Maia (89 page)

Maia walked in the garden while her soldier Brero went to make inquiries. After a little she paused in the shade, leaning against a blossoming cherry tree. Looking up at the side of the palace facing her, she could recognize the gallery, with its trellised arcading, where she had embraced the Sacred Queen in the moonlight. Suddenly, as she stood gazing, a girl's scream sounded from above. It seemed like

a cry of pain rather than of fear, and was quickly cut short, as though whoever uttered it had either been silenced in some way or had controlled herself. Maia wondered whether the girl-whoever she might be-had burned herself or dropped something heavy on her foot. At any rate it wasn't Occula-she could tell that. She fingered her diamonds nervously; chewed a blade of grass and picked at the cherry bark. Then, hearing the sound of a footstep on the path, she turned to see Brero coming towards her.

Somewhat to her surprise, the man told her that he had been given to understand that the queen would see her immediately. She followed him round the lawn and past the monkeys' grove to a stone doorway above which, in a recess, a little statue of Frella-Tiltheh the Inscrutable stood pointing downward at the sprouting tamarrik seed. Inside was a long, cool hall, elegantly tiled in red and white, where slim, fluted columns rose to a coffered ceiling. Scented shrubs were standing here and there in leaden troughs, and at the far end rose a staircase.

Zuno, waiting at the foot of these stairs, bowed to Maia without speaking and motioned to her to ascend. Arrived at the stairhead, she at once recognized the corridor where Form's had tackled the guard-hound with her bare hands. Passing the actual spot, she noticed several scratches still remaining on the polished boards. Then they were climbing to the second story.

Zuno stopped outside the queen's bedroom and knocked. After a few moments the door was opened by a woman- an obvious Palteshi-whom Maia had not seen before. She gave her name and the woman nodded to her to enter.

Fornis, half-naked in a pale-green dressing-robe embroidered with waves and fishes in silver, was seated at a dressing-table of inlaid sestuaga-wood. Open before her was a kind of cabinet full of jars of ointment, boxes of creams and unguents and bottles of lotion and perfume. Her shoulders and bosom were lightly sprinkled with an adhesive, golden powder which guttered where it caught the light. In one hand she held the heavy, carved comb with which she had combed Maia's hair in the bathroom, while with the fingertips of the other she was lightly rubbing an orange-tinted rouge into the skin round her cheekbones. As Maia raised her palm to her forehead, the queen turned her head and looked up at her over her shoulder.

Once again Maia saw, with that tremor which often comes

upon us in the moment that we realize that we had forgotten the precise appearance of someone remembered with deep emotion-love, hatred or fear-the blazing hair, the ice-green eyes, the creamy skin, the buxom body at one and the same time opulent yet lithe and agile as an athlete's. Again she sensed the latent energy like a coiled spring, and the domineering, rapacious vitality which, striking upward through the leaves like a physical force, had literally thrown her off balance as she stood poised above the Barb.

Looking into those eyes, Maia knew that she was afraid. This was not Folda, the woman with whom she had eaten and drunk and whom she had failed to gratify. This was the legendary Queen Forms, who carried within her the power to confront warriors, to outface monarchs and barons, subdue the priesthood and set at nought-with impunity, as it seemed-the very gods themselves. Princess of Paltesh she might have been born, and Sacred Queen of Airtha she might have become; yet ultimately her power stemmed not from these titles, but from some inscrutable, transcendental source compared with which mere human attributes were trifles; a source whose servants, once sent into the world, were authorized to stick at nothing. This power-so it appeared to Maia now-must have grown in Fornis like a tree. She had not always been thus; yet the seed had been born with her. Now it was full-grown. Ah; so tall that men-and women, too-could hang upside-down from the branches.

"Good morning, Maia," said the Sacred Queen, somehow contriving, by her near-nakedness and casual pursuance of her cosmetic activities, to reduce to vain, pretentious triviality Maia's silk dress and diamond necklace. "I trust you've been enjoying yourself since your return to Bekla."

"Yes, thank you, esta-saiyett," replied Maia, by the queen's tone put beyond doubt that there was to be no sort of renewal of a friendly relationship between them.

She was about to go on to inquire after the queen's health and well-being when she became aware of a kind of struggling commotion taking place further down the room. Looking over Fornis's shoulder, she now saw Ashaktis seated astride a bench, beside which was standing a dark, hirsute young man in a leather jerkin.

