"The High Counselor's house--his property--that's being guarded, I suppose?"
"Naturally, esta-saiyett: there are soldiers there, and the domestic slaves have been left in the house for the time being."
"Including the woman Terebinthia?" asked the Sacred Queen.
Kembri looked embarrassed. "She--er--she left the city very suddenly the day after the murder, esta-saiyett. We don't know where she's gone. However, she's not under suspicion, for we know she never left the High Counselor's house at all that day."
"Perhaps not," replied the Sacred Queen, "but I think you know very well why she left the city so quickly, don't you?"
Before the Lord General could reply she went on, "And the High Counselor's girls?"
"Two of them were with him in the gardens that night, esta-saiyett--"
"I know that."
"Naturally, we're holding them for questioning."
"Naturally. But there was a third girl: I don't mean Dyphna, the one who bought her freedom that morning. Whom do I mean?"
Kembri hesitated. Maia could see that he was uneasy. The extent and accuracy of the queen's knowledge had evidently taken him by surprise. Fornis, now looking directly at him, spoke a little more sharply.
"I mean a girl named Milvushina. Where is she now?"
"She is--just at the moment--that is, while the household is being fully inventoried, you understand, esta-sai-yett--she is being looked after by my son."
"Yes. What you mean is that Elvair-ka-Virrion bribed Terebinthia and helped himself to the girl before any inventory of the High Counselor's property had been sub-mitted to the temple or to the High Baron?"
"Well--er--I dare say you know, esta-saiyett, that the girl is well-born--she came from the baron Enka-Mordet's family in Chalcon; a family we unfortunately had to destroy for sedition. I was quite unaware that the High Counselor had issued private instructions to the soldiers and enslaved her. Had I known, I would never have agreed. I think it's very doubtful in law whether she can be held to be a slave at all. In all the circumstances my son took pity on her. He thought that she--well, that she ought to be properly cared for."
"How very considerate of him! He probably also thought that I wouldn't come to learn of it. You know, of course, that by law all slaves in the household of a man who dies intestate without heirs belong to the temple?"
"Well, strictly speaking, esta-saiyett--"
"Yes, I am speaking strictly," replied she. "But perhaps Elvair-ka-Virrion consulted the chief priest before he helped himself to this girl, did he?"
The chief priest said nothing. The queen stood up.
"What a strange empire this is! Santil-ke-Erketlis must have every benefit of the law, but for the god Cran it's apparently otherwise. Let's hope he's not angered. Luckily he has at least got me to defend his interests."
She turned and looked at Maia, still standing against the wall in the posture of a waiting slave, head bent and hands clasped below her waist.
"This child was one of Sencho's girls too, wasn't she? What are you going to do with her? Help yourself? Or perhaps she's already earmarked for the governor here, is she?"
Kembri seemed to be controlling himself with an effort. "Esta-saiyett, if I may say so, you are a shade too exacting. The city has been turned upside-down by this murder. Everything has been in confusion--"
"Oh, very much," said she. "I'm confused myself; and not least by your son's blasphemous temerity."
"Esta-saiyett--"
Fornis turned her back on him. "Come here, child."
Maia, startled and blushing, obeyed. Fornis looked her slowly up and down.
"She looked much better when she was swimming in the Barb the other night. I'm afraid you can't have been looking after her very well, poor girl. She ought to have been treated in accordance with the law, of course. Never mind; I'll see to it for you. That will save any risk of further irregularity, such as household saiyettts accepting bribes to hand over girls who are temple property and then leaving the city before they can be called to account for it."
"Esta-saiyett," said Kembri, "for the sake of public safety and our own safety too, let us both be plain. I confess my son helped himself to the Chalcon girl and that he had no legal right to do so. But at least that causes no real harm. The Tonildan girl I need. She is vital to a secret and important scheme which could very well turn out to be of great advantage to us all."
The queen raised her eyebrows. "This child?"
"This child, esta-saiyett. As things stand, no other girl will do. I beg you not to make too much of my son's-- lapse. This girl here may quite possibly be able to effect something of critical value to us all. Let me explain to you what I have in mind."
