87: WHAT MAIA OVERHEARD

Maia had been milking the cows. She had not lost the knack—or at all events jt had come back quickly enough— but her soft, white fingers and pampered, upper city wrists were aching, and now the yoke seemed pressing hard on her shoulders. All the same it was reassuring—the feel of wooden pattens on bare feet and the well-remembered sensation of treading on cracked, summer-baked mud and powdery dust. The dark cowshed was heartening, too, with bright spots of light showing through the knotholes of its planks; likewise the stamping and kloofing of the cows and the smells of cow-dung and of evening water from the brook outside. Her mind might prompt her as often as it liked that she was not out of danger, but in her heart these familiar things spoke of security. It is always satisfying to show oneself unexpectedly capable in some chance-en-countered situation where one's companions are all at sixes and sevens. Meris was a shocking bad hand about the place, and even Zirek, though willing enough, knew next to nothing and was continually having to be instructed.

Doing her damnedest to look as though she didn't find the pails heavy, Maia carried them across the yard, through the stone-flagged kitchen and into the little, narrow dairy beyond. Here she set them down, ducked out of the yoke and then, lifting first one pail and then the other, emptied them into the big clay vessels on the shelf above the churn.

Even the dairy was not properly cool this weather. The milk would have to be used quickly. A little would be sold round about, but most would go to themselves—drunk fresh or made into butter, cheese or whey. This was hardly more than a subsistence farm, a bit better than Morca's patch on the Tonildan Waste, but still a long way behind the kind of place where Maia had met Gehta. The farmer, Kerkol, his wife Clystis and her fourteen-year-old brother lived almost entirely on what they produced. Still, at least there was plenty of black bread, cheese, brillions and tendrionas. The strangers weren't eating them out of house and home and Kerkol was glad enough of their money, to say nothing of the extra help.

Coming back into the kitchen, Maia stepped out of her pattens and rinsed her hands in the wooden tub opposite the door. The water was getting greasy, she noticed: she'd tip it out after supper and refill the tub from the brook. She gave her face a quick rub with her wet hands and was just drying it on a bit of sacking when Clystis came in.

Clystis was a big, healthy girl, happy in her youth and strength!—in being equal to life—and in her first baby, a boy not quite a year old. She had a quick mind and from the first had struck them all as more forthcoming and go-ahead than her husband, a slow, rather taciturn fellow who always seemed happiest out working. It was undoubtedly Clystis who had convinced Kerkol that they stood to gain from letting the strangers stay. He himself, like most peasants, tended to be dubious of anything unfamiliar.

Clystis smiled at Maia, showing a row of sound, white teeth. "Cows done, then?"

"Ah," Maia smiled back. "Gettin' a bit quicker now, see?"

"Didn't take you long, did it? How many days is it you been here now?"

"Ten." Maia looked round towards the passage. "How is he this evening?"

"The poor lad? I reckon he's a lot better. The young chap's with him."

They had never been asked where they came from, nor their names; and Clystis never used any except Maia's. Bayub-Otal was "the gentleman," Zen-Kurel "the poor lad," Zirek "the young chap," while Meris was "your friend" or "the other girl." They were fugitives from the fighting beyond; a "beyond" known only vaguely to Kerkol and Clystis, neither of whom had ever been to Bekla.

During the night of her flight from the city and all the following morning, Maia had been in a state of almost trance-like shock. If she had not been young and in perfect health she would have collapsed.

Zirek and Meris, after their months of hiding, were weak and not rightly themselves: nervous, unsteady, starting at everything and incapable—or so it seemed—of normal talk or thought. Only Bayub-Otal, though clearly almost at the end of his tether from fatigue and lack of sleep, had remained comparatively self-possessed, limping on beside Zen-Kurel's stretcher, leaning on a long stick cut with Maia's knife and now and then exchanging a word with the soldiers. Long afterwards, Maia still remembered that night as the worst of her life.

Some time after moonset they stopped in a thicket. Maia, who alone knew how large a sum of money she was carrying, and remembering the footpads on the way up from Puhra the year before, was so much afraid that she could not bring herself to rest. At the near-by call of an owl she leapt up and would have run if Bayub-Otal had not restrained her. They had been there no more than five minutes before she asked him whether they could not go on.

"But where to, Maia?" he replied in a dry whisper. "We may just as likely be going into danger as away from it."

"Where you making for, then, sir?" asked one of the soldiers who had been carrying the stretcher. "Only we didn't reckon to come this far: the captain's expecting us back."

Maia gave them twenty meld apiece. "I'll write something to your captain," said Bayub-Otal. "It won't be much further, but if we don't get this young man into shelter he's going to die."

The second soldier nodded. "Looks bad enough now. Should I try to give him some water, do you think, säiyett?"

She shook her head. "He couldn't swallow it."

She herself now believed that Zen-Kurel would die. Since she had first seen him in Pokada's room he had not spoken a word, though once or twice he had muttered unintelligibly and moaned as though in pain. To add to her misery and the nightmare-like nature of all she was feeling, it now seemed to her that she would have done better to leave him in the care of the Lapanese. But—Fornis? She doubted whether, with Randronoth dead, the Lapanese could hold the city. Before long either Kembri or Fornis would recapture it. So in that respect they had been right to escape; yet if only they had stayed, Zen-Kurel would have had a chance of recovery.

She was kneeling beside him when Bayub-Otal, taking her hand, drew her to one side.

