Maia (Beklan Empire 1)

As usual, it was an advantage to be a pretty girl. He smiled broadly.

"Of course, saiyett."

"When I was up north, I was asked to deliver a letter to a lady in Nybril called Almynis. Do you happen to know where she lives?"

He chuckled. "Oh, ah, yes, saiyett, of course. Very nice lady. Rich lady, too. It's not so far from here, her house. Shall I tell the boy to take the letter for you?"

"No, thank you. I have to talk to her myself. But I'd be grateful if the boy could come along to show me the way."

"Of course, saiyett: Fllcallhim."

"The other thing: I've--er--got rather a large sum of money here: I'd rather not go out with it on me. I was wondering if you'd very kindly look after it until I come back?"

"Certainly, saiyett: but I hope you don't want any of that there writing, saying how much an' that. Only there's no one in this house can write."

"Oh, I know I can trust you," she smiled. "It's only that it isratheralot--all I've got, actually."

"How much, saiyett?"

"Well--seven hundred meld." And she looked at him wide-eyed.

"Oh, yes: that'll be all right, saiyett. It'll be perfectly safe with me."

She counted it into his hand and two minutes later was on her way, escorted by the pot-boy. It was not very likely now, she felt, that her room would be searched.

The lad's dialect was so thick that she couldbarely understand him. He was happy enough, however, for she had given him five meld for himself--more than he saw in a week, very like. As they reached the top of the hill and came over the crest she could see, sure enough, the cloud-banks out to the east, more than a hundred miles away .To her left, below her and beyond the walls, lay the river bank along which they had come with Tolis. On the right, along the nearer bank of the Flere, extended what was evidently the wealthy neighborhood of the little town. There were several stone-built houses; not large by Beklan standards, but trim and quite well-main-tained. One, with what seemed from this distance a very pretty, neat little garden extending down to the river, reminded her poignantly of her own house in the upper city. I wonder who's living there now, she thought; and the tears pricked her eyes, for she had loved it dearly, her house.

She pointed. "Is that Almynis's?"

"Naw, saiyett. Fu'r 'long: artside o' warls."

It did not take long to reach the walls. They were obviously very old, not mortared, built of rocks and stones piled on a base of natural crags and all of five feet thick. Those who raised them, thought Maia, all those years ago, must have heaved and dragged and carried every rock for miles around. There were no steps, as there were leading up onto the Bek-lan walls. The boy, like one doing an accustomed thing and seeming to need no permission, disappeared into a near-by shed and came out with a ladder which he set up and climbed. Maia having scrambled after him, he pulled it up and then lowered it for them to descend on the other side.

A track ran parallel with the walls, towards the gates in one direction and down to the Flere in the other.

The boy left the ladder lying under the wall and they set off towards the river.

The grasshoppers zipped in the short grass. The heat was intense. There was no one else on the track, but some oxen were gathered in a shady place, watched by a little, ragged girl who begged from the lady as she passed. Maia gave her a quarter-meld: she took it and ran back to her beasts without a word.

The boy stood still, pointing. "Therr!"

About two hundred feet below them lay a square, white dwelling. It was larger than her house in Bekla, very smooth and clean-looking in the glaring sunshine. On the flat roof bay-trees and laurels were standing in big, terracotta pots. She could not see a single stain or crack in the wall facing her. The pale-gray, louvred shutters, like closed eyelids across the windows, suggested the very acme of shadowy coolness and seclusion within. On this nearer side, a lower stone wall projected at right angles from the town walls, then itself turned at a right angle and so ran down to the shore. Within this enclosure lay the garden, entirely surrounding the house. It was profuse with arbors, little groves and bright flowerbeds. A green lawn extended down to the river, where she could see a stone j etty and a small boat-house.

From the baking hillside above, where the stones, flickering in the sun, were too hot to touch, the place looked a veritable sanctuary of verdurous ease. Maia could see two men trudging back and forth from the river, each carrying two buckets on a yoke. Clearly, their j ob must be to water the garden almost continuously throughout the day. Nothing less could possibly keep it looking like that. It shone and guttered, vibrant in contrast to the still, dried-up scrubland. As she stood gazing, a faint scent of lilies came drifting up-ward.

"Anight, saiyett?" asked the boy. She nodded rather abstractedly. In the light of her twenty-four hours' experience of Nybril she had not been expecting anything quite like this. To say the least, she thought, Mesca had not been guilty of exaggeration. This Almynis obviously had money and knew how to make good use of it, too. Occula ought to come and have a look at this; it might cool her off a bit about the Lily Pool.

Dismissing the boy, she walked on down the hill. Since she could see no gate in the garden wall facing her, she rounded the right angle and followed it down its length to the shore. Still there was no gate, but the wall came to an end some yards short of the water's edge, and she walked round it onto the lawn.