"No, you needn't," she said, raising her hand, on which the snake ring, catching the light, flashed an instant in Maia's eyes. "I can guess well enough. Some man is to be decoyed--enticed--betrayed. How else do you work, and what else could such a child be good for? As for your son, I was on my way to speak to the High Baron about this profane act on his part--"
"I'm convinced, esta-saiyett, that all he wanted was to show some kindness to a young woman of good family who should never have been enslaved to a man like Sencho--"
"And do you expect either me or the High Baron to believe that? For one thing, your son's ways are notorious." She paused reflectively. "But also I rather suspect, Lord General, that you may be entertaining certain notions on your own behalf regarding the future of the girl Milvushina. However, I'll say no more of that. In fact I'll oblige you: I'll oblige you in two respects. I'll disregard your son's sacrilegious behavior--for the moment--and I myself will look after this girl--this piece of temple property--until further notice."
"But I need her tomorrow, esta-saiyett."
"Then you may send to me and ask for her!" flashed the queen in a tone of conclusive finality. "The girl is temple property--not yours. Maia!" (Maia jumped.) "My saiyett is waiting for you in the corridor."
Thereupon she swept out of the room. Maia, bewildered, afraid to obey her and afraid not to, remained where she was beside the chair. After some moments, however, her eyes brimming with tears of nervous anxiety, she fell on her knees before the Lord General.
"My lord, Occula! If you'd only let me see Occula-- just for a few moments--"
"You'd better hurry up and obey the Sacred Queen," replied Kembri coldly. "Whatever else you do, I don't advise you to displease her."
Maia, raising her palm, stumbled from the room. Outside, the Palteshi woman, giving her a half-smile, wrapped a cloak round her shoulders, took her arm and led her along the corridor and down the temple staircase.
41: QUEEN FORNIS
For a good nine hours and more Maia lay sleeping in a great, soft bed, while the sunlight moved slowly across the floor until at length evening fell with a gradual melting and vanishing of the hard, black shadows of the afternoon. The unexpected lifting of the horrible fear in which she had lived since the killing of Sencho; Kembri's plan to make use of her against Bayub-Otal; the unexpected appearance of the Sacred Queen and her own sudden removal--whither and for what purpose she had no idea: these had left her as much confused and bewildered as a bird flown by chance into a lighted room.
She had not even had the self-possession to ask Queen Fornis's saiyett where they were going, but only hobbled on, leaning on the woman's arm and taking in little or nothing of their surroundings. They stopped. She found herself in a jekzha. A quarter of an hour later she could not even have said whether or not they had passed through the Peacock Gate. Two things she knew--that she was no longer a prisoner and that she longed above all for sleep.
When at length they reached their destination, she was aware--vaguely--only of a great, stone-fronted house, a flight of steps and a heavy, panelled door which was opened to the woman's knock--by whom she did not notice. Inside was coolness and two rows of green columns between which hung suspended some huge, dully-gleaming, winged effigy. She was led up one staircase, then another
, and finally into a sunny, clean-smelling room with a bed. The woman undressed her, tut-tutting at the state of her tunic, which she simply threw outside the door as though to be rid of it; and thereupon Maia, all dirty as she was, climbed into the bed and was unconscious almost before the woman had left her.
When she woke, the room was in twilight. Through the windows opposite shone an afterglow sky of ochre and pale-green, and from somewhere just outside came the low cackle of birds settling to roost along a cornice--mynahs or starlings. The air smelt of evening--wood-smoke and moist herbage. She must be high up, for from where she lay she could see neither roofs nor trees. It was quiet-- too quiet, she thought, for the lower city.
For some time she lay still, listening to the gentle commotion of the birds as the last light ebbed out of the sky. In spite of her complete ignorance, both about her situation and the future, she felt full of relief and even a curious kind of confidence. Whatever lay ahead, it could only be better than the horror behind. Evidently Queen Fornis had a use for her, though Maia could not remember what, if anything, she had said about it.
Well, and come to that Sencho had had plenty of use for her, too. Strange to think that she would never again feel him panting and shuddering as she did what he liked on the big couch in the fountain-room.
What would be-come of his household now, she wondered--the cooks, Jarvil the porter, Ogma and the others? No doubt the skilled ones would be able to take their skills elsewhere. Lucky Dyphna, getting out just in time! And apparently Elvair-ka-Virrion had taken Milvushina: to keep or to set free?
