Maia

by Richard Adams

  done right by him even before she'd returned to Bekla, borrowing from Sendekar enough to pay a messenger to go to Meerzat and tell his parents; and in reply had received an unexpectedly dignified and touching letter from the father (Sendekar had read it to her) who had turned out to be a clerk in the provincial government and obviously a most respectable man.

  There did not seem to be many butchers or meat-merchants at work as her jekzha came up through the Shilth; though she had to wait some minutes-her jekzha-man taking care to keep well back-while a herd of bullocks were driven past on their way to the shambles. Getting down at the gate of the jail, she gave the man ten meld and told him to wait, saying that she did not expect to be more than a few minutes.

  The mucous-eyed gatekeeper looked her over as listlessly as before.

  "The governor, saiyett? Can't say, I'm sure. Only it's an execution morning, see? and that always means extras-"

  She felt too light-hearted to be angry. Smiling, she gave him five meld.

  "We've had all this before, haven't we? Just take me to U-Pokada's room, and then go and tell him as I want to see him very urgently."

  In the little, bare room she sat down and waited, impatient for nothing, fretting for nothing, as content with the present moment as someone who has just completed a long journey or finished reaping a field. She held the parchment in her hands, turning it this way and that and admiring the clear impress of the seal. Well, Cran and Airtha had been good to her, she thought. Perhaps, after all, even the Sacred Queen might not be without her good side. Nine thousand meld! Had any girl ever gone for as much, she wondered, in all the yesterdays of Bekla?

  When Pokada came in she almost ran forward to take his hands before recalling the proper dignity of the Ser-relinda. He had halted just inside the doorway, staring at her unsmilingty, his mouth drawn down in a startled, grotesque expression of dismay. He was roughly dressed-as roughly as any laborer-in an old, stained leather jerkin, sacking breeches and a torn woolen cap. His arms were bare to the elbow and down one forearm ran a long scratch, still bleeding, which he kept wiping with a dirty cloth.

  "Saiyett-you must understand-I can't-not now-"

  She held up one hand to silence him. Then, bowing triumphantly-making a little pantomime of it-she gave him the sheet of parchment.

  "Read that, U-Pokada, please. Oblige me, U-Pokada, by reading that!"

  Peering, he held it up to the light, saw the seal and started. Maia watched as his eyes traveled back and forth, slowly making out the few lines. Like enough, she thought, he wasn't much more used to reading than what she was. When he had finished he said nothing, only laying the parchment down on the table and staring at the floor without moving.

  "Well, come on, U-Pokada," said Maia at length. "It's plain enough, surely? Only I got a jekzha waiting, see?"

  "Saiyett," said Pokada, still avoiding her eyes, "the man is dead."

  "Whan" cried Maia. "What the hell do you mean, dead?"

  "He hanged himself in his cell this morning."

  "I don't believe you! This is some trick to try to get money out of me or something! You just take me to him, now, and hurry up about it!"

  As he said no more, she ran to him and beat her fists on his chest. "It's not true! Not true! Come on, say it!"

  "I think you'd better come and see for yourself, saiyett. I'm sorry."

  Bewildered, still disbelieving him because she was unable to take it in rather than because she thought he was lying, Maia followed the governor out of the room and then walked beside him down a stone-walled passage of which she noticed little or nothing. They came to a heavy, iron-bound door, and this he opened with a key at his belt. Beyond was a dimmer light, doors with grilles and an all-pervading, foul smell. A man appeared and spoke to Pokada, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

  "U-Pokada, this Urtan woman-"

  "Not now," answered Pokada, brushing him aside. "Ask Tortil or someone; I'm busy."

  At the end of the passage they reached a row of eight or nine doors, all standing open. An old man was sweeping with a broom. As Pokada came up he moved aside and stood respectfully against the wall.

  "Have they all gone?" asked Pokada.

  "Yes, U-Pokada. Oh, yes, some time ago now: I'm just

  getting straight. That one who went for you, we had to break his-"

  "All right, never mind," replied Pokada. "Go and get on with something else: I'll tell you when to come back. Well, go on!" he said, as the old man hesitated. He pointed to one of the open doors. "He's still there, is he?"

