There was no moon and despite the great comet, still burning if anything brighter in the north, the night was dark for summer. Brero, whom Maia had asked to say nothing about the visit, accompanied the two girls, veiled and on foot, as far as the walled lane leading to the kitchen courtyard. Here, unexpectedly, they came upon Zuno, who had apparently been waiting for them. Maia gave Brero ten meld to drink and asked him to meet them in two hours' time. Zuno, using his own key, let them into the palace and they climbed the two flights to the queen's paneled supper-hall without seeing anyone.
They had hardly slipped off their cloaks when Occula
came in. Maia was touched to see that she was wearing an orange-colored metlan not unlike the one she had brought with her from Thettit. (That must have been ruined long ago, thought Maia, for she remembered how Occula had worn it to the gardens on the night of their arrest.) Having kissed them both, she held Maia at arm's length and looked her up and down.
"Precious little wrong with you, banzi, 's far as I can see."
She herself looked drawn and wan, with a kind of grayness in her face which Maia had never seen before, but guessed to be the equivalent of pallor. The two girls had already had supper while waiting for the summer darkness to fall. Zuno brought wine, fruit and serrardoes, served them himself and then, nursing his white cat, sat down near Occula.
"You can trust me, saiyett," he said to Milvushina (whom he had, of course, never previously met). "Occula and I have sworn to get each other out of here by one means or another."
"It's like bein' a monkey in a bastin' cage," said Occula, draining her goblet straight down. "I wasn' born for this, banzi-shut up all day and night and no use for me except-what you saw."
"Why didn't she take you to Paltesh, then?" asked Maia.
"I doan' know for sure," answered the black girl, "but I think she decided I might be one too many. She took Ashaktis, you see. Whatever it is she's up to, she can' manage without Ashaktis to do her dirty work. Ashaktis and I have never really got on, and Fornis knows that. Ashaktis would get rid of me if she could, but she's too smart to try it on as long as she knows I'm what Fornis still wants. That might be it, or it might just be that she didn' want to be tempted to indulge in any little games while she's engaged on serious business-whatever it is. 'Cos believe you me, banzi, that bitch has got her back to the wall. She's desperate-doesn' care what she does; or who she kills, either. That's partly why I took the risk of sendin' for you both here-to warn you of that, face to face."
"She frightens me," said Milvushina. "I'd never try to pretend she didn't. What's she planning, d'you suppose?"
"Cran alone knows," replied Occula. "But let's come back to that in a minute. I've got so much to ask you both
that I scarcely know where to begin. Are you happy sittin' there, Milva, with that belly on you, or would you rather lie down?"
Milvushina smiled and shook her head. It was plain that her pregnancy gave her the greatest happiness.
"Rather you than me," said Occula. "No accountin' for tastes, is there? Yowlin' one end and shit the other. Still, never mind: we've got to be serious; there are things I need to know. The war, Milva-what's the latest news? I know what's put out by the heralds-everythin' every-where's as jolly as a bull on a cow-but if us lot are goin' to stay alive I've got to know the real truth. Do you know it?"
Milvushina nodded, compressing her lips. "Kembri doesn't tell me everything. But of course I get letters from Elvair, and I quite often have the chance to listen to the staff officers or even just the soldiers."
She hesitated; then asked, "Which side are you on, Occula, anyway?"
"Reckon I ought to be askin' you that," answered the black girl. "Obviously you doan' want Elvair smashed up; but d'you want him to smash up Santil or what?"
"What I used to hope was that Santil would come to terms," said Milvushina. "I used to hope that Elvair's army just going into Chalcon might end the trouble."
"Why, doan' you any more?"
"You haven't heard anything, then?"
"Well, of course I haven' heard anythin'," said Occula irritably, "shut up here like a pig in a damn' sty. Not about Chalcon, anyway. Has Santil had a defeat or what?"
