He touched her forehead with his lips. "Yes, of course."
"Listen, my lord. There's a girl with me now in the High Counselor's house. You talk about loss and trouble--"
She began to tell him about Milvushina, but after a time he stopped her, resuming his restless pacing.
"Strange things happen, don't they? An enslaved girl's loved honorably for years, by a High Baron; and a baron's daughter's enslaved and becomes the victim of a filthy libertine."
" 'Tis all a dream, my lord. That's what old Drigga used to say--her as told the stories back home. When Lespa wakes us--"
"Now do you understand why I don't feel inclined to go to bed with you--or with any girl? Do you think I'd buy a girl's body, or compel a girl to bed with me, after what I've told you; yes, and after what you've just told me? This whole city's full of wretched girls yielding to men because they've no choice. And wouldn't those men love to see me become as dissolute as themselves?"
"You take it too hard, my lord, that you do. It's pleasure and comfort, after all. Where's the harm, long as the girl's willing--?"
"Yes, for a lygol!" He spat the word. "Where's the dignity, the sincerity, in what they're doing?" He pointed upward. "Where my father bedded, there he loved. And where he loved, there he honored and cherished." His voice rose. "I'm speaking of the sense of responsibility that ought to go with desire for a woman."
"And d'you know what I reckon, my lord? I reckon you're just cutting off your nose to spite your face. There's thousands have lost everything and had to make the best of what's left. You should, too."
"I will: when Suba's free. I have a sacred duty to my people, you see. But that's enough of such talk." He smiled into her eyes, his pale, rather fine features (did he take something after his mother? she wondered) seeming to express amusement at the futility of his own outburst. "You told me you dance, sometimes. Will you dance for me now?"
"Oh, I'd not have the face, my lord; not after what you told me--about your mother, I mean."
"If I were to tell you to take off your clothes and go to bed with me, I suppose you'd raise no objection at all. Yet you're reluctant just to dance. I find that rather depressing."
"One's difficult and I'd do it badly. The other's easy and I'd do it well."
"All in a day's work, eh?"
"I know how to give pleasure, my lord. Ask anyone you like! You can start with Lord Eud-Ecachlon, and--"
"I don't think I'll bother," interrupted Bayub-Otal bleakly. "But I will trouble you to dance for me: I've a particular reason. Please go and ask them to send in a hinnarist."
Maia could only obey. When she returned Haubas, Ka-Roton and the two shearnas had come back downstairs. As they lolled half-dressed in one corner of the room, yawning and barely attentive, Maia did her best to tell the accompanist what she wanted and then, sadly devoid of any real confidence, entered upon the reppa of the senguela, which depicted Lespa's apotheosis to become the consort of Shakkarn and divine mistress of stars and dreams.
As she danced, unable for a moment to discard her awareness of the inadequate space, of the spent, drowsy Urtans and the indifferent hinnarist with whom she had not rehearsed, Maia had never felt so clumsy, so incapable of forgetting herself or of becoming in her heart the goddess whom she was supposed to be representing. She had forgotten to ask for the floor to be swept, and once, treading unexpectedly on a broken nutshell, she stumbled and could barely control a cry of pain. Yet Bayub-Otal, watching gravely, gave no sign of disappointment. As she came to the close--the beautiful, beneficent young goddess gazing down upon her sleeping earth-people between the clouds invisibly spread below her--dismally aware that she was two beats ahead of the hinnari, she felt full of chagrin. It was the first time she had danced for anyone but Occula, and a sorry go she had made of it.
"Maia," said Bayub-Otal after a few moments, "I can tell what you're feeling. Will you believe me if I tell you that you're a great deal better than you suppose? Given the opportunity, I'll prove it to you before much longer."
She made no reply, but he seemed to expect none and, having paid and dismissed the hinnarist, opened a shutter upon the Caravan Market.
"It's late," he said, as the clock-lanterns opened and shone for midnight, "but there's still no rain for the moment. You have to go back to the upper city, don't you? I'll go with you as far as the Peacock Gate. Then you can take the jekzha on and I'll walk back."
Out of the tail of her eye, Maia saw Haubas glance at Ka-Roton and Ka-Roton shrug.
"Just as you wish, my lord."
