"As much as you can: anything he'll tell you; his hopes, his plans. He may be innocent; but we think not."
"I wonder you don't have him killed, then, my lord. You easy could if you wanted, I suppose." This was insolence and meant to be. She was speaking sardonically, out of a peasant's well-founded resentment against all callous rulers and oppressors. He answered her seriously, however.
"Kill the love-child of the High Baron of Urtah? They hate us enough as it is. That would bring the whole place round our ears." Again came the grim smile. "His father loves him, Maia, even if you don't."
"Can you tell me any more about him, my lord?"
"I'm deliberately not going to tell you anything at all: then you can't reveal, can you, that you know more than if you were completely innocent? He didn't want to bed with you at the party. He may change his mind later, or he may not. For our purposes it doesn't matter. You may not know this, Maia, but a few men, here and there, prefer a girl who doesn't fall on her back straight away--even a slave. Perhaps he wants to believe you're pure at heart. If you decide, when you've got to know him better, that that's what he wants, you must do all you can to go along with it.
I can't tell you how to win his confidence. You're the woman, not I." He paused. "Well, now you know that he means to see you again, and you've heard what I want you to do. How do you feel about it?"
Maia had in fact been recalling the contempt with which Bayub-Otal had spoken to her. "Are you learning your trade?"
"You'll get no lygol out of me." Remembering her mortification, she felt herself once more full of annoyance. Why ever should Bayub-Otal want to see her again? She neither knew nor cared. She could not choose but do this work for the Lord General, but she would much prefer to find herself in a straightforward sexual situation, with a normal man whom she could understand. If only, she thought, it had been Eud-Ecachlon they had wanted her to find out about.
She raised her eyes. "All I was thinking, my lord, is that if you're looking for a girl as'll make him forget himself-- I mean, strike him as young and innocent, the way you said--then I know one as'd likely do much better for the job than me."
"I'm the one to decide that, Maia, not you," replied Kembri.
Now she'd angered him, she thought. She looked down into her cup, swirling the wine in the bowl and wondering whether or not to go on. In the silence she could hear the rain beating in gusts against the stones of the tower outside.
"Who is this girl?" asked the Lord General at length.
"Her name's Milvushina, my lord. She's with me in the High Counselor's household."
"And what makes you think she'd do better than you for Bayub-Otal?"
"Because she's a baron's daughter, my lord."
"A baron's daughter? A bed-girl in Sencho's household? What do you mean? How did he come by her?"
"You mean you don't know, my lord?"
There was no question of him thinking her impudent now. The startled sincerity of her question carried its own conviction.
"You'd better tell me, Maia. Whose daughter is she?"
"Enka-Mordet's, my lord; the baron you killed in Chalcon."
At this he stared. It was obvious that he knew nothing of Milvushina. She told him all that she had learned, together with an account of how she and Occula had found Milvushina at Sencho's upon their return from Elvair-ka-Virrion's party, and of the way in which Milvushina had borne her affliction since then.
"We heard, my lord, as you'd told your men to bring her back for the High Counselor."
"Did you indeed?" replied Kembri. "Well, one day I may decide to see this girl for myself. Meanwhile, you can take it from me that she wouldn't do for this work with Bayub-Otal. There's a particular reason why you've been selected. When you succeed in finding out what it is, you'll know you're well on the way to success."
This was baffling; but the Lord General said no more by way of explanation. For some little time he remained standing with his back to her, looking out at the rain. Maia, having drained her cup, tilted it in her hand and sat tracing the serpent pattern with one finger. Twilight was falling, but despite her disappointment over the way the afternoon had turned out, she felt in no hurry to return to Sencho's. The red glow of the stove seemed inviting her to linger before its warmth and let the wine finish its work.
"I'll give you a piece of advice, Maia," said Kembri suddenly, turning back into the room. "I'm speaking to you now simply as a man to a woman. Only a few slave-girls get as far as the upper city. That means they leave behind them far more who don't: and often that's the ruin of them, because they start forgetting where they came from and deceiving themselves into thinking they're exceptionally gifted--" he shrugged--"too clever to lose. The vital thing for adventurers--whether they're men or women--is never to forget that they're insecure. Self-deceit's fatal; it only leads to a dangerous sense of over-confidence. A girl in your position's entirely dependent on her wits. If they fail you've nothing to fall back on at all."
Suddenly Maia felt that they were indeed talking on equal terms.
"You're an adventurer, aren't you, my lord?"
A brief, surly nod. "You're young, Maia, but as far as I can see you're no fool. Just don't start thinking you're beyond the reach of disaster, and you might go a long way. I've already told you something about Otavis. I remember her when she was. a young, inexperienced girl like you. She gave us a lot of help, so we helped her. That's why she's free now, with enough money to set herself up in the style a high-class shearna ought to have."
As though about to go, he walked round the end of the bench towards the door. But his sudden, gratuitous advice, not unkindly spoken, had induced in Maia a typically spontaneous impulse towards the only kind of reciprocation at her command. Getting up, she stood with one bare arm outstretched along the back of the settle.
"You wouldn't care for something before you go, my lord?"
He turned, and from the shadows by the door looked back at her where she stood in the orange glow from the stove.
