Maia (80 page)

"Wait, sir! Oh, can't ye just
wait
a minute, now!" cried the old soul, flustered, and torn between annoyance at his haste and gratification at making such a fine sale. "Let me see, that's twenty meld the lilies, fifteen the roses; and this planella, now-"

"Oh, never mind!" cried Selperron. Dragging out his purse, he thrust five twenty-meld pieces into her hand, gathered up the flowers in one great scented, dripping mass and turned about fust as the soldiers reached the foot of the hill. Stumbling forward, he gripped the jekzha's nearside shaft and looked up into the girl's face. At this moment there was nothing in the world but himself and her.

"Saiyett, honor me by accepting these!" he said, lifting up the flowers. "They're nowhere near so beautiful as you, but take them all the same, so that I may never forget you till the day I die."

For a long and terrible instant he waited, standing at the shaft, seeing her initial, startled look and the surprise and uncertainty momentarily crossing her face. Then she smiled full in his eyes, bent forward and took the flowers from him in a single embrace of her open arms. Her neck and shoulders were covered with drops of water and the upper part of her dress was soaked; but of this she took not the least notice. For an instant only she looked away from him to lay the huge, tumbling bouquet beside her on

the seat. Then, once more stooping, she took his face between her two hands and kissed him.

"Happen I shan't forget you, either," she said.

Then the wheel went over his foot. But it was not very heavy, and even though he stifled a quick cry and doubled up his leg, he was hardly aware of the pain, for as the jekzha rolled away up the hill, the girl turned her head, looked back at him and waved.

Selperron was as good as his word. He never saw the Serrelinda again; and he never forgot her for the rest of his life. N'Kasit's present, perforce, was not quite so lavish as he had originally intended, but what matter? He could always give him another next year.

The soldiers always began by declining the money which Maia offered them, and always she insisted that they should accept it-a fraction of what she herself could have come by in far less time and without exertion. Among the many privileges conferred upon her together with her beautiful little house beside the ndrthern shore of the Barb, was that of calling upon soldiers to draw her jekzha whenever she had occasion to fare abroad. Otherwise she could certainly never have visited the lower city at all, to go on foot being out of the question, while no jekzha-man or attendant slave could possibly have protected her from the adulation of the common people.

It was seldom that she passed the Peacock Gate, however. The crowds and their devotion half-frightened her, and although she always responded as she knew they wished, yet upon coming home she would find herself exhausted, consumed with a sense of the precarious and unnatural, as though looking vertiginously down from some dizzy pinnacle upon that real world to which she could never descend.

For three weeks and more after the Terekenalt army had been thrown back across the Valderra she had lain gravely ill, scarcely able to tell night from morning, let alone to understand the full import of what she had achieved or of the news which had been proclaimed throughout the army and the city. A frailer girl would have bled to death,

they had told her, or else died from shock and exhaustion. As it was, she had often been in worse pain than she had imagined possible, at times being afraid even to stir, for every least movement seemed to bring agony spurting from an injured limb. What had really carried her througli-as on the river bank with the soldiers-had been the knowledge that she had succeeded-had not Sendekar himself told her so?-had prevented the bloodshed and saved the lives of the Tonildans stationed down the river. Their commander had come on tiptoe to visit her, a gruff, taciturn man standing almost inarticulate beside her bed, trying as best he could to convey their thanks: but she no less than he had found few words, slipping back into half-oblivion even before he was gone. The clamps with which they had fastened her gashed thigh caused her continual discomfort, and she had had to be scolded for worrying at them like an animal.

Her litter-borne return to the city had been secret and nocturnal, for although she was sufficiently recovered to leave fortified Rallur-no place for a convalescent-Sendekar had been advised that she must at all costs be spared the crowding and ovations inseparable from a daylight entry into Bekla. Also, as he-a Yeldashay professional soldier, not on close personal ternis with the foremost members of the Leopard regime-had come to realize, there were those in the upper city who would in any case have sought to prevent it.

Arriving tired out after the trying, five-day journey, Maia had been touched and comforted to find Ogma already installed as her housekeeper, together with old Jarvil, the porter from Sencho's former household, with whom she had always got on well. Ogma-who had, of course, been expecting to be sold on the open market, like the rest of Sencho's slaves-had been even more startled and delighted than Maia by this caprice of fortune (the idea had originated with Elvair-ka-Virrion) and at once set about looking after her devotedly. Thanks largely to her attentions, it was not long before Maia felt well enough to begin the exciting business of ordering her life in Bekla for herself.

