"Yes, sir, I do."
"But thot's high-class work, now," said Lalloc, staring at her shrewdly. "All kinds of work, too. No good if you don't foncy it. You don't foncy it, you say now, not later. Then I soil you somewhere else, what you foncy--just to oblige Domris, you know."
"Thank you, sir. I'd like a rich household in the upper city. I'm talented, and I can assure you that your reputation as a dealer woan' suffer through me."
Lalloc picked up the letter and rapidly re-read it. "I soil you on approval, we hope you don't come bock, eh? But I suppose Domris don't be selling you to me onless she think you're good."
Putting the letter back on the table, he picked up an abacus and began making calculations. At length Occula said, "May I ask you about the money, sir?"
"Monny?" replied Lalloc, looking up at once.
"Yes, sir. Madam Domris promised me five hundred meld for myself out of the purchase money."
"Ah," replied Lalloc, "thot's if we're getting what we hope for."
"Sir, may I beg you very respectfully to put yourself in my position? I've come here at my own request, to do you credit and make my fortune, if I can. I haven' any money at all. A little of my own, for minor expenses, will make a lot of difference to the amount of credit I can do you."
"Well--well--" Lalloc made an impatient gesture-- "likely we monage something, if thot's what Domris say. Now this other girl--" he turned towards Maia, who blushed and looked down at the floor--"we don't know nothing about her. She's surplus to the Tonilda quota, Zuno, thot's it?"
"Yes, sir. I gather Megdon--"
"Vorry nice-- vorry nice," said Lalloc, regarding Maia with a smile and rubbing his hands together. "How you say Megdon gotting her?"
"I--er-----gather, sir," drawled Zuno, "that Megdon--or Perdan--one of our men in Tonilda, anyway--was in the neighborhood of a place called Meerzat, when he was approached by a woman who said she wanted to sell the girl. He went and inspected her; and not unnaturally he bought her."
"How moch he pay?"
"You have his receipt, sir: I gave it to Vartou last night."
"And I say, how moch he payl You trost Megdon?" said Lalloc.
"I trust no one, sir, in the trade--except yourself, of course. Megdon bought the girl from an illiterate peasant woman, and there is his receipt. As you can see, it's for much less than we can hope to get for a girl like this: that's all I can say. Megdon will no doubt be rendering his accounts next month as usual."
There was a pause.
"Who's this who soil you?" said Lalloc to Maia.
"My--my mother, sir," whispered poor Maia almost inaudibly.
"Stepmother?"
"No, sir."
"Your real mother soil you? Why?"
"I don't--I don't know, sir."
Lalloc leant across the table and gripped Maia's chin so that she was forced to meet his eye. "You been on a game, hov you? Howing baby? Or maybe you try to kill her, eh? Come on, you toll us now."
Maia, jerking away from him and burying her face in her hands, began to weep uncontrollably. Occula bent over her, doing her best to calm her. Vartou clicked her tongue impatiently. Lalloc sat back, drumming his fingers on the table.
"Shall I bring her to her senses, sir?" asked Vartou.
"No," said Lalloc. "Dozzn't motter--not thot moch. I jost want to know she's not sick and she's not howing baby, that's all. If not, we soil her straightaway: soil her good, too."
"Will you be selling her to the same house as me, sir?" asked Occula.
"Don't be fool," said Lalloc. "We soil you fourteen, maybe fifteen thousand; you think the man pay two lots like that, one time, eh?"
Maia, clutching at Occula and crying hysterically, was jerked to her feet by Vartou, who held her upright and put a hand over her mouth.
"You botter take her outside, Vartou," said Lalloc. "Calm her down; but don't mark or bruise her, you see? Not like thot one last month you knock her teeth out. Thot's jost waste of monny. You jost see you can find out she's not sick, thot's all."
"I think I can tell you all you want to know, sir," said Occula, as the door closed behind Maia and the woman. "The girl's told me her story, and I'm sure it's true. While she was at home she became the mistress of her stepfather, but she's never had anyone else in her life. They're a poor family--hardly food enough to go round, she told me, and the mother pregnant herself. She found out what was goin' on and sold the girl out of resentment and jealousy, while the stepfather was away on some business or other. She's not diseased and I'm good as certain she's not pregnant."
"Why you ask me soil her with you?" asked Lalloc.
"Well, chiefly because I like her, sir, and she likes me: I admit that. But I can see advantages for yourself. She's very young and completely inexperienced, and I can train her better than anyone else because she trusts me and isn' afraid of me. I think, with her looks and mine--you know, the contrast--we could come to work very well together. She'll do much better and be more of a credit to your fine reputation as a dealer if I can look after her and make her less nervous--which I'm sure I can." Her eye flickered towards Zuno. "Doan' you agree, sir? Didn' you think, for instance, that she seemed rather nervous at--well, at Khasiki You recall the night at Khasik?"
Zuno paused. "Well--er--well, we need hardly talk about Khasik now; but perhaps there may be something in what you say. I'm inclined to agree, sir, with what this girl suggests. Always provided, of course, that it's possible to sell them together for a good total figure."
Lalloc considered. From what Domris had told him this black girl, apart from her unusual and striking looks, was sharp and able--a girl out of the ordinary. She was likely to go far--indeed, in the present state of Bekla, no one could say how far. A rich voluptuary's pet concubine; a baron's favorite shearna--there was no telling. One of the built-in features of the bed-girl trade (and he had known others come unstuck through it) was that while there were big profits to be made out of such girls while they were young and starting out, it might later prove important-- you could never tell--not to have antagonized them. Conversely, if they retained not-too-unpleasant memories of the way you had treated them, they could in time become influential friends and valuable sources of information. In-deed, he recalled that Hosein, a former dealer at the time of the Leopard rising six or seven years ago, had been able to cut and run just in time, following a word from a girl who owed him a^good turn.
"Well," he said at length, "we try it, Occula. But it's expocting something, I toll you. This is roch man all right, oh, yes, but I don't think he spond that moch--and if he don't, thot's it and nobody making trobble, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"Maybe I give you your monny now, then no one olse see. You got where you can put it?"
/> "Yes, sir."
"We going opper city this morning. You--well, you don't need hairdresser; only the other girl. You need clothes?"
"I have some clothes with me, sir, which suit me very well, I think. You'll judge for yourself. But my friend will need some."
"You botter go now, talk to her. She got to look nice: no good we gotting there she's making a foss, look like she been crying."
"She woan', sir. Leave it to me."
An hour later Maia, dressed in a close-fitting, low-cut, green-and-white robe, her golden hair combed smooth and falling over her bare shoulders, was being carried with Occula in a curtained litter up the Street of the Armorers to the Peacock Gate, the only entrance from the lower to the upper city. Here Lalloc, the girls, litter-bearers and all were conducted to the enclosed chamber known as the Moon Room, searched and their identities noted; for even a dealer of Lalloc's standing was not immune from the strict and vigilant surveillance imposed by the Leopard regime. Finally the litter itself was also searched. Thereupon the porter operated the counterpoise that opened the postern and Lalloc, followed by his wares, proceeded towards the group of wealthy houses east of the Barb, one of which was that of Sencho-be-L'vandor, High Counselor of the Beklan Empire.
PART II
THE SLAVE-GIRL
18: SENCHO
His Worthiness Sencho-be-L'vandor, High Counselor of Bekla, was, in this seventh year of the reign of Durakkon, forty-five years of age, a leading member of the Leopard faction and one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the empire.