Maia

  She gazed questioningly at Maia.

  "Well, come to that, Sessendris was on about this to me--oh, weeks ago now," said Maia.

  "What did she say?"

  "She said there was plenty of people in the lower city as'd like to see me acclaimed Sacred Queen, and I said that was silly. So then she said some of the Leopards would be ready to try it on if they thought it would be to their own advantage, like, and go down well with the people."

  Milvushina nodded. "And Kembri himself wants it to be me."

  "Yes, Nennaunir told me that Kembri and Elvair would likely have the same idea about you, but I didn't know whether to believe her or not. Do you want to be Sacred Queen? 'Cos I don't, I'll tell you that much."

  Milvushina shook her head. "No, I don't. Before Fornis it wouldn't have mattered all that much. But you see, Maia, during the last eight years Fornis has given the Sacred Queen so much real power that the whole thing's become absolutely vital to anyone who wants to rule Bekla."

  "Well, far's I'm concerned, you can have it," said Maia, smiling.

  "Oh, you still don't see, do you?" replied Milvushina almost frantically. "It doesn't matter what Durakkon said to Fornis: she won't go unless she's actually forced to, and she's as cunning and cruel as a whole army of devils! You and I--we're both in danger--in real danger--from her; but you most, because Kembri's protecting me. Oh, Maia, I'm so afraid she's thinking up some horrible plan to put you out of the way!"

  At this Maia, weeping, poured out the whole story of Tharrin's death, omitting nothing. Milvushina listened without interrupting, her needle laid aside. As Maia ended she said, "I knew your real reason for the auction at the barrarz, because Elvair told me. But I didn't know the rest. The cruel woman! How vile and wicked!"

  "What d'you reckon Ashaktis told Tharrin, then?" asked Maia.

  "That you were dead--that you weren't coming--that you'd deserted him--whatever would make him despair. And of course she brought the rope."

  "Milva, couldn't we say--I mean, sort of both announce publicly--as we don't neither of us want to be Sacred Queen?"

  "Oh, no; that would only look ridiculous--I mean, be-fore either of us has actually been put forward. All we can do is wait, and be terribly careful." She hesitated; then suddenly said, "Oh, Maia, don't go home tonight! Stay and sleep here!"

  For the life of her Maia could not share such desperate and immediate anxiety as this. "But--well, but I mean, I'll have to go home some time, Milva. I can't stay here for ever, can I?"

  "Never mind; just stay tonight. I'd feel happier if you did. We'll sleep together, like last year when you used to comfort me." She embraced Maia. "You can comfort me again: I need it, I can tell you."

  Maia could only accept, and send Brero back with a message to Ogma.

  The following morning the two girls were awakened by Milvushina's Beklan maid, a competent, handsome woman named Lokris. Bringing in a tray of milk, fruit, butter and fresh-baked bread, she asked Milvushina, "Have you heard the news, saiyett?"

  "From Chalcon, do you mean?" asked Milvushina apprehensively. "What's happened, Lokris?"

  "No, not from Chalcon, saiyett. I only asked because I thought you might not have heard last night. It seems the Sacred Queen's left Bekla for Paltesh. She went yesterday evening, but the Lord General wasn't informed until several hours after she'd gone. Her chamberlain, Zuno, came here with a message very late. Apparently he'd had orders not to deliver it earlier. She said she wanted to be among her own people for a while."

  "How did you come to hear this, Lokris?" asked Milvushina.

  "Well, saiyett, we get to hear things, of course, but as you know, I don't go chattering as a rule. Only I thought--well, I thought this was something you might like to know about quickly."

