Maia (52 page)

to-who could tell what? Well, she would certainly pay her debt to him, and warmly and bountifully at that, even though he might not be exactly her idea of Shakkarn incarnate. Her beauty, her body, was all she had to give him, and her gratitude was as sincere as it could be. Indeed, at this moment Maia had quite fogotten her ulterior, secret purpose-Kembri's purpose. Why, now she came to think about it, she would positively enjoy giving herself to him- yes, really! She'd no doubt be able to help him-teach him a thing or two. Oh, yes, he had a funny way with him, but then he'd had a funny life-and his poor hand and all. After this evening she really couldn't find it in her heart to deny him. He deserved a nice time, he really did.

He had still done nothing to break the silence. Why not a hand on her shoulder? Or better still, his lips to her shoulder; then her cheek could turn just a little and touch his. What a pity he seemed never to have learned any such ways! Well, but even so, he could at least speak, surely? He'd had time enough now, in all conscience, to think of something to say.

She turned round on her stool. Bayub-Otal was sitting on a bench, his back against the table, gazing absently down into his wine-cup with the air of one waiting without impatience. He certainly didn't look nervous or tense; not in the least like a man wondering what best to say or how to say it. Glancing up, his eye met hers, whereupon he smiled slightly, nodded and sipped his wine.

"Nearly ready?"

Perplexed, she frowned a moment. "Oh, yes, I'm quite done, my lord."

She stood up, turning one way and the other to make sure her skirt swung freely. "Were you waiting for me? I'm ready all right!"

She crossed over and sat beside him on the bench. "My lord-I can't thank you enough for making me dance tonight. I was nervous-I was real scared-when you first told me; but you knew better than I did, didn't you?"

"I thought you ought to have the opportunity. One can't always expect to have Fordil, you see."

"Oh, he was wonderful! I never knew-I couldn't have imagined-and the drummers, too-I mean, I couldn't have gone wrong if I'd tried."

"I've paid him for you, by the way. I gave him what he'd have got from a shearna."

This was her cue-all the cue she seemed likely to get, anyway. She flung her arms round his neck, and would have kissed him; but he turned his face aside.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, my lord! And did
you
like it? Did I do as well as you'd hoped?"

"You weren't bad as Shakkarn." He paused, considering. "And you were most resourceful, I admit. It hadn't occurred to me-it should have, of course-that without a costume or a dresser you'd be in difficulties over the old woman. I blame myself for that. But you certainly got over it very neatly."

"You've been marvelously good to me, my lord, really you have. I'm so grateful! What can I do to show it to you?"

He shrugged. "Practice, I suppose."

She waited for him to go on, but he was silent. Elated and full of her triumph, she was now consumed with sheer, raw desire. For him? she wondered. For a man, anyway. Then, Yes! yes! certainly for him! Yes, of course, for him! Come on, then!

She rose, put her wine-cup on the table and sat down on his knee. After a moment, since he made no move to support or embrace her, she once more put her arm round his neck. Her other hand, finding his, drew it up to her bosom and fondled it back and forth.

"You're the kindest man I've ever known. I mean it, truly. Oh-" She looked impatiently about the room- "isn't there somewhere we can go-?"

Rather absently, he drew his hand away. "Well, I came to take you-I can't call it 'home,' unfortunately for you- but to where you live, anyway."

"To take me
home,
my lord?"

"Well, you see, there are a great many people in the hall who want to-well, give you money and so on. Here's Sarget's lygol, by the way. I asked him to give it to me, so that you wouldn't have to go back. That'll keep your saiyett happy, I suppose. And Elvair-ka-Virrion will be seeing to your friend, I'm told."

Maia stood up, and at once he did so too.

"What do you mean, my lord, 'I won't have to go back'?"

"There's a jekzha waiting for you in the courtyard," replied Bayub-Otal, "just along the corridor."

Before she could control herself, Maia had hurled her

bronze wine-cup across the room. Dented on one side, it leapt, rolled a few feet and came to rest in a corner.

"And suppose I happen to want to stay here, my lord?"

Bayub-Otal picked up the goblet and put it back on the table.

"There seems little point in staying in this room."

"I mean, suppose I happen to want to go back into the hall?"

"I'm afraid you can't: I don't wish it."

"And I do!"

"As I've already told you once before this evening, Maia, you were brought here at my request. It would be a pity if Elvair-ka-Virrion had to tell your saiyett that you wouldn't do what you were told."

