Maia (Beklan Empire 1)

Waking in discomfort, he called once more for Occula, and when she came told her to ease the itching and prickly heat tormenting him. The black girl, gazing at him gravely, assured him that all would be well if only he would do as she said. He should order the slaves to carry him into the small hall: he would find himself more comfortable there. Indeed, she assured him, for his own ease and well-being he would in general find it best always to go wherever she suggested. Complying, he felt the power of his own cunning compromised and diminished, yet felt, too, immediate relief and reassurance as she caressed and whispered to him, changed the sweat-soaked cushions and fanned him while he drank the wine she had brought.

Sometimes Dyphna or the Tonildan girl would take Occula's place, but at such times he was disturbed and fretful, for he felt at the mercy of shadows--had she conjured them?--and dared not let her be absent for long, his enigmatic comforter. All was paradox. "I am bewitched: I am not my own master," he once broke out suddenly to Terebinthia. Yet when she asked him what he meant, he was not aware that he had spoken but, queasy and restless, merely told her that he felt disinclined for supper tonight, and once more fell asleep, to dream of Occula, transformed to Frella-Tiltheh the Inscrutable, preserver and destroyer, floating with him upon dark water towards some undisclosed destination of voluptuous enjoyment and impending menace.

Bayub-Otal drained his goblet, gestured for it to be refilled and leaned back in his chair, smiling at Maia across the table. His face, in the candlelight, was flushed and a few drops of sweat glistened at his temples. During dinner the room, which was not large, had become too warm. Now that the shutters had been opened to cool it, they could hear that the rain had slackened. Light gusts of wind were blowing and the air smelt fresh. In the colonnade, below, a girl's voice, soliciting, spoke to some passer-by, who replied sharply and presumably walked on. The exchange gave Maia a pleasant sense of satisfaction.

Even if she did not care for Bayub-Otal's company, at all events she was not plying for hire on the streets of the lower city.

They had dined well, in a private room at "The Green Grove", a well-known tavern situated on the north side of the Caravan Market. "The Green Grove" catered not only for prosperous traders and merchants but also, on demand, for aristocratic customers prepared to pay for the best food and wine. During Melekril there was little in the way of custom from provincial traders and the like, and Bayub-Otal's small party--himself, Haubas, Ka-Roton and three girls--had had the benefit of the best cooking and service the house could provide. Maia, who still could not take for granted the marvel of unlimited, delicious food, had not allowed her task of cutting up Bayub-Otal's meat to interfere with doing the fullest justice to the hare soup, baked carp, stuffed lamb and succeeding dishes, and was now sitting alone with Bayub-Otal over mulled wine, figs and thrilsa. She was glad the other Urtans had taken their girls upstairs for a time, since both--strangers to her-- were prosperous shearnas a good six or seven years older than she, and neither had shown herself particularly friendly to the sixteen-year-old slave-girl. "Why couldn't he have let us bring Actynnis?", she had heard one of them whisper. "She was dying to come."

"Little slave-girls are cheaper," giggled the other, but broke off as Maia leant across to ask her for the salt.

"Did you enjoy the dinner?" asked Bayub-Otal, fanning himself with a fig leaf pulled from the basket.

"Very much, my lord," replied Maia. Then, making no attempt to suppress a belch, she laughed and added, "That's how much!"

"You'll never grow up to be a shearna at that rate."

Her task, she reminded herself, was to appear as simple and innocent as possible.

"P'raps I don't want to be a shearna."

"What would you like to be?"

Maia paused, smiling at him between the candle-flames. "There were four of us girls back home: I was the eldest, but dare say Kelsi'll be married now 'fore ever I am."

Bayub-Otal made no answer and she went on, "I told you how I used to swim in the lake--oh, sometimes for hours. It was lovely."

He pushed the candlesticks to one side, so that the light no longer lay directly between them.

"When you told me you belonged to the High Counselor, I was in two minds whether to see you again."

