She laughed. "I don't reckon old Sencho'd have given fifteen thousand meld for me at that rate, do you?"
"You're proud of that, aren't you?"
She nodded.
"I'm not surprised. Why shouldn't you be? And Bayub-Otal?"
"Well, then he kind of cut Lenkrit off short. But I was that upset and moithered with everything--you ever had a knife held at your throat, Nasada, have you?--tell you the truth I wasn't really taking in all that much of it."
"What do you know about Bayub-Otal? Do you know about his father and mother, and how he grew up?"
"Oh, he told me all about that, yes: how his mother was sent to Urtah as a dancing-girl, and how the King--High Baron--whatever 'twas--fell in love with her and hid her away in Suba to save her from his wife. And about the fire--why, Whatever's the matter, U-Nasada?"
To her horror, she saw tears running down his rough, wrinkled cheeks. For an instant he actually sobbed.
"You're very young, Maia: young people are often unfeeling--until they've learned through suffering themselves. It wasn't really so very long ago. Nokomis--she was like moonlight on a lake! No one who saw her dance ever forgot her for the rest of his life. All Suba worshipped her, even those who never actually saw her. When she died, the luck ran out of Suba like sand out of a broken hour-glass. You never saw Nokomis--"
"Well, how could I?" she answered petulantly. "I wasn't even born when she died."
"As far as any of us here can make out, you were born more or less exactly when she died. The night of the tenth Sallek?"
Maia stared. "What do you mean, my lord? Why do you say it like that?"
He drank off his wine and put the cup down on the table. "And then," he said, as if continuing, "last night I asked you whether you were sure about your father. You were." He paused. "So that just leaves us with the will and power of the gods, doesn't it?"
"The gods? I don't know what you're on about, U-Nasada, honest I don't."
"Arid you say Sencho paid fifteen thousand meld?" he went on. "Well, for what it's worth, that's what Nor-Zavin, the Baron of southern Suba, paid her parents for the daughter they'd called Astara. I happen to know that. I'm not sure who first nicknamed her Nokomis, but I suppose that doesn't really matter."
It may seem incredible that no inkling had dawned earlier in Maia's mind. Yet just so will a person often fail to perceive--resist, even, and set aside--the personal implications of a dream plain enough to friends to whom it is told.
"U-Nasada, are you saying that I look like Nokomis?"
He paused, choosing his words. At length he answered, "To someone like myself, who remembers her well, it would be quite unbelievable--" he smiled--"if it weren't here before my eyes."
She reflected. "Then why doesn't everybody see it? Tescon, say, or Luma?"
"Because they're too young. It's more than sixteen years, you see, since Nokomis died. But as well as that, you have to realize that Suba isn't Bekla. This is a wild, marshy country and most people seldom travel far. Everyone in Suba knew the fame of Nokomis--she was a legend--but thousands never actually saw her. No one in that little village we left this morning, for instance, had ever seen Nokomis. But Penyanis, Makron's wife--she saw her more than once. How did she take it when she met you this evening?"
"She seemed--well, kind of mazed, like."
"And Makron--well, did you think it strange that they didn't ask you to have supper with them?"
"I never really thought."
"Anda-Nokomis had already told them what to expect, you see. They have some old servants, some of whom would also remember Nokomis, and they thought it better not to set the whole place buzzing with tales of witchcraft and magic and so on. I suppose--"
She blazed out, interrupting him. "But why didn't Bayub-Otal himself tell me all this in Bekla? Why? Or Eud-Ecachlon, come to that? Cran and Airtha! I went to bed with Eud-Ecachlon! I--"
"I doubt whether Eud-Ecachlon ever saw a great deal of Nokomis. In fact he may quite possibly never have seen her at all. Younger boys are brought up rather secluded in Urtah, you know. He'd have been--let me see--scarcely nine when Nokomis left Kendron-Urtah in fear of her life, so in any case he wouldn't have a very clear memory of what she looked like. As for Bayub-Otal, this is really what I came to talk to you about." He paused. "What do you think of Bayub-Otal?"
She said nothing.
"You can trust me, Maia."
"Well, tell you the truth, not a great lot."
He took her hand. "I think I know why, but I'd like you to tell me."
"Well, I can't make him out, U-Nasada, and that's the truth. He's not like any ordinary man. In Bekla he didn't want to make love to me and yet he wouldn't let me alone. And then he kept on saying sort of spiteful things--nasty, contemptuous things--about--well, about me being a bed-girl," (she was crying now) "as if I could help that! And about me being with Sencho and taking lygols and all such things as that. As if all the girls didn't take lygols! That's the real reason why I was what you called--what was it?-- defensive just now, when we were talking about basting. He was always so sort of scornful and sneering in his talk, like. And then, when he'd as good as ordered me to dance the senguela in the Barons' Palace--I couldn't never have done it if he hadn't made me, but afterwards everyone thought the world of me--and I wanted to show him how grateful I was and I as good as told him I'd like him to make love to me, he--he just said--" And here poor Maia rolled over on the bed, sobbing with the recollection of that humiliating mortification and beating her fists on the pillow.
"How very disappointing," said Nasada, "for an ardent, warm-hearted girl like you! Anda-Nokomis really is a fool sometimes. Obviously you must have felt very upset. But he had his reasons, hadn't he? as you can no doubt see now."
Maia was half-expecting him to go on to say something like "I wonder, at that rate, that you went straight to him when you'd escaped from the temple." But he did not.
"Bayub-Otal," he continued at length, "he's had enough to make him feel bitter, if ever a man had. His mother a renowned beauty, the most famous and idolized dancer in the empire, his father the High Baron of Urtah. When he's ten his mother dies--murdered, so most people believe--and he himself's maimed so that he can never hope to be a warrior or try to compete normally with other lads. But his beloved father doesn't disown him: no., just the reverse. He gives him everything to live for. He promises him the rule of Suba--something at which he can hope to succeed, for he's got a gift of authority and a good head on his shoulders. The boy starts as he means to go on. He puts everything into learning about the province he's going to rule. And then Fornis--with no legal right in the work!-- trades it off to Karnat while she seizes Bekla."
"But what's all this got to do with me, U-Nasada?"
"He's not even worth murdering," went on Nasada, ignoring her. "That wouldn't be politic, would it?--it'd only antagonize his aging father, and the Leopards aren't too sure of Urtah anyway. So he's left to moon about between Urtah and Bekla. With any luck he'll go to the bad with drink or women or something, and then the Leopards'll be able to say 'Look at the former heir of Suba lying there in the gutter!' "
"What's that to me, U-Nasada?"
"However, he doesn't go to the bad. He puts on an act of being at a loose end, under cover of which he manages to enter into secret negotiations with King Karnat. And then one day the gods send him a sign. Quite unexpectedly--and it's an enormous shock, of course--he comes upon a girl who looks almost exactly like his fabled mother as he remembers her. Only as it happens she's enslaved-- to the most disgusting libertine in Bekla. She's loaned out to be basted for money, too. He finds this--well, a trifle distasteful, shall we say? But when, in his rather diffident, prickly way--for naturally, after all he's been through, he's become distinctly stand-offish and sensitive--he does his best to get to know her better, this is--oh, very naturally: no one's to blame--misunderstood and taken the wrong _way. The poor girl's looking for money to buy her freedom, but of course this isn't at all
what Bayub-Otal has in mind. How can he explain? March up to her and say 'It's most peculiar, but do you know, you look exactly like my mother?' Would that go down well, I wonder?"
For the first time since they had begun talking, Maia laughed.
"But that's not his only problem," went on Nasada. "The resemblance is so uncanny that doubts and questions begin to arise in his mind. Surely the only possible explanation is that he and she must be related in some way? This is something he obviously can't set aside, but of course it doesn't alter--oh, no, it only strengthens--his determination to get her out of Bekla if he can, and make her a free and honored woman."
There was a long silence. Nasada got up, filled Maia's cup and his own with the last of the wine, sat down again and drank deeply. "Well, it's made me quite dry--saying all that."
"U-Nasada," said Maia at length, "are you telling me that Bayub-Otal loves me?"
"Certainly not. He's the only person who could say anything like that."
"Well, then, do you know whether that's what he feels? Has he said anything to you?"
"No, he hasn't--nothing of that kind at all. But as I keep on telling you, Maia, he's a very reticent, diffident sort of man; reserved and constrained--with good rea-son."
"Then how do you know all this as you've been telling me?"
"Well, partly because he's told me a certain amount himself, and partly because I know him and I know Suba. And then again, you see, I'm old, and when you're old, if you'll believe me, you often find that you see quite a lot of things without actually being told, because of all you've learned and experienced yourself."
As she remained silent, perplexed, he added, "I'm not talking about love. That's nothing to do with me and I'm not trying to give you any advice one way or the other. I can't say whether or not it comes into the business at all. All I've tried to do is explain to you how you're situated here in Suba and the reason for what you've very naturally seen as Anda-Nokomis's strange behavior towards you."
"I can't hardly take it in at all."