Suddenly, with a quick darkening of the spirit, she remembered Occula. Occula was still held in the temple for questioning. Whether she told them anything or not, a slave had no rights at law: for a slave to be condemned, only suspicion was necessary. Occula's only hope was that some influential person might speak for her.
Who might be ready to do it? Shend-Lador or some of his Leopard friends? Yet they were only young blades-- not men of influence. Even Elvair-ka-Virrion did not strike her as likely to be of much help here. Suddenly she thought of Sarget. Sarget--a middle-aged, wealthy man, not prof-ligate, widely respected for his culture and good sense. Not a nobleman, true, but at least a man who had lent money to noblemen. After she had danced the senguela, Sarget had given her his arm out of the hall and praised her warmly. Could she possibly get a message to him now, begging him to intercede for Occula?
At this moment she became aware, beyond the far end of the big, shadowy chamber, of lamplight behind a curtained archway. Someone was moving quietly about in the adjoining room.
She coughed two or three times. The lamplight grew brighter, the curtain was drawn aside and the Paltes woman came in, carrying lighted lamps on a tray. Three of these she placed on stands about the room, then came across and sat down on the edge of the bed, smiling at Maia as she put down the fourth lamp on the table close by.
"Good sleep? Feeling better?"
Maia nodded. "Where am I?"
The other looked surprised. "Why, in Queen Fornis's house, naturally! Great Cran, girl, you look frightened to death! You've nothing to be afraid of, you know. You ought to be thanking the gods for your good luck!"
Maia managed to smile. "Well, only it's all a bit sudden, like; and I've had a real bad time."
"But it's over now."
"Will you tell me," asked Maia hesitantly; "well, who you are, saiyett; why I'm here and what I've got to expect, like?"
The woman laughed. "Well, for a start, I'm Ashaktis, and you can call me that; you needn't call me saiyett. But before I tell you any more--Maia, isn't it?--you'd better come along to the bath. The queen will want to see you as soon as you're fit to be seen--"
"What for?" Maia's fingers tightened on the coverlet.
"What for? Don't be silly! Are you afraid of her?" asked Ashaktis.
"Yes, I am. Reckon I'm not the only one, either."
"But you used to be with Sencho, didn't you? Anyway, the bath now!" said Ashaktis peremptorily. "Put this wrap round you and come with me."
Evidently the bath had already been prepared, for as they walked together along the open gallery outside, Maia could smell the perfumed steam. The bathroom, when they reached it, fairly took her breath away. It was even more luxurious than Sencho's. Half of one wall consisted of a broad stone hearth spread with glowing charcoal, and here two great caldrons of water, each with a long-handled iron dipper, stood gently bubbling. The circular bath, a good seven feet across and made of green malachite, was sunk in the floor and surrounded with glazed, crimson tiles, each bearing a different design of a bird, flower or animal. On shelves along the opposite wall were laid out any num-ber of flasks of scent and perfumed oils, smooth and rough pumice-stones, scented soaps, small files and pointed wooden spills.
To one side stood the cold-water cistern, from which a copper pipe, stopped with a wooden plug, led down into the bath. There were two carved, wooden couches covered with thick towels and rugs, and a deep, open-fronted recess stacked with wraps, slippers, brushes and at least three silver hand-mirrors.
A Deelguy slave-girl, dark-eyed and broad-nosed, her black hair in a plaited rope down her back, was kneeling to fan the charcoal. Ashaktis, dismissing her, took off Maia's wrap and hung it on a peg, gave her her hand to step down into the bath and then seated herself near-by.
Maia, used as she had become to luxury, had never experienced opulence like this. Always capable of setting aside her worries in any pleasure which the immediate moment might offer, she spent plenty of time in the water, feeling the tension and grime of days disappearing like smoke on the wind. When she had finished washing her hair, she asked Ashaktis whether she might let some of the water out and add more from the caldrons on the fire. .
"Oh, I'll see to that," said Ashaktis, getting up and plunging a bared arm into the bath to grope for the plug. "Just stand out of the way while I pour this boiling water in."
"Can you tell me what this is all about?" asked Maia, slipping back into the hot water with a wriggle of pleasure and splashing it over herself.