"Maia," he said, "I'm too exhausted to think clearly, but can I ask you this? Have you any destination—any plan?"

She shook her head. "No, Anda-Nokomis. All I ever had in mind was to get the four of you out of Bekla."

"You?"He looked at her in perplexity, apparently wondering whether his hardships might not have brought about some breakdown in his rational powers. "But—er— why?"

She shrugged. "Well, I did, anyway. What d'you reckon we ought to do now?"

"You aren't counting on help from anyone else?"

"No."

"Have you got any money?"

She gave a wry little laugh. "Much as you like."

"Then we ought to try to find some sort of shelter: a farm; somewhere like that. The lonelier the better: pay them to take us in. Otherwise Zenka'll die. These soldiers, too—we can't keep them. They're impatient now: they want to be back with their friends, looting Bekla."

"I'll pay them to go on, Anda-Nokomis, until we find somewhere."

So in the morning, an hour or two after sunrise, they had come, a hobbling, staggering little bunch of exhausted vagrants, to Kerkol's farmstead—a house and some acres of rough fields about three miles west of the Ikat road. Kerkol and the lad, Blarda, were in the fields, getting in the last of harvest, and Maia had gone in alone and spoken with Clystis in the dairy. They had taken to each other. Besides, the sight of Zen-Kurel would have wrung pity from anyone with the least spark of humanity, and Maia was offering good money. She had assured the girl that his illness was no pestilence. They were fugitives, victims of the hated Leopards. They wanted to stay only until Zen-Kurel was better, and would move on as soon as they could. Kerkol, when he came in at mid-day, had found three of them sound asleep on straw in the barn, with Maia watching by Zen-Kurel, whom Clystis had told the soldiers to put into Blarda's bed. Inclined to be surly at first, he had gradually warmed to the pretty girl so obviously in distress; and being (as they later came to perceive) a man who secretly knew his wife sharper than himself, he was finally persuaded that there was more to be gained from letting them stay than from sending them packing. In any case, with the soldiers already gone, to compel them to leave would certainly have meant Zen-Kurel's death.

By the following day everyone except Zen-Kurel was in better shape. Zirek and Meris, naturally, were only too glad to get out of doors and try to give some help about the place. Zirek made fun of his own ignorance and clumsiness, and sometimes made even Kerkol laugh with his clowning. Maia had forgotten the stormy streak in Meris; or perhaps, she thought, their former circumstances had prevented her from seeing it in its true colors. In Sencho's house, where they had all been slaves and all afraid of Terebinthia, her continual foul language and swiftness to anger might almost be said to have expressed a common feeling. Now, seeing her tense, glittering-eyed manner among ordinary, decent folk and blushing before Clystis to hear her cursing over the butter-churn, she began to understand why Terebinthia had been so anxious to get rid of her. Meris might be all very well for a concubine, but she was precious little use for anything else. She was a natural trouble-maker, not really capable of steady work, short-tempered as a bear and as prone to outburst. One evening, tripping over Blarda's whip in the dusky passage, she snatched it up, swearing, and snapped it across her knee. Maia, apologizing to Clystis, did her best to make out that Meris had had a very bad time and was not herself.

This sort of thing was worrying enough, but in addition Maia had once or twice seen Meris glancing at the fourteen-year-old Blarda with a look which she herself understood if no one else did. A baste in the barn, she thought, even with an innocent, might be neither here nor there, but she doubted whether Meris would rest content with that. Before she was satisfied, someone would have to suffer. She was a girl getting her own back on the world, and the innocuous and simple were her natural prey. Even with nothing else to worry about, Meris would have been a nuisance, but with Zenka on her hands Maia simply had no energy or attention to spare.

Next to Zen-Kurel, Bayub-Otal was the worst affected. There could be no question, for the time being, of him helping on the farm. He was worn out and half-starved, and for several days could eat only whey, eggs in milk and such other slops as the kindly Clystis prepared. His feet were in such a terrible state that Maia could not imagine how he had walked from Bekla. She had learned, of course, on the journey to Suba, that he was an exceptionally un-flinching, determined man, but she had not hitherto realized how much he was capable of enduring.

Resting by day in the shade of the sestuaga trees on one side of the yard, he told her, at odd times and little by little, all that had befallen him since the fight near Rallur. The prisoners, as she knew, had been sent to the fortress at Dari-Paltesh. Here they had been in the charge of Durakkon's younger son, a humane but very ineffectual young man who, it was generally known, had been promoted out of harm's way before he could discredit himself further in the field. Plotho ("the rabbit"), as he was nicknamed, had done what little he could to make their lives bearable, forbidding the soldiers to ill-treat them and ensuring that their wounds received attention. Despite his kindness, however, several had died.

"You were locked up all that time, then?" asked Maia, trying to imagine it.

"No," replied Bayub-Otal. "It's not like that at Dari-Paltesh. There are no dungeons. The lowest floor lies be-low the level of the moat like the bottom of a great, drained well. We were free to wander about. We looked after each other as best we could. We lost count of time. The food was very bad and there was never enough, and although we'd made everyone swear to divide it fairly there were always quarrels. One man was killed in his sleep—"

"How?" asked Maia.

"Sharp stick driven through his throat. We never found out who'd done it. I keep dreaming I'm back there, though I suppose it'll stop after a time."

In telling her all this Bayub-Otal never uttered any word of reproach against Maia. He might have been talking to someone who had had no more to do with his capture than had Clystis. Nor was there in his manner any suggestion that he particularly wanted to arouse remorse in her. Most of what he told her, indeed, was vouchsafed with his habitual restraint, briefly and bit by bit, in reply to her own questions.

