Ah, yes: Kembri remembered her now: a handsome girl. If only she could avoid arousing suspicion, she should prove virtually irresistible in a back-of-beyond spot like Chalcon. And as long as she was apparently chance-met on a road, or at some wayside inn, the fact that she was a Belishban would add to her attraction rather than make her suspect, as it would if she were a servant in some baron's house.
"But it occurs to me," went on Kembri, "that whatever you may think, Sencho, of the drawbacks to family servants as spies, it couldn't do us any harm to plant a local girl in Erketlis's house as well. Haven't you got any Tonildan girls?"
Sencho replied that he had indeed, but it was certainly not his intention to send back to Tonilda a young woman who had just cost him fifteen thousand meld and worth every trug. He could not resist enlarging a little on the subject. The girl had already shown every sign of a pleasingly carnal disposition. She was a sharp little thing, too-- had a good head on her shoulders. As a concubine she was, of course, immature but already capable of a good deal, with a certain capacity for invention to compensate for her rough edges.
"Rough edges?" Kembri, recalling the girl he had seen at the banquet, chuckled. "That's what you call them, is it? Well, you must let me borrow her some time." (In point of fact the Lord General, irritated at Sencho's having brushed aside his suspicions and anxieties about the Ur-tans, had just been visited by an idea for pursuing the matter on his own account, but this he did not disclose to the High Counselor.)
"On the usual terms." Sencho began helping himself to buttered crayfish and plovers' eggs, which the slave had just carried in.
"Of course. Yes, I'd fancy her: I'll send someone to see your saiyett--Terebinthia, isn't it?--about an arrangement. But now we'll eat."
Getting up from beside the High Counselor, he made his way across to the table.
"Let me pour you some wine, sir," he said to Durakkon. "It's no good troubling yourself with doubts and regrets about Enka-Mordet: it's an essential part of the High Baron's job to be ruthless when necessary, you know."
He poured the wine, but Durakkon, after raising the goblet absently to his lips, had still not emptied it by the time the Lord General and the High Counselor took their leave.
25: TEREBINTHIA BRINGS NEWS
"Oh, we used to just about dread Melekril, and that's a fact," said Maia, stretching a bare arm out of bed for another handful of grapes. "I can remember waking up and, you know, hearing the rain and that and thinking 'Isn't it ever going to stop?' "
"We used to take it fairly easy at old Domris's," said Occula. "Same as they do here. You couldn', I suppose?"
"Well, you can't, can you?--not when there's beasts to be seen to, and then sometimes we'd have to take the boat out; and then there'd be firewood to get in--oh, I can remember being almost up to the knees in mud, just going down the lane to borrow a bucket."
"So you reckon this is a better life?"
"Well, isn't it?" Maia giggled. "We're the cows now-- someone else has to look after us, don't they?"
"Come on, then, pretty cow, let's get up. Stove'll be goin' nicely by now. I'm hungry, aren' you?"
"Oh, the dancing, Occula! That dance you said you'd teach me--the--"
"So I will: soon as we've had somethin' to eat." She raised her voice. "Ogma! Can we have some breakfast, dear, please? Dare say I can play a hinnari well enough for all you'll need to begin with."
An hour later Occula, having laid the hinnari aside on a bench, was standing opposite Maia on the open floor near the pool, her hands moving this way and that in smooth, fluid gestures.
"First thing you've got to realize, banzi, is that this isn' village dancin'. Your hands aren' just somethin' at the ends of your arms. You've got to use them, and your fingers too. Each finger's got to be able to move separately--like this, see?"
"Oh, I'll never be able to do it, Occula!"
"Yes, you will. If I could, you can. You're made for it, actually; but it takes skill and practice. Wouldn' be any point otherwise, would there?"
"What did you say the two parts are called?"
"The selpe" and the reppa. The whole point of the senguela, banzi, is that although you're only one dancer, you've got to play three parts. First of all you're Lespa, then you're Shakkarn and then you're the old woman. And you've got to act each of those parts; be them, not just dance them. You've got to act them so well that your audience see what isn' there. In the sort of dancin' you've been used to, there are a lot of other people and everybody more or less has to keep together. But then they're only concerned with amusin' themselves and each other. This you do alone, and you're doin' it for people to enjoy watchin' you. So once you've mastered the skills and the actin', you can dance more or less as you like; you can pretty well make it up, as long as you're graceful and as long as you act the different parts so well that everybody can follow you. Anyway, let's leave the finger-movements for now: you can practice them half an hour a day. Look, I'm just goin' to keep a rhythm goin' for you--I can't play this thing much better than that, anyway.
