through the opened collar of his robe. She saw the marks of Teani’s passion still visible on the skin over his collarbone, and the hard set of his lips. Lastly she looked into his eyes, which showed a mixture of thwarted anger, childlike confusion, and longing.
Unaware that in the eyes of her husband she was beautiful and, in a strange way, untouchable, Mara bowed. The only words she could think to utter felt wrong.
Buntokapi stared at her with an intensity that hurt to witness. ‘And like the pusk adder, my wife, your venom stops the heart. You play the Game of the Council with masterful precision. How could you know which face I would wear, the Anasati, whose blood and birth were mine, or the Acoma, whose honour I pledged to preserve with a vow?’
Mara willed her rigid posture to relax. But her voice shook ever so slightly as she said, ‘The Acoma family is ancient in honour. No Lord of that name has ever lived in shame.’
Buntokapi stepped sharply forward, his legs easily spanning the breadth of the ceremonial pool. Towering over the slight form of his wife, he bent and caught her wrists. ‘I could change that, proud woman. At a stroke, I could make the honour of your forebears as dust in the wind.’
Forced to look into his angry eyes, to feel the strength of a man she had not cherished, Mara needed all her will to hold steady. A minute passed heavy with threat. Then the darting play of the insects that fed among the flowers inspired Ayaki to spontaneous laughter. Buntokapi looked down and noticed the weals his handling had left on Mara’s flesh. He blinked in embarrassment and let her go, and it seemed to her as she watched that something vital drained from him. Then he straightened, and a look that she had never known crossed his face.
‘Perhaps I was wrong, the day we married,’ said Buntokapi. ‘Perhaps I am indeed as stupid as you and my father and my brothers believed. But for the sake of my son, I will die bravely as an Acoma.’
Mara bent her head. Suddenly she had to fight to suppress tears. For one brief instant she had perceived the man her husband might have been had he been raised with the love and the care that had all fallen to his elder brothers. The Lord of the Anasati might have done little to foster the potential of this, his third, son; but she had played upon Buntokapi’s inadequacies until she achieved the end she had desired. Mara felt pain within; when she should feel triumph, she instead knew grief. For in this one moment she saw that Buntokapi’s potential for greatness, now glimpsed like the hint of sunlight through clouds, should be wasted so soon in death.
But the poignancy of the moment lasted only a second. Buntokapi caught her arm in the bruising grip of a warrior and pulled her roughly to his side. ‘Come, wife. Fetch our son from his basket. Before the sun sets this day, you shall both see what it takes to die like a Lord of the Acoma.’
Unthinkingly Mara offered protest. ‘Not the child! My Lord, he’s too young to understand.’
‘Silence!’ Buntokapi pushed her roughly, and distressed by his shout, Ayaki began to cry. Over the child’s wails, the Lord of the Acoma said, ‘I die for the honour of my son. It is right that he should remember. And you.’ He paused, his lips curled in malice. ‘You shall witness what you have wrought. If you would engage in the Game of the Council, woman, you must know that the pieces you manipulate are flesh and blood. For the future, if you continue, it is right that you should remember.’
Mara picked up Ayaki, hiding her distress in concern for her child. As Buntokapi’s steps retreated from the grove, she paused, battling a strong urge to weep. She had thought she understood the stakes of her position when she grieved after the murder of her father and brother. But now Buntokapi had shown her the scope of her ignorance. Feeling humbled, and inexplicably dirtied, she held Ayaki closely. Her husband’s command must be obeyed. Somehow she must find the resilience to weather the final, bitter fruits of her victory. If she did not, the Minwanabi waited with plans to ruin her, even as ruthlessly as she had plotted the downfall of Buntokapi to secure herself immunity from Anasati treachery.
The soldiers of the Acoma stood rigidly in a square, the plumes of the officers’ ceremonial helms tugged by the gentle breeze that sometimes blew before sundown. Within the formation waited Keyoke, Papewaio, and another warrior sent by the Anasati to act as witness; and between them, clad in the red robes of ritual, bound with a sash of Acoma green, Buntokapi lifted a sword that was also red, and sharpened to the keenest edge Tsurani armourers could fashion.
Outside the square, but afforded a clear view by the slight rise of ground, Mara shifted Ayaki’s warm weight to her other shoulder. She wished the proceedings were done with. Ayaki was wide awake and playful, tangling small fists in her hair and gown, and exclaiming brightly over the warriors in their colourful lacquered armour. Like all things Tsurani, even death had an element of ceremony. Buntokapi stood statue-still in the centre of the square, the blade that awaited his end in his hands, while Keyoke recited the list of the honours he had earned as Lord of the Acoma. The account was very short: one battle and a dozen wrestling matches. Mara swallowed stiffly, aware as never before how young her husband really was. Tsurani faces aged slowly, which made it easy to forget that Buntokapi was barely twenty, a scant two years older than herself.
Straight, still, every inch the warrior despite his bandy legs, he showed no weakness in his bearing, but something about his eyes reflected the desperate determination needed to see this moment through. Mara swallowed again and gently pried Ayaki’s fingers off the lobe of her ear. He shrieked with laughter, ready for more of such play.
‘Hush,’ scolded Mara.
In the square, Keyoke finished his speech. He bowed deeply and said, ‘Go in honour, Lord of the Acoma. Let all men remember your name without shame.’
As he straightened, each warrior simultaneously removed his helm. The breeze pushed damp locks back from sweating faces; emotionless eyes watched the sword Buntokapi lifted above his head.
Mara swallowed again, her eyes stinging with salty tears. She tried to think of Lano, sprawled and bloodied under the hooves of barbarian horses; but the sight of Buntokapi, standing in failing sunlight with his sword raised in final tribute to the gods of life, was far too real to put aside. Except for his crudeness in bed, and his explosive temper, he had not been an oppressive husband – had Mara used the same manipulations to mould him instead of destroy him … No, she commanded herself, there can be no regret. She called upon the discipline she had learned in Lashima’s temple and banished such thoughts from her mind. Without expression she watched Buntokapi turn the sword and set the blade point against his stomach.
He offered no final words. But the eyes that met Mara’s were dark with irony and a strange admiration mixed with the triumph of knowing she must live with this moment for all her living days.
‘Before the sun sets this day, you shall both see what it takes to die like a Lord of the Acoma,’ he had said to her in the grove. Mara’s hands clenched reflexively in the folds of Ayaki’s clothing as Buntokapi lowered his head. Large hands, clumsy on the body of a woman but capable in wrestling and war, closed on the red-laced leather of the sword. Lowering sunlight gilded the sweat on his wrists. Then his knuckles tightened. He took a swift, running step and dived forward. The pommel of the weapon rammed cleanly against the earth. The blade drove through his body. Hands and hilt struck his breastbone, and he grunted, his body gone rigid with agony.
He did not cry out. A sigh left his lips while the life bled swiftly through his fingers and mouth. As the spasms of his muscles slowed, and almost stopped, he turned his head. Lips caked with dust and blood framed a word that no man heard, the dead eyes stilled upon the figure of the woman and child who stood on the hillock above.
Ayaki began to wail. Mara loosened hands that gripped his young body too tight, and by the ache in her chest realized
