to be inflexibly different in outlook from ourselves. "Oh- she just wouldn't understand." "So you're ashamed?" asks an inward voice. No, no, inward voice; don't be so simplistic. Do you think there is only one color in the spectrum; or that some animal is universally "unclean" because one out of the world's countless religions has always maintained so? It is, rather, just that her values are not ours; that's all.
Maia, somewhat to her own surprise, heard herself asking to see Sessendris. The man raised his eyebrows slightly, bowed and requested her to be so good as to accompany him.
Sessendris was dressed in a long white apron, making bread, her beautiful arms covered with flour to the elbow.
"Maia!" she said, looking up with a smile and tossing back her hair. "How nice! You must wonder what in Cran's name the Lord General's saiyett thinks she's doing in the bakery. The truth is I enjoy it, and no one else in this whole house can make bread as well as I do. So you've caught me out, my dear. Now don't you go telling the whole upper city that the Lord General's saiyett's a baker, or you'll probably have me hanging upside-down!"
This unintentionally grisly pleasantry brought the tears to poor Maia's eyes. Apart from her initial collapse in the jekzha the previous afternoon, she had until now stood up pretty well to the shock and strain of the past fifteen hours; perhaps the better because the squalor, vulgarity and sordid ugliness, which to someone like Milvushina would have been almost the worst of it, were things she had grown up with. Now, however, she wept, standing unreplying in front of Sessendris with the tears running down her cheeks. Sessendris, nodding to the kitchen-maid to leave them, sat down beside her on the flour-sprinkled table.
"It's nasty," said the saiyett, when she had heard it all. "The truth is, the world's nasty, Maia Serrelinda. Haven't you learned that yet? You ought to, I should have thought, after a few months with Sencho."
"I'm-I'm getting to know, I reckon."
"And you want to try to alter it, do you?"
"But Sessendris, surely they'll pardon him, won't they? I mean, if I ask them? They're always saying as I saved the city, and if-"
"Why d'you want him pardoned?" interrupted Sessendris. "Do you still love him?"
"No," replied Maia, so instantly and emphatically that the saiyett, nodding, was drawn to say, "I see: you love someone else, do you? Well, never mind about that for now. But in that case why do you want him pardoned? From what you've told me, he's as guilty as he can be, and he never lifted a finger to try to help you when you'd been sold as a slave: and he could have, couldn't he?"
"How could he?" asked Maia.
"Why, at the very least he could have gone to one of his heldro masters and asked him to follow you up. That's what happened with Missy upstairs, as I dare say you know; but by that time she didn't want it. Anyway, suppose you were to get him handed over to you, what would you do with him?"
"I haven't thought yet. Send him home, I suppose."
"To get into more trouble? He's been in and out of scrapes all his life, by what you've told me. He'll never change. You must know that, Maia, if you're honest. I just can't understand-well, what your idea is."
"To save him from suffering," said Maia.
"You're such a sweet, kind girl," said Sessendris. "D'you know, I used to be like you, believe it or not? You haven't grasped as much as I thought you had. Now you listen to me. You've gone up in the world. I've gone up in the world too: not like you-you've had a shower of stars poured into your lap-but still, I'm a long way above where I started. And when that sort of thing happens to you, you simply can't afford to be the person you once were. You can't be two people. You've become a new person and you've got to be her. To the upper city you're as good as a princess. Suppose you start begging for the life of this five-meld wastrel, the Leopards aren't going to think any the better of you, are they? They'll just think you can't tell shit from pudding."
"I'll go down into the lower city! I'll appeal to the people-" Maia was angry now as well as tearful.
"My dear, the people-they'd like it even less. Surely you can see that? The very last thing they want to think is that you're one of themselves. You're the magic Ser-relinda, the girl who fooled King Karnat and swam the river. No one's good enough for you! And there you'd be, pleading for a-well, never mind. But you're living in the real world, Maia-the only one there is-and the world's been good to you. You've got to learn to accept it as it
is." Sessendris stood up and once more began tossing the flour. "I'm sorry my advice is nasty medicine. But drink it! It'll do you good. The other won't, believe you me."
At the Barons' Palace she was obliged to wait for some time. Officers-some of whom she knew, others she had never seen before-were coming and going and there was an atmosphere of males intent upon male matters, in which she felt unhappily intrusive and out of place. She was touched when the Tonildan captain-the very one who had come to thank her in Rallur-catching sight of her alone and obviously ill-at-ease, excused himself to three or four companions with‹ whom he was about to leave and kept her in countenance by sitting down and conversing with her-as best he could, for he was none too ready of tongue-until a smooth and courtly Beklan equerry not much older than herself came up and begged her to accompany him to the Lord General.
In the Beklan Empire, maps-insofar as the term is appropriate-took-the form of rough models, more-or-less to scale, built up, from local knowledge and eye-witness reports, either on trestles and boards or simply on the ground, with clay, twigs, pebbles and the like. Kembri and Elvair-ka-Virrion were standing at a plank table laid out to represent Chalcon, the Lord General pointing here and there as he talked. Elvair-ka-Virrion, dressed in a Gelt breastplate over a purple leather jerkin, looked up and smiled at Maia as warmly and gallantly as on that far-off afternoon when he had seen her for the first time in the Khalkoornil.
"Maia! Are you here to join up? Come to Chalcon and help us beat Erketlis! Then we'll make you queen of Ton-ilda and give you a crown of leopards' teeth. How about it?"
She smiled, raising a palm to her forehead. "Happen I'd be less help than hindrance, my lord. All the same, there is something you can give me; cost you a lot less trouble an' all." Seeing Kembri also smiling, she added, "Reckon you must know as I've come to ask for something. Hadn't, I wouldn't be here."
This was the first time that Maia had met with the Lord General since the day when she had been released from arrest by the intervention of the Sacred Queen. He looked
strained and tired, but his manner, as he put down the stick he had been using as a pointer and took her hands in greeting, at first seemed friendly and well-wishing enough. She could not help thinking that Nennaunir had been rather hard on him. While it would certainly have been nice if he had come to visit her together with the High Baron, he must have had lots more important things to do. (Maia was of course vague about military matters, but tended to think of them as necessarily occupying soldiers from morning till night and often longer than that.)