"Zenka," she asked silently, "won't you tell me, darling?" But for once he made no reply in her heart, only smiling as he had smiled in the lamplight at Melvda when he had promised that he would always love her and begged her never to forget him.
Rather abstractedly, she selected a plain robe of very pale gray and a contrasting necklace of tawny ziltate beads from the Telthearna; a present from some admirer. No doubt, she thought, their price had lined some Ortelgan pocket; perhaps Ged-la-Dan's.
Milvushina received her warmly and affectionately. The old reserves which had at one time constrained their relationship had entirely vanished, due-or so Maia felt- not only to their closer acquaintance and happier fortunes, but also to a certain mutual dependence which each felt without actually saying as much. Milvushina, an aristocrat to her finger-tips but nevertheless a girl from the back of
beyond, her man gone to the wars and her servants all Beklan, often found herself, even now, somewhat out of her depth. From Maia she could seek advice without breach of confidence or loss of dignity. Maia, for her part, was more than glad of a friend who, unlike the shearnas, was not for ever concerned with men, basting and the material advantages to be gained therefrom. Nennaunir and Otavis were warm-hearted, unenvious and the most easy-going and tolerant company imaginable, yet she not infrequently felt-to her own surprise and self-annoyance-that there were things about which she could not speak to them. Nennaunir, who admired her success, was plainly ready to stand by her anywhere; would have lent her money if she had needed it, lied for her or spoken up in her defense against anyone. Yet she could not have talked to Nennaunir about Zen-Kurel.
Milvushina was another matter. Although Maia had not as yet spoken to her of Zen-Kurel, she had come to feel that one day, when she was ready, she would probably find sympathy and understanding. What she felt to be their common bond was a sense of deep personal integrity transcending superficial contamination. Whatever had befallen Milvushina, whatever had been done to her, she plainly regarded as past and over, and her true self as remaining intact despite it. Her devotion to Elvair-ka-Virrion was no matter of expediency or eye-to-the-main-chance. In her own eyes she had neither come down in the world nor (like Nennaunir) up in it: she was Elvair-ka-Virrion's consort and the willing mother of his unborn child. With all this Maia felt herself entirely in sympathy.
Milvushina received her wearing a dark-blue, loose-bodied gown of Yeldashay silk on which was embroidered in gold thread a likeness of Airtha the mother almost identical to that which Maia had seen last year in the long gallery of this very house. Smiling, she put her hands behind her back and drew it close for a moment, to show Maia the swell of her belly beneath.
"Enjoying it?" asked Maia, passing an admiring hand over the curve.
Milvushina nodded happily, poured wine for them both and led her into the cool, flower-scented supper-room.
Maia, naturally, asked first about the latest news from Elvair-ka-Virrion and the Chalcon expedition, and of this Milvushina spoke with every appearance of cheerfulness,
giving-very convincingly-the impression of having heard nothing which she could not mention in the hearing of the slaves.
"In the last letter I had-that was three days ago-he said they were a good thirty miles or more into Chalcon and sending out patrols to find Santil's main force. It's very difficult country, he says-" Milyushina laughed-"well, I could have told him that-and it's not always easy to get supplies through. Apparently at least one baggage-train's been ambushed."
"What d'you reckon's going to be the rights of it, then?" asked Maia.
"Well, if you really want to know, I think it'll all come to little or nothing," answered Milvushina. "I told Elvair as much myself. In those hills Santil can keep out of the way for as long as he likes-I should imagine-and then of course he's got the people on his side. I felt quite sure Elvair would have trouble feeding an army that size once they really got any distance into Chalcon. If you ask me, they'll be back before the end of the summer and no one much hurt on either side. But they'll have lots of rip-roaring stories to tell, won't they? Men always do."
They talked of other things. After supper, however, when the sun had set, the slaves had brought in the lamps and left them together and she was sitting at her embroidery frame, Milvushina came back to the war in a rather different vein.
"I didn't want to say this before," she said. "I know slaves get to hear everything anyway, but I don't want them saying they heard it from me. I can't help worrying, Maia. Elvair says the whole country's bitterly hostile, even though he's had it proclaimed everywhere that they've no quarrel with anyone except Santil. I told him how it would be. My father was very well-liked, you see; and besides- well, I think they're angry about me, too."
" 'Tain't all that surprising," said Maia.
"Elvair says arrows come flying out of the trees, bridges get broken, sentries are found strangled-all that sort of thing-and never an enemy to be seen. But what in Cran's name did he expect?"
"Has he told Kembri all this, or just you?" asked Maia.
"I don't know what he's told Kembri," said Milvushina. She paused, holding up two contrasting strands of yellow to the lamp. "It's so hard to tell in this light, isn't it? Which
one would go better with the green, d'you think?" And then, as Maia pointed to one of them, "But I know what Kembri told me, only this morning. Not about Chalcon- about Urtah."
"Uriah?" said Maia. "What about Urtah, then? You mean as there's trouble there, too?"
"So Kembri was saying," answered Milvushina. "You know, of course, don't you, that the Urtans have been pressing for Bayub-Otal to be pardoned and released? Kembri's still holding him in Dari-Paltesh, to make sure his father keeps the province quiet; I don't know for certain, but it's my belief he's told the old man secretly that he will release Bayub-Otal as soon as things have quietened down and people have begun to forget about what happened in Suba."
She refilled Maia's goblet. "But the High Baron of Ur-tah's one thing, you know, and the Urtans themselves are another. There are a lot of people there who hate the Leopards and aren't content to wait. There's been trouble; no actual rebellion yet, but the next thing to it, and naturally Kembri's worried. There's unrest in Belishba, too. Apparently the governor's written to Kembri that there's so much heldro opposition to the slave quotas there that unless they're reduced he can't undertake to go on keeping law and order. It's the open fighting in Chalcon that's sparked all this off; I'm certain of that. I only wish to Cran the Leopards had left Santil alone and Elvair was safe back in Bekla. To tell you the truth, Maia, the whole thing's troubling me very much."
She was silent for a time, and Maia was silent too, listening to the distant cry of the watchman on the Peacock Wall and the thin "twink, twink" of bats hunting above the dark garden outside.
At length Milvushina resumed. "But actually, none of this is really what I wanted to talk to you about, Maia dear. There's something else; something nearer home that concerns you as much as me."
"Oh, ah?" Maia waited with some little apprehension.
"Do you remember," went on Milvushina, "one day when we were at your house, I told you I was afraid of Fornis?"
"Ah; on account of Elvair'd taken you away from old Sencho's," said Maia. "Nor he wouldn't send you back to Chalcon when she told him."
"Well, it's worse now," said Milvushina. "Durakkon's told Fornis officially that at the end of this year she'll have to cease to be Sacred Queen."
"Don't see as he could have done anything else," replied Maia. "I mean, her time's up anyway; more than up, isn't it?"