A day or two later he went on to tell her how Han-Glat and Fornis had given orders to bring out the officers and tryzatts—some nineteen or twenty altogether—to join the march from Paltesh to Bekla.

These were supposed to be hostages against the risk of an attack across the Zhairgen by Karnat, but it soon became plain that although that might be a principal reason for their presence, there was another.

During the march the Sacred Queen had devised various ways of amusing herself. She had begun by compelling the hostages to beg on their knees for their rations, or else go hungry; but after a day or two had become more ingenious, requiring them to perform various things to their own degradation—things of a nature which Maia recognized as being in accordance with what she herself had seen in Fornis's bedroom on the morning when Occula had hidden her in the closet.

Bayub-Otal had held out against this cruelty, and accordingly he had starved; or rather, he had half-starved, for it so chanced that one of the Palteshi guards, who had a Suban wife in Dari, knew him to be none other than Anda-Nokomis. This man, moved to pity, had risked giv-ing him scraps when no one was looking: otherwise he would have died.

He told Maia how, very soon after the murder of Durakkon and his son, Fornis, as soon as it was clear that Kerithra-Thrain lacked numbers to destroy her army, had persuaded Han-Glat to join her in a forced march to take Bekla by surprise.

"She knew that Kembri had gone south to fight Santil-kè-Erketlis and that Eud-Ecachlon had no troops worth the name. But she knew, too, that he could still close the gates against her, and she meant to get there before he'd even learned of Durakkon's death.

"There wasn't a single man in that company of Han-Glat's with more speed and endurance than Fornis. I'd never have believed it possible. She led them for twenty-four hours without sleep and with scarcely a halt. They ate as they marched. Half of them were barely on their feet, but only one man tried to drop out. It was in the early morning, just after first light. He said he'd twisted his ankle. She called him out and asked him whether he was married, and he answered yes. So then she said she'd spare him the shame of going home and telling his wife that a woman had more guts than he had. She had a spear in her hand—she was carrying everything the men were carrying—and before he'd had time to say another word she'd run him through. 'Now we'll get on!' she said. 'We've wasted enough time already.' No one else could have done a thing like that and not been faced with mutiny. The men simply left him lying there and followed her like dogs."

"But Zenka—on the march from Dari—was he—forced to—you know—?"

"Zen-Kurel? He held out for quite a time. But that was part of the sport for Fornis, of course, to see how long some people would hold out. It was I who advised him to forget his pride and take his food. I told him that if we ever got out alive it would all be forgotten anyway. But he still got far too little, because for a full ration she used to make people do—well—things to each other, and that Zen-Kurel always refused."

"Did she bring all the hostages on this dash for Bekla, then?"

"No, only about a dozen, I think, but I'm afraid I wasn't even counting very well by then. How she picked them I can't tell. I doubt she knew herself: she's mad, really, you know. Not raving mad, but—well—deranged. I think she just couldn't deny herself the pleasure of keeping a few with her. Three of us fell down on the way and she speared them, too. To tell you the truth, I remember very little about the last part of the march. But you'll understand now why Zenka's so ill."

"And you walked here with us—the night after that?" "To save my life, yes. What was the alternative?"

"You could have stayed with the Lapanese in Bekla." "They'll never be able to hold the city. Eud-Ecachlon's got the citadel, you told me, and once the rest of Han-Glat's troops reach Bekla the Lapanese'll have no chance. Besides, you say Randronoth's dead?"

She nodded. Their talk had tired him—he was still very weak—and after a little she left him to rest while she went to milk the cows. Alone in the shed, she wept to think of her own part in all this misery. "But what else could I have done?" she whispered aloud. "Dear Lespa, what else could I have done? I never wished Karnat's men any harm." She had as yet told Bayub-Otal nothing of Tharrin's story or of whom she had discovered herself to be. Intuitively, she felt that the time had not yet come.

Yet this was not the only cause for weeping which afflicted her during these days. Indeed, she was thankful for the relief and distraction of working on the place, for whenever she was unoccupied, and always when she lay down to sleep, her thoughts were so wretched that in all reality she would rather have had to endure again the pain and illness she had suffered after swimming the Valderra. Worst—obsessive, indeed—was the memory of Milvushina; that futile death which made nonsense of any notion of the gods as kindly patrons of mankind. Many times, recalling the cruelty which Milvushina had endured, the dignity and courage she had maintained in the face of it, her brief span of happiness as the lover of Elvair-ka-Virrion and the selfless generosity she had shown at her pitiful end, Maia would begin sobbing, and steal away to some lonely place where no one could see her. How poignantly, now, did she recall Occula's reproof for her childish, unimaginative resentment of Milvushina's aristocratic reserve and brave show of detachment in Sencho's house!

In actual fact, of course, Maia had finally achieved a deep affinity and friendship with Milvushina, and had come both to love and respect her. Yet that only served, now, to heighten her sorrow, and she mourned for her friend with an intensity which, while it was upon her, blotted out all else. This was poor Maia's first experience of true, grievous bereavement. The death of Sphelthon, a stranger, had frightened and horrified her. The death.of Tharrin had angered and humiliated more than it had actually afflicted her—except with pity. But the death of Milvushina, a girl of her own age, whom she had comforted in affliction, her companion both in misery and good fortune, she many times wished, and wished sincerely, that she could have taken upon herself. Whatever the future might hold, never again would she see the world through the eyes with which she had seen it before Milvushina died. This was her real loss of innocence; far sharper and deeper than that conventionally-termed "loss" which she had so gaily experienced in the fishing-net.