  68: MAIA COMMISSIONS A SEARCH

  The news that Form's had left Bekla for Paltesh filled both the upper and lower cities, from the poor to their rulers, with speculation. The interest was of that unquiet kind which people feel when they suspect that a public occurrence is likely to affect their personal lives. One thing above all that the Sacred Queen was known for was a woman of decision; of action, energy and vigor. (It was common knowledge, for example, that an entire night without sleep was nothing to the Sacred Queen.) It was also known that she often did the unexpected, devising moves that could hardly have been anticipated. Finally, she was a great confronter and outfacer, always ready and more than ready to beard anyone at all and overcome them by sheer force of spirit and power of rejoinder. Both Kem-bri and Durakkon had good cause to know this, to say nothing of the chief priest, various provincial governors and countless smaller fry down to the wretched dog-boy. If Fornis had left Bekla for Paltesh, therefore, it would certainly not be out of a nostalgic desire for a quiet holiday among her own countrymen. She must have some purpose, and as to what it might be there was much talk and guessing among the common people, to whom she remained what she had always been--a magical figure, intrepid, dazzling and numinous, her known cruelty rather adding to her goddess-like standing (for are not the gods crudest of all?) than otherwise. (It is a curious fact that lack of pity is often condoned in people admired for their personal courage.) At the same time, the impossibility of her continuing as Sacred Queen was not disputed. Such a thing would be impious and accordingly most unpropitious, inviting the anger of the gods. Fornis herself must know this, and therefore presumably (thought the people) had no wish to incur divine retribution. Most in the lower city had hitherto supposed that she would either return to Dari to rule Paltesh, or else that she would accept some honorable religious appointment conferred by the High Baron, such as controller of sacred statues, images and mural paintings throughout the empire. Everyone, of course, remembered her march upon the city nearly eight years before, but this she could not be expecting to repeat.

  Both Durakkon and Kembri, however, would have been glad to feet sure of this. They were among those--that is to say, virtually everyone--to whom it had never occurred that Fornis would leave the city. Now that she had, the very fact was reason for disquiet. Fornis could be up to anything, and that she was up to something was certain. The lower city, who saw her only from a distance and, as it were, on her own terms, had scarcely any notion of the extraordinary blend of shrewd cunning and violent passion given to all extremes which made up her character. "That woman," Kembri had once said to Durakkon, "would be capable of plotting to ruin herself and the world, as long as it destroyed her enemies and sated her pride." Now, with the queen gone, Durakkon, still aghast and wretched from his glimpse of some of the grisly weapons in her secret armory, could only await the outcome with misgiving. To command her return would be futile, for the secular power could claim no ultimate authority over the comings and goings of the Sacred Queen. Indeed, the only possible effect would be to prolong her absence. But then again, that? Might that in fact be relatively the safer course? (There could be no such thing as absolute safety for any enemy of Fornis.)

  Maia, however, shared none of this disquiet; for her there was only the simple, delightful knowledge that the queen was gone. She had not realized how badly she had been afraid of Fornis, or in how many respects her fear had been affecting her life. She had in fact been afraid whenever she made new friends, afraid to entertain in her own house, to go freely about the upper city, to enjoy to the full her public popularity. Now, like an animal venturing little by little out of concealment, she began gradually to do all these things. She gave a party for thirty guests (the limit, she reckoned, for her house, and of course she had to hire extra servants for the occasion). Among those who came were one or two of the first wounded officers back from Chalcon, and little good it was that they had to tell. Guided by Nennaunir and Otavis as to who would be suitable, she began to invite a few of her better-connected admirers to call on her for wine and talk. Maia, of course, was no brilliant conversationalist, but she was a good listener, lively and quick to both sympathy and laughter, and with these qualities added to great beauty no girl has
ever been able to go far wrong. By listening, too, she learned a good deal about affairs in the provinces, and began to understand what Kembri had meant by saying that men were apt to speak more freely and indiscreetly in the company of a beautiful girl whom they wished to impress. Indeed, she heard one or two things which she guessed that the Lord General would have been most interested to learn. However, she had not seen him since the morning when she had gone to the Barons' Palace to plead for Tharrin, and anyway she no-longer regarded herself as his agent. As far as she was concerned, that had come to an end on the banks of the Valderra. She no longer had any need to better herself by bearing tales. Also, she felt intuitively that she had fallen out of favor with Kembri, and this she attributed to his having decided upon Milvushina and not herself for Sacred Queen. That, however, troubled her little, for she did not believe that he would go the length of seeking her life or her ruin.

  So she fared abroad, and bought fine clothes, and slept till noon when she chose, and dined or supped with Sarget, and with Bodrin the Gelt iron-master, and such Leopard lords as her friends approved; and shed tears of rapture as Fordil's fingers called forth from the hinnari a divine sorrow in which all her own--and the world's--was dissolved. In the moment of awakening, and before ever her sleepy mind had fastened upon the actualities of the com-ing day, it would be filled with a delightful assurance that all was well. All, indeed, until she thought of Tharrin's ashes blowing on the easterly wind--ah! whither?