  "Well, that's it, U-Pokada, yes. Only there hasn't been time, you see-"

  "Never mind. Do as I say: go on up the other end."

  In the doorway of the cell Pokada faced about, momentarily preventing Maia from entering.

  "Saiyett, this isn't a pretty sight. All my men have had their hands full this morning, getting the queen's prisoners out to the temple. There's been no time to do more than take him down and lay him on the bed."

  She answered nothing. She believed him now; her mouth was dry; she felt sick. A moment later he had stepped inside the cell and she followed him.

  Tharrin's body was lying on a narrow plank bed in the further corner. The clothes were those she had seen the day before and he still looked, as he had then, tidy and clean. Yet in the horror of recognition she noticed nothing of this. His head was twisted to one side, the neck distorted and encircled by a livid ring of bruised flesh. In places blood, now darkly clotted, had oozed from the chafed skin. The tongue protruded and the eyes were wide and fixed. One or two flies were walking on the face, which had already assumed a rigid, waxen quality. One arm hung down, the backs of the clenched fingers touching the floor. As she looked away, moaning and holding her hands to her mouth, Maia noticed a length of rope, one end of which was knotted round a bar of the high window. The lower end was still tied in a running noose.

  Half-fainting, she fell on her knees beside the bed, took the cold hand in her own and tried to lay it across the body; but the arm was stiff and resistant.

  She began to cry, stroking his other hand and kissing the mutilated neck and bared shoulders. He was cool and smooth as the parchment and stiff as a frosted branch. As the reality came flooding more deeply into her she wept passionately, on and on because it was easier than stopping, because she was afraid to think what would happen when she stopped. She felt consumed with pity for poor, shiftless Tharnn and the ugly squalor of his end. As she

  remembered his arms around her in pleasure, his easy laughter and the game of the golden fish in the net, her grief burst out yet more intensely, prostrating her so that she laid her head on his chest, grasping his shoulders and crying as though to sob the breath out of her body.

  At last Pokada, putting his hands under her armpits, pulled her, still weeping, to her feet. As he made to wipe her face with the cloth at his belt she flung away from him, setting her back against the wall of the cell and glaring at him from reddened eyes that still poured tears.

  "You killed him! You killed him! I'll see you hang upside-down for this!"

  She was shouting hysterically, and he took a step towards her.

  "Don't think you can kill me too! There's them as knows I'm here!"

  "Saiyett, I give you my word I didn't kill him and nor did any of my men. He killed himself."

  "But he knew I was coming! He knew I was coming today to get him out! He couldn't have killed himself!"

  Pokada hesitated. After a few moments he said, "Saiyett, you'd better come back to my room. This is no place for us to talk."

  "Talk? You think I want to talk to you? I want to see you dead and damned, you bastard, and I will, if it's the last thing I do!"

  Now he suddenly assumed a kind of stilted, homespun dignity and authority, like that of a gate-porter or a domestic steward. Perhaps, after all, he had not been made governor of the prison for nothing.

  "Saiyett, little as you may wish it, I must request you to come back to my room, for I have
something to say to you of a private nature. I regret to inform you that you have no choice, for the gates are locked and I can't let you leave until you've heard me. I've no wish to hurry you, however. You can either come with me now or stay here and come as soon as you feel ready."

  "Very well," she said, "I'll come. But before I do-" She pointed to Tharrin. "Bring someone now-now!-to close his eyes and lay him out properly. And then see that he's treated decently and burned as he should be. I'll pay for everything. Will you promise me that?"

  "Yes, saiyett: in fact I'll go and see to it at once." He went out, and she heard him call a name: there were foot-

  steps and muttered instructions, too low for her to catch the words.

  They walked back together in silence. Once Maia stopped short, clutching the governor's arm as from somewhere not far off sounded a scream. He only grasped her wrist and led her on, through the iron-bound door and back down the passage to his room. Here she was overcome by a fresh seizure of grief; but now, from very exhaustion, she wept almost silently, sitting at the table, her head on her arms. At length, regaining some degree of composure, she said in a voice of cold accusation, "U-Pokada, when I first came here, the day before yesterday.'you asked me whether I'd brought poison, and told me as you had to make sure prisoners didn't kill themselves."

