Servant of the Empire recap

Desio of the Minwanabi opens his rule by swearing a blood oath to the god of death to destroy the Acoma, and recalls his brilliant cousin Tasaio from the war to do it. Mara, consolidating her unexpected victory, buys barbarian slaves cheaply and among them a Midkemian named Kevin of Zun, who refuses to behave as a slave and becomes her lover and her most persistent critic. Under his questioning she starts to see the Game of the Council as something that could be changed rather than only survived. The Warlord Almecho falls and dies, a violent scramble for his office follows, and the young Emperor Ichindar seizes the moment to abolish the Warlord's office and rule directly, with Mara among his most useful supporters. Desio dies and Tasaio takes the Minwanabi, and the feud becomes open war. Mara loses Nacoya to an assassin and comes close to losing everything, but Arakasi's infiltration finally opens the Minwanabi estate. Tasaio takes his own life, the Emperor grants Mara his lands and names her Servant of the Empire, Kevin goes home under the peace, and Mara marries Hokanu of the Shinzawai.

Previously, in Daughter of the Empire: on the world of Kelewan, the Empire of Tsuranuanni is governed by rigid honour and by the Game of the Council, an endless contest among the great houses fought with marriages, trade, assassination and staged accidents. Mara was pulled out of a temple at seventeen when her father and brother were killed in the war on the barbarian world, in a battle arranged by the Minwanabi, leaving her Ruling Lady of a house reduced to a handful of soldiers. She rebuilt it by breaking convention: she recruited masterless grey warriors, bargained with a cho-ja queen for a hive on Acoma land, and took the spymaster Arakasi and his network into her service. To force the rival Anasati into protecting her she married their least regarded son, Buntokapi, then manoeuvred him into a position where honour left him no choice but to take his own life, leaving her ruling for their infant son Ayaki, whose Anasati blood obliges Lord Tecuma to keep protecting the house. Finally she survived a trap at Lord Jingu of the Minwanabi's own estate, losing her guard Papewaio but proving before the Warlord and the assembled nobility that her host had broken guest-right. Jingu took his own life, and his son Desio inherited a damaged house and a debt of vengeance.

Desio of the Minwanabi begins his rule by binding his house to its purpose in the most absolute way a Tsurani can: a blood oath sworn to Turakamu, the god of death, committing the Minwanabi to destroy the Acoma or be destroyed themselves. He recalls his cousin Tasaio from command on the barbarian world to plan the campaign, and it quickly becomes clear that Tasaio is the more dangerous of the two by a wide margin, a soldier of real brilliance who is patient, precise and entirely without impulse. On the Acoma side Mara is consolidating a victory nobody expected her to win. She expands the estate's trade aggressively, and when the war floods the markets with cheap barbarian prisoners she buys a large number of them, including a red-haired Midkemian named Kevin of Zun, whose behaviour makes it immediately obvious that he has no intention of being a Tsurani slave.

Kevin should not survive his own insolence, but Mara keeps him alive first out of curiosity and then for his usefulness: he knows things about the enemy world nobody in the Empire has bothered to learn, and he asks questions no Tsurani would ask. He becomes her lover and, more disruptively, her critic, challenging the assumptions she has never examined, that slaves are property, that honour requires suicide, that the Game of the Council is simply how the world works. Meanwhile the Minwanabi campaign begins in earnest with attacks on Acoma trade, caravans and allies rather than open battle, and the Hamoi Tong, the Empire's assassins' guild, is set on Mara and her son. Arakasi fights a quiet war of intelligence against an opponent who is at least his equal, and the Acoma survive by a narrowing margin.

Politics on the imperial scale begins to move faster than the feud. Events beyond the rift go badly for the Warlord, and the Assembly of Magicians, which stands above the Empire's law, withdraws the support that made his position unassailable; Almecho does not survive the collapse of his authority. A violent scramble for the white and gold follows, settled largely by assassination, and the young Emperor Ichindar uses the chaos to do what no Light of Heaven has done in centuries: he abolishes the office of Warlord and takes the government of the Empire into his own hands. Mara, who has become one of the most visible ruling lords in Tsuranuanni, backs him, which puts the Acoma at the centre of imperial politics and sets them against every traditionalist house that wants the old order back. Jiro of the Anasati is prominent among those houses, and his grievance against Mara is personal as well as political.

The Minwanabi leadership passes to Tasaio when Desio dies, and the feud becomes open war between the two houses, fought with armies as well as agents. Tasaio is a far more capable enemy than his cousin: he attacks Mara's alliances, her trade and her officers, forces engagements on ground of his choosing, and comes close to breaking the Acoma more than once. Mara's own household is not safe, and neither is her son. Kevin's presence beside her, meanwhile, has become a political liability as well as a personal complication, since a ruling lady of the Empire openly attached to a barbarian slave hands her enemies an easy weapon. Mara refuses to give him up, and pays for it in standing.

The war with the Minwanabi reaches its worst point. Nacoya, First Adviser and the woman who raised Mara, is killed by an assassin, and the loss takes from Mara both her oldest counsellor and the last person who could tell her she was wrong without calculation. Mara comes near to losing the Acoma outright, and survives on the strength of the unconventional things she built years earlier: the grey warriors who owe her their names, the cho-ja hive, and Arakasi's network. Arakasi, playing the longest game of his career, works his way into the Minwanabi household itself, at severe personal cost, and finds what Mara needs. Beyond the rift, meanwhile, the war that has run through both books is finally ending, and the terms of the peace include returning the surviving barbarian prisoners to their own world.

Arakasi's infiltration opens the Minwanabi from within, Mara's forces take the great lake estate, and Tasaio, beaten with no honourable exit remaining, takes his own life. The feud ends with the Minwanabi extinguished as a house and their lands, wealth and holdings granted to the Acoma by the Emperor. Ichindar then names Mara Servant of the Empire, an honour awarded only a handful of times in Tsuranuanni's history, marking her as one who has served the Empire above her own house; it makes her the most celebrated figure in the Empire and, because the traditionalist houses blame her for the abolition of the Warlord's office, one of the most exposed. The peace returns the barbarian prisoners home, and Kevin, who changed the way Mara sees her own society, goes back to his world. Mara marries Hokanu of the Shinzawai. She has won everything she set out to win, and made a new set of enemies in the process.

The Minwanabi are destroyed. Arakasi's long infiltration opens the family's defences from the inside, Mara's forces take the great lake estate, and Tasaio, beaten and with no honourable exit left, takes his own life. The feud that has run between the two houses for generations ends with the Acoma standing and the Minwanabi extinguished as a political entity, their lands, wealth and holdings granted to Mara by the Emperor. Ichindar goes further: he names her Servant of the Empire, an honour granted only a handful of times in the Empire's history and never in living memory, marking her as one who has served Tsuranuanni above her own house. It makes her, at a stroke, the most celebrated and most exposed figure in the Empire, and it does not make her safe. The office of Warlord has been abolished and Ichindar now rules directly, which suits Mara and enrages the traditionalist houses who blame her for the change; Jiro of the Anasati is among them. The war beyond the rift is over, and the peace returns the surviving barbarian prisoners to their own world, so Kevin, who changed how Mara thinks about honour, slavery and power, goes home. Mara marries Hokanu of the Shinzawai. Nacoya is dead. The Great Game continues, and Mara has just given the Empire's conservatives a common enemy. The story concludes in Mistress of the Empire.