Maia (92 page)

"So the long and short of it was they brought you up as their own daughter. But they never told you, because you'd have let on, wouldn't you?-children always talk-and they were still afraid of this woman and what might happen. But apparently she died herself quite soon after you were born, so they needn't have worried; but they never knew that, you see. You don't get to hear all that much in country places, do you? and I suppose it never occurred to them to make inquiries. Anyway, that's the truth for you at last. Morca's not your mother."

Maia was weeping so intensely that for a little while she could not speak. At last she said, "I always wo-wondered why Drigga was so good to me. She was always-well, sort of specially kind. Oh dear, oh dear!"

Tharrin made no reply and she, at length getting her feelings a little more under control, went on, "So-at that rate, then-I'm sister's daughter to this famous No-this famous Suban dancer?"

"Yes. Whoever she may have been: for it's all a long time ago now, isn't it? Anyway, you did Morca some good, didn't you? Four children she's borne since then and healthy as anybody's, even if they
are
all girls."

Maia stood up. She must be alone to think.

"Thank you for telling me. Have you got everything you need, Tharrin? Are they good to you? Here's a hundred meld. Is there anything else you want? Tell me."

"No, nothing. I'll be fine till you come back. Cran bless you, Maia! How can I ever thank you?"

"Well, I'll be back before noon tomorrow, and then you'll be free! You can count on that, so sleep well." She kissed him warmly, feeling her tears wet against his face. "Good-bye for now."

On the way out, neither Pokada nor anyone else remarked on her weeping. This was a place where people often wept and after all, she had not told any of them that Tharrin was going to be released.

What-even though it may involve neither pain nor danger-is more bewildering and agitating than to learn something of the greatest importance about oneself-something entirely unsuspected and highly extraordinary; verging on the unique: fo find oneself in a situation which very few indeed (and none available to talk to) can have been called upon to face? Some there be who have found themselves heirs to kingdoms; others the sudden possessors of some hitherto undreamt-of knowledge or truth. Others again have stumbled, all unawares, upon some huge discovery, daunting, of incalculable import. Visions have been vouchsafed to simpletons, landfalls made by the lost and desperate, revelations bestowed upon purblind stumblers in the dark. My very self is changed for ever; I am not and can never again be the person I was. Why me, God, why me? My dazzled, peering eyes cannot make out the import, the perspective: a fly on the window-pane or a far-off mountain? But first and foremost, God, am I beneficiary or victim?

Maia sat in her garden above the Barb. From time to time she beat with the flat of her hand upon the seat-slats beside her, staring out unseeingly across the water. Again, she sprang up and began pacing back and forth over the grass; then gripped the rail of the fence with both hands and rocked herself backwards and forwards. To Ogma, peeping from an upstairs window, it was plain that her

mistress must have learned something to upset her: no doubt an affair of the heart, she thought with sluggish, lukewarm envy (for such things lay so far beyond Ogma's horizon that she had little real idea of them), yet for the life of her she could not imagine who it might be. Well, she knew that Maia was to attend Elvair-ka-Virrion's bar-rarz that night. No doubt more would become clear later, for to give her her due Miss Maia had never been one to make herself out better than anybody else, to act standoffish or keep secrets.

In Maia's heart there was a kind of fighting. Part was inflamed with excitement by what Tharrurhad told her, part full of trepidation, exposed and fearful as a fledgling just flown from the nest. She was, in fact, in a state of shock. Again and again she called before her mind's eye that grim, long-ago night which Tharrin had described to her-the exhausted girl, in mortal terror, stumbling on through the mud and rain she knew not whither, her belly big with-with herself!
She,
too, had taken part in that dreadful journey towards death-and life! She saw her dear father-Ah, no! Now her father no longer-striding in out of the darkness with the lass in his arms: Morca staring in bewilderment and consternation: the dim-lit vigil over the sweating, babbling girl: Drigga heating water, making up the fire, comforting, reassuring. Then her thoughts leapt to the ash-tree by the lake-her own tree, from which she had so often dropped blissfully down into the water, to swim away, to escape from her drudgery and chores. Where exactly could the grave be? She called the surrounding ground before her mind's eye. There was nothing to see, no mound-well, no, they'd have made sure of that. Could it be that bit over by-But then she began to cry again and couldn't think straight any more.

Her father was not her father. And Kelsi and Nala and little Lirrit-oh, she'd been so fond of Lirrit, she'd been the one she really loved best-they weren't her sisters at all! And Morca? Well, at least that made what she'd done a bit more understandable. They mustn't be left alone, they mustn't go in want. She'd send them money. And Tharrin-she'd need to keep an eye on Tharrin: send one of her soldiers back to Serrelind with him: ah, make sure he got there and all, and the money too.