"It's not my fault, my lord, if I belong to the High Counselor. Fin still the same girl."

"The same girl as whom?"

"As swum in the lake."

"You won't be for long if you stay in his household. You tell him all you get to hear, I suppose--you and your black friend. That's the other use he has for you. Very serviceable, I'm sure."

A more experienced girl would have passed over the taunt. Maia felt nettled and showed it, for he had, of course, come close to the truth.

"We're not spies, my lord; we're his household girls. I shan't go telling him anything you say. If you don't believe me, why do you want my company?"

He walked across the room and closed the shutters on the dripping darkness outside. Then, turning to the slave who had waited on them and pressing a couple of coins into his hand, he said, "Bring us in some more mulled wine. After that you may go."

"You're angry," he said, when the door had closed.

"Don't make much difference, my lord, does it, whether I am or not? I'm here to do as you like."

He cracked and peeled a nut with his left hand.

"What I'd like? Then what I'd like is simply for you to listen to me for a little while: I'll tell you a story which I dare say you may not have heard, though it's certainly known to the High Counselor. Do you want to hear it?"

"Seeing as you want to tell it to me, my lord."

"When I was born, my mother was a girl little older than you are now. She came from southern Suba--the marshland delta where the Valderra runs into the Zhairgen. There are more channels there than a cat has whiskers."

Maia, forgetting her annoyance, laughed. "How many's that, then?"

He smiled back. "I don't know, but that's what they used to say when I was a child. Ah! 'When I was a child': we all love the place we come from, don't we? You loved your lake. In Suba the grass grows very tall--as tall as a man--in great swamps, with sheldin trees lining the banks of the channels. Evenings, the sun sets--oh, far away, out beyond Katria--and there are shoals of little silver fish-- margets, they're called--that leap out of the water, here and gone, like rain pattering. It's all waterways there--waterways and reeds--and the children can paddle a raft almost as soon as they can walk. The Urtans call us marsh frogs: they say that when our enemies come we dive into the water." He laughed. "So we do. People who want to be lost take a lot of finding in that country."

"Lespa of the Stars--didn't she come from there, my lord?"

"So they say. But if she did, she couldn't have been more beautiful than my mother."

He pushed the wine-flagon across to her and waited while she refilled her goblet.

"My mother was a dancer--the most famous and beautiful in all Suba; in all the empire, really. At festival-time men used to travel three, four days' journey just to see her dance. I hardly ever saw her dance, myself; but I've talked to men who did, before she was--before she was married," said Bayub-Otal with emphasis. "That's to say, before I was born, when she was at her greatest as a dancer.

"The baron of southern Suba at that time--Nor-Zavin; he's dead now--he was suspected by the Urtans--I don't know how justly-of secret dealings with Terekenalt, and he badly needed to convince the High Baron of Urtah that he was loyal to him. He sent him all sorts of gifts--unusual, singular things that they'd never seen in Urtah. He knew of my mother, of course. All Suba knew of her. So he bought her from her parents. It was a forced sale: he was a baron, and even though she wasn't a slave they had no real choice, though I suppose you could say it was a fair deal in its way. He paid them far more than she'd have fetched in the hands of men like Lalloc. It kept them in comfort for the rest of their lives." He paused. "Break up this thrilsa for me, Maia, and have some yourself."

&n

bsp; Maia did as he asked. The slave returned with the mulled wine, put it down and went out.

"Well," went on Bayub-Otal slowly, "so she was taken away--crying, I dare say--to Kendron-Urtah. And there she danced for the High Baron and his court. Do you know his name?"

"No, my lord, can't say as I do. Is he still alive?"

"Yes, he is. He's sixty-two. His name is Het-Otal-Ecachlon. At the time I'm speaking of, he was about thirty-four or thirty-five. It's--well, it's always been widely known-- that things weren't smooth or happy between him and his wife. She was a Palteshi, very well-born; it was a political marriage. Many a ruler, many a great man in that situation's found himself as badly off, I dare say.