  He nodded, looking at her with pursed lips, like a man with something on his mind and unsure whether to tell it or not.

  "Tharrin had no reason to hang himself. So if one of your men didn't hang him, who did, and why? And how did he get a rope?"

  Still he said nothing, and she burst out, "I warn you, U-Pokada, I'm going to make a public matter of it. I'm going to see you ruined for this." She snatched up the parchment, which was still lying where he had left it on the table. "Here's a pardon, sealed by the Sacred Queen herself, for a man who was in your charge-"

  He was trembling now, the big, fleshy hulk of a man, fear written all over him, even his silver earrings shaking in his head.

  "Saiyett-saiyett-"

  "Yes?" But he said no more. "Well, what?"

  "Saiyett, I tell you-what I'm going to tell you-it-it puts my life in your hands. I tell you, and perhaps you get me hanged upside-down-if I tell you-"

  "You mean you did murder him?"

  "No, saiyett, no? I didn't murder him, no! I'll tell you the truth, I'll trust my life to you because I believe what everybody says, that you're a kind-hearted, good lady. Once you know the truth, then you're not going to be angry any more, you're not going to ruin me, because you're just and fair-"

  She stamped her foot. "Stop this stupid nonsense! Say what you have to say and get on with it!"

  Pokada, having shut and locked the door, went over to

  the window, which he closed after peering outside. Then he sat down on the bench beside the table.

  "Saiyett," he whispered, "do you know a Palteshi woman in the upper city? A woman close to the Sacred Queen?"

  "Ashaktis, do you mean? A dark, middle-aged woman, with a Palteshi accent?"

  "Sh! Saiyett, sh! We've got to whisper-"

  Still angry, but nevertheless affected by his fear, she lowered her voice. "Well? What about Ashaktis, then?"

  "Saiyett, it was very early this morning: it was only just light. I was up, with two of my men, preparing for the executions. Only there are things we naves to see to-the priests come-well, I don't need to tell you about that. But then Elindir, the man on the gate, he comes and beckons me to one side, so no one else can hear, and he says there's a woman come; and then he gives me a note with the queen's seal which says I'm to see her at once. But Elindir says she won't come further than the gate."

  He stopped, as though expecting Maia to reply. She said nothing and after a few moments he resumed.

  "I went to the gate-house and there was the woman all muffled up-her face, too-nothing I could know her by again except her voice, her Palteshi accent. She said no one was to know that she'd gone into the prison. She hid behind a curtain while I called Elindir and told him she'd left. She told me to do that, and then to send him away again on some errand.

  "Then she showed me another note from the queen, saying that I was to take her to the prisoner Tharrin in his cell. No one was to see her on the way. So I sent away the two men who were waiting for the priests, and took her to Tharrin myself. He was sleeping, saiyett, and when I woke him he smiled and said 'Is it Maia come?'

  "The woman told me to go away and wait up the passage, by the far door. And then after-oh, not very long, saiyett-five minutes, I suppose-she came back up the passage and she said 'Now give me back both those notes.' So then she had both the notes herself, you see, and I took her back to the gate and let her out. And the last thing she said, saiyett, she said 'If the queen gets to hear one word from any living soul about my coming here, you'll hang upside-down, do you understand?'

  "And then, not ten minutes later, we found Tharrin dead, just like you saw. Seven years, saiyett, seven years

  I've been governor here and not one condemned man has ever been able to kill himself before."

  Still Maia said nothing. "Saiyett, I've told you because you said you'd see me ruined. But now you know the truth, you won't want to do that, will you? If the Sacred Queen gets to hear-"

  "No, I won't say anything, U-Pokada," replied Maia listlessly. She stood up. "I'll go now. Come to the gate with me, please."

  "Saiyett," he said, "there's one thing you can comfort yourself with. At least you saved him from worse: he didn't have to go to the temple. And you and I, We're no worse off, are we, as long as we both say nothing?"

