Then, after a pause in the talk, "Are you a slave?" asked one of the girls suddenly, in a kind of quick little spurt of utterance, as though she had finally screwed herself up to the point of asking. One or two of the other girls giggled with nervous embarrassment, but nevertheless it was clear that they were all waiting for her reply.
"Not anymore," answered Maia, smiling. "I've been freed."
This let loose a flood of exclamations and further questions. "But you're no age!"
"Were you born on a slave-farm?" "How long have you been free?" "Did you have to pay?" "You don't look a bit Like a slave!"
Maia, catching on to the last of these as the easiest to answer, asked teasingly, "What d'you reckon a slave looks like, then?"
To her surprise this did not seem to go down very well. Most of the girls looked grave and there was a little pause. Then one said, "Well, o' course we didn' mean nothin' personal, not if you've been a slave, like, but so happens there's one of these new slave-farms not so very far off from here, where the poor children's actually bred for slavery, to be taken away when they're old enough. We all feel sorry for them. My dad told me it belongs to some of those rich Leopards up in Bekla."
"Ah, that's right," said an older lass, "and 'twas the Leopards as brought the farms in, too, 'cause they wanted even more slaves--more than they dared take from the villages and from ordinary folk like us. There weren't any slave-farms, my mum said, not when she was a girl."
"I didn't come from a slave-farm," said Maia.
"Then were you--" began the girl; but another, interrupting her, cut in, "We heard about that big Leopard baron, or whatever he was; him as was murdered at the festival--terrible bloody murder, they say--and they've never found the ones as did it, neither."
"Oh, I can tell you all about that," said Maia, glad of an opportunity to distract them from any further inquiries about herself. "I was actually in the gardens by the lake that night, when it happened."
This, of course, had all the effect she was hoping for, and the whole group listened agog to her description of the party by the Barb, the murder of Sencho and the mysterious disappearance of his assailants. Of her own relationship to the High Counselor she naturally said nothing.
"Must 'a bin someone important behind it, though, mustn't there?" said the older girl, when Maia had finished.
"Well, 'twasn't you, Gehta, anyway," cried a little, merry girl, with black eyes and a snub nose. "That's for sure!" Then, turning to Maia, she added rather unnecessarily, "I'm only teasing, you know. But Gehta's a real Leopard-- we all tell her so. If she'd 'a bin there she'd have gone and saved that fat old Counselor, sure enough."
"Now then!" cried the deaf old woman, shaking her ladle at them with mock minacity. "How much longer you lazy wenches goin' to sit there on your bums? Anyone for any more, 'fore it's cleared away?"
Everyone, however, seemed as replete and contented as Maia felt herself. Indeed, they struck her as such a cheerful, good-natured little society and the whole atmosphere seemed so pleasant, that she couldn't help feeling, rather wistfully, that she'd have liked to stay with them. Well, but it was only a fancy, she thought, as she began helping to clear away. Like enough she'd soon be tired of getting up early to milking and dirty hands from morning till night.
She watched her opportunity to take the older girl on one side and ask her about clothes. As she had hoped, Gehta proved helpful. Between them, she and the deaf old woman fitted her out with a tidy, serviceable smock, as well as a clean shift, neither much the worse for wear, and a pair of sandals. They firmly refused to accept so much as a meld.
"Never in the world!" cried Gehta, closing Maia's fingers over her money and pushing her fist back into her pocket. "Think we're going to take money for helping out a guest? You'll be helping us one of these days. Fact, you can," she added in a lower voice (though the old woman was their only company). "Let's you and me just have a little stroll outside, shall we?"
She led the way across the yard to the gate of the stockade, where a fire was burning in an iron basket and the night-watchman was already pottering about near his hut beside the sheep-pens.
"We're just going for a bit of a turn before bed-time, Brindo," said Gehta. "We'll be back directly--don't worry."
The old fellow, smiling as he pretended to grumble, unbarred the gate and the two girls went out into the big, smooth-grazed meadow beyond.
"They let you go out alone after the gate's been shut?" asked Maia in some surprise.
"Well, we're not really supposed to," replied Gehta, "but Brindo's never one to make trouble, and everyone here takes the rules pretty easy. The land's open as far as the forest, you see, and there's not really much harm you could come to."
The moon, directly ahead of them, had already risen clear of the distant trees. Bats flitted noiselessly here and there and the breeze carried a resinous scent from the pines.
"Peaceful, isn't it?" said Gehta after a minute or two. "You wouldn't think there was any danger in all the world, would you?"
Something in her tone made Maia turn her head and look at her.
"What's up, then? You mean, there is?"
"Well, that's what I wanted to ask you, really," replied Gehta, "but I didn't want the others to hear. You've been living in Bekla, haven't you--working in that gentleman's house as you're with? I don't want to ask a lot of inquisitive questions, only I thought p'raps you might sometimes have heard one or two of these big barons and such-Iike ta
lking--you know, at their parties and dinners and that."
"What about?" asked Maia.
Gehta stopped and faced her squarely. "I'll tell you straight out. My dad's got a farm--not so big as this-- about twenty miles west of here. One day it'll be mine and my husband's; when I've got a husband, that's to say; only I've no brothers, you see. I'm here for a bit to learn one or two things--well, like buying and selling the timber-- that I couldn't pick up so well at home. But never mind that--what I want to find out is whether there's going to be trouble--you know, real bad trouble."
"D'you mean the war?"
"S'ssh!" said Gehta; though there was no one in sight. "Everything we hear--you know, from pedlars and visiting timber-dealers; oh, yes, and from our own men when they take stuff up to Bekla: they believe there are barons--you know, heldril--in some of the outlying parts that are getting ready to make trouble for the Leopards. They're the ones that really killed that fat old Counselor or whatever he was, because he was the one as knew most about what they're up to; he had his spies everywhere, or so we heard. They say some of the barons living right the way over there"--she pointed eastward--"they'd even be ready to see King Karnat take Bekla, because they reckon they'd be better off than they are under the Leopards."
"The Leopards tax the farmers and peasants and favor the merchants and city people," said Maia. "I've heard that said again and again."
Gehta looked at her with tears in her eyes. "If King Karnat crosses the Valderra river and makes for Bekla, dad's farm's slap in the way, near enough. That's why the other girls say I'm a Leopard--because I'm afraid of what might be going to happen. If there's going to be fighting, I want to go back home now, before it starts. That's my proper place--with dad and mum. Only you can't get any reliable news, living here. I thought if you've been--weft-- in service in the upper city, p'raps you might have heard-- you know, something or other--"
"Well, truth is I reckon you know more'n what I do," said Maia, "About the Leopards, I mean. All I know is they're all in a great taking about the killing."
"I know the Leopards are hard on farming folk," said Gehta, "but even that's better than war. I was only nine when Queen Fornis and her lot came up from Paltesh to Bekla. They took everything we had; and the soldiers, they--you know." She began to cry. "If there was to be all that over again--oh, what's going to happen, Maia? What ought I to do?"