some time in Sulan-Qu. Several of my friends are –’
He paused, puzzled, as Mara suddenly clutched at the cloth of her dayrobe. She had been having mild contractions all morning, but this was strong, and her face drained of colour. At last her time had come. ‘Bunto!’
The usually violent-tempered man was suddenly both delighted and alarmed. ‘Is it time?’
‘I think so.’ She smiled calmly. ‘Send for the midwife.’
Solicitous for the first time in his life, Buntokapi was furiously patting Mara’s hand to the point of inflicting bruises when the midwife came, followed in an instant by Nacoya. The two of them chased him away with a briskness no husband in the Empire could withstand. Buntokapi left like a whipped dog, looking over his shoulder as he disappeared through the screen.
The next hour he spent pacing in his study as he waited for his son to be born. As the second hour dragged on, he sent for wine and something to eat. Evening faded into night, still without word from the birth chamber. An impatient man who had no outlet for his concern, he drank and ate, then drank again. After the supper hour he sent for musicians, and when their playing failed to soothe his nerves, he called for the hot bath he had neglected that afternoon.
In a rare mood of respect, he decided to forgo the company of a girl. Bed play seemed inappropriate while his wife was giving birth to his heir, but a man could not be expected to sit waiting with no comforts. Buntokapi bellowed for the runner to fetch a large jug of acamel brandy. This he would not surrender, even when servants pulled the screens away and filled his tub with steaming water. They waited with soap and towels. Buntokapi stripped off his robes and patted his expanding girth. He grunted to himself about needing to practise with the sword and bow more, to keep fit, as he slid his bulk into the water. A weaker man would have winced, but Buntokapi simply sat down. He took a brandy cup from a servant’s hand and drained it in one long pull.
The servants worked with diffident care. None of them wanted a beating for letting suds inadvertently spill into the open cup and sour the brandy.
Bunto sloshed back in his bath. He absently hummed a tune while the servants soaped his body. As their hands kneaded his taut muscles and the heat drew him into a sleepy, amorous mood, he luxuriated in the bath, and soon he drifted into a doze.
Then the air was cut by a scream. Bunto bolted upright in the tub, overturning his brandy and splashing the servants with soapy water. Heart pounding, he groped about for a weapon, half expecting to see the servants running for safety while armoured men answered the alarm. Instead all was quiet. He looked to the musicians, who awaited his order to play, but as his mouth opened to speak, another scream rent the stillness.
Then he knew. Mara, slender, girlish Mara, was giving birth to his son. Another scream sounded, and the pain in it was like nothing Buntokapi had heard in his short life. Men wounded in battle made loud, angry cries, and the moans of the wounded were low and pitiable. But this sound … this reflected the agony of one tormented by the Red God himself.
Buntokapi reached for his brandy. Dark fury crossed his face when he found the cup missing. A servant retrieved it quickly from the door, filled it, and placed it in his master’s hands. After Buntokapi drained it he said, ‘Go see that nothing is amiss with my wife.’
The servant ran off and Buntokapi nodded to another servant for a refill. Long moments passed while the sounds of Mara’s torment filled the night. Shortly the servant returned and said, ‘Master, Nacoya says it is a difficult birth.’
Buntokapi nodded and drank again, feeling the numbing warmth of the brandy rise up from his stomach. The scream came again, followed by a low sob. Exasperated, the Lord of the Acoma shouted over the noise, ‘Play something lively and loud.’
The musicians struck up a march tune. Buntokapi emptied the brandy. Irritated as Mara’s cries cut through the music, he tossed away the cup and motioned for the jug. He set the jug to his lips and took a large gulp.
His head began to swim. The screams seemed to come at him like a swarming foe, unwilling to be blocked by a shield. Buntokapi drank until his senses grew muddled. A happy glow suffused his vision and he sat with a stupid smile on his face until the water began to cool. The master still showed no signs of arising, and worried servants scurried to heat more water.
More brandy was brought, and after a time Buntokapi, Lord of the Acoma, could barely hear the music, let alone the unrelenting screams of his tiny wife as she struggled to bear his child.
In time, dawn silvered the screens to his chamber. Exhausted from a sleepless night, Nacoya slid open the study door and peeked in. Her Lord lay back sleeping in the cool water of the tub, his great mouth open and snoring. An empty jug of brandy rolled on the floor below his flaccid hand. Three musicians slept over their instruments, and the bath servants stood like battle-beaten soldiers, the towels hanging crumpled from their hands. Nacoya snapped the screen shut, disgust on her wrinkled face. How grateful she was that Lord Sezu was not alive to know that the successor to his title, Buntokapi, Lord of the Acoma, lay in such condition when his wife had laboured long to bear him a healthy son and heir.
A shout rang out.
‘Mara!’
Buntokapi’s anger rent the morning quiet like the challenge of a needra bull. Mara winced. She glanced instinctively at the crib near her side. Little Ayaki still slept, undisturbed by his father’s bellow. His eyes were tightly closed and his stocky limbs half tangled in his covers. After two months of Buntokapi’s roars, the infant could sleep through a thunderstorm. Mara sighed. The boy was his father’s son, thick of body and with a big head that had made his mother wish for death when he had been born. The difficult labour had drained Mara in a way she would not have thought possible before. While but eighteen years of age, she felt like an old woman, tired all the time. And the first sight of her son had saddened her. She had secretly hoped for a lithe, handsome child, such as her brother Lano must have been as a baby. Instead Buntokapi had given her a red-faced, round-headed little brute,