Not far off was one of the water-carriers, white-bearded, stooping and gnarled, with a wide, flat straw hat on his head.

"I've come to see the saiyett Almynis. Will it be all right to go up to the house?"

He squinnied up at her, old eyes peering out of a crumbling dwelling--as it were from far away--at youth and beauty which once, perhaps, he might have hoped to attain. Not any more. Not now.

"Why not?"

She gave him five meld, at which the poor old fellow uttered an exclamation, touched it to his forehead and called down a blessing on her. She went on between the trees and shrubs with their smell of moist greenery. Glittering gnats were darting among them and butterflies fanned their wings on the stones. The double doors giving on the garden were louvred like the shutters, made of sestuaga wood, very light and delicate andfastenedwithabronzechain. Shewasabout, to knock when she saw, standing on a little, round table beside the door, a copper hand-bell. It was made in the form of four naked girls facing outwards and arching their bodies, hands raised above their heads to meet round the handle-- an erect zard carved in some dark, smooth wood. Wouldn't Nennaunir just about fancy one of those? she thought; and forthwith picked it up and rang it. Like a sheep-bell it was not resonant, but gave off a hollow, cloppering sound, which somehow went with the hot afternoon. She held it up and looked inside, expecting the tongue to be another zard: however, it turned out to be a boy and girl clasped in each other's arms. She had just replaced it on the table when the chain was drawn and the doors opened by an enormous man--the biggest she had ever seen in her life, exceptfor King Karnat. The chucker-out, she thought: these places always employed a strong fellow.

He certainly was an intimidating sight, bare-armed, barefooted and muscled like an ogre. She only just restrained herself from raising her palm to her forehead.

"I've come to see the saiyett Almynis," she said.

"She's expocting you?" He spoke like Lalloc--like a Deelguy.

" Agirl called Mesca told Almynis I was coming."

"You com in." He stood aside.

She stepped into a big, cool room. There were couches covered with bright rugs and cushions, a long dining-table with benches on either side and a central pool with a fountain; but the fountain was still. All the windows were shuttered against the sun, except for one, a dazzling rectangle on the far side of a couple of steps leading up into a little colonnade at the other end of the room.

"You waitinghere. Itollher."

She began wandering about the room, admiring the fittings and furniture, most of which looked new.

One wall was d

ecorated with a series of licentious pictures, another with a charming painting of swans alighting on a lake.

All of a sudden Maia stopped short. On a small, lacquered table against the wall stood a little cluster of ornaments and pretty artifacts--a pair of candle-snuffers made like a silver dragon, the corn-sheaves of Sarkid carved in Ortelgan ziltate, a golden filigree sweet-box and so on. Arhong these was a little carving, in greenstone, of two goats mating. One exactly like it, she remembered, had had its place on the edge of the fountain in Sencho's dining-hall. She had once asked where it came from and been told from some foreign land beyond Yelda.

She would never have imagined there could be two such. She stepped forward and was j ust going to pick it up when she realized that the huge bodyguard had returned and was standing at her elbow.

Without speaking he gestured towards the unshuttered window behind her; She looked across the room. The dark shape of a woman, looking out of the window, was outlined against the light. She must have entered without a sound from somewhere along the colonnade. Maia crossed the room, went up the steps and raised her palm to her forehead.

"Saiyett Almynis, thank you very much for letting me--"

The woman turned. "Hallo, Maia."

For a moment Maia stared; then, with a cry, she recoiled, clutching with one hand at the painted column be-hind her.

"Terebinthia!"

99: A HARD BARGAIN

Maia's fear upon recognizing Terebinthia was, of course, instantaneous and irrational. During her months in Sen-cho's house it had been second nature to all the girls to regard Terebinthia, even in her moods of relative amiability, as the very embodiment of ruthless cunning, a woman out for her own interests and nothing else. What happened to girls who did not suit those interests had been exemplified by Meris. Occula, maturing her secret, desperate design day after day, had feared Terebinthia as she had never feared Sencho. Terebinthia's lack of all kindness, warmth or humor, her self-contained vigilance, her minacious domination over the household, the impossibility of ever hearing her coming or of guessing how much she really knew--all these had created an atmosphere which would certainly not have obtained if the saiyett had been someone like Sessendris. Maia had not, of course, seen Terebinthia since the evening when she and Occula had set out with Sencho for the party by the Barb. Small won-der, then, that in the first moment that she recognized her, it did not immediately occur to her that a great deal had happened since they had last been together. The most frightening thing about Terebinthia had always been that you never knew where she would be next; and of that there could scarcely have been a more startling instance than now.