Coupled with this grief was a bitter sense of reappraisal and disillusion, flowing from the memory of her last sight of Elvair-ka-Virrion and of what he had said. To her, he now stood for the whole upper city and almost everyone in it.

At other times she was troubled by the fear of pursuit and murder. They had heard no news, either of Bekla, or of Kembri and Erketlis to the east; and Kerkol—never talkative anyway—seemed oddly reluctant to try to get hold of any. Seekron must have discovered, of course— perhaps even before she had left Bekla—that Randronoth had died by violence. Might she herself be suspected of his death? (It did not occur to her that Ogma, given the chance, could testify to the contrary.) But perhaps Fornis and Han-Glat had already overcome the Lapanese? If For-nis were now mistress of Bekla, one of the first things she would certainly apply herself to was hunting down the Serrelinda: and one man unlikely to put any obstacle in her way was Eud-Ecachlon. But again, was it possible that Santil-kè-Erketlis might have defeated Kembri? This, she realized bitterly, was the best hope for herself—for all five of them. In other words Bekla, the Leopards and the whole upper city—not entirely excluding that happy, golden innocent known as the Serrelinda—stood revealed as so much glittering dross, internecine and treacherous, as Nasada had said. For it seemed to her now that she could not excuse herself from the general indictment. She, Maia, had done with them; but had they done with her?

Later, the reason for Kerkol's uncommunicative disposition became reasonably conjecturable.

Somehow or other he had managed to dodge being taken for a soldier, and he was not unnaturally afraid that it might catch up with him. As Maia knew, it was in fact unlikely to do so now, when whatever authority might be left in Bekla could hardly have tentacles to spare for probing after odd peasants in lonely places. But Kerkol was not to know this, and his anxiety explained his unfriendliness on their arrival; for though slow and dour he was not, as they gradually learned, an ill-natured man. Although it was harvest-time, he had even taken a turn or two in watching beside Zen-Kurel at night. Everyone, indeed, except Bayub-Otal, had a share in this, for Zen-Kurel was never left alone.

During the first few days they had all felt almost certain that he could not recover. He seemed to have no vitality to combat the ceaseless, restive discomfort under which his mind and body appeared to be crumbling away. At first he could keep down no food at all, and although unconscious of where he was or who was with him, seemed never truly to sleep. He tossed and turned continually, muttering unintelligibly and giving himself no rest. Yet when they spoke to him he neither replied nor gave any sign that he had understood.

Maia's grief was extreme, and the worse for having no one to whom she could unburden herself. She could not make a confidante of Meris, while Zirek she felt she hardly knew. Clystis, of whom, on account of her kind heart and honest, decent goodness, she had become genuinely fond, she already felt she knew well. But it would have been quite beyond Clystis to comprehend her dealings with Kembri and Karnat or her secret mission to Suba: and if she had tried to explain, it would only have seemed, to a simple woman like Clystis, as though she were boasting about her grand, exciting life in high places.

There was no one to whom she could have spoken freely except Bayub-Otal; and he, even when answering her questions, always maintained that same unsmiling reserve and detachment which had galled her in the old days, when her pride had been so bitterly hurt by his indifference to what she now thought of as her stupid, childish advances. She perceived that he meant to maintain between them that indeterminate yet apparently impassable distance which had always been part of their relationship. She, of course, had never, before now, had any chance to speak to him of what had passed between herself and Zen-Kurel at Melvda-Rain. Yet surely he must know? He and Zen-Kurel had spent months together in the fortress.

Besides, what motive could he suppose her to have had for risking her life in Bekla to effect Zen-Kurel's release?

Always, however, his manner, as he sat in the shade or walked slowly back and forth on the path beside the brook, rather resembled that of some Beklan dignitary or provincial delegate such as she had now and then met at sup-per-parties in the upper city: polite and courteous, yet offering no crack through which she could thrust any real confidentiality, let alone any plea for comfort.

All five of them, she often felt, were in ignorance and uncertainty about one another, their perception obscured by troubles past and present as though by clouded, muddy water. Well, if he preferred to wait for the mud to settle, she had no choice but to do the same. Zenka's recovery was more important than any ease of mind she might have been able to derive from pouring out her feelings to Bayub-Otal.

And now, at last, he was recovering. They had finally allowed themselves to feel sure that he would not die. He had been taking food, had had long spells of tranquil sleep and was beginning to look less haggard and famished. Yet still he did not recognize even Bayub-Otal, and had not conversed intelligibly with anyone. It had now become Maia's chief anxiety that his mind might not recover. If that were the will of the gods, she believed she could accept it. (So generous-hearted in love are the young, so eager to give all, so heedless of long years ahead and of all that is truly involved in an act of self-sacrifice.) Certainly, when she had fallen in love with Zen-Kurel at Melvda-Rain, a great part of it had been that he was so plainly a likely lad. Nonetheless, it had not come deliberately, from her mind, but spontaneously, from her heart. She had loved him for himself and as he was, not primarily for any material expectations. Besides, through her care and devotion he might in time recover, which would be matter for great pride. Yet inwardly she shrank from such a prospect, and prayed with all her heart that it might not have to be. Of all the afflictions that oppress mankind, insanity is the hardest for friends to accept and the hardest to reconcile with any faith in divine order.