"Anything but. Elvair's falling back towards Ikat Yel-dashay. He wrote to me-I've got it here-" she fumbled a moment in her robe and drew out a soiled, torn paper. " 'We've been up and down this wilderness until the men are worn out, but the enemy are never where we expect to find them. They've driven away all the beasts and burned the farms. The only soldiers of ours to see any fighting are those who convoy the supplies. Things can't go on like this. The army's half-starved. Believe me, my darling, no one can know what it's like who hasn't wandered for days on end through these woods and hills and found nothing but the bodies of our stragglers. There's no help for it- we shall have to fall back on Ikat and try to work out some
new plan. It will be better not to let my father know I've told you this."
"Oh, men! Men!" cried Milvushina. "Always fighting! 'I'm braver than you are'; like a lot of little boys! If only Elvair was safe back and the whole thing forgotten! I told him what would happen-I told him! I know that country and he'd never been there before in his life. Chalcon's like a spider's web: they'll be lucky to get out at all, that's what I think now."
"D'you think Bekla's goin' to fall, then?" asked Occula coolly.
"Bekla?" Zuno and Maia spoke together in astonishment.
"To Santil, you mean? Oh, never, surely?" said Milvushina. "I mean, harvest's coming on, for one thing. Once Elvair's out of Chalcon, Santil's men'll want to get back to their homes."
"Well, I wouldn' be too sure of that, if I were you," answered the black girl. "I expect you know there's trouble in Urtah and in Belishba, too. I heard that it's quite a serious slave revolt in Belishba, and Sendekar's had to bring men south from the Valderra to deal with it. You can bet your deldas-in fact you can bet Maia's-Karnat woan' have missed that."
"But Beklal Fall?" Milvushina knitted her brows. "I haven't heard Kembri or any of the Leopards speaking about that as a serious possibility."
"Well, personally I doan' give a fart if it does fall," said Occula. "But I've got to be thinkin' about my own plans. Sooner or later, you see, Fornis is goin' to come back, and if Bekla falls she's quite capable of sellin' herself to the other side. In fact that's almost certainly what she will do. She could twist anyone, that woman: yes, even Santil, I believe. 'Oh, it wasn' really me, it was all those horrible Leopards! Now I can help you!' That'll be her line. She's as cunnin' as forty foxes. In fact she may very well be plottin' the fall of the city at this very moment."
Occula, clenching her fists, jumped up and began walking up and down the little hall. "Why the bastin' blue brothels d'you think she went to Paltesh? To be safe from Kembri, of course, and raise support among her own people, that's why! Kembri'd kill her if he could. Even Du-rakkon would kill her. But they're not goin' to rob me,
either of them. Fm the one that's goin' to kill her, an' doan' you make any mistake about that!"
She stopped, gazing out at the pendent, misty fire of the comet where it hung above the Gelt mountains. Maia, looking up at her, was reminded of a silent, dark stream sliding between its banks. The stream flowed where it must: no telling the depth; no stopping it and never a sound. Ah! but this water would bear her up-friendly water, however dark and deep.
"Occula," she asked, "why don't you kill her in one of those horrible sprees of hers? You could do it easy and pass it off as an accident: say she brought it on herself."
Zuno shook his head. "No, no, banzi," said Occula. "What-a slave-girl bring about the death of the Sacred Queen? And one already more than suspected of helpin' to murder Sencho, at that? I'd hang upside-down quicker than a goat can get stiff. Besides, when I do it, she's goin' to know who I am and why it's bein' done. It'll be no bastin' accident, believe me. But the right moment'U be everythin'. That's why I've got to know as much as possible about what's happenin' and wha
t's goin' to happen."
"I'll tell you something else," put in Milvushina. "Kem-bri's afraid of her: he's as good as told me so. He told me that when they first seized Bekla nearly eight years ago, he and Sencho were just out to make use of her-you know, her magnetism and popularity with the people. He said he never realized then that before she'd finished she'd turn out to be more than they could handle."
"Either she'll maintain herself in power," said Zuno, "or else, if she can't, she'll pull the city down round her own ears and everyone else's."
"Well, never mindV cried Occula impatiently, as though Zuno had uttered something completely trivial. "That's enough about that green-eyed cow. You listen to me, banzi. First of all, what have you done with Chia?"
Maia told her.