And she herself? She was a Suban-a marsh-frog! Well, half, for sure, anyway. But her real father-had
he
been-

a Suban? No, not if they'd been living in eastern Urtah: he'd have been an Urtan. Where exactly was the village? It shouldn't be difficult to find out-they'd not have forgotten the murder after as little as sixteen and a half years. There'd be people there who'd known her father and mother.

Nokomis! She was sister's daughter, then, to the fabulous, legendary Nokomis! Well, that explained a whole basting lot, as Occula would no doubt have remarked. And more than that, she and Bayub-Qtal were cousins! And before the implications of this, poor Maia fetched up literally at a standstill and all of a shake, like a boat in the eye of the wind. "Oh, it's all too much at one go, that it is!" she said aloud, as though declaring to the gods that she was just not going to play any more. She sat down on the grass and began chewing daisies; and a few minutes later Ogma came to tell her that dinner was ready.

Today she could eat all right. Both horror and uncertainty had left her. She knew what she meant to do, and her confidence was only slightly less than her determination. After the meal, telling Jarvil to admit no one, she lay down on her bed, escaping into sleep with the relief of a slave pitching a heavy load off his back and not caring which way up it landed, either.

When she woke, Ogma was rattling pails in the bathroom and a beaker of milk, its top covered with muslin, was standing on the table beside her bed. The sun was setting and the swifts were darting and screaming high up in the cooling air. A passer-by called to someone in the quiet road outside. A scent of planella drifted in from the garden. Suddenly it seemed to Maia that some god was revealing to her a truth-that the world was not, in fact, transfixed upon a few sharp, pyramidal points of great matters. Rather, it was supported easily upon countless passing moments, a myriad diurnal trivia, like the host of befriending butterflies in old Drigga's story, who carried the wandering princess up and over the ice mountain.

She drank the milk and stretched luxuriously, smelling the planella, admiring again the workmanship of the onyx rabbit and listening to the sound of water pouring into the bath. "I'm not cold or hungry or ill," she thought, "and I've got me." Somewhere outside, the blue-finch sang his little phrase, "Never never never never
let
-you-fear." It

was the only one he knew. She laughed, sat up and swung her feet to the floor. She'd show them!

She would wear the cherry-colored robe with the bodice of crystals-one of four or five which they had given her on her return to the city (for the authorities, having taken over Sencho's great mass of possessions and effects, had been weeks in disposing of them, and she had returned in time to be offered her pick of the wardrobe). The cherry dress had been lucky on the night of the senguela: it would be lucky now. For the rest, her diamonds and a spray of planella in her hair (which she would comb out loose over her shoulders) would do very well. Sixteen-year-old Maia had no need to wonder what Fornis might keep in her cabinet of unguents.

Coming downstairs in the rose-and-saffron half-light reflected from the Barb, over which the bats were already flittering, she found her two soldiers-summoned by Ogma-waiting to take her to the Lord General's house. She gave them ten meld apiece and told them to go and drink it. "Half a mile up the Trepsis Avenue, on an evening like this? I'm walking!" At this their eyes opened wide, for in the upper city the only women who walked in public were slaves. But the Serrelinda-well, for the matter of that she might have been going to swim it (oh, yes, they'd heard that story all right) and no one would have had a word to say.

"But when shall we come to the Lord General's to bring you home, then, saiyett?" asked Brero. "You needn't," she said. "I'll send you a message tomorrow morning." At which he clapped his hand over his mouth to suppress an appreciative guffaw. She didn't mess about, did she, the little saiyett? Someone or other wasn't half going to be lucky.

The avenue seemed as full of scents as a flowerbed of summer bees, stirring and mingling, here and gone. Roses, lake water and planella, wood-smoke and dew, clipped grass and a sharp, resinous smell from where someone was sawing logs. She, the Serrelinda, was floating to her destination on the fragrance of the world, like the butterfly princess on her magic quest. She was on her way to save poor old Tharrin from the Sacred Queen. Ah, and after that she'd have to start thinking about Bayub-Otal and all. Shakkarn alive! He, the rightful Ban of Suba, was not only her liege lord but her own kith and kin! And anyway, even

setting all that aside, she'd begun to think rather differently of him since Suba and since Nasada. Funny, she thought, how you get to altering your ideas about people as you.find out a bit more about them. Like Milvushina.

Am I beautiful, Zenka? Zenka, am I the girl you can feel proud of? You never had the chance to show me off, Zenka, did you; to feel proud of your sweetheart in public, among other Katrians? "You're the most beautiful girl in the world," he answered. "I'm always with you, all the time: I'll
never
leave you." She broke off a spray of yellow
Claris
trailing over a wall beside her. "Take this, my darling," he said, "and wear it for me: if I knew of anything more beautiful to give you, I would. Well, we're on active service now, you know. Have to grab what we can get." Oh, thank you, Zenka! I love you so much! Oh, do you remember how we chose a dagger? And you said-

From behind her sounded the soft flit-flat, flit-flat of a jekzha-man's feet in the dust and then a girl's voice, "Maia! What in the
world
are you doing here?"

