a good listener, lively and quick to both sympathy and laughter, and with these qualities added to great beauty no girl has ever been able to go far wrong. By listening, too, she learned a good deal about affairs in the provinces, and began to understand what Kembri had meant by saying that men were apt to speak more freely and indiscreetly in the company of a beautiful girl whom they wished to impress. Indeed, she heard one or two things which she guessed that the Lord General would have been most interested to learn. However, she had not seen him since the morning when she had gone to the Barons' Palace to plead for Tharrin, and anyway she no-longer regarded herself as his agent. As far as she was concerned, that had come to an end on the banks of the Valderra. She no longer had any need to better herself by bearing tales. Also, she felt intuitively that she had fallen out of favor with Kembri, and this she attributed to his having decided upon Milvushina and not herself for Sacred Queen. That, however, troubled her little, for she did not believe that he would go the length of seeking her life or her ruin.
So she fared abroad, and bought fine clothes, and slept till noon when she chose, and dined or supped with Sarget, and with Bodrin the Gelt iron-master, and such Leopard lords as her friends approved; and shed tears of rapture as Fordil's fingers called forth from the hinnari a divine sorrow in which all her own-and the world's-was dissolved. In the moment of awakening, and before ever her sleepy mind had fastened upon the actualities of the coming day, it would be filled with a delightful assurance that all was well. All, indeed, until she thought of Tharrin's ashes blowing on the easterly wind-ah! whither? Towards that remote west-Suba, Katria, Terekenalt-which somewhere in its immensity contained her own Zen-Kurel. She, the Serrelinda, who had saved the city, had been made a victim of the Sacred Queen's cruelty, wronged and cheated beyond anything that any honest heart should brook unavenged. And incomparably fortunate though she might be, she yet lacked the simple luck of thousands of peasant lasses whose lot lay far beneath her own; namely, to laugh and chide and bed and wake with her rightful man.
"Zenka! Zenka!"
"Did you call, miss?" said Ogma, coming into the steamy, perfumed bathroom where she lay naked as a bride and lonely as a widow.
"Oh, don't mind me, Ogma," answered Maia, stretching for a towel to wipe her wet face. "I'm all upside-down this morning! Dreams-star-gazing-never mind." She broke off. "Oh, but listen-I want to go down to the silk market later, will you tell Brero? There's a new trader up from the south: Otavis thought we ought to take the opportunity."
"Opportunity, miss? Strikes me you're not taking all what you might." For Ogma had been completely bowled over by Randronoth and the dawn delivery of the nine thousand meld (which she supposed to have been safely stowed somewhere or other) and had continually in her mind the prospect of a whole succession of lustful governors, councilors, merchants and what-not, whose tips to the Serrelinda's lady's maid (for Randronoth had been liberal) would carry her as far beyond her wildest dreams as ever Maia had been carried beyond hers. Nor, perhaps, could she-who had so often seen Maia return tousled from the couch of Sencho-altogether be blamed for wondering why on earth her mistress seemed too fastidious either to make three times as much money as any shearna in Bekla, or (if that was not to her fancy) at least to set about achieving a noble and wealthy marriage. There could be only one explanation.
"Miss?"
"Yes, Ogma?" Maia stepped out of the bath, flinging back her head and shoulders as she toweled her back. Then, as Ogma hesitated, "Well, what?"
"D'you reckon they're going to make you Sacred Queen at the end of this year?"
In the freezing silence that followed her question, the wretched girl stammered, "Well, miss, I-I only just- only people keep saying-I mean, there's them as-"
"Get outV cried Maia, hurling the towel at her. "Get out! And if ever you dare to talk to me like that again I'll have you sent to Zeray, d'you understand? ZerayF'
As Ogma, flabbergasted-for Maia was almost always the most easy-going and conversable of mistresses-stumbled out of the room, Maia flung herself across the massage-couch, sobbing, beating her clenched fists in the cushions and swearing as fluently as Occula herself.
"Opportunity!" whispered Zen-Kurel in her mind's ear. "Aren't you the girl who had the wit to dress herself in golden hiies to meet the king? D'you suppose I've for-
gotten; d'you suppose I could ever forget my princess of opportunity? Only find the opportunity, Maia!"
After a time she dried her eyes, dressed and went pensively down to breakfast in the sunny garden. Half an hour later, the silk trader temporarily forgotten, she was lying in a low-slung hammock with one foot on the grass when Nennaunir, all diaphanous gauze and perfume, burst into the garden with a fervor like that of a hound welcoming a returning master. Before she rightly knew what was happening, Maia found herself embraced and so smothered with kisses that she could hardly find breath to greet the shearna or ask what it was all about..
At length Nennaunir rose from her knees beside the hammock and stood looking down at her with a smile that broke into the outright laughter of pure joy.
"You-you miracle-worker!" said the shearna, wiping tears from her eyes. "You conjuress! How d'you do it- m'm?"
Maia, feeling good-humored enough but a shade impatient of this unexplained transport, was visited by a touch of the Occulas.
"Well, on my back, mostly, but sometimes I-"
Nennaunir, grasping her two hands in her own, swung her to and fro in the hammock.
"Oh, Maia, thank you! Thank you from the bottom of my heart! What more-what more can I say?"
Maia looked up at her frowning, and shook her head.
"You mean to say you don't know?" asked Nennaunir.
"That's 'zackly what I do mean to say. What you on about?"
"It's Sednil! Sednil! He's back, he's back in Bekla! He's freel Randronoth's given him a release token! And now the queen's gone, he's got nothing to be afraid of! I suppose you didn't arrange that too, by any chance, did you?"
Maia jumped up.
"Sednil; free? Oh, Nan, I'm so glad! Well, good old Randronoth-I never guessed he'd be that quick! I reckon he's a lot better than what he's given credit for; some ways, anyhow. What happened, then? Tell me! When did Sednil get back? Did he come straight to see you or what?"
"No, dear; I went to see him. Well, he couldn't possibly hope to get admission to the upper city, could he? He reached Bekla early yesterday morning. He'd been three days walking from Lapan. He was in rags-good as-and
he had two meld on him. And then by sheer luck he overheard someone in the market saying look, that was the Serrelinda's servant-girl over there buying vegetables, so he went up to her and gave her his two meld to come and tell me. So it was your Ogma who brought me the news. That was why I was so surprised you hadn't heard."
"So'm I. 'N then what?"
"Well, I went straight down, of course, and there he was, waiting by the Scales in the Caravan Market. My dear, we've hardly been out of bed for the last twenty-four hours! But I've got him some reasonable lodgings down near the Tower of the Orphans, and given him enough money to buy some decent clothes. He's started looking for work already." For a moment Nennaunir looked troubled. "I only hope he'll find something, and not get into any more trouble."