Ashaktis, laying aside the dipper, sat down again.
"How much do you know about the Sacred Queen?" she asked.
Maia recalled all that Occula had told her of Fornis of Paltesh; of her unscrupulous rapacity, her cruelty, her relentless and cunning tenure of power; of the admiration she inspired and the fear she was capable of inspiring when she wished; of the many men, dazzled, who had tried to gain her, and how none had been even so much as rumored to have succeeded.
"Reckon just about nothing," she answered.
"I've been with her for twenty years," said Ashaktis, "ever since she was a girl in her father's house in Dari. I was with her when she took the boat and sailed it to Quiso. You'll have heard that tale, I suppose?" (Maia nodded.) "Cran only knows what I've done for her since, and Cran'll destroy me for it one day, I dare say, for she's thumbed her nose at him and every one of the gods for years. But it'll have been worth it. Perhaps you've learnt something yourself already, have you, about the difference between scrubbing floors for the bare living and doing what rich people want done by girls who know how to stay on the right side of them and keep their mouths shut?"
"Ah, that I have," replied Maia decisively.
"Life's not easy with the queen," went on Ashaktis, "but at least it's never dull. There's times she makes your hair stand on end. You've got to look alive with her. For a long time now I've had more than enough money to buy myself free, but I never do. She's like one of those drugs the Deelguy sell: people keep saying they'll give it up, but they don't. I've become addicted to Miss Fornis. One day she'll be the death of me and that'll be that."
Maia felt emboldened by the woman's friendly loquacity. "Go on, then; tell me something you've seen her do. Something out of the ordinary, like you were saying."
Ashaktis was silent for a time, reflecting. Maia, looking this way and that to admire the serpents, porcupines, gazelles and panthers depicted on t
he bath-tiles, waited expectantly.
"Well, one time, several years ago now," said Ashaktis at length, "we went up into Suba. It was only about three months after we'd got back from Quiso; that's to say, before those uncles of hers had really got it into their heads that she didn't mean to marry. She'd told them she wanted to go to Suba to hunt duck and water-fowl. There weren't many of us; one of the uncles and his daughter, a girl of about twenty; a couple of huntsmen, Miss Fornis and me. The cooks and guides and the rest we hired once we'd crossed the Valderra. You've never been in Suba, have you?"
"Never," said Maia.
"It's a strange place, and the people are strange, too. It's like nowhere else in the empire--half land and half water. You travel everywhere by boat, down the water-channels; like corridors of water they are, between one village and the next, and the reeds and trees standing high all round you. You hear bitterns booming in the swamps and I've seen black turtles--oh, big as a soldier's shield-lying out on branches above the water.
"After about ten days poor old uncle was tired out, so Miss Fornis went out alone with me and four men--two Subans and our own two Dari huntsmen. We came to an island in the swamps and in the middle was a heronry. We could see the big, ramshackle nests, high up in the tops of the trees. You know the way they build?"
Maia nodded.
"Well, we'd no sooner got to this island than Miss Fornis looks up at the trees and says 'Ah, herons! I've always fancied young herons would be good in a pie; better than pigeons. Phorbas,' she says to one of the Suban lads, 'just climb up and bring me down half a dozen, will you?' 'No, saiyett,' says the boy, 'that I won't! I value my life and that's the truth. There's no living man could reach those nests, and even if he did the herons would be at him like dragons.' 'Why, you damned, cowardly, Suban marsh-frog!' she said to him. 'I don't know why ever I hired the likes of you! Go on, then, Khumba,' she said to one of our huntsmen, 'you'd better just show him how to do it, hadn't you?' 'I'm very sorry, saiyett,' says Khumba, 'but I reckon yon Suban fellow's in the right of it. I'm no more going up there than he is. My wife wouldn't fancy me with a broken neck, that's about the size of it.'
" 'Cran and Airtha! Well, here goes then!' says Miss Fornis, as if she was stepping out of doors into the rain. 'And since you're not a man,' she said to the Suban, 'you can just give me those breeches of yours to keep my legs from getting scratched. Come on, hurry up!' And she made him take them off. They still thought it must be some joke she was up to. She was only just seventeen then, you see, and in those days her ways weren't so well-known.