  Towards that remote west--Suba, Katria, Terekenalt--which somewhere in its immensity contained her own Zen-Kurel. She, the Serrelinda, who had saved the city, had been made a victim of the Sacred Queen's cruelty, wronged and cheated beyond anything that any honest heart should brook unavenged.

  And incomparably fortunate though she might be, she yet lacked the simple luck of thousands of peasant lasses whose lot lay far beneath her own; namely, to laugh and chide and bed and wake with her rightful man.

  "Zenka! Zenka!"

  "Did you call, miss?" said Ogma, coming into the steamy, perfumed bathroom where she lay naked as a bride and lonely as a widow.

  "Oh, don't mind me, Ogma," answered Maia, stretching for a towel to wipe her wet face. "I'm all upside-down this morning! Dreams--star-gazing--never mind." She broke off. "Oh, but listen--I want to go down to the silk market later, will you tell Brero? There's a new trader up from the south: Otavis thought we ought to take the opportunity."

  "Opportunity, miss? Strikes me you're not taking all what you might." For Ogma had been completely bowled over by Randronoth and the dawn delivery of the nine thousand meld (which she supposed to have been safely stowed somewhere or other) and had continually in her mind the prospect of a whole succession of lustful governors, councilors, merchants and what-not, whose tips to the Serrelinda's lady's maid (for Randronoth had been liberal) would carry her as far beyond her wildest dreams as ever Maia had been carried beyond hers. Nor, perhaps, could she--who had so often seen Maia return tousled from the couch of Sencho--altogether be blamed for wondering why on earth her mistress seemed too fastidious either to make three times as much money as any shearna in Bekla, or (if that was not to her fancy) at least to set about achieving a noble and wealthy marriage. There could be only one explanation.

  "Miss?"

  "Yes, Ogma?" Maia stepped out of the bath, flinging back her head and shoulders as she toweled her back. Then, as Ogma hesitated, "Well, what?"

  "D'you reckon they're going to make you Sacred Queen at the end of this year?"

  In the freezing silence that followed her question, the wretched girl stammered, "Well, miss, I--I only just-- only people keep saying--I mean, there's them as--"

  "Get out!" cried Maia, hurling the towel at her. "Get out! And if ever you dare to talk to me like that again I'll have you sent to Zeray, d'you understand? Zeray?"

  As Ogma, flabbergasted--for Maia was almost always the most easy-going and conversable of mistresses--stumbled out of the room, Maia flung herself across the massage-couch, sobbing, beating her clenched fists in the cushions and swearing as fluently as Occula herself.

  "Opportunity!" whispered Zen-Kurel in her mind's ear. "Aren't you the girl who had the wit to dress herself in golden hiies to meet the king? D'you suppose I've forgotten; d'you suppose I could ever forget my princess of opportunity? Only find the opportunity, Maia!"

  After a time she dried her eyes, dressed and went pensively down to breakfast in the sunny garden.

  Half an hour later, the silk trader temporarily forgotten, she was lying in a low-slung hammock with one foot on the grass when Nennaunir, all diaphanous gauze and perfume, burst into the garden with a fervor like that of a hound welcoming a returning master. Before she rightly knew what was happening, Maia found herself embraced and so smothered with kisses that she could hardly find breath to greet the shearna or ask what it was all about. .

  At length Nennaunir rose from her knees beside the hammock and stood looking down at her with a smile that broke into the outright laughter of pure joy.

  "You--you miracle-worker!" said the shearna, wiping tears from her eyes. "You conjuress! How d'you do it-- m'm?"

  Maia, feeling good-humored enough but a shade impatient of this unexplained transport, was visited by a touch of the Occulas.

  "Well, on my back, mostly, but sometimes I--"

  Nennaunir, grasping her two hands in her own, swung her to and fro in the hammock.

  "Oh, Maia, thank you! Thank you from the bottom of my heart! What more--what more can I say?"

  Maia looked up at her frowning, and shook her head.

  "You mean to say you don't know?" asked Nennaunir.