They went out into the colonnade while the landlord's boy ran for a jekzha. As they were getting into it Maia caught a glimpse, in the shadows, of a solitary girl--no doubt the same one whose importuning voice she had heard earlier in the evening. She looked haggard, dingy and considerably older than Maia.
"Is that your lygol?" asked Terebinthia grimly. "Are you sure you haven't been tampering with it?"
"When did I ever tamper with a lygol, saiyett?" said Maia. "They're Urtans. Why do I have to go with them?"
"You needn't again," replied Terebinthia, "if they can't do better than that."
36: A SIGN FOR OCCULA
"When are you going to take the field, then?" asked Durakkon. With any luck, he thought, and if Melekril were really ending (for sometimes the rainy season would ap-pear to be over, only to resume for as long as two weeks), Kembri might leave Bekla within the next few days and remain several months with the army.
He wondered, not for the first time, what good he had ever done anyone throughout the empire by seizing the lordship of Bekla. As for himself, fear and anxiety never left him. He was surrounded by and dependent upon men whom he disliked and despised--men who had corrupted the city and alienated many parts of the provinces. Day in and day out, simply to maintain power, he lent his name to a regime of intrigue, double-dealing and subterfuge. He had accomplished nothing of what he had first intended: this bore no resemblance--none--to the benevolent rule with which he had planned to replace Senda-na-Say's.
"Give the roads a few days to dry," answered Kembri, "and I'll take the Tonildan and Beklan regiments to the Valderra to join Sendekar."
"Has Sencho found out anything yet about Karnat's whereabouts and plans?"
"The truth is," said Kembri, "that Sencho's becoming less and less useful. It was only to be expected, I suppose. Lately, apparently, he hasn't even been capable of seeing his own men or hearing their reports. Anything could be brewing and we might not hear about it until too late, simply because he's sick or dying."
"I she dying?" asked Durakkon.
"His saiyett won't say a word one way or the other. One of his girls--a Tonildan--is reporting to me, and she thinks not; but she's only a child and she could be wrong--she admits it herself. As far as I can make out, he seems to have become completely dependent on the black girl--you know, the one all the younger men are talking about."
"The sorceress?" asked Durakkon. "Didn't she do some extraordinary sort of act with a knife--someone told me--"
"I don't know," replied Kembri shortly. "I wasn't there. She certainly seems to have acquired some extraordinary sort of influence over Sencho. The Tonildan's been with Bayub-Otal a couple of times. He seems to fancy her in some way of his own. I've told her to do everything she can to win his confidence. If only he'll talk freely to her, we might learn a great deal about Urtah--and Suba too; more than Sencho's likely to find out for us in his present condition. She's here now, without Sencho's knowledge. That's one advantage of him being sick, at least."
"Well, we'd better have her in then, I suppose," said Durakkon, with an air of distaste.
"I think not," replied Kembri. "If we do, at least one person--my saiyett--is going to know that you and I talked to her together, and possibly draw conclusions. No, I'll have her taken into a bedroom: nobody's going to wonder about that. There's one with a concealed screen, so you can easily come and hear what she's got to say."
A few minutes later D
urakkon, seated in darkness be-hind the screen and looking into the lamp-lit room, saw the girl come in. He remembered, now, having noticed her at the Rains banquet--a golden-haired lass, strikingly beautiful. Raising her palm to her forehead, she stood before the Lord General in an attitude of expectant submission.
"You won't be here long today," said Kembri, "and don't try to do what you did last time, or I shall be angry; do you understand?"
"Yes, my lord."
"You've been with Bayub-Otal again?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Were you alone with him?"
"Well, quite a while I was, my lord, yes."
"Did he say anything about Suba?"
"He said he'd not be able to take life easy, my lord, till Suba was free; on account of he had a sacred duty to his people."
"Nothing more?"
"No, my lord."
"You didn't think of asking him what he meant by that, or how he intended to go about it?"
"Well, I would have, my lord; only then he broke off the talk himself, see, and made me dance; and after that he said we'd go home, so I never had the chance to ask him any more, like."
"Well, that's useful information as far as it goes," said Kembri. "How is the High Counselor today?"
"About the same, my lord, I reckon: kind of sleepy, like. Not himself at all. It's like as if he was bewitched, sort of."
"What else did you talk about with Bayub-Otal?"