It was Nennaunir, wrapped in a gossamer-thin, azure cloak, a crystal-and-gold ring on one finger of the hand that held the rail as she leant towards Maia, her high-piled hair set now not with one but apparently about five garnet combs.

Maia laughed. "Walking to Elvair's party."

"Walking? You're out of your mind! Where are your soldiers, for Cran's sake?"

"I sent them off to get drunk."

"Whatever for?"

" 'Cos I wanted to walk."

Nennaunir shook her head and looked serious. "It won't do you any good, Maia-not in the long run it won't- doing eccentric things like going about on foot in the upper city. I mean that as a friend. You've got a position to keep up, my lass. You can't just take it into your head to go strolling up the Trepsis Avenue in the twilight, loaded with diamonds. People may even start thinking you're a human being. Get in here with me, come on."

Meekly Maia obeyed, settling herself comfortably beside Nennaunir as the man went on. The shearna seemed drenched in kepris-in the confined space of the jekzha it was quite overpowering-and this reminded Maia that she herself had forgotten to put on any scent. Never mind, she

thought. There's sure to be some flowers; I can always pick up a jasmine wreath or something.

"I called round for you, as a matter of fact," said Nen-naunir, "and Ogma told me what you'd done, so I was looking out for you. That girl, by the way," she went on after a few moments, "I don't think she's quite what you need, Maia, to be honest. Please don't take this the wrong way, but a girl as young as you are needs someone sharper and-well, knowledgeable about people and affairs and what's going on. It's a great pity you couldn't have kept that woman Terebinthia to look after you. I'm sure she'd have been delighted, if only it had been put to her."

"She
might have been, but I shouldn't."

"Why, was she a bitch?"

"Hard as nails and mean with it. The house-slaves all hated her; always sniffing about. I used to feel she was like water round a boat: you always had to be taking care to keep her outside, kind of. Oh, no, Nan, I couldn't never have done with her-not after I'd had to obey her at Sen-cho's and do what she told me. Surely you can see that?"

"Well, p'raps. But all the same, Maia, just you and that poor little club-footed ninny together in that house-I'm not happy about it. Oh, I'm sure she's first-rate in the market; and she cooks a nice meal, I don't say she doesn't. But the upper city's a tricky place, and she's not at
all
the right sort to be personal slave to a young and inexperienced girl shot up into a big public position. I warned you only the other day: there's all kinds of unscrupulous people who'd like to make use of you; to say nothing of possible enemies. You ought to get yourself someone older and shrewder, someone who can see what's what and keep you straight. I wish
I
had, years ago; I'll tell you that."

"I'll think about it, Nan: really I will." Maia, like most of us when some more experienced friend criticizes arrangements which we had thought suitable enough but now begin to have sneaking doubts about, felt resentful, but had no wish to fall out with a good friend like Nennaunir.

"For instance," went on Nennaunir, turning her sleek, shining head and looking Maia over appraisingly, "Terebinthia would never have let you go to a. barrarz dressed like that. Whose idea was that-yours or Ogma's?"

"Mine. Whatever's wrong with it? I wore this at Sarget's party in the Barons' Palace and-"

"I know, darling. I was there-remember? But it's not right for a barrarz."

"What is a barrarz? Elvair was on saying that-'a bar-rarz -

Nennaunir silently drove one fist twice into the other palm, like a girl tried close to the point of outburst.

"So Ogma didn't know about a barrarz? Honestly-"

"Don't be cross, Nan: just tell me. There's a first time for everything, you know."

"First time?" replied the shearna. "I'm worried about you, that's all. There can be situations where a girl only has to be wrong once, you know."

"But is a barrarz one of them?"

Nennaunir burst into soft, happy laughter.

"No, fortunately not. Of course you'll do very well as you are, Maia dear. I didn't mean to be a cat, truly. You're very lucky-you'll always look marvelous; for quite a few years, anyway. I heard you met King Karnat dressed in nothing but your shift and a bunch of golden lilies. Is that true?"

Maia stared. "How on earth did you know that? I never told a soul!"

"Oh, news travels, dear; news travels." Then, before Maia could question her further, she went on, "Anyway, a barrarz: Cran help me, I should know! I've been to enough of them. It's the custom in Bekla-and elsewhere, for that matter-the night before soldiers are leaving on active service, for the commander to give a party for his officers-and some of the tryzatts too, sometimes. Well, it's apt to become a pretty rowdy affair, as you can imagine. They boast and shout and sing and drink themselves silly and naturally they generally get to basting the girls as well. The thing is, they're usually in a mood to be pretty open-handed-you know, ready to spend what they've got before they go. Many a good lygol I've had at a barrarz, though I admit I generally earned it right enough. I lost my virginity at a barrarz, actually-the one Kembri and Han-Glat gave in Dari-Paltesh before they marched on Bekla seven years ago."