“Not even then,” said Maja. “Not till I die too. Even then…”
“That is my hope,” said Lady Kzuva. “Now I am telling you this because when you hear my proposal you might very reasonably guess that it arises from a desire to keep Maja to myself. Not so. I rejoice at your affection for Ribek, and his for you. I should rejoice if it were to ripen into adult love. I hope to rejoice at your wedding, though I have to be carried there on a stretcher. If I were to die on that very day I should die happy.
“But meanwhile, what is to become of Maja? Where is she to live? I would very strongly suggest that it should not be at Ribek’s mill. The balance you presently maintain on the border between strong affection on Ribek’s part and what I know to be genuine love on Maja’s will become increasingly precarious as Maja grows toward womanhood—”
Normally none of them interrupted Lady Kzuva. Ribek did now.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about that too,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy. And anyway, it’s far too soon for her to make up her mind the way she has. Striclan and I are almost the only men she’s ever got to know. She needs to meet boys her own age—Benayu doesn’t count. She needs girl friends to talk to about them. Experience of the world too. Again, what we’ve been doing doesn’t count—ordinary life isn’t like that. You’re suggesting she comes back here? It’s up to her, but I’m all for it.”
“Wait,” said Lady Kzuva. “There is more to my proposal than Maja simply coming back here. You tell me there is going to be a peace conference. I have every intention of participating. I shall renew Maja’s acquaintance with Syndic Blrundahlrgh—I of course did not experience it directly—and accompany her on part of her travels. With the disappearance of the Watchers there will be intense power struggles in Talagh. I shall throw my support behind Chanad and persuade my fellow Landholders to do the same, and so on.
“Where do you three, Saranja, Striclan and Maja, fit in? The case of Striclan is obvious. I doubt if there is anyone living who has his experience and knowledge both of the Empire and the Pirates’ culture and politics. Simply to have him there as my adviser would be invaluable. Saranja, as a member of our truce delegation—”
“But I was a complete fake!” said Saranja. “Everybody will know that I wasn’t ever a Captain in the Imperial Army, and then they’ll realize that the whole delegation was fake.”
“You are mistaken. Maja, if you would be kind enough to look in the top right-hand drawer of the bureau there…There is a sheet of parchment, with wax and seal beside it….”
The parchment was thick and creamy. Elaborately penned writing filled one side.
“Now that little silver dish. Thank you. Take one of the candles from the table and tip it a little sideways over the parchment and hold the dish in your other hand to catch any drips from the candle…A bit lower…that’s right.”
Wide awake this time, Maja watched the scarlet pool of wax forming, and then Lady Kzuva’s many-ringed fingers pressing the seal firmly into the wax. Much better than I managed, she thought. I wonder what the penalty is for forging a Landholder’s seal. Death, at least, I should think.
“Among the less absurd privileges Landholders possess,” said Lady Kzuva, “is that of appointing an officer to a regiment in the Imperial Army. All Landholders travel with an armed escort, which will be much more effective if one of them can act with the full authority of an Imperial commission. Congratulations on your appointment, Captain Saranja, of the Women’s Regiment of the Imperial Guard. You will see that the commission predates our conference at Larg.”
Ribek laughed aloud, and Striclan too. Saranja stared at the parchment. Maja had never seen her so put out. She turned white, then red. Her mouth opened and shut several times before she could speak.
“Oh,” she said at last. “Oh…Thank you. Thank you very much. I don’t know what to say.”
“You have already said it, my dear. I should add that I do not expect you to be a mere ornament in my train, though you will certainly be that. But you are manifestly a woman of action, full of fire and purpose, a born soldier, one whom others will follow. We may well have need for that. And your horses—they are now wingless?”
“I can give Rocky his wings again if I want to.”
“And the other two,” said Benayu. “I can fix that for you.”
“Again, an obvious asset. Finally Maja. You shall come as my ward, my dear, so it is natural that you should accompany me. But in many circumstances in which we may find ourselves, with unchecked magic now loose in the Empire, your special talent may prove invaluable, as you have already shown me in my little courtroom.
“And more important to me than any of your separate gifts is that I can be confident, both from the story you have told me and from what I have seen of you, that I can trust you completely.
“Now, unless you have any questions, I suggest that I should leave you to talk my proposal over among yourselves, and you can tell me in the morning what you have decided.”
She unhooked her cane from the arm of her chair and waited for one of them to help her to her feet. Nobody moved. Maja looked at Ribek, who had already turned to her. He raised his eyebrows. She nodded. He pointed at her. Surprised, she turned to Lady Kzuva.
“Yes, please,” she said. “Thank you very much.”
“I was about to say the same thing, rather more elaborately,” said Striclan from the other side.
“Me too,” said Benayu.
“Excellent,” said Lady Kzuva. “Nothing moves quickly in the Empire. I shall need to send to Talagh at once, to prepare the ground, but I should like to be on the road as soon as the snows are gone. If you can be here by then, well and good. Otherwise you will need to find me on the road somehow. With wings on your horses you will travel far faster than I.”
CHAPTER
27
Again the Empire reeled itself away beneath them as they flew on, still passing none of the country they had traversed so slowly on their journey to Tarshu. The detour to Kzuva had taken them well west of that, and now they were heading back toward the sheep pastures north of Mord. There seemed to be an unspoken joint desire that they should stay together as long as possible, and this was the simplest way. They would say good-bye to Benayu and Sponge at the pastures, cross the mountains by the way they had come when they’d been escaping from the Pirates, and after a couple of days at Northbeck leave Ribek and Maja there. Saranja and Striclan would fly on with all three horses to see what was happening at Woodbourne. When the time came for them to leave the Valley, they would return by way of Northbeck, pick Maja up, take her to Lady Kzuva and travel south together when the snows were gone.
Now, far ahead, they could see the glitter of the snow-peaks. Farms and woodlands flowed beneath them, and there was the river, skirting the plain of Mord, and Mord itself, smug and snug behind its walls. The Watchers’ Eye was gone from its southern gate. More and steeper woodland, and then…
Then, where the pasture should have been, utter desolation. A dismal black slope of scree and tumbled rock. A crater at the center. Not a blade growing on the slope itself apart from one or two strips of turf running down from where the whispering cedar had stood. Not a tree standing within several hundred paces of it. Benayu shouted, pointed and wheeled to the left, up the slope. The great wings pounded the thinning air, spiraling up beside a cliff-face to a wide ledge, clothed in scanty grass. They landed there and slid or swung themselves down from the horses.