She had been surprised-despite her incomparable celebrity, happily and unexpectedly surprised-by the genuine warmth and kindness shown to her by Nennaunir, as also by Sessendris, Kembri's household saiyett. In the days

when she had been a slave at Sencho's she had always assumed (as she had, for example, at Sarget's party) that Nennaunir's friendliness was to a large extent no more than politic-a keeping-in with a girl whom she had perceived to stand well with the Leopards. She had certainly felt this about Sessendris on the night of Elvair-ka-Vir-rion's party-that night when she had first met Bayub-Otal. Not long after her return to Bekla, however, something took place which showed her that (over-influenced, perhaps, by Occula's worldly-wise skepticism) she had in this instance been somewhat too canny.

One beautiful evening, about ten days after her arrival, as she was sitting at the open window of her parlor overlooking the Barb, watching the cranes feeding in the shallows and listening to one of Fordil's hinnarists whom she had hired to play to her (it delighted her to be able, now, to spend money in this way), Ogma came in to tell her that an unaccompanied lady was at the door. It turned out to be Sessendris. Maia, surprised and taken rather unawares, was at first constrained and on her guard. After several minutes, however, she began to feel intuitively that whatever motive the handsome, urbane saiyett might have in coming to see her, she meant her no harm. For a time they conversed of those matters which had all Bekla by the ears-the killing of Sencho, Maia's swimming of the Valderra and Sendekar's capture of the traitor Bayub-Otal in the course of Karnat's retreat. Maia, however, recounted little of her own experiences, and in particular omitted any mention of her journey to Urtah with the Subans or the night crossing at the ford. As the evening light faded from the sky, leaving at last only streaks of pale rose and darkening purple reflected from the windless expanse of the Barb, Ogma brought in serrardoes and a flask of Yeldashay and Maia, sipping and nibbling in the window-seat, fell silent and waited, feeling that someone as experienced as Sessendris should need no further encouragement to bring her to the point of her visit, whatever that might be.

"Well, Maia Serrelinda, savior of Bekla, princess from Tonilda-" Sessendris, seated on a polished stool with up-curved, scrolled arm-rests, leant back against the table, smiling at Maia over her wine-cup-"what now? How does a girl follow up a conquest like yours?"

"Don't know as I've had all that much time to think

about it," answered Maia. "It's all like a dream still: I'm just taking things easy. My leg won't be right for a bit yet, they say, though it's nowhere near as bad as 'twas."

"And who else has been to see you?" asked Sessendris. The question, which might have been typical of idle conversation, was asked in a tone which made Maia look up quickly, sensing something direct and concerned in the saiyett's voice.

"U-Sarget's been," she replied. "Matter of fact, he was here very soon after I arrived: and then Shend-Lador and two or three of his friends, along with Nennaunir. Of course I'm not up to all that much yet, you know. Eud-Ecachlon called only yesterday evening, but I was feeling that done up I had to tell my porter I couldn't see him."

"But the Lord General hasn't been, has he?"

"No."

"Nor the Sacred Queen?"

"Well, no."

Sessendris waited, gazing at her with raised eyebrows.

"You mean-well, but I don't see a great lot in that," said Maia. "I mean, people like, that, if they want to see you, they send for you, don't they? And I dare say they reckon I'm not back to rights yet. Nor I am."

"Yes, but Durakkon came? And you'd never met
him
before, had you?"

"Oh, I hardly knew what to say!" Maia flushed at the recollection. "He gave me these diamonds-did you ever see the like?" (she touched her neck) "and then he said as he'd come to thank me on behalf of the city and the empire, and that neither he nor anyone could ever-" She brokeoff. "Well, don't matter all he said, but I'll not forget it, tell you that. He put it-well, what you'd call stately. I reckon he
deserves
to be High Baron. No, I
hadn't
met him before, but I'd say he's what a High Baron ought to be."

Sessendris shrugged her shoulders and was silent for a little. At length she said, "I've taken a risk coming here, you know. I always pretend I don't hear anything, but of course any good saiyett knows how to pretend that. Let's go on pretending, shall we? For instance, can you tell me- for I simply can't imagine-whose idea it was that you should join Bayub-Otal and leave the city by night for Urtah?"

Maia started. "Bayub-Otal?"

Sessendris smiled. "You thought I didn't know? Who do you suppose took the Lord General's message to let you through that night to the guard commander at the Gate of Lilies? Oh, Maia, you're such a dear, beautiful baby still! You don't really understand anything, do you? Listen: all the common people from here to Paltesh are wild about you. They know you saved us all. They'd give you the moon if they could. And Maia,
I'm
common people! My father was a baker in Sarkid.
I
love you too, and I feel grateful to you from the bottom of my heart. But has it occurred to you that there may be people who don't?"

Uncomprehending, Maia was nettled. "Don't know as I ever really thought about it all that much."

