68: MAIA COMMISSIONS A SEARCH

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Zenka! Zenka!"

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

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

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

"Miss?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maia jumped up.

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

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

"So'm I. 'N then what?"

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

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

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

Ogma came into the garden to clear away the plates.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The truth was that sixteen-year-old Maia had no wish for an older, more experienced woman to tell her her own business. Club-footed, dull, dependent Ogma suited her very well and she had no intention of looking for someone like Sessendris, who had advised her against trying to help Tharrin and been proved abundantly right.

"Brero," said Maia, "d'you reckon you might be able to find me a particular man in the lower city, and get him up here without anyone taking any particular notice of it?"

It was two days after Nennaunir's visit. Maia, having taken what was for her a considerable time to reflect on an idea which had first occurred to her before the shearna had left, was now (with a certain amount of inward trepidation) putting it into effect.

Brero frowned, scratched his head and seemed about to reply, but Maia forestalled him.

"I'll tell you as much as I know. His name's Sednil and I suppose he's about twenty-one." She went on to describe him as she remembered him. "He's in lodgings somewhere near the Tower of the Orphans. He's been out and about looking for work, so likely he's been talking to people round there who'll remember him. And he's a branded man, Brero: crossed spears on the back of his hand. But he's finished his sentence: he's free now."

"A branded man, säiyett?"

"Well, but he's got a release token. Anyway, he hadn't really done anything."

"Oh, none the more for that, säiyett: that's nothing to me. Only you said you didn't want anyone taking any notice, and it won't b& possible to take a branded man through the Peacock Gate without the guards wanting to know who he is and where he's going."

"And yet I've got to see this man, Brero; and secretly, too. I've had instructions."

"I understand, säiyett." It did not surprise Brero to learn that Maia had had instructions. After all, she had had instructions to cross the Valderra, hadn't she?

"Well, for a start let's see whether you can find him, Brero. And if you do, don't say anything about me, understand? Give him this box—there's some money in it— and say it's an advance for a special job of work as'll be well-paid, and that if he's interested there's someone as wants to talk to him about it."

"He wouldn't take the money, säiyett," said Brero, "but he says he's ready to talk about the work."

It had taken him less than a day to find Sednil. The area along the banks of the Monju brook, between the two great thoroughfares of the Sheldad and the Kharjiz, was a comparatively quiet and respectable district; quite un-like, for example, the teeming alleys and warrens further west, between the Khalkoornil and the Tower of Sel-Do-lad; and inquiries among its taverns and lodging-houses had SQon put Brero on the right track.

"How did he act, like?" asked Maia. "Did he seem surprised?"

"Well, more kind of suspicious, säiyett, really," replied Brero. "First of all he made me swear black and blue that 'twasn't anything to do with the Sacred Queen. He seemed real frightened of her."

"Isn't everyone?" asked Maia.

"Well, yes, I suppose so, säiyett, in a manner of speaking. Only it didn't seem to make sense, like, her having gone to Paltesh, as everyone knows, and why should he suppose it might have anything to do with her?"

"Oh, he's got his reasons, Brero," said Maia. "Well, now what?"

"Well, what I was thinking, säiyett, if you're agreeable, we might make a little arrangement like this, seeing as you have to see the man secretly. I'll go down tomorrow night after sunset, and meet him by arrangement. We'll wait together in a jekzha wherever it suits you: perhaps the Monju bridge in the Sheldad would be a convenient place. Then I'd suggest that you follow in another jekzha about half an hour later—veiled, of course, säiyett. When you come to the bridge, you simply get into the other jekzha with this young man. He needn't show himself at all. Then the two of you can ride up and down the Sheldad—or anywhere-—while you talk as long as you want. I'll keep your jekzha by the bridge, and as soon as you're ready you can simply come back, change over again and go home. It just struck me that that might be better than meeting in a house: I mean, in a house there's always bound to be someone who sees you come and go, isn't there?"

"Brero, they ought to make you a tryzatt, that they ought."

"Well, one day, perhaps, säiyett. But I hope you won't go recommending me, for I'm in no hurry to change this job just now. Why, they might send me to Chalcon or the Valderra, mightn't they?"

' "Oh, great Gran!" said Sednil. "It's you!"

Maia laughed and lowered her veil again. "Who'd you reckon it'd be, then?" He was looking far better, she thought, than ever he had in the temple. Indeed, she would hardly have known him. Darkness had almost fallen, but there was enough light from the lamps and flaring torches of the shops and booths still open along the Sheldad to show her a spruce, alert-looking young man with a trim, black beard, dressed in a new veltron and leather breeches. More striking than his actual appearance, however, was the entire alteration in his manner, and the figure he cut in her female eyes. Before, it had always seemed to her as though his whole demeanor—his facial expression, his talk, his gait, his gestures—had been as it were dyed, soaked through and through with resentment and dejection, so that it had been impossible for him to speak or act without expressing these things, as involuntarily as a priest expressed solemnity or a clown the absurd. In short, he had been the very embodiment of a convicted prisoner. Now, all this—as near as she could perceive in the flickering half-light and street hubbub through which they were moving on—had disappeared, or very nearly so. She had always been puzzled by Nennaunir's devotion to Sednil. Now, she thought, she was seeing something like the young man whom Nennaunir had first known; before he, like herself, had fallen victim to the cruelty of the Sacred Queen.