Maia walked over to the window and stood staring out into the moonlight. Tears' of mortification filled her eyes. Yet there was no point in saying more: Bayub-Otal, she knew, would be immutable. But what could he want? What did he mean by subjecting her to this motiveless, pointless humiliation, involving no gain to himself?

"Just as you wish, my lord. But perhaps you'd kindly allow me to go back alone to the High Counselor's. It's only a mile through the upper city, so there's no danger."

"I'll fetch your cloak," replied Bayub-Otal.

Maia, left alone, stood with closed eyes, gripping the edge of the table. Gradually she sank down until she was kneeling, her forehead resting on the wood.

"O Cran and Airtha, curse him! Lespa, darken his heart! Shakkarn, send down on him the Last Evil!"

Realizing that she was kneeling in the spilt wine, she got up. Anyway, where was the sense? She was no priestess; she hadn't the power of cursing. She had no power at all-yet. Ah! but she'd a fair taste of it tonight, before he'd gone and spoilt everything.

"To be desired," she said aloud-and now she spoke calmly-"to be desired by everyone-that's power! To be desired, that's-an army of soldiers. If ever I can harm him-oh, if ever I can harm him, I will!"

It was two hours after dawn. Durakkon, clad in the golden, black-dappled robes of the High Baron, was standing with a small entourage on the rostrum outside the Blue Gate. On either side of him rose the backward-sloping walls of the outer precinct, forming a kind of funnel down which the paved roadway led eastward from the gate itself to the junction, outside the city, of the highways from Thettit-Tonilda and Ikat Yeldashay.

In spite of the water sprinkled on the stones below, dust covered Durakkon's robes and had filled his mouth and nose. For half an hour he had been standing on the platform, while below him the Tonildan and Beklan regiments, some three thousand men in all, marched out of the city for the Valderra front. The two contingents, having mustered in Bekla upon the first slackening of the rains and spent several days in equipping and refitting, had been assembled by Kembri at dawn that morning in the Caravan Market. Apart from his anxiety to reach the Valderra as soon as possible, the Lord General wanted no delay in getting the men out of the city, where soldiers in the mass were always liable to cause trouble through fighting, theft, rape and the like. Watched by the usual crowd of grieving girls, proud but sorrowful parents, envious younger brothers and angry tavern-keepers, trulls and similar creditors making last, vain efforts to collect what was due to them, the regiments had been inspected and addressed by Kembri and then marched out of the city by the nearest gate.

Durakkon, thinking it only fitting that the High Baron as well as the Lord General should be present at their departure, had decided against coming to Caravan Market (where he could only appear second in importance) and taken up his position outside the Blue Gate. Notwithstanding the dust and discomfort, it had proved worthwhile. Several of the companies had cheered him as they passed and he had spoken personally with eight or nine senior officers.

Although it was common knowledge that as High Baron he lacked force and domination, Durakkon had a fine presence and a name for honesty and benevolence at least. The feeling of most of the men, as they recognized him standing on the platform, had been that although it was

not going to make any difference either to their comfort or their success, he had nevertheless done the decent thing in turning out to see them off, and accordingly they cheered him sincerely.

There was another good reason for the regiments' early departure. This was the day fixed for the spring festival. Kembri had originally intended to get them out the morning before, but had been unable, owing to the late delivery of certain supplies. It was now vital that they should be gone before the festival began, for otherwise they-or even the city itself-might very well get out of control. During the past three days crowds from all over the provinces had been pouring into Bekla. The lower city, even without the soldiers, was already thronged to overflowing, and the householders on whom they had been billeted were impatient to see the back of them and attract paying lodgers instead. From the point of view of law and order they were probably leaving in the nick of time.

During their departure all incoming traffic through the Blue Gate had been stopped. As the last company of the Tonildan regiment came out from between the walls, turning north and then west in the rear of the column, hundreds of wayfarers, who had been waiting beside the road as the soldiers went by, came surging down the outer precinct towards the Blue Gate.

Durakkon, not having foreseen this, found himself cut off on the rostrum and unable to take his departure, for clearly the High Baron could not jostle his way back into the city among pilgrims and drovers. His entourage was insufficient for an escort and in any case the crowd was too dense. So on the platform Durakkon remained, coughing in the dust raised by the sweating, shoving tide below. He had dispatched one of his aides for an officer and thirty men to accompany him back to the upper city. He could do no more.