It was not at either of these, however, that Maia looked

for more than a moment, but at the figure between them; a dark-haired, big-built girl, stripped to the waist, who was kneeling on the floor. Ashaktis, leaning forward and gripping her wrists, was holding her prone along the length of the bench. The girl's back was criss-crossed with bloody weals; and in the moment that Maia took in the scene, the young man struck her again with a thin, pliant stick on which blood was glistening. At this the girl flung back her head, showing a plain, rustic face contorted with pain, and Maia saw that she had a marked cast in one eye. She recognized her then, in spite of the distortion caused by the gag in her mouth. It was Chia, the Urtan girl with whom she and Occula had fought and then made friends in Lalloc's slave-hall.

"Oh, esta-saiyett, please!" Maia, who from the first had felt all embarrassment at standing beside the queen lolling in undress, now fell on her knees at her feet.

"Whatever's the matter?" Fornis, peering in the mirror while with one finger she rubbed the rouge in just below her eye, spoke with an air of slightly irritated surprise.

"I beg you-please spare that girl, esta-saiyett, as-as a favor to me. I don't know what she's done, but-"

"My dear Maia, neither do I: I haven't the faintest idea. That's a kitchen-maid, or something of the kind, I believe."

"But I knew her once, esta-saiyett: that's why I'm asking."

"Knew
her?" Fornis, frowning, looked perplexed to the point of annoyance, as though Maia had used some inappropriate or unintelligible word.

"Yes, esta-saiyett; when I was a slave, I knew her."

"Oh, when you were a
slave.
I
seel"
She raised her voice slightly. "Shakti, Maia wants you to let that girl go; apparently she used to know her when she was a
slave.
Just send her back wherever she came from, will you?"

At that moment Maia felt certain that either Ashaktis or Fornis herself had known-probably the poor girl had boasted about it in the kitchens-of her own acquaintance with Chia, and that the beating had been deliberately arranged as soon as Fornis had learned that Maia was downstairs and asking to see her.

As Ashaktis pulled the girl to her feet, threw her clothes round her and nodded to the young man to drag her out of the room, Fornis turned back to the dressing-table and

began polishing her nails with a strip of bone bound in soft leather. Maia waited for her to speak, but she said nothing and after a minute or two laid the bone aside, stood up, opened a wardrobe and began looking through the gowns hanging there.

I'm the Serrelinda, thought Maia: I'm the Serrelinda. If I could swim the Valderra- Yet in her heart she knew that such thoughts had no real validity. If Fornis wanted the Valderra swum, she would simply order two people to go and do it; and if they drowned, two more.

"Esta-saiyett," she said, "I've come to ask you-to talk to you, if you'll very kindly hear me, about a man called Tharrin."

"A man called
Tharrin?"
said Fornis, looking up sharply as though Maia had discourteously interrupted her. She paused. "I think you mean a man called Sednil, don't you?"

Maia, momentarily startled and discomposed, hesitated. The green eyes rested upon her with a cool yet expectant stare.

"No, esta-saiyett," said Maia, keeping her voice steady with an effort. "Tharrin's a Tonildan political prisoner, and I'm told by the Lord General as he's one that's your property. He happens to be my step-father-my mother's husband-and I've come to beg you to be so good as to- to enter into my natural feelings, like, and let me buy him from you. You'd be doing me and my mother and sisters the greatest kindness."

"Did you have a pleasant talk with the chief priest the other day?" asked Fornis rather absently, taking a gown out of the closet and holding it up against her body as Ashaktis came back into the room.

"Yes, thank you, esta-saiyett." She did not know what else to say.

"You've been quick enough to come here this morning. It didn't occur to you before to come and ask
me
about your friend Occula, rather than the chief priest?"

"No, esta-saiyett: well, only I didn't feel it would be right to presume on our earlier acquaintance in that way. I reckoned as you might not like it."

"I see. But you don't feel that now, over this-this- Tharrin?"

"Yes, I do feel it, esta-saiyett, very much. I've been afraid to come, 'cos I didn't want to displease you. Only

he's my step-father, see, and I owe him a lot, and the Lord General told me as there wasn't any other way 'ceptin' to ask you."

