"I suppose you're thinking of the Tonildan child, are you? The one they call the Serrelinda?"
"Well, she'd certainly be one possible choice," replied Kembri noncommittally.
"I liked her when I met her," said Durakkon. "She's-- well, she struck me as typical of the sort of ordinary, decent people I wanted to help when I became High Baron."
Kembri was silent.
"But frankly, I'd be almost sorry to see her pushed up into a position like that," went on Durakkon.
"Because it'll be dangerous, Kembri; you know it will. Fornis isn't going to--"
"There is another possibility, of course," said Kembri, interrupting him. "And I'd certainly like to meet your wishes, sir, if we can: about not supporting the Tonildan, I mean."
It was almost too dark, now, for him to see Durakkon's face, but nevertheless he turned and looked at him, halting a moment on the rough, uneven stones of the rampart-walk.
"I'm thinking of another girl. Sencho wasn't popular, of course: in fact he was hated. And what he got for himself out of the killing of Enka-Mordet--well, of course it didn't come out for some time, but when it did, a lot of people were so angry that I sometimes wonder whether he could have continued to get away with it if he'd lived. He'd have had to let the girl go."
"But what's this got to do with--" began Durakkon.
"So naturally there's been a great deal of public sympathy for his wretched victim," went on Kembri.
"Especially when my son told the temple authorities that she'd never legally been a slave at all, and that he was ready to defy both them and Fornis on her account. A very beautiful girl, Milvushina; and, of course, one whose acclamation as Sacred Queen would have an excellent effect in pacifying Chalcon and bringing a lot of the heldril there round to our side."
"But her association with your son?" said Durakkon.
"Well, precisely, sir: I think that would be likely to go down very well with the people. The victorious young commander and his beautiful Sacred Queen: it would be just the sort of thing they'd like. But anyway, there you are; two excellent candidates from the Leopard point of view. Either would suit us, though on balance I think Milvushina would be the better choice."
"I--well, I suppose so," replied Durakkon rather uncertainly. : There was renewed silence as they walked on, reaching at length the steps leading down from the ramparts about three hundred yards west of the palace. Here Kembri halted, looked round to make sure the sentinel was not in hearing, and murmued, "So you'll--er--speak to--"
"Speak?" answered Durakkon. "What do you mean?"
"Well, sir, someone's going to have to tell Fornis that a third reign as Sacred Queen is out of the question. And there's no one who can perform that task with authority except the High Baron of Bekla."
There was a long pause. At length, "She has no legal power, sir," ventured Elvair-ka-Virrion, in a tone which was meant to be encouraging yet sounded anything but.
"No; she has her own power, though," answered Durakkon dolefully. Then, recovering his dignity as though with an effort, he said, "Well, Lord General, I'll think it over, and let you know how and when I mean to go about it. You may both leave me now."
The Lord General and his son bowed and descended the steps. Durakkon, turning away from them, remained alone, gazing out from the walls at Lespa's stars now twinkling more brightly above the darkening plain.
59: THE PRISONERS
Two hours before this, Maia had set about her task of taking Occula's message to the old woman in the sweet-shop.
In the event it proved easier than she had dared to hope. Nonetheless, she took a little while to find the shop; and the jekzha-man (who did not know who she was) had to be placated with extra money for all his stumbling up and down. Finally she made him go as far as Eud-Ecachlon's old lodgings, near the Tower of the Orphans--she could remember that all right, recalling the afternoon when she had acquitted herself so well--and then retrace his steps as though returning to the upper city.
Ah yes! and there, sure enough, was the sweet-shop, on the opposite side of the street, just before it came out into the Sheldad. Today, in fine summer weather, it had a different look, as revisited places often do; yet there was no doubt about it. Maia stopped the jekzha, crossed the street and went in.
The old woman was sitting behind her scales, and her lad could be heard clumping about somewhere in the back. A big, portly man, who looked like an upper servant, was making a great to-do over buying all manner of sweetmeats--no doubt for some supper-party of his master's-- and it was plain that the old woman meant to take her time over obliging so good a customer. Maia waited. After a minute or two the lad appeared and came up to her, but she only shook her head, pointing and murmuring something about "your mother."