Durakkon had always had a sincere feeling for the common people. That, indeed, was what had seduced him into the seizure of power and the predicament of rule. Now, not ill-humoredly despite his discomfort, he stood looking here and there about the precinct below, observing this person and that among the multitude pushing on towards the gate. Here, if anywhere, he could see, almost as though depicted on a great scroll, the range of his subjects-men

and women from every part of the empire, as well as some from beyond its borders.

A gang of thirty or forty market women, typical of those who regularly tramped the twenty-odd miles to the big commercial gardens along the banks of the upper Zhairgen to buy fruit and vegetables for sale in Bekla, went past together, each carrying on her head a full pannier. Close behind came a Kabin bird-catcher, capped and belted with bright feathers and hung about with wicker cages containing his prisoners for sale. Two, Durakkon noticed, were already dead. Three solemn-looking, gray-bearded men, each wearing the corn-sheaves emblem of Sarkid-by their bearing, persons of standing back home-looked up as they passed and saluted him by raising their staves. Following them, singing raucously and waving leather bottles as they rallied those around them in the crowd, came a troop of long-whiskered Deelguy with silver rings in their ears and at least four knives to each man's belt. Among these, and apparently accepted by them as companions, were a lank, tough-looking young man in the uniform of a licensed pedlar, and a pretty, dark-haired girl-Belish-ban, by her appearance-who was limping and plainly very tired. Probably, thought Durakkon, she had been walking all night. For a moment he had a vague notion that he had seen her somewhere before. However, he could not remember where, and next moment she was gone, leaning heavily on her pedlar-lad's arm.

But now the High Baron recognized a wealthy Gelt ironmaster, one Bodrin, carried in a chair on the shoulders of four slaves. Calling down to him by name, he invited him to join him on the rostrum. The man climbed up, and after the usual courtesies Durakkon began questioning him about the supplies of iron to be expected from Gelt now that the rains were over. (Although a paved road ran sixty miles from Bekla to the Gelt foothills, consignments of iron were suspended during Melekril.) Below, the festival crowds surged on-pilgrims from as far as Ortelga and Chalcon, craftsmen and merchants up from Ikat, from Thettit, from the upper Zhairgen valley, from Cran alone knew where; some with their women and some without; and all manner of strange earners of livings-piemen and itinerant confectioners, quack-doctors, traveling actors and their wenches, professional letter-writers, hinnarists, cloth-sellers, vendors of knives, of glass, of bone needles and cheap

jewelry; and along with these, plain sight-seers and folk up for a frolic; people who had come to see the Tamarrik Gate and people who already knew it well. Many of these, unable to obtain lodgings, would sleep on the streets.

At length Bodrin, palm to forehead, took his leave, descended from the rostrum and continued on his way. Durakkon, still aloft above the crowd, felt suddenly old and tired, a prisoner cut off from all the energy and vibrant life below. Wearier than the poor lass with the pedlar, he thought, for he had been tramping for seven years to stay in the same place. Once he had been full of confidence and determination to be a just ruler, to put down oppression and champion ordinary folk against those who cheated and exploited them. He had even had some idea of an end to slavery. But his vision, like the charitable bequest of some stupid, kindly old lady, had never reached its intended recipients. Somewhere along the way it had been intercepted, pilfered, nullified; by Kembri, by Sencho, by Fornis, by men like Lalloc. Was there, he wondered, one single peasant-man, woman or child-whose life was any the easier for his rule?

He thought of his wife, the daughter of a baron of Sar-kid, whom he had married twenty-eight years ago, loyally fulfilling her role as High Baron's consort in a society where many now regarded the very concept of marriage as obsolete foolishness; of his sons, one on the Valderra, the other an officer in the new fortress at Dari-Paltesh. He called to mind, too, the pretty, golden-haired girl, with her soft Tonildan burr, whom he had watched Kembri question and browbeat the other night; a child enslaved, snatched from her home, eager to make her fortune by whoring, spying and delation. Whatever good she might contrive to dredge up for herself from the mud into which she had been pitched, he had conferred none on her.

He wondered how much longer he would have to go on living. At his age he could not realistically seek service- and death-in the field. Already he was showing signs of infirmity and it would look merely foolish. The prospect of something like another twenty years of increasing inability to hold his own against Kembri and Sencho seemed to him like slow death in a dungeon. Yet at all costs he must try to keep his dignity for the remainder of his life- whatever that might be.

From somewhere away to his right he heard shouted

commands and men marching. The soldiers were coming through the gate to escort him back to the upper city, opening a lane through the crowds, pushing people back with the shafts of their spears. Their officer, reaching the foot of the rostrum, looked up and saluted, right forearm across his chest.