You're Lespa bathin' in the pool, right? And you've got to feel you're Lespa, banzi; you've got to become Lespa! Lie down to start with; shut your eyes and think; pray if you like. And then you're goin' to turn into Lespa, simply burnin' for it, but half-frightened as well. If you doan' believe it, nobody else is goin' to. Now then--these are what they call the water-chords. Lie down and concentrate--"
Towards the end of the morning they were still at it when Maia, as deeply absorbed and self-forgotten as even Occula could wish, took a few whisking steps backward among the imagined trees and found the silent Terebinthia at her elbow. She started, stumbled and broke off. Occula stopped playing.
"Well, I dare say you may become quite good in time, Maia," said Terebinthia, taking her arm to help her regain her balance. "But take care to develop your own style: don't copy some other girl's. Dyphna's shimmer than you, and that makes a difference. Work with your body and not against it."
"Do you know the senguela, then, saiyett?" asked Occula.
"Very well: I've seen many girls work out their own ideas of it. But now I have to interrupt you on one or two matters. First of all, the pedlar's here again. He's been taking orders for various things the High Counselor wants from Thettit, and he's setting off again this afternoon."
"What, in the rain, saiyett?" asked Occula.
"So it seems," said Terebinthia. "It's a matter of profit, I dare say. No doubt pedlars ready to travel in the rain make more money, or he may simply have been ordered by the High Counselor to go at once. He says if you have any messages for anyone in Thettit-Tonilda, he can take them."
"That's nice of him, saiyett," said Occula, slackening off the strings of the hinnari and hanging it up on the wall. "Could he come in for a moment, do you think, if we're not puttin' you to too much trouble? I've a friend in Thettit--one I think he may already know."
The pedlar, clumsy in great boots reaching to his knees, was carrying a cape shaped, as though for a hunchback, with a recess to contain his pack. Laying this down and opening his tunic at the neck, he leant against one of the columns by the door-curtains and took a long pull at the goblet which Terebinthia offered him.
"Why, you girls live in a bed of roses," said he, wiping his mouth. "I don't know where there's a better drop than that--no, not from Bekla to Thettit."
"I doan' envy you your journey, Zirek," said Occula. "You'll be walkin' straight into the rain, too. How far will you get tonight?"
"Oh, I'll get as far as Naksh easily enough," he answered. "I'm used to it, you know. I always say if the boots can do it, I can. Still got your Cat Colonna? It was you I gave it to, wasn't it?"
"Oh, d'you know, I dropped it?" said Occula. "It broke, of course: I'm sorry, after you gave it me for nothin'."
"Well, some cats fall off a roof and land right way up," said the pedlar, "but pottery cats you'd hardly expect it, would you? Never mind: I can let you have another, seeing as your master's been kind
enough to give me a good bit of profitable business. I think I've got a nice, striped one somewhere." He opened his pack. "Yes, here she is: with my compliments. But now I can't stop about--not with seven or eight miles to do before dark."
"Could you give a message to a friend of mine at the Lily Pool?" asked Occula. "A shearna called Bakris?"
"Bakris?"
"That's right. Before I left there was some talk of her comin' up to Bekla this spring on business."
"What d'you want me to tell her, then?"
"Well, I thought if Bakris happened to be here for the spring festival, there might just possibly be a chance for us to meet--at the feast by the Barb in the evenin' perhaps--that's if she can get someone to take her and if I happen to be one of the girls the High Counselor takes with him. I'd be workin', of course, but there might be a minute or two to spare all the same."
She glanced a moment at Terebinthia, but the saiyett made no comment.
"Well, that's easy enough," said the pedlar. "I'll drop in and give her your message." He drained his goblet. "And now I'll be off. See you again after Melekril, for I don't mean to tramp that road twice in the rain, I'll tell you that."
Bowing to Terebinthia, he went out. Occula was about to take the hinnari down again when she and Maia became aware that the saiyett evidently had more to say.
"One or two matters, I said, Occula," remarked Terebinthia coldly.
"I'm sorry, saiyett: forgive me."