"How is he this evening?"

"The poor lad? I reckon he's a lot better. The young chap's with him."

Clystis went across to the fire, over which, on a heavy chain, hung a bronze caldron. She was understandably proud of this, for there were not many to be seen in farm kitchens in the empire. Into it, of course, went practically everything edible. During harvest, Kerkol and Blarda had been lucky enough to kill two hares in the corn. These had been duly hung, skinned and quartered, and had gone into the pot that morning. This, as Maia well knew, was luxury.

Clystis added more water, stirred the pot with a wooden ladle and sipped.

"M'm, that's a nice broth! I'll put in a few brillions. I reckon he might manage some of it for supper, don't you?"

"Ah!" answered Maia. "I'll take it along, if you like."

"He's been talking to the young chap, you know," remarked Clystis casually.

"What?"Maia turned, staring as if unable to believe her ears. "Talking sense, d'you mean?"

"Young chap said so. Said he seemed ever so much better."

"Oh, Clystis!" Maia came over to the fire. "You couldn't have told me anything better!"

"Reckoned you'd be pleased."

Clystis had never said a word to suggest that she had perceived Maia's feelings about Zen-Kurel but, as Maia was well aware, not to have done so she would have to have been a lot stupider than she was.

Ladling out the broth, she gave Maia the bowl and a spoon. Across the steam and the savory smell the two girls met each other's eyes and smiled complicitly. Then Maia, holding the bowl carefully in both hands, made her way down the short, dark passage-way towards Zen-Kurel's room.

The door was just ajar. She had not yet reached it when her ear caught the sound of two voices—Zirek's and Zenka's. She felt so happy that she could scarcely contain herself. It was she who should be talking to him, of course, not Zirek. Nevertheless, it occurred to her that in her present state of emotion it might perhaps be better not to burst in upon them. He still needed to be kept free from excitement. She paused to compose herself, and as she did so caught the tail-end of what Zirek had been saying.

"No, no, Fornis isn't here. You'll probably never see her again."

There was a pause, and then Zen-Kurel's own voice, the voice she remembered, restoring on the instant, as might a smell or a song, the entire feel of that night in Melvda-Rain, replied, "I don't—understand. Is she dead?"

Prom where Maia was standing his utterance was barely audible, thin as a stream shrunken by drought.

"Not that we know," answered Zirek. "She's in Bekla."

Zen-Kurd seemed, as best he could, to be weighing this. At length he said, "And we're not. Is that right?"

Zirek must have nodded, for after a moment he went on, "Then—where?"

"You're safe," said Zirek, "with friends. Nothing to worry about, sir. But you've been very ill. Why don't you just try to rest now?"

This time there was a still longer pause, almost as though Zen-Kurel had decided to follow this advice.

Maia tiptoed forward and had just reached the threshold when he spoke again.

"Where's Anda-Nokomis, then? Is he dead?"

"Who?"

"Suban leader—withered hand—"

"Oh, he's here too; he's all right—more or less."

"Where—are we, then—with Erketlis?"

"No, but we're safe. Why don't you just rest now, sir?"

Zen-Kurel's next words, though still weak, were spoken in a tone of authority.

"I shall be able to rest better if you'll tell me a little more, please. What is this place?"

"A farm; a good way outside Bekla, quite lonely. We brought you here. We all escaped from Bekla together, you see, sir."

"Why—why did you need to escape, then?"

"Well; it was me as killed Sencho, you see—me and a girl. She's here too."

"You killed Sencho? You yourself?"

"You lie down, now!" said Zirek sharply. "You've been very ill, sir, and if you don't keep quiet you may be ill again, and that won't help anybody. These questions'll keep. I can't tell you everything all at once. Anyway, either Clystis or Maia'll be bringing your supper in a minute."

For a few moments Zen-Kurel made no reply. Then, in a tone of puzzled uncertainty, he asked, "Maia? Who's Maia?"

Zirek did not answer at once and he went on more urgently, "You don't mean—not the girl who swam the Valderra?"

"Yes, she's here with us," said Zirek.

"Maia? But—but why don't you kill her, then?"

"Kill her? What you talking about? Why, it was her as got you and your friend out of prison in Bekla. Near as a touch got killed herself doing it."

Maia, holding her breath behind the door, stood still as moss.

"Then," said Zen-Kurel, "it can only have been for some vile, mean purpose. That bitch—" She heard Zirek try to answer, but he ran on, his voice rising, "She's the most treacherous, rotten whore in the world! Oh, yes, she fooled me all right! She betrayed us all and she'll betray you, too, if you don't kill her! I know what I'm talking about! Go and kill her now, before it's too late! Tell Anda-Nokomis I want to see him—get him in here—"

Maia heard no more. Still clutching the bowl of broth, she stumbled back up the passage and into the kitchen. Clystis, busy at the table, looked up in surprise.

"Wouldn't he have it, then?"

Maia, not answering and almost upsetting the bowl in putting it down, went across to the door that led into the yard.

"Maia, you all right?"

"Yes; I'll—I'll be back in a minute."

Out she ran, across the yard to the belt of trees. He wasn't there and she pushed through them, down the slopes beyond to the bank of the stream.

"Anda-Nokomis?" she called.

He stood up. He had been sitting in a kind of little arbor about a hundred yards downstream, where a tangle of scarlet trepsis trailed over the bushes. She ran along the bank, but just as she reached him tripped and measured her length at his feet. He bent to help her up, but she only lay sobbing, face down, her head on her arms.