"Well, it just never entered my head it'd be you," he answered. "But I suppose that was the idea, was it? Nowadays you have to be careful going about, I know that. I hope you've come so that I can thank you. Nan's told me what you did. The governor told me, too, come to that, when he gave me my release token. He gave me a letter for you as well: I meant to give it to Nan, but I forgot. It's back in my room now."

"You can give it to Brero later."

Now he set about thanking her in earnest, and that with an articulate warmth and fervor of which she would never have believed him capable. His sincerity went to her heart. Just as in the temple, on that morning of the festival when they had first met, she felt him to be someone like herself, someone whom she understood. Palteshi he might be, but she could tell without asking that he, like herself, had been born in a hut and known what it was to be glad of a lump of black bread. She was really delighted, now, to think that she had helped him; and relieved, too (for of this she had been doubtful before), to feel convinced that he was to be trusted with her secret.

"—And anything I can ever do for you—" he was saying, when she put a hand on his arm and, again raising her veil, bent forward and kissed his cheek.

"There is: but it's a very big thing, and I don't want you to think as you've got to do it because you're under any obligation to me. It's not a favor, it's a job. It might be dangerous and I'm paying according. There's no one else I can possibly entrust with it, Sednil. If you don't want to take it on, I shall have to leave it."

Now he was once again the old, canny, worldly-wise Sednil.

"You'd better tell me a bit more about it, Maia."

Suddenly a girl flower-seller jumped up onto the step of the jekzha, jolting it and causing the jekzha-man to turn and swear at her.

"Lovely roses, säiyett! Lilies, look, sir, and this purple cresset, real cheap!"

She held up her basket so that the sweet, fresh scents filled the dark interior of the jekzha. Behind her array of blooms she herself looked pinched and tired. Maia slipped a five-meld piece into her hand.

"I'll take this rose. Keep the money, dear. Good-night, now."

The girl was beginning, "Oh, bless you, säiyett—" when the jekzha-man slapped her arm. She rounded on him, cursing, dropped off the step and was gone into the dusky commotion of the Sheldad.

Maia smelt the rose, tapping it pensively against her upper lip.

"Sednil, what would you say if I was to tell you—if I told you that I'm—in love—with a Katrian—an officer in Karnat's army?"

He did not laugh, or say "What?" or even come out with any sort of oath or exclamation. She could see that he believed her at once and took her seriously. For a little while he was silent; and she was silent too, waiting for him to answer her. And answer he did.

" If you said that to me, the first thing I'd ask is 'Where is he now?' "

"I don't know. And that's what it's all about, Sednil."

Slowly, and more than once with a catch in her voice, she told him how King Karnat had received her like a princess at Melvda-Rain; of the supper that evening, and of how Zen-Kurel had come to her house. As she went on to speak of their love and his promises, she began to weep in good earnest; yet he made no attempt to calm or pacify her, only waiting and listening as she faltered out the end of her tale—Zen-Kurel's disclosure to her of the king's plan, the night-march of the army to the river and her own desperate resolve.

When she had finished he remained silent while she dried her eyes and composed herself. At length he said, "But I don't understand. If you loved this fellow—and you say you still love him—why ever did you risk your life to make sure Karnat's plan failed?"

She was astonished. "Why, Sednil, to save them all; to stop the bloodshed, of course! Dear Lespa, if only you'd seen what I've seen! Listen, and I'll tell you—if I can."

She told him of the night-crossing of the Valderra ford, of the slaughter of the patrol and how she had knelt over the dying Sphelthon. Then, for good measure, she added what the farm-girl Gehta had said to her about her terror of invasion; and lastly she spoke of the Tonildan detachment downstream of Rallur, which the Terekenalt army would have destroyed to a man.

"So if it hadn't 'a been for me, there'd have been another three hundred Tonildan fellows like that poor boy Sphelthon, and Cran only knows how many more besides. You must see that, Sednil, surely?"

"Oh, I can see it all right," said he, "and I admire you as much as anyone in the city. But what d'you suppose he thinks—your Katrian officer chap?"

"What he thinks?"

"Well, people in Terekenalt know what you did, same as people in Bekla. But on top of that, there's one thing your Zen-Kurel will know which no one else knows—that's if he's still alive and if he's had the sense to keep quiet. He knows how you learned about the plan, doesn't he?"

For the first time—for it must be remembered that in addition to her youth and immaturity she had hitherto been entirely land-locked, as it were, in her own memories and dreams of Zen-Kurel, and had never discussed her love with anyone—there began to dawn upon the ingenuous Maia some idea oi what Zen-Kurel must have felt upon hearing how the garrison at Rallur had been warned in time. Like a child to whom an adult points out something serious and unwelcome which till now has lain beyond the restricted field of personal experience, she sensed, vaguely yet dismally, that this was a matter she was not going to be able to disregard or ignore; and began by trying to do just that.