  Her jekzha was gone, and rather than wait while another was fetched she put up her veil and walked away, down through the reeking lanes of the Shilth towards the Shel-dad. Whether anyone spoke to her or tried to accost her she had no idea. In the Sheldad she found a jekzha and returned to the upper city.

  65: A GLIMPSE DOWN THE PIT

  The knife-blade was strong-too strong to bend or break on bone-and its point was very sharp. When she had told him that she would only need it for an hour, Brero had lent it to her without asking any questions. It was belted on her left side and her cloak hid it completely.

  She had put her diamonds in their box and buried it in the garden. She would have liked to give them away-to Occula or even to Nennaunir-but that would have meant explanations and anyway there was no time. Delay was the last thing endurable now.

  Nevertheless she set out on foot, partly because she did not want her soldiers to be accused, later, of having known where she was going, but principally because she wanted to feel herself alone with her purpose, deliberate and silent, pacing down the avenues and flower-bordered walks of the upper city. Behind her the Barb glinted in the midmorning sunshine and the gray-green shadows on Crandor deepened as the sun moved southward above the summit.

  I was born dirt-poor, she thought. I was sold for a slave;

  and I shall have died mistress of my own house in the upper city. Nothing's going to alter that.

  This time she did not make her way to the garden of the queen's house, but straight to the further gate, where the porter, recognizing the Serrelinda as readily as would any other servant in the upper city, was prompt to accept both her five meld and her telling him that she had an appointment to see U-Zuno.

  Slowly, as though in a dream, she walked across the courtyard towards the side, stone front-the way she had come with Ashaktis on the morning when the Sacred Queeri had taken her from Kembri. She met no one, but this did not surprise her. If, as she believed, the gods had appointed her their agent, then the gods would ensure that she was not hindered.

  Climbing the broad steps, she paused a few moments before raising and letting fall the heavy, bronze knocker. It was bigger than her own hand, made to represent a crouching leopard. The sound, plangent and resonant, pleased her. Just so should the arrival be announced of an emissary of retribution.

  Yet it was not Zuno but a very ordinary servant who opened the door
; a middle-aged, stooping, gray-bearded man; some house-slave, it would seem, who had merely happened to be working near-by, for he was wearing a sacking apron, in the front of which he had stuck his duster and hearth-brush.

  "Her Sacred Majesty's-" he began, before she had spoken.

  "Are you the servant whose duty it is to answer this door?" she asked, staring at him coldly and haughtily.

  At this the poor wretch clearly felt himself-and whatever authority he might have tried to exercise-at a disadvantage.

  "Well, no, not exactly, saiyett. But you see, it's early for anyone to be calling, and what with the doings at the temple and that, they weren't expecting-that's to say, the doorkeeper-"

  – Had slipped away for a drink and a chat, she thought. It might have been fore-ordained. She gave the man two meld, at which he stared and bobbed his head.

  "It doesn't matter: I shan't be more than a few minutes. I wish to speak with Her Sacred Majesty's personal stew-

  ard. I know where to find him, so you can get back to your work."

  She made her way along the jade-green colonnade, from the central ceiling of which hung the huge, winged figure she dimly recalled from the morning of her first arrival. It was, she now saw, an image of Canathron of Lapan, that vindictive dragon-god with serpent's head and condor's wings, flying inviolate through the midst of his nimbus of flames-fire being his natural element. Canathron was not worshipped in Bekla, except by such immigrant merchants and craftsmen as had come there from Lapan, and Maia could only guess that this must be an old treasure of the house; a gift, perhaps, or relic of some reign of a former Sacred Queen who had been Lapanese. She walked beneath it with mistrust and apprehension. She knew nothing of Canathron, except that he was reputed to be pitiless to his enemies. Might he in some way, perhaps, be a tutelary guardian of the house? Yet not even Canathron-no god or goddess whatever-would condone the unspeakable treachery and wickedness which she had come to avenge at the cost of her own life. At this thought she raised her eyes boldly to his jeweled ones staring down, held his gaze a moment and then passed on to the foot of the staircase.