Maia (Beklan Empire 1)

, and finally into a sunny, clean-smelling room with a bed. The woman undressed her, tut-tutting at the state of her tunic, which she simply threw outside the door as though to be rid of it; and thereupon Maia, all dirty as she was, climbed into the bed and was unconscious almost before the woman had left her.

When she woke, the room was in twilight. Through the windows opposite shone an afterglow sky of ochre and pale-green, and from somewhere just outside came the low cackle of birds settling to roost along a cornice--mynahs or starlings. The air smelt of evening--wood-smoke and moist herbage. She must be high up, for from where she lay she could see neither roofs nor trees. It was quiet-- too quiet, she thought, for the lower city.

For some time she lay still, listening to the gentle commotion of the birds as the last light ebbed out of the sky. In spite of her complete ignorance, both about her situation and the future, she felt full of relief and even a curious kind of confidence. Whatever lay ahead, it could only be better than the horror behind. Evidently Queen Fornis had a use for her, though Maia could not remember what, if anything, she had said about it.

Well, and come to that Sencho had had plenty of use for her, too. Strange to think that she would never again feel him panting and shuddering as she did what he liked on the big couch in the fountain-room.

What would be-come of his household now, she wondered--the cooks, Jarvil the porter, Ogma and the others? No doubt the skilled ones would be able to take their skills elsewhere. Lucky Dyphna, getting out just in time! And apparently Elvair-ka-Virrion had taken Milvushina: to keep or to set free?

Suddenly, with a quick darkening of the spirit, she remembered Occula. Occula was still held in the temple for questioning. Whether she told them anything or not, a slave had no rights at law: for a slave to be condemned, only suspicion was necessary. Occula's only hope was that some influential person might speak for her.

Who might be ready to do it? Shend-Lador or some of his Leopard friends? Yet they were only young blades-- not men of influence. Even Elvair-ka-Virrion did not strike her as likely to be of much help here. Suddenly she thought of Sarget. Sarget--a middle-aged, wealthy man, not prof-ligate, widely respected for his culture and good sense. Not a nobleman, true, but at least a man who had lent money to noblemen. After she had danced the senguela, Sarget had given her his arm out of the hall and praised her warmly. Could she possibly get a message to him now, begging him to intercede for Occula?

At this moment she became aware, beyond the far end of the big, shadowy chamber, of lamplight behind a curtained archway. Someone was moving quietly about in the adjoining room.

She coughed two or three times. The lamplight grew brighter, the curtain was drawn aside and the Paltes woman came in, carrying lighted lamps on a tray. Three of these she placed on stands about the room, then came across and sat down on the edge of the bed, smiling at Maia as she put down the fourth lamp on the table close by.

"Good sleep? Feeling better?"

Maia nodded. "Where am I?"

The other looked surprised. "Why, in Queen Fornis's house, naturally! Great Cran, girl, you look frightened to death! You've nothing to be afraid of, you know. You ought to be thanking the gods for your good luck!"

Maia managed to smile. "Well, only it's all a bit sudden, like; and I've had a real bad time."

"But it's over now."

"Will you tell me," asked Maia hesitantly; "well, who you are, saiyett; why I'm here and what I've got to expect, like?"

The woman laughed. "Well, for a start, I'm Ashaktis, and you can call me that; you needn't call me saiyett. But before I tell you any more--Maia, isn't it?--you'd better come along to the bath. The queen will want to see you as soon as you're fit to be seen--"

"What for?" Maia's fingers tightened on the coverlet.

"What for? Don't be silly! Are you afraid of her?" asked Ashaktis.

"Yes, I am. Reckon I'm not the only one, either."

"But you used to be with Sencho, didn't you? Anyway, the bath now!" said Ashaktis peremptorily. "Put this wrap round you and come with me."

Evidently the bath had already been prepared, for as they walked together along the open gallery outside, Maia could smell the perfumed steam. The bathroom, when they reached it, fairly took her breath away. It was even more luxurious than Sencho's. Half of one wall consisted of a broad stone hearth spread with glowing charcoal, and here two great caldrons of water, each with a long-handled iron dipper, stood gently bubbling. The circular bath, a good seven feet across and made of green malachite, was sunk in the floor and surrounded with glazed, crimson tiles, each bearing a different design of a bird, flower or animal. On shelves along the opposite wall were laid out any num-ber of flasks of scent and perfumed oils, smooth and rough pumice-stones, scented soaps, small files and pointed wooden spills.

To one side stood the cold-water cistern, from which a copper pipe, stopped with a wooden plug, led down into the bath. There were two carved, wooden couches covered with thick towels and rugs, and a deep, open-fronted recess stacked with wraps, slippers, brushes and at least three silver hand-mirrors.

A Deelguy slave-girl, dark-eyed and broad-nosed, her black hair in a plaited rope down her back, was kneeling to fan the charcoal. Ashaktis, dismissing her, took off Maia's wrap and hung it on a peg, gave her her hand to step down into the bath and then seated herself near-by.