"I don't reckon he'd be angry—not if I could talk to him, like—explain—tell him the rights of it—how I felt an' that."

"Don'tyou?"

"I would 'a done just that—told him how I felt—if only there'd been time: I would have! Fact I was starting to, only soon as he heard that trumpet blowing for the muster he was up and off—oh! that was so dreadful, Sednil! When I realized he was going to the fighting—" Her tears began to fall again.

"And you think he'd have listened to you, do you?"

"He loves me. We could have gone away together: we could have gone to his father's in Katria—"

"And him one of the king's personal aides? I thought you had more sense, Maia."

"Are you jealous of him? Is that it?" She knew this was nothing to the purpose, but anything was better than accepting the truth.

"Well, I might be, but that's not the point. What I'm asking is, do you really suppose this fellow feels the same about you—that is, if he's still alive—knowing what he can't help knowing now? 'Cos if I was him I'd want to cut you up into fifty bits, that's what."

As a last resort the Serrelinda fell back on her dignity. "Since you're so keen on what's the point, that's not the point either, U-Sednil. The only point as far as you're concerned is that I happen to want to know where Zen-Kurel is now. That's the job I'm talking about; just that and nothing more. He's an enemy of Bekla, fighting for King Karnat, so I've got to be careful how I go about it, haven't I? No one's to know. I'm offering you four thousand meld to go and find out for me, and that's what I came here to say tonight. Never mind what you think Zen-Kurel thinks: that's none of your business. Do you want the job or not?"

"Four thousand meld?" He was clearly startled.

The jekzha had gone the length of the Sheldad and they had now reached the place, not far from the western clock tower, where it broke up into the narrower streets and lanes of the poorer quarter of the city. The jekzha-man stopped and turned his head.

"Where to now, sir?"

Maia gave him fifteen meld. "Just turn round and go back. You needn't hurry."

He shrugged his shoulders, pocketed the money and made the turn, pushing his way through a crowd of roisterers outside a tavern. As they got clear, a snatch of tipsy song came up from behind.

"—So then she jumped right out of Karnat's winder: No one could hinder The Serrelinda—"

Maia could not suppress a chuckle. "Never heard that one before."

"Nor me. They don't tell you, then, when they make them up?"

"Just as well they don't, some of 'em."

At least it had blown away the ill-feeling between them.

"I'm sorry, Maia: you're the last person in the world I'd want to fall out with. Yes, I will do this for you—for you, and because I need the money. Four thousand meld! D'you really mean it? Cran, I could start a business with that!"

"That's if you come back, Sednil. Trying to get information about a Katrian—you'll be running a risk, you know. You can get to Urtah all right, I suppose?"

"That's no trouble: I could be looking for work, couldn't I? But how about the money?" asked Sednil.

"When d'you—"

"Half now and half when jou get back. That's fair, isn't it? I brought it with me: two thousand. Here it is."

"You trust me that much, then? Two thousand—I could be off with that, you know."

"No, I trust you."

"It's just that I've got out of the way of being trusted, that's all." He paused. Then, "Yes, Maia, of course I'm jealous of this Katrian."

"Nennaunir loves you."

It was his rum to flare up. "Yes, so much that she wouldn't even speak up for me about that basting ring! She could have saved me—"

"Sednil, you couldn't expect it; you really couldn't. She would have, if the queen had sentenced you to the mines or to hang. She did all she could to get you out, and what's more she's succeeded—"

"You succeeded."

"She still loves you, Sednil. She's told me as much. And now she's rich and successful you'd be a fool to leave her."

"Well, that's my business. But I shan't tell Nan about this: I'll simply teU her that I'm leaving Bekla to look for work, and I'll be back as soon as I can."

"You could go so far as to tell her you're going to Urtah. See, it's only that I don't like deceiving Nan any more 'n what we have to. She's been a good friend to me."

"I shall go to Dan first, Maia. For one thing, it's less likely to attract attention than if I were to go straight to Urtah from Bekla; but besides that, my old mother's still living in Dari—or she was—and I'd like to give her some of this money. And won't she be happy and proud to see her son with a branded hand and release token?" added Sednil bitterly.

"But can't you tell her as 'twasn't none of your fault?" said Maia. "She ought to believe you—her own son."

"Oh, yes, and then she can just explain to all the neighbors, can't she, and to everyone else who gets to hear? Poor old woman, she'll be glad of the money, though. But I won't waste any time in getting on with your job, Maia, I promise. I don't see why I shouldn't be back in under two months. You say this Zen-Kurel was brought up in Dari: well, I could have known him when we were banzis, couldn't I, and be wondering what had become of him? That's where I'll start asking around, and then perhaps move up into Urtah, or even cross the Zhairgen. I may not have to go to Suba at all."

"How will you let me know when you get back?"

"I'll watch out for your lame girl in the market and tell her."

"Here we are back at the bridge. Good luck, Sednil, and I'll pray for you. Don't forget to give Randronoth's letter to Brero, will you?"