Maia

by Richard Adams

  "Speak?" answered Durakkon. "What do you mean?"

  "Well, sir, someone's going to have to tell Fornis that a third reign as Sacred Queen is out of the question. And there's no one who can perform that task with authority except the High Baron of Bekla."

  There was a long pause. At length, "She has no legal power, sir," ventured Elvair-ka-Virrion, in a tone which was meant to be encouraging yet sounded anything but.

  "No; she has her own power, though," answered Durakkon dolefully. Then, recovering his dignity as though with an effort, he said, "Well, Lord General, I'll think it over, and let you know how and when I mean to go about it. You may both leave me now."

  The Lord General and his son bowed and descended the steps. Durakkon, turning away from them, remained alone, gazing out from the walls at Lespa's stars now twinkling more brightly above the darkening plain.

  59: THE PRISONERS

  Two hours before this, Maia had set about her task of taking Occula's message to the old woman in the sweetshop.

  In the event it proved easier than she had dared to hope. Nonetheless, she took a little while to find the shop; and

  the jekzha-man (who did not know who she was) had to be placated with extra money for all his stumbling up and down. Finally she made him go as far as Eud-Ecachlon's old lodgings, near the Tower of the Orphans-she could remember that all right, recalling the afternoon when she had acquitted herself so well-and then retrace his steps as though returