She slipped out of his embrace, sitting up in the bed and tossing back her hair. He reached up and gently fondled one breast.
"What is it, then, my lord, that you want me to do?"
"All we want you to do tonight is to turn someone else's head as thoroughly as you've turned mine. No more than that. Don't, whatever you do, give him what you've just given me. Just make him very much want to see you again. Can you do that?"
"All depends, my lord, doesn't it, whether he's goin't' fancy me?"
"He'll fancy you all right. Just pretend you're back home in your own village and be yourself. Listen: I'll tell you a story. When Durakkon's wife went into labor a year or two ago, the doctor was very nervous to think he was attending the wife of the High Baron. Durakkon told him to imagine he was delivering a girl in the lower city. It worked like a charm. I bet you had one or two lads on their toes in Tonilda, didn't you, before you came here?"
"But this man, my lord-he'll know I've been with you."
"He won't: I took the greatest care. They'll just be starting supper now. Come with me and I'll show you your man without him seeing you. Then we'll go down to the hall separately."
Obediently, Maia got out of bed and dressed. Picking up a lamp, Elvair-ka-Virrion guided her along an empty corridor and up a steep flight of steps. At the top he blew out the lamp and opened the door of a small, unlit room. She could hear the rain drumming on the roof overhead.
The opposite wall consisted of nothing more solid than decorative wooden tracery, through which lamplight was shining. From below rose sounds of talk and laughter and the clatter of plates and goblets. Elvair-ka-Virrion, turning
to her with a finger on his lips, led her across to the tracery wall.
Through this Maia, from a height of perhaps thirty feet, found herself looking down into the Lord General's dining-hall. It was less crowded than on the night of the Rains banquet, for Elvair-ka-Virrion had invited no more than sixty or seventy people altogether, men and girls. The serving-tables were spread with food-the mere sight of them, together with the smells of roast meat, vegetables, herbs and sauces, aroused Maia's appetite-and the flower-crowned guests were moving among them for slaves to fill their plates and goblets. Several men had already seated themselves at tables on the dais itself, while others, accompanied by their girls, had strolled further down the hall, forming casual groups. Maia could see Nennaunir, in a saffron robe and a necklace of what looked like real rubies, talking with two young men who were obviously competing for her favors. As she watched, one of them suddenly turned towards the other with a quick look of anger, whereupon Nennaunir burst out laughing, slapped his hand and held out her goblet for him to go and refill.
Elvair-ka-Virrion pointed towards the right-hand side of the dais. Here a little knot of five men were talking among themselves as they sat together round the end of one of the tables. All had long hair gathered behind their necks in the Urtan style, and wore daggers at their belts. In guests from any other part of the empire this last would have been regarded as an insult to their host, but among the Urtans wearing daggers at all times was a custom so obstinately retained that it had become tolerated, so that shearnas were sometimes asked jestingly whether they wore them in bed.
Although the group included no girls, they were plainly enjoying themselves, laughing and talking animatedly and sometimes turning their heads to call out to passers-by or guests at other tables. Suddenly Maia saw Occula (to whom Terebinthia had given a tunic made entirely of overlapping, scarlet feathers, which left her oiled limbs bare except for a pair of belled anklets and a serpentine brass torque on one arm) saunter across to where they were sitting and offer one of them-an older man who looked to be in his mid-thirties-a dripping rib of beef. As she bent and whispered something in his ear he laughed, whereupon she sat down on his knee and, with one arm around his neck,
shared the meat with him, from time to time putting her hand on his to turn the bone for the next bite of her gleaming teeth.
Maia, eyebrows raised, turned inquiringly toward El-vair-ka-Virrion, but he shook his head, whispering, "No, that's Eud-Ecachlon, the heir of Urtah."
"Then which?"
"The man on his right; his half-brother."
Maia looked down once more. Beyond Occula's be-feathered, red shoulder she now observed a thin, dark man; rather tall, it seemed. Half a fowl was lying on the dish before him, and as she watched he put down the drumstick he had been gnawing and turned for a moment to speak to Occula. Maia, quick as always to form a first impression, thought she perceived in his manner a kind of detachment, almost distaste. As he looked at the black girl where she sat on Eud-Ecachlon's knee, his rather narrow, unsmiling face had an expression she could only describe to herself as haughty. A clever but humorless man, she thought: tense, highly-strung yet tenacious, not altogether at ease among his companions; for that matter not at ease, perhaps, in the world itself, yet determined to hold his own. He might be twenty-four or twenty-five, but the lamplight and the distance made it hard to judge.
As she watched him talking to Occula-the black girl leaning across to answer him, so that her necklace of teeth hung forward like a row of tiny, curved knives-she noticed something odd. The Urtan sitting on his further side- a big, good-natured-looking fellow with a fair beard and gold earrings-leant across, took the fowl in one hand and proceeded to slice it with his knife. The dark man glanced towards him with a nod of thanks, then stuck the point of his knife into a piece of the cut-up meat, dipped it in the sauce beside his dish and ate it.
Elvair-ka-Virrion, his face dappled by the light shining through the tracery, again caught her eye, nodded and led her back into the corridor, closing the door silently behind them.
"You'll know him again?"
"Yes, my lord; who is he?"
"His name is Bayub-Otaclass="underline" he's a natural son of the High Baron of Urtah."
"A natural son?"
"He might very well have had no standing in Urtah at
all. He might have been sent away-brought up as a peasant-and no wrong would have been done either to his mother or himself. But she was a great beauty and a much-admired and very charming woman-to say the least. The High Baron loved her passionately-more than he loved his wife, for that was nothing but a political marriage between baronial families. Bayub-Otal's mother was a Suban dancing-girl. When she died-well, never mind how she died-the High Baron was heart-broken. That's why Bayub-Otal's always been treated as though he were a legitimate son. And if it had remained under Urtan dominion, he'd have stood to inherit Suba. He'd been promised Suba: that was what his father intended for him."
This last was of little interest to Maia: but what she had actually seen was.
"That other man-he was cutting up his meat for him?"
"Bayub-Otal has a withered hand. It was-injured, when he was a boy."
As they walked back down the corridor Maia was silent. At length she asked, "What-what sort of a man is he?"
"That I can't tell you, Maia: I've had very little to do with him. They say, though, that he's full of resentment and that he's no fool."
"And I'm to deceive him?"
Elvair-ka-Virrion stopped short and turned to face her.
"Who said that? Not I!"
Half-child as she was, she gave way to a touch of impatience.
"Reckon you did!"
"I did not. Maia, understand, you're simply to make him like you, talk to you, want to see you again-nothing more than that."
"But why, my lord? I mean, what for?"
"Never mind. Trust me, it'll all turn out very much to your advantage. Now I'm going to leave you. Wait here a minute or two, then go down this staircase and Sessen-dris-you know, my father's saiyett-will be waiting for you. Go in and have supper with the Urtans. Remember, I hardly know you-I've only seen you at Sencho's. Sail your boat well, pretty Maia! I'm sure you can. Thank you for my pleasure. It was much the best I've ever had in my life! I'm not going to spoil it by giving you a lygol, but believe me I'll do far more for you than that one day."