Fornis beckoned to Ashaktis to help her on with the gown. Maia stood unspeaking. After a time the Sacred Queen shook out her skirt and then sat down for Ashaktis, kneeling before her, to put on her sandals.

"I suppose you know, don't you," she said, without looking at Maia; "perhaps your friend Sednil, or somebody like that, will have told you, what sort of prisoners are normally allocated to the Sacred Queen and why?"

"No, esta-saiyett." Her voice came in a frightened whisper.

"Those who are known to have been so basely treacherous and criminal that they can't decently be sold into slavery are allotted to the temple for sacrifice. There are eight such prisoners in the group brought in yesterday- seven men and a woman. Naturally I don't know their names, but with your wide acquaintance among those sort of people I expect you do."

"No, esta-saiyett. All I know is as the Lord General told me that Tharrin was-was out of his hands, 'cos he belonged to you."

There was another long pause while Fornis took off the sandals, tried on another pair and then began washing her hands in a basin held by Ashaktis.

"What extraordinary company you seem to keep, Maia," she said at length. "Kitchen-slaves, lower city shearna's pimps-I don't know. But of course if your step-father's a criminal and a traitor, I dare say that accounts for it."

In spite of her terror, it occurred to Maia that she might very well have replied that the queen herself was among those who had sought her company. She said nothing.

"Well, so you want to buy this-person," said Fornis. "However, it's from the temple, not from me, that you'll have to buy him, as I've explained. And we don't drive bargains with the Lord Cran, do we?"

"I'm only asking to pay a fair price, esta-saiyett. I'm not suggesting bargaining."

"I see. And what would be a fair price, do you think?"

"I don't know, esta-saiyett."

"Neither do I, for no one has ever had the temerity to make such a request before. I shall have to think it over carefully: you may come back in three hours' time."

Maia knew that the queen was hoping she would lose her self-possession and plead for an immediate reply- perhaps weep. She raised her palm to her forehead and left the room.

Zuno was standing at the foot of the lower staircase. As they were crossing the hall side by side he murmured almost inaudibly, "What is it that you came to ask her?"

She hesitated, and he added, "You can trust me, I assure you."

"My step-father-from Tonilda-he's a prisoner-one of the lot that's to die, so she said. I came to ask her to let me buy him." =

They were close to a little alcove at the further end of the hall, near the door by which she had entered. Zuno, looking quickly round, drew her into it and stood facing her.

"What did she answer?"

His manner startled her. This was a new Zuno, his customary air of supercilious detachment set aside, a man dealing with her directly and speaking to a fellow-being.

"She says she'll think it over. I'm to come back in three hours."

"You couldn't-er-forget about it, I suppose?"

She shook her head. "Couldn' do that, no."

"You owe your step-father a lot?"

"Whatever he's done, I can't just stand by and let that happen to him."

Zuno was silent for some moments, gazing out into the garden. At length he said, "And how did she treat you?"

"Bad. I'm afraid of her. I mean, she could have said yes or no straight out; but she's cruel, isn't she? It's-I don't know-it's not so much what she does as what she
is
that frightens me. I don't understand it-I've never done her no harm!"

"You'd better understand several things, Maia, before you decide to go any further with this business. Before you went to Suba, she and Kembri were still on good terms. She believed he meant to see that she was acclaimed Sacred Queen for a third reign: Ashaktis told me as much. But when he allowed his son to help himself to Milvushina and then refused point-blank to send her back to Chalcon, Fornis guessed at once-she's very quick and shrewd- that he must have the idea of getting Milvushina acclaimed Sacred Queen instead."

He stopped, listening, and then looked quickly out of the alcove for a moment.

"Well, what of it?" asked Maia, made fearful by his tension and anxious, now, only to end this conversation and leave the house.

"When she sent you back to the temple to go to Suba," said Zuno, "that was by way of obliging Kembri. Her idea was that he could have you back and make use of you on the understanding that Milvushina would either be returned to Chalcon or else-well, put out of the way. She thought
you'd
probably die anyway, you see. But what happened was that Kembri refused to part with Milvushina and then you came back as-well, what you are now. She knows, now, that Kembri must intend to supersede her. Actually, he has no alternative: the people would never acclaim her for a third reign. Oh, she knows how to keep up appearances, but secretly she must be desperate. And she knows, too, who are her rivals. Kembri would prefer Milvushina: but left to themselves the people would undoubtedly prefer you."