He knelt beside her. "What's happened, Maia? What's the matter?"

"Zenka! Zen-Kurel, Anda-Nokomis—"

"O gods! Has he taken a turn for the worse?"

"No no! He's able to talk now. He told Zirek—I heard him, I was in the passage—he said I was the rottenest— woman in the world; he said why didn't you kill me—" Her weeping became passionate and uncontrollable.

Bayub-Otal waited in silence. At length, in a cold, expressionless tone, he asked, "Are you so very much surprised?"

"What,Anda-Nokomis?" She knelt up and looked at him, her face swollen and tear-wet. After a moment, like a child driven to desperation by someone else's inexplicable failure to understand the obvious, she shouted, "Well, 'course I am! What d'you think—"

He took her hand and she allowed him to lead her the few steps into the arbor. Here there was a big log, from which a segment had been cut, making a flat seat. They sat side by side. The stream below was a mere trickle, almost lost among clumps of water-plants and dried beds of weed. A pair of green dragonflies were hovering and darting here and there.

"There's a lot I'm extremely puzzled about," he said, "and obviously if we're to go on at all it's got to be sorted out. Do you want to talk, or shall I?"

She was still weeping, but he made no attempt to check or comfort her. After a little he went on, "One thing's plain: you evidently don't see what's happened in the same light as I do or as Zen-Kurel does. If you did, you wouldn't be here."

She did not answer, but he had caught her attention and she was waiting to hear what he was going to say next.

"I'll start from the beginning. Last Melekril, in Bekla, I—well, I thought that perhaps I'd found a friend; a young slave-girl. I never made friends easily in Bekla, of course, being a suspect and dispossessed man with no prospects. But I liked this girl and felt sorry for her. Anyone with the least decency would have felt sorry for her. She was very young and inexperienced and she belonged to the most evil, disgusting brute in the upper city. She was being sent from one bed to another for money and even seemed to be taking to it. It was obvious that in a year or two she'd be corrupted and that in a few years after that she'd probably be on the scrap-heap—that's if she hadn't been brought to some horrible end first. I thought she deserved better.

"One night, soon after the murder of her master, I received a warning to leave Bekla at once. Within the same hour the girl came to my lodgings in terror—or so you'd have thought. She said she'd escaped from the temple— from torture—and implored me to help her.

"I got her out of Bekla and took her with me to Suba. I told both Lenkrit and King Karnat that she was a girl to be trusted. I pointed out that she'd be valuable to us because of her extraordinary resemblance to my mother, Nokomis. She was treated honorably and gave the most convincing appearance of being entirely on our side."

For a moment Bayub-Otal's voice quavered. He bent down, picked up a stick and began breaking it into pieces and tossing them into the stream.

"That same night, however, she quite deliberately seduced one of Karnat's staff officers, a young man who knew—and she must have known that he knew—the plan of attack. He told it to her. He was much to blame, of course, but then he trusted her, you see; just as I did. She'd been very cunning in convincing him that she'd fallen in love with him.

"In fact, she achieved all that the Leopards could possibly have hoped for. She made her fortune that night. She became a demi-goddess, almost; her fame spread throughout the empire and beyond. It spread to Suba; and to Katria and Terekenalt. It even spread to Dari-Paltesh, where some of the men she'd betrayed—the ones who weren't dead, I mean, or who hadn't managed to get back to Suba—were shut up in squalor and misery. I remember one man actually cursing her with his last breath."

The light was fading. The dragonflies had vanished. In an isolated pool a little way downstream, some tiny fish suddenly skittered across the surface, here and gone, like the margets in Suba. A flock of starlings flickered over on their way to roost.

"But then, quite suddenly, when this same young staff officer's at death's door himself, after suffering the most revolting cruelty and degradation at the hands of Queen Fornis, he's taken out of prison in Bekla and carried away delirious. Some days later he recovers his senses and almost the first thing he hears is that among those with him is this same girl—the girl he trusted, the girl who betrayed him. This makes him feel angry and perplexed—afraid, even, perhaps."

As though he were now going back to the farmhouse, Bayub-Otal stood up and stepped out onto the bank. Then, without looking round, he said, "He's not the only one. Perhaps that girl might, in fact, be better out of the way. There's no telling what she might get up to next, you see."

He had gone some yards when he found Maia beside him.

"Anda-Nokomis!"

As though at any rate unwilling to fail in propriety he halted, but did not look at her.

"Here's one thing there's no catch in it, and you'd better just know it! I'm your cousin! My mother was Nokomis's sister."

The tone in which she spoke carried immediate conviction. He looked at her, startled. After some moments he said, "We'd better sit down again, and you can tell me what makes you think that."

Thereupon he himself returned and sat down, but she was so much agitated that she could not keep still, pacing back and forth on the bank as she talked.

"Earlier this summer, while you was still in that prison, the Leopards arrested a bunch of heldro agents in Tonilda. One of them was my stepfather, Tharrin; the man as took up with my mother—or her I always thought was my mother. He'd been a secret messenger for Erketlis. Tharrin was the first man as I ever went with. That's how I come to be sold for a slave; only Morca, her I thought was my mother, she found out, see? And she tricked me and sold me while Tharrin was away."

"Go on," said Bayub-Otal.

"I talked to Tharrin in prison before he died, and it was then as he told me—"

She went on to speak of the assassins sent from Kendron-Urtah and of her true mother's desperate flight and pathetic death. When she had ended Bayub-Otal remained silent, gazing down at the brook. "Do you believe me?" she asked at length.