"You little trollop! Are you importuning the Lord General?"
She giggled. "Well, without you to help me, my lord, I can't get out of this dress, see?"
He hesitated a moment; then bolted the door.
Before she left he said, "Well, audacity can be an advantage--sometimes--to a girl like you. You've still got a light heart, Maia, and a trick of making men go along with it. It's a natural gift; if I were you I should hold on to it as long as I can."
35: BAYUB-OTAL'S STORY
Stirring uneasily, Sencho woke little by little from a confused sleep to meet the dark-brown, slightly bloodshot eyes of the black girl gazing down at him. The sight of her, sedulous and compliant, was reassuring, recalling to him that he was now High Counselor of Bekla, wealthy and powerful, master of spies throughout the empire, possessor of information indispensable to Durakkon, Kembri and the Leopard regime. For a few moments, still half-asleep, the stupor of his fancy identified her with his own dark, hidden knowledge of plots and conspiracies running underground--plots which he would reveal and bring to ruin as soon as he was ready. This girl was his to do with as he might wish. But she, like his secret knowledge, was too valuable to him to part with or expend lightly. He was reliant on her: she was his security.
Laying her hands on his swollen body, the girl began to knead and caress him, murmuring gently the while in her own tongue, to the sound of which, though he understood not a word of it, he had become more and more used during these past days while she had attended him, easing the strange infirmity clouding both his mind and his luxury. Her soft speech was like a spell to assuage sickness and anxiety.
Relaxing, he gave himself up to the soothing sense of being enfolded, body and mind, in her skilled attentions.
He could not remember exactly how or when the illness--if illness it was--had come upon him.
Indeed, he did not believe himself truly ill, for he had suffered no pain or fever; and of poison he had no fear. Not only were his cooks reliable but Terebinthia, he knew, was continually vigilant.
His lassitude and loss of appetite and lubricity, so it seemed, had stolen upon him by slow degrees, as gradually as winter. At first with impatience, he had felt in himself a disinclination for those pleasures which he had formerly found so enjoyable. His sleep, too--once a smooth refreshment after gratification--had become broken, and troubled by disturbing dreams--fantasies which tended to linger after awakening and from which he could find relief only in the black girl's ministrations.
In lucid moments he felt her presence as a danger. He must make himself do without her--sell her; have her killed, perhaps. She was a sorceress (for Senchorlike many of the cunning and cruel with no belief in religion, was full of superstition and vague notions of necromancy). He had become addicted to her; less to her body--for the intermittent pleasure he could still derive from that was not exclusive of others--than to her mysterious, sustaining power, like a thick, dark fluid which seemed continually passing from her into himself. Sometimes this seemed to him an actual reality; she represented a kind of drug, at one and the same time euphoric and harmful, which he knew to be nocuous yet could not do without. When she was a
bsent he became peevish, full of vague dread and at the mercy of all manner of nebulous fears. Yet when she returned, he felt her spirit scattering those fears only the better to dominate him itself. When he dined, solacing himself with no more than a shadow of his former gluttony, it was by her will; and when he gratified himself, whether by means of her body or another's, it was as though she led him out into a paddock and stood by while he carried out what her husbandry had appointed. Her pig to be fattened; her goat to perform its task.
There were days when he could recall clearly the instructions he had given to his various agents; and the suspects--each one of them--for whom he had laid snares. Chalcon was a dangerous center of disaffection. Tonilda, he had long been aware, was full of spies and counter-spies, many already known to him. He had a list of names-- more than fifty, ranging from servants, shopkeepers and secret messengers to disaffected barons--against whom treason could be proved. At the right time, when it suited him, he would have them arrested. The right time would be when he had enough evidence against Santil-ke-Erketlis, whom he knew to be the Leopards' most influential enemy. The killing of Enka-Mordet had possibly been premature, he reflected. Perhaps, on the other hand, it had put a stop at the outset to what might otherwise have become a full-scale revolt. Other heldril, minded like Enka-Mordet, would not have failed, now, to realize that there was little which remained unknown to the High Counselor. Ah! but to have acquired his haughty, delicate young daughter for nothing--and without even Kembri's knowledge, too--that had been extremely clever. As soon as he felt better, he would apply himself properly to breaking her in. Some reason might be found for Terebinthia to whip her; yet there were subtler and more enjoyable forms of degradation; delightful inventions of his own, for which at the moment, however, he lacked true inclination or energy. For the time being he must confine himself to milder humiliations.
Once or twice, during these last few days, he had felt about to rouse himself sufficiently to hear and give instructions to some of the spies who had come to report to him. More often, however, he had let matters slide, simply telling Occula to see that they were paid and dismiss them until they were due to return.
He fell asleep again, and in this sleep dreamed of an unknown, black goddess with white slits for eyes; thick-lipped, her breasts sharp and pointed as weapons, who revealed to him the likeness of Fravak, his long-dead master; then of the Katrian boy executed for his murder; of the servant-girl raped in Kabul--these and more. "How is it that you know these people?" he challenged her; and to this she replied, in some strange tongue which in his dream he nevertheless understood, "Most strangely are the laws of the nether world effected. Do not question the laws of the nether world."