Sessendris bit her lip with frustration. "Look; here's a girl who's sent on an utterly desperate assignment. She succeeds beyond anything that could ever have been expected, she's battered almost to death in doing it and saves an army and probably the empire as well. The Leopards vote her a house, servants, money, privileges, attendance by uniformed soldiers. By Airtha! and they just about knew what was good for them, didn't they? If they hadn't, the army'd likely have torn them to pieces. The High Baron, who's at least got the bluest blood in Bekla if he hasn't got anything else, visits her in person to thank her. But the man who actually sent her, and the woman who consented that he should-
they
don't come. Why not, do you suppose?"

"General Kembri, d'you mean? Well, but he must have everything to do from morning till night, what with the war and that. That rebel baron, Santil What's-his-name in Chalcon, on top of all the rest, and then-"

"Maia, dear, I can't stay much longer: I'll have to go before I'm missed. But I'll ask you something else. How long does the Sacred Queen normally reign, do you know?"

Maia pondered. "Well, I can't just rightly say. Four years, isn't it?"

"And how long has Queen Form's reigned?"

"Well, I suppose two lots of four years: I never really thought about it."

"Start now. This next Melekril her second reign's due to end. She's thirty-four or thirty-five-I forget which: older than any Sacred Queen before her, anyway. The other morning, while I was down in the lower city on the Lord General's business, I overheard two porters talking in the

colonnade. One of them said, 'Why don't they make the Serrelinda Sacred Queen? That'd bring us all the luck in the world, that would, for if ever the gods loved a girl it's her. Must do, else she'd 'a bin dead by his time.' "

Maia laughed. "Why, I couldn't be Sacred Queen: that's crazy! Everyone knows I've been in and out of bed-"

"But Maia, that doesn't matter! The Sacred Queen doesn't have to be a virgin. It certainly wouldn't stop the people acclaiming you; and there are certain Leopards who'd like to get rid of Kembri and put themselves in his place, you know. They'd be quite ready to make use of you if they decided it would serve their purpose. When you were a slave-girl you hadn't any enemies. Now you've saved the army and the city, you have. That's how the world works, dear. But
I'm
not your enemy, and that's why I'm here this evening."

"General Kembri wouldn't harm me," said Maia. "I'm sure of that. Why, he promised me my freedom and Cran knows what else if only I could do what he wanted, and I reckon he's been as good as his word and all."

"He couldn't dare be anything else, after Sendekar'd told the army what you'd done. And you're quite right to think he hasn't got anything against you personally. But what I'm trying to tell you is that you're a public figure now, and whether you like it or not, you're almost certainly seen as a rival by Fornis, whose position's difficult enough anyway at her age, with her second reign due to end in a matter of months. Fornis can be like a raving maniac when she hates someone, you know. She'd be ready to let Karnat in-burn the city-smash the empire-anything at all, before she'd give up her power. She wouldn't care
what
she did!"

Maia stood up and began walking to and fro.

"I can't see this, Sessendris. Whatever should Queen Fornis have against me?
I've
nothing against
her!
I've never even put myself forward-"

"You're young, you're very beautiful and you're a public heroine; the people used to worship her, and now they worship you. That's what she'll have against you, and she'll be watching Kembri like a hawk to see whether he favors you or not. He might feel himself forced to, you see, by sheer weight of public feeling. 'Maia for Sacred Queen!' And then-"

"I'll go away-I'll leave Bekla-"

"That would be quite fatal, dear. Everyone would be wondering what you might be up to behind their backs. Remember Enka-Mordet. No, it's not that bad, Maia. By all means stay here and enjoy all you've earned. All I'm saying is, take the greatest care. Don't give anyone the remotest grounds for thinking you might be aiming higher, and don't listen to anyone who may suggest to you that you should. And now I'm off; I've stayed too long as it is. Good-night, golden Maia, and may Lespa guard you! Tell Ogma and the porter to forget I came here. No one else saw me."

When Sessendris was gone and Ogma had brought in the lamps, Maia asked her to bring her needlework and sit with her for company. Yet although Ogma (who had never in her life been five miles from Bekla) did her best, talking of this and that and from time to time asking Maia to thread her needle-for her sight was poor-Maia herself was but indifferent company, preoccupied as she was with all that Sessendris had said. At last Ogma, perceiving that her mistress was not herself, but attributing it merely to fatigue and her state of health, suggested bed; and for some reason this homely proposal at last drew from Maia what was really in her heart.

"Ogma, what's become of Occula? Have you heard anything about her?"

Ogma, limping across the room with her work over her arm, stopped and turned.

"No, not once, Miss Maia. Not since-well, not since that last evening, when you both went to the gardens with the High Counselor. But then they took her away to the temple, didn't they?"