Occula nodded. "I hoped you might. That's why I asked Zuno to send her. H'm! Northern Urtah; that might prove quite useful, I doan' know."
"How d'you mean?" asked Maia.
"Well, by all accounts they're a very funny lot up there, where she comes from," answered Occula enigmatically. "And of course she'll tell them what she owes Fomis, woan' she? And that might-Well, never mind. There's
somethin' else I want to hear about. What's all this about you gettin' up on the Scales and talkin' about the star, as if you were Lespa or somethin'?"
"The star? Well, it just come into my head to see 'f I couldn't go down there and cheer a few of 'em up. I never meant to go on the Scales at all-'twas the armourers an' the rest as done that."
"You and that Ogma, you're not safe, the two of you left alone together," said Occula. "She might have thought to stop you goin' out, even if you couldn' see it for yourself. That girl's a fool an' so are you, banzi. Far as I can make out, you did the very thing everyone's.been warnin' you not to do. It never crossed your mind, I suppose, that Kembri'd think you were puttin' yourself forward for Sacred Queen?"
"No, it never," retorted Maia hotly, "and n'more I was, an' so I told Kembri to his face when he" come round yesterday."
"The thing you must never forget, banzi, about Kembri, is that he's every bit as much a conspirator and a murderer as Sencho and Fornis. He was in on this Leopard business from the very beginnin', like them. He's completely ruthless. He's decided that Milva's the girl the Leopards need for Sacred Queen. That's why he didn' stop Elvair goin' round and takin' her the very day after Sencho was done in, even though he knew it'd make Fornis his enemy from that moment. Do you realize that if good old Sendekar hadn't made it impossible, by tellin' the whole army about you swimmin' the river before Kembri could stop him, Kembri'd almost certainly have had "you killed by now, just to get you out of the way as a rival to Milva?"
"Ah, he told me as much yesterday," said Maia.
"Cran, I'd almost rather be back at Piggy's," said Occula, "wouldn' you? Three nice bed-girls from the High Counselor's, and here we are up to the neck in what's goin' to be the biggest shine for a thousand years, you mark my words. And there's no gett'n' out of it that I can see. Doesn' it frighten you?"
"Yes, it frightens me sick," answered Maia. Yet still she said nothing of Randronoth's forty thousand meld.
"What really makes me sure these damn' Leopards are bound to go down in the end," said Occula, "is the filthy, blasphemous use they've made of this whole Sacred Queen business. Come right down to it and they've spat in the
gods' faces, that's what. They're not my gods, but never mind 'bout that. The whole point of the Sacred Queen always used to be that she was the gods' choice and not men's. She was supposed to be the gods' makeweight for man's imperfection. Men in power made the rulers-the generals and councilors and so on-but the Sacred Queen was honestly acclaimed by the people, and no hanky-panky. That's to say, the gods put it into the people's hearts whom to acclaim, and that was their own choice; not the rulers'. But Fornis, Sencho, Kembri-they changed all that, and Durakkon was the fool who went along with it. The gods'll have their blood for that in the long run, you see if they doan'."
"You're the lucky one, aren't you?" said Milvushina to Zuno. "You'll be all right."
"I may and I may not, saiyett; it all depends. I have no wish to stand or fall with the Sacred Queen, yet what else can I do? In practice I'm not free to leave her, and in any case I have no particular prospects elsewhere."
"No, you're the lucky one, Milva, that's the truth of it," said Occula. "At least you've got Kembri and Elvair to protect you, and even if the city were to fall, they'd probably get you out alive. You've got no enemies, unless you call Santil an enemy. No, banzi, you're the one I'm worried about: there can' be any goin' back for you, you see. And yet you can' go on as you are. Kembri may not be prepared to go the length of killin' you, but Fornis will be when she comes back-as I'm sure she means to. And even if you were to cut and run, where could you go? Suba-Katria- Terekenalt-they'd tear you to pieces, after what you've done! And I can' see you in sanctuary on Quiso for the rest of your life. No; there's only two things you can possibly do, and I reckon I know which one'd be best."
