the screen to admit the evening breeze, and depart.'
Alone once more, and confronted by his pens and his desk, the First Adviser thumbed a blank sheet of parchment and pondered how to compose his missive to Tasaio. While the man was ostensibly transferred to command of another Minwanabi garrison, Desio had effectively ordered banishment. The fortress in the Outpost Isles had only been established to protect Minwanabi shipping from piracy; and those waters had been cleared of such brigands for over a century and a half. The fort still stood due to the hidebound Tsurani reluctance to surrender any ground once taken. The Minwanabi manned that desolate, fogbound chunk of rock simply to prevent anyone else from supplanting them. Now one of the most gifted military minds in the Empire was being sent to the hinterlands to grow moss.
Disgusted by what he perceived as a waste, Incomo reminded himself that as the price of a grand failure went, life on that rock was light punishment. Had Lord Jingu remained alive to wear the Lord's mantle, Tasaio would have answered for such disgrace with his head preserved in a jar of vinegar and red-bee honey. Setting brush and ink to parchment, the First Adviser sighed that so painful an order should be relegated to written correspondence. Tasaio surely deserved better. A slight word of personal regret would be appropriate; seasoned with the reverses of politics, Incomo knew better than to burn any bridge at his back. Fortune in the Great Game could turn all too quickly, and a man never knew where he might owe his loyalty in the future.
As the litter rounded the last bend in the road, Mara leaned out of the curtains with childish eagerness. The Tsurani bearers shouldered their off-balanced burden in stoic silence; they could sense their mistress's excitement.
'Nothing has changed,' Mara said breathlessly. 'The trees and the grass look so green.' The wet season lushness of the landscape was a balm to the eye after years of barren desert. Over the final knoll, past the fences of the outermost needra fields, the well-kept estate spread across the land. Dead branches and brush shoots had been pruned back, and the grass under the hedges stood neatly clipped. Mara could see the advance scout waving from the top of the next rise. For an instant she worried: could some clever enemy have set an ambush to turn her homecoming to disaster? Had she, in her excitement, pushed her warriors and her scouts ahead too rapidly to ascertain the safety of the road? Then logic absolved her fear; she rode at the van of a triumphant army - more than one foe must join ranks in force to threaten her at her own borders.
A scout reported to the head of the column.
Mara pushed impatiently at the gauze hanging that separated her from the officers who marched beside her.
'What news, Lujan?'
Her Force Commander flashed a smile, his teeth vividly white in his desert-tanned face. 'Mistress, a reception!'
Mara smiled. Only now could she admit to anyone, most of all herself, just how desperately she had longed for home. The fanfares that had greeted her and Lord Xacatecas in llama and Jamar had been flattering, but even celebrations that heaped her with honours had proven taxing. Close to three years had passed since the orders to send her garrison in defence of the borders; too long a time in the life of a young son for a mother to be absent. Nights in Kevin's arms and the rigours of battle by day were only a distraction from her ache to see Ayaki.
The returning army crested the hill, the tramp of three thousand feet in the damp soil of the road a dull thunder in the morning quiet. Mara breathed in the scents of rich foliage and akasi, then went wide-eyed with wonder.
At the junction of the Imperial way and the road to the Acoma estate rose the ornate, towering arch of a magnificent prayer gate. New paint and enamelled roof tiles sparkled in sunlight and in the gate's deep shadow, a hundred Acoma soldiers stood in ceremonial armour.
Before their rows of shining shields were other well-loved figures - Keyoke, correct as his warriors but wearing the embroidered badge of an Adviser; Jican dwarfed by the hadonra's staff of office; Nacoya, her bothered expression buried in smiles - and a pace ahead of her, a boy.
Mara's breath caught. She fought a rush of tears, determined not to succumb to