"Yes, of course," he answered. He nodded slowly. "You couldn't be lying about that." She winced at the emphasis. "In fact, it explains a great deal." He looked directly up at her and for the first time she could see that he was moved.

"I can tell you your mother's name. Her name was Sheldis. I remember her in Suba when I was a child, but I never knew what became of her. Children don't think much about anyone who isn't there, of course. When I grew older, I learned that she'd married an Urtan and tried to settle down quietly, but they'd both been murdered on the orders of my father's wife. I suppose when the murderers got back to Kendron-Urtah they'd naturally have reported that they'd been entirely successful. After all, Sheldis, not her husband, was the one she really wanted dead." After a pause, he added, "The village is Kryle, in eastern Urtah. I'm afraid I can't remember her husband's name—your father—but you could easily find out."

While he was talking she had sensed a barely-perceptible softening of his earlier hostility; yet not enough to make her want to try to explain to him the truth, her truth, about what had passed between herself and Zenka at Melvda-Rain and the true reason why she had swum the Valderra. He had as good as threatened her life. That life-—her life as the Serrelinda—had conferred on her a dignity and courage of which the Tonildan peasant girl would not have been capable. She would be damned if she was going to beg for it—or even to seem to be doing so—by offering unsought explanations. If he was so keen to kill a defenseless girl, Jet him. She was, of course, too young for it to occur to her that he himself might, beneath his harsh manner, feel grieved and sorrowful. In telling him of her mother, she had been concerned simply to let him know who it was he would be killing—a girl as well derived as himself, or nearly; his kinswoman, one whose resemblance to the legendary Nokomis was no mere coincidence.

After an even longer silence he said, "I talked to you without mincing words because I think you ought to realize how much misery and suffering you've caused with your treachery and your cold-hearted deceit of that Katrian lad. You broke his heart—do you know that? I had plenty of time in Dari-Paltesh to get to know it. He couldn't believe you'd done that to him: yet there it was, beyond doubt or argument. While you were living in luxury in the upper city, he was keeping half-alive on filthy scraps, with nothing to think about but the false words you'd said and the promises you'd broken."

She answered nothing, only looking him in the eye and waiting.

"Do you want to say anything?" he asked.

"No, thank you."

"Well, there are one or two things puzzling me, so perhaps I'll go on to ask you some questions. First, was it on orders from Kembri that you went with me to Suba?"

"Yes."

"But I suppose—I want to be fair to you, Maia—you had no alternative?"

"Not really. Only I hated you then, see. By the time we'd reached Suba I didn't hate you any more."

This seemed to take him aback; he hesitated, thrown out of his customary, bleak composure. After a pause he went on, "Then I suppose that it was just a matter of your own self-interest being too strong, was it? Here was this golden opportunity to make your fortune and you took it?"

Of all that she had been accused of that evening, the thing—naturally—which had cut her to the heart had been the unquestioning assumption that she had deliberately deceived Zen-Kurel, that she had felt no sincerity and had gone about to seduce him for her own gain. She could not, would not speak of it.

"You can suppose what you like, Anda-Nokomis."

"Very well. Now there's something else: something that struck me as odd while we were coming here. Those Lapanese soldiers who were with us—they knew you'd swum the river, of course, but they told me that no one had ever learned how you discovered Karnat's plan: it was commonly believed that Karnat himself must have told you."

"Anybody wants to think it was Karnat, that's their business."

"You never told Kembri or Sendekar what actually happened?"

"No, nor any of the Leopards."

"Then may I ask, lastly, why you went to the trouble and risk of releasing us and getting us out of Bekla?"

She shook her head.

"I suppose you're working for Erketlis now, are you? He pays better, or he's going to win and there's still time to change, is that it?"

Once again, it did not occur to her that the mordancy and scorn in his manner might flow from his own pride and pain; from his sense of disillusion with someone for whom he had allowed himself the rare luxury of feeling affection. Nor did it occur to her that he might want her— might almost be begging her—to tell him he was wrong, to give him an explanation which would somehow or other clear things up. All she knew was that apparently neither he nor Zenka had been able to see all that was plain as noonday; Gehta and her dad's farm, poor Sphelthon at the ford, the detachment of three hundred Tonildans downstream of Rallur, the horrible risk of death to which she had twice exposed herself in order to save—amongst oth-ers—two people she loved and who, whatever they might have suffered, were now indisputably alive. She felt ready to weep with chagrin. Mercifully, Occula came boiling up.

"You dirty, rotten, basting venda!"

"Ah, unmistakably one of Sencho's young ladies! Perhaps—"

But before he could say more, his name was being called from up by the sestuagas and a few moments later Zirek came running along the bank.

''Sorry to interrupt you, Anda-Nokomis, sir—you too, Maia—but there's wonderful news! Captain Zen-Kurel's taken a great turn for the better! He's in his right mind and he's been talking to me. I've told him to stay quiet, of course: but he's made a good supper and he seems comfortable. He asked me to say would you go and see him, Anda-Nokomis."

"Thank you," said Bayub-Otal. "I'll go at once."

He walked away towards the house.

Zirek clapped Maia on the shoulder. "I'm a pedlar, remember? I sell anything—good news an' all! It's cheap to pretty girls like you, too—only a kiss."

Absently, she put one arm round his neck and kissed his cheek. He raised a hand to his face.