Maia would have liked Occula to take her in her arms and whisper in her ear, as in the old days in bed at Sen-cho's.The talk of killing had frightened her badly. Yet she did her best to make a joke of it.
"Well, come on, then! Reckon Terebinthia won't be eavesdropping just now."
Occula, sitting down beside her, took her hand in her own. "You could put your trust in the gods, banzi, and believe that they mean you to be Sacred Queen. That's one thing you could do; for there's hardly a doubt that if you're still alive and in Bekla at the end of this year, the
people will acclaim you, Kembri or no Kembri. But it's my belief that if you stay here just as you are now, either Kembri or Fornis will get rid of you somehow."
She paused. "And the other?" asked Maia.
"The other," said Occula deliberately, "is to marry the richest and most powerful man you can find; preferably one with an estate in the provinces, where you can go and live in safety. You're not cut for a life of high intrigue, banzi. You're too nice. A girl like you needs a protector- someone to belong to. And the long and short of it is, you can either choose the gods' protection, or a man's. I know damn' well which I'd choose-and if I doan' love you no one does."
A silence fell. It was as though all four of them, sitting in the elegant, luxurious hall high above the teeming city, felt themselves isolated as though besieged; or surrounded by a flood lapping the base of their precarious tower with invisible waters of malevolence and peril. Suddenly Maia had the horrible fancy that the sunken rectangle of the central floor, enclosed within its honey-colored walls and broad step of banded slate, was like a well down which her dead body could be pitched and vanish untraced. Setting down her goblet, she jumped up and almost ran across to the north-facing window.
The comet was low, its drooping tail partly obscured behind the jagged, barely-discernible line of the mountain peaks. The comet, she knew, had been sent by Lespa- Lespa who had saved her again and again. Yet why had she sent it? What did it mean? It was like the danger she was in, she thought. It made no sound, uttered no threat. It simply abode; whenever you looked up, there it was, undeviant and unchanged.
"Oh, Lespa," she prayed silently, "help me! I'm more afraid than ever I've been!"
For now, with Occula's words, her very real and immediate danger had at last become plain to her; the danger which, though in all conscience told clearly enough, had not been brought fully home by Sessendris, by Nennaunir, by Milvushina or even entirely by Kembri. It now seemed to her that she-she who had knelt beside the dying Sphel-thon, who had swum the Valderra by night-had in fact never, in all her life, possessed any real power to distinguish between semblance and reality.
The sudden recognition of a lack in oneself of normal
perception, of the ability to see in its true colors what has been plain as day to everyone else; the realization that in some important respect one has hitherto been like a child, not clearly differentiating actuality from fantasy, security from peril, truth fr
om fallacy, can take place at any time in life, even to outwardly-seeming experienced people, and when it does is always mortifying. When it involves the apprehension of danger, the shock often comes with a kind of freezing effect, dream-like, momentarily cutting off awareness of companions and surroundings.
Still no one spoke. Maia stood still, supporting herself with one hand on the embrasure. Her hope of finding Zen-Kurel, of fulfilling their mutual promise to marry and live in Katria; it was as though a glaring, hard light had suddenly been turned upon this secret room in her heart, revealing-what? Flimsy walls, frail beams, a brittle door that any ruffian could kick in. True, it was also revealed as no less beautiful than she had always known it to be- but utterly insecure. In this room, whatever its beauty, there lay no safety. Her love for Zen-Kurel would not save her, and she had been deceiving herself in thinking that it would. Yet if safety was what she must have, if safety was what she valued above all else, then no doubt about it, she must quit this beautiful, forlorn, memory-filled room for some stronger one. Her love for Zenka-her.love of one night, which she nevertheless knew in her own heart to be entire and sincere-how much, in cold, sober fact, was that love worth to her? That, though Occula did not know it, had been the implication of her words to the hearer. Was she, Maia, ready to risk death-no fancy, no game, but the real, bowel-clutching prospect of being murdered-not in return for the certainty of finding and marrying her Zenka in the end, but in return for the mere chance that she might?
I must wait for Sednil, she thought. At the very least I must wait for Sednil and whatever news he brings. And that's a matter of time. But how much time will I have?
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