At last the self-important butler was done and strutted out, pocketing his list and giving an address in the upper city to which the stuff was to be delivered that day without fail. Maia went up to the old woman while she was still bowing and smiling behind him in the doorway.
"Good evening, mother," she said in a low voice, "and may Colonna and Bakris bless you. Last time we met, you told me I shouldn't never have come, so I'll be a bit quicker today. Occula--the black girl who was arrested when the High Counselor was killed--she's still alive and sends you greetings. She says you're to get out now, at once, without stopping for anything."
"I've been expecting it," replied the old woman. "Did she say where?"
Maia, shaking her head, produced a ten-meld piece. "How about Urtah? Now sell me some sweets--anything you like--for the jekzha-man to see when I come out, and I'll be gone."
Two minutes later she was back in her jekzha, out in the Sheldad and turning left towards the Caravan Market. After a few moments, however, she realized that they were not making any progress. Something ahead had halted the traffic and everybody seemed to be being pressed back against the shop-fronts on either side of the street. Her jekzha-man, jostled by four or five cursing porters, staggered a moment against another, righted himself, slewed round on the axis of one wheel and halted, wiping his face with his sleeve.
"Can't you go on?" she said impatiently. "I want to get home."
"Got to wait a bit, saiyett, I'm afraid. Here's the soldiers coming now, see 'em?"
She looked up the highway. Two files of soldiers were approaching, one on either side of the road; but very oddly, for they were side-stepping, facing outwards and pressing the people back against the walls with their spears held sideways. From further up, in the direction of the Caravan Market, there could now be heard a raucous clamor--ugly and malign, it sounded--coming gradually nearer, until one could distinguish individual, strident voices, like nails sticking out of the head of a cudgel.
"Oh, whatever is it?" she asked, frightened. The man did not answer and she rapped sharply on the rail.
"What is it? Tell me!"
"Won't be more'n a minute or two, I dare say, saiyett," he answered. "I reckon they're bringing in the prisoners from Tonilda--them heldro spies. I heard tell as they'd be here today."
Even as he spoke she saw, across the heads in front of her, a tryzatt appear from the left, walking slowly yet somehow tensely and impatiently up the center of the paved thoroughfare. Behind him came perhaps a dozen soldiers, spaced out on either side and carrying not spears, but leather whips coiled
in their hands. They looked harassed and stretched to the limit, as men might look after hours spent in policing a plague-stricken town or struggling to bring home a leaking boat in bad weather. Their dust-grimed faces were streaked with sweat. They glanced continually this way and that and from moment to moment one or another would fling out his arm, pointing quickly, or call a hasty warning to a companion.
Yet it was not at the tryzatt nor yet the soldiers that Maia stared aghast, but at those walking between them-- if walking it could be called. Singly--in twos and threes-- in huddling, flinching groups like driven animals-little by little there came into view a dreadful procession. No wounded of a defeated army, stumbling from the battlefield, could have presented so terrible a sight. All were ragged, gray-faced, hollow-cheeked, staring about them either in deadly fear or else in a glazed, unseeing stupor of despair worse than any fear. Among them were a few women, one or two of whom might once have been attractive; and these, with their filthy faces, matted hair and look of exhausted misery, filled Maia with unspeakable anguish, so that she began to tremble and her head swam; so much worse they seemed than the rest, so much more a distorted travesty of what they must once have been. One man, tall and bony in his tatters, seemed to be attempting bravado, swaggering along alone and apparently trying to sing. As he came closer, however, it became plain that he was mad and virtually oblivious of his surroundings. Two more, as they limped forward, were supporting a woman between them and staggering from side to side. A fourth, with wrists chained together, was holding his hands in front of him and elbows to his sides, swaying in a kind of grotesque rhythm like a cripple trying to dance. Among them all--how many? Forty, fifty?--there was not one whom children would not have been terrified to see coming up a village street.