"If you'll allow me to say so, my lord, I wouldn't delay. My men can't hold back a crowd like this for long."

"Thank you," replied Durakkon. "I'm coming."

In the High Counselor's house also, preparations for the spring festival were proceeding. Sencho, irritated by the prospect of the three-quarter-mile journey down through the lower city to the Temple of Cran, the long, tedious rites and the unavoidable foregoing of dinner and other customary pleasures, lay morosely in the bath while Ter-ebintbia laid out his robes and regalia.

Slave-girls, of course-even the High Counselor's-could not be present at the temple ceremony, but since Sencho was virtually helpless without attendants, Occula and Maia were to walk beside his utter as far as the temple precinct, wait until the ceremony was concluded and then accompany him back.

For the Sacred Queen's spring festival the aristocracy of Bekla, as well as the numerous provincial barons who made the journey to attend, were usually dressed, in accordance with ancient custom, as though for a wedding, while those of rank wore or carried their privileged insignia. By the same token propriety required that slaves, insofar as their presence might be unavoidable, should be dressed plainly and inconspicuously: or rather, this was what would once have been expected, in the days of Senda-na-Say and his predecessors. Of late years, however, fewer and fewer inhabitants of the upper city had continued to regard the ceremony with the fervor felt by their forefathers. The rites were not, indeed, cut short or treatedlightly, but they were observed rather than celebrated-a tradition of empire rather than an invocation of the god from the hearts of his worshippers. The dignitaries attending did so because it was expected of them, and because to have been absent would have given rise to criticism.

Accordingly, in the matter of dress, no one was particularly concerned to find fault with departures from the

sober ways of the past, those who might privately feel troubled preferring not to risk being thought hide-bound or puritanically out of date. Least of all was anyone likely to suggest that so powerful and vindictive a public figure as the High Counselor might be acting tastelessly or irreverently by attiring his slave-girls in travesties of traditional styles. Occula was dressed in a plain white frock of fine wool, its long sleeves slashed and the weave, from shoulders to knees, so open as to reveal her body beneath. Maia's dress, which in cut followed exactly the homely garment of a household servant of a hundred years before, was made of very thin blue silk which clung so closely that the effect was, and was meant to be, immodestly provocative.

"Great hoppin' Shakkarn, banzi!" muttered Occula, as on Terebinthia's instructions they went together to fetch hot towels from the steam-room, "you hang around the Tamarrik Gate like that for a bit and half the jig-a-jigs in town'll be rubbin' themselves up against you."

"Reckon
you'll
be safe, then, do you?" answered Maia, trying the heat of a towel on her bare forearm, clapping the steam out of it and dropping it into the basket.

"Oh, they'll all have come off jus' lookin' at you before they get anywhere near me," replied the black girl. "Anyway," she went on, with a certain change of tone, "Kantza-Merada's protectin' me today. And you'll remember I said that, woan' you?" she added, turning to look directly into Maia's eyes. "Do you love me, banzi? Really?"

"You ought to know."

"Then remember this. Tonight, at the Barb, whatever I tell you to do,
do
it, and doan' ask any questions. No" (holding up a pale palm), "that's enough! But remember we were lovers, banzi, and that I was always straight with you."

Before Maia could reply she had taken the basket and was leading the way back up the passage.

When the girls had finished dressing the High Counselor and helped him into the small dining-hall to await the arrival of his litter, Terebinthia, kneeling, begged him, in the customary terms, graciously to hear the petition of his faithful and devoted slave Dyphna, who had completed five years in his service. This was the signal for Dyphna to come forward, prostrate herself, offer the payment for her freedom and formally request Sencho to grant it to

her. Usually, in Bekla, the freeing of a girl who had earned her price and given her master pleasure and satisfaction was the occasion for mutual compliments and some little informal ceremony. The girl would be asked to rise and drink with her master and would receive his thanks, good wishes for her future and so on, before receiving a present and taking formal leave of the household; sometimes being escorted by an admirer (invited beforehand) to begin her new life as a shearna or sometimes even as a wife.

Such wearisome niceties, however, were not for Sencho. Having told Terebinthia to count the money, he lay silently, with closed eyes, from time to time scratching himself under the oppressive robes; and as soon as the saiyett had assured him that the sum was correct, waved the girl away, at the same time calling for Milvushina to hold a pot for him to pass water before setting out for the lower city.