"Tears, eh? Well, it's natural, I suppose. You love him, don't you?"

Of course, she thought, he did not know that she had overheard what Zen-Kurel had said. Himself a good-na-tured, easy-going fellow, he had probably discounted it, anyway, as the petulance of a sick man who had had a bad time.

After a moment he laughed.

"Come on, Maia! You can't fool the demon pedlar of Tonilda! D'you think I can't see what's plain before my eyes?"

"There's some can and some can't," she said, and wandered away along the bank, where the bats had begun hunting for moths in the dusk.

"Kill her?" said Bayub-Otal, with an air of indifference, moving the candle to where it no longer shone into Zen-Kurel's eyes. "Well, from all that Zirek fellow's told me, I'm sure Fornis would be happy enough to do that for you."

"Before she kills us, I mean," said Zen-Kurel. "Otherwise how can we feel safe? We know what she's capable of, don't we?"

"Well, you certainly make it sound very convincing. Would you care to do it, perhaps?"

"How can I do it while I'm like this, Anda-Nokomis?"

"Oh, well, it might wait a day or two, I suppose. But I was only thinking, Zenka, if she really is working for Erketlis now, might it perhaps be a little unrealistic to kill her? I mean, in that case it would be for revenge, really, wouldn't it, and not for our safety? If she's really gone over to the heldro side, she won't be likely to harm us any more."

"There's no telling which side she's on, is there? Do you mean to say—"

"Now, you mustn't get excited, Zenka. Just lie back and go on drinking that milk. Where was I? Oh, yes, it did occur to me that we're supposed to be noblemen, you and I, though I admit no one would have thought so in Dari-Paltesh. So perhaps personal resentment wouldn't really be a very appropriate motive for killing this peasant girl—"

"But Cran and Airtha! doesn't she deserve it? Think of the—"

"Oh, no doubt. But at that rate, surely, the correct thing would be to have her properly indicted, as soon as we get anywhere where we're among heldro people and there's any sort of law and order. After all, Erketlis must know what she did. Everyone does."

"Yes, everyone does! So it's not only a case of how much she harmed us. She's made me look the biggest fool—"

"You know, Zenka, it's very odd, but she hasn't."

"She hasn't!"

"No. She's consistently kept it a complete secret, how she found out that plan of Karnat's. Plotho told me, when we were in Dari-Paltesh, that no one had any idea how she'd found it out: and those Lapanese soldiers who carried you here told me exactly the same. Everyone supposes Karnat himself must have told her, and apparently she's let them go on thinking that. She's assured me that she never even told Kembri or Sendekar—she didn't need to, of course; the thing itself was enough for them—and I personally believe she's speaking the truth. These farm people too, you see; they know what she did, but they don't know how she found out the plan. I asked them."

"Perhaps there are some things that even she's ashamed of."

"Perhaps. But anyway, I've just thought of two rather more down-to-earth reasons for not killing her. First, we haven't any weapons—I only wish to Cran we had; and I'm sure these farm people wouldn't like it if we hanged her. But secondly, she's got money and we haven't any at all. Whatever we decide to attempt, money's going to be important. I don't really care for the idea of killing her and then taking her money, do you? Sencho might, I suppose. That would be quite in his line, but hardly in ours."

"All right, Anda-Nokomis, you've convinced me: so what are we going to do with her? Leave her here?"

"Difficult, isn't it?" said Bayub-Otal. "I mean, we can't get away from the fact that she very nearly got herself killed getting us out of Bekla—"

"Without her, Karnat would have taken it months ago."

"I know: but we've got our reputations to bear in mind. We both hope, don't we, that the Leopards are going to be defeated, that Santil's going to take Bekla and make peace with Karnat, and that you're going to get back to Katria and I'm going to get back to Suba."

"Have you ordered the wings for the pigs?"

"Well, but seriously, Zenka, we don't want some sort of half-and-half rumor following us for years, that we abandoned this girl—possibly left her to the mercy of Fornis— after she'd got us out of Bekla at the risk of her own life."

"Well, what, then?"

"I think that all depends on what we decide to do ourselves as soon as you're better. What do you want to do; make for Erketlis at Ikat Yeldashay?"

"No, be damned to that!" said Zen-Kurel. "You talk about our reputations. Karnat's still at war with Bekla. I'm one of his officers and I've escaped from the enemy. My duty's to report back as soon as I can, not to go buggering about with irregulars at the other end of nowhere."

"Well, I'll go along with that, Zenka. If it comes to that, I want to get back to Suba. The only question is how?"

"The left foot, the right foot. What's to stop us?"

"Be sensible: it's more difficult than that. We're completely ignorant about our enemies. We can't go back to Bekla, obviously. If we go directly west, it'll take us into Paltesh—Fornis's province. And I repeat, we haven't got any weapons, in a country swarming with bandits and escaped slaves; though we might try to buy some later, I suppose, with Maia's money."

"Well, what's your idea, then, Anda-Nokomis?"

"We won't discuss it tonight. It's high time, now, that I left you to sleep. But it did just cross my mind that we can't be too far from the upper Zhairgen. If only we could reach it and get hold of a boat, that might be the answer."

Clystis came in, clicking her tongue.

"It's not my place to say it, sir, but you shouldn't keep the poor young man talking any more. We don't want him bad again, do we, just when he's begun doing so well?"

"You're quite right and very kind, Clystis," replied Ba-yub-Otal. "I'm just going. Boats cost money, you know, Zenka. But put it out of your mind now and go to sleep."