Maia, used as she had become to luxury, had never experienced opulence like this. Always capable of setting aside her worries in any pleasure which the immediate moment might offer, she spent plenty of time in the water, feeling the tension and grime of days disappearing like smoke on the wind. When she had finished washing her hair, she asked Ashaktis whether she might let some of the water out and add more from the caldrons on the fire. .

"Oh, I'll see to that," said Ashaktis, getting up and plunging a bared arm into the bath to grope for the plug. "Just stand out of the way while I pour this boiling water in."

"Can you tell me what this is all about?" asked Maia, slipping back into the hot water with a wriggle of pleasure and splashing it over herself.

Ashaktis, laying aside the dipper, sat down again.

"How much do you know about the Sacred Queen?" she asked.

Maia recalled all that Occula had told her of Fornis of Paltesh; of her unscrupulous rapacity, her cruelty, her relentless and cunning tenure of power; of the admiration she inspired and the fear she was capable of inspiring when she wished; of the many men, dazzled, who had tried to gain her, and how none had been even so much as rumored to have succeeded.

"Reckon just about nothing," she answered.

"I've been with her for twenty years," said Ashaktis, "ever since she was a girl in her father's house in Dari. I was with her when she took the boat and sailed it to Quiso. You'll have heard that tale, I suppose?" (Maia nodded.) "Cran only knows what I've done for her since, and Cran'll destroy me for it one day, I dare say, for she's thumbed her nose at him and every one of the gods for years. But it'll have been worth it. Perhaps you've learnt something yourself already, have you, about the difference between scrubbing floors for the bare living and doing what rich people want done by girls who know how to stay on the right side of them and keep their mouths shut?"

"Ah, that I have," replied Maia decisively.

"Life's not easy with the queen," went on Ashaktis, "but at least it's never dull. There's times she makes your hair stand on end. You've got to look alive with her. For a long time now I've had more than enough money to buy myself free, but I never do. She's like one of those drugs the Deelguy sell: people keep saying they'll give it up, but they don't. I've become addicted to Miss Fornis. One day she'll be the death of me and that'll be that."

Maia felt emboldened by the woman's friendly loquacity. "Go on, then; tell me something you've seen her do. Something out of the ordinary, like you were saying."

Ashaktis was silent for a time, reflecting. Maia, looking this way and that to admire the serpents, porcupines, gazelles and panthers depicted on t

he bath-tiles, waited expectantly.

"Well, one time, several years ago now," said Ashaktis at length, "we went up into Suba. It was only about three months after we'd got back from Quiso; that's to say, before those uncles of hers had really got it into their heads that she didn't mean to marry. She'd told them she wanted to go to Suba to hunt duck and water-fowl. There weren't many of us; one of the uncles and his daughter, a girl of about twenty; a couple of huntsmen, Miss Fornis and me. The cooks and guides and the rest we hired once we'd crossed the Valderra. You've never been in Suba, have you?"

"Never," said Maia.

"It's a strange place, and the people are strange, too. It's like nowhere else in the empire--half land and half water. You travel everywhere by boat, down the water-channels; like corridors of water they are, between one village and the next, and the reeds and trees standing high all round you. You hear bitterns booming in the swamps and I've seen black turtles--oh, big as a soldier's shield-lying out on branches above the water.

"After about ten days poor old uncle was tired out, so Miss Fornis went out alone with me and four men--two Subans and our own two Dari huntsmen. We came to an island in the swamps and in the middle was a heronry. We could see the big, ramshackle nests, high up in the tops of the trees. You know the way they build?"

Maia nodded.

"Well, we'd no sooner got to this island than Miss Fornis looks up at the trees and says 'Ah, herons! I've always fancied young herons would be good in a pie; better than pigeons. Phorbas,' she says to one of the Suban lads, 'just climb up and bring me down half a dozen, will you?' 'No, saiyett,' says the boy, 'that I won't! I value my life and that's the truth. There's no living man could reach those nests, and even if he did the herons would be at him like dragons.' 'Why, you damned, cowardly, Suban marsh-frog!' she said to him. 'I don't know why ever I hired the likes of you! Go on, then, Khumba,' she said to one of our huntsmen, 'you'd better just show him how to do it, hadn't you?' 'I'm very sorry, saiyett,' says Khumba, 'but I reckon yon Suban fellow's in the right of it. I'm no more going up there than he is. My wife wouldn't fancy me with a broken neck, that's about the size of it.'

" 'Cran and Airtha! Well, here goes then!' says Miss Fornis, as if she was stepping out of doors into the rain. 'And since you're not a man,' she said to the Suban, 'you can just give me those breeches of yours to keep my legs from getting scratched. Come on, hurry up!' And she made him take them off. They still thought it must be some joke she was up to. She was only just seventeen then, you see, and in those days her ways weren't so well-known.