  "That's 'zackly what I do mean to say. What you on about?"

  "It's Sednil! Sednil! He's back, he's back in Bekla! He's freel Randronoth's given him a release token! And now the queen's gone, he's got nothing to be afraid of! I suppose you didn't arrange that too, by any chance, did you?"

  Maia jumped up.

  "Sednil; free? Oh, Nan, I'm so glad! Well, good old Randronoth--I never guessed he'd be that quick! I reckon he's a lot better than what he's given credit for; some ways, anyhow. What happened, then? Tell me! When did Sednil get back? Did he come straight to see you or what?"

  "No, dear; I went to see him. Well, he couldn't possibly hope to get admission to the upper city, could he? He reached Bekla early yesterday morning. He'd been three days walking from Lapan. He was in rags--good as--and he had two meld on him. And then by sheer luck he overheard someone in the market saying look, that was the Serrelinda's servant-girl over there buying vegetables, so he went up to her and gave her his two meld to come and tell me. So it was your Ogma who brought me the news. That was why I was so surprised you hadn't heard."

  "So'm I. 'N then what?"

  "Well, I went straight down, of course, and there he was, waiting by the Scales in the Caravan Market. My dear, we've hardly been out of bed for the last twenty-four hours! But I've got him some reasonable lodgings down near the Tower of the Orphans, and given him enough money to buy some decent clothes. He's started looking for work already." For a moment Nennaunir looked troubled. "I only hope he'll find something, and not get into any more trouble."

  "But surely, now, you can keep him going as long as ever he needs, can't you?" asked Maia.

  "Yes, of course I could," replied Nennaunir, "if only he'd have it. But I told you before, didn't I? He's a very funny lad that way, is Sednil. That's partly why I'm so fond of him, I suppose. He won't take money from anyone unless he reckons he's earned it himself. D'you know he's actually tallied up everything I've paid out for him? As far as he's concerned it's a loan and he means to pay it back, every last meld. That's what's worrying me: I don't think he's going to find it all that easy. I'm never sure how much you know, Maia dear, about Beklan ways; but it's usually rather difficult for branded men to get respectable work. Silly, I call it, because often, of course, it only drives them back to crime."

  Ogma came into the garden to clear away the plat
es.

  "Ogma," said Maia, "Miss Nennaunir tells me you saw her friend Sednil in the market yesterday, just after he'd got back from Lapan."

  Ogma looked startled and somewhat confused. "Why, yes, that's right, miss: he came up and spoke to me."

  "It didn't cross your mind that I might be interested to know he was back?"

  "Why, no, miss; I can't say as that occurred to me at all," replied Ogma, in a tone of defensive indignation. "Why, I didn't even know as you knew him!" Then, as Maia remained silent, she added, "I hope you're not thinking as I acted wrong, miss, in not telling you? It never even entered my head. He didn't look--well, to tell you the plain truth, miss, and I don't want to speak out of turn, but he didn't look at all like someone as you'd --that's to say--" Conscious of Nennaunir's eyes on her, she became even more disconcerted. "I'm sure I'm very sorry, saiyett, if I--"

  Maia laid a hand on her arm. "No, it's all right, Ogma. You weren't to know I knew him, and nobody's cross. Just forget all about it. I think Miss Nennaunir's staying to dinner" (Nennaunir nodded, smiling) "so we'll have those pigeons U-Sarget sent, shall we? That's if you think they've hung long enough? How do you think they ought to be cooked? You tell me."

  "You know," said Nennaunir, when Ogma had been sufficiently flattered, soothed and sent about her business, . "she was right, of course. Strictly speaking she wasn't to know. But all the same, a girl who's looking after someone like you really ought to have her ear a bit closer to the ground and be able to put two and two together better than that. It's part of her jot>--or it ought to be. Terebinthia, Sessendris: why don't you get yourself someone like that? You could easily afford it, and it might make all the difference one of these days."

  "No, I won't get rid of Ogma," said Maia. "She was with us at Sencho's and she knows my ways."

  "I'm not suggesting you should get rid of her," replied Nennaunir. "But why not get yourself a proper saiyett as well, someone a bit sharper--"

  "Well, I'll think it over, Nan, honest; and I'll think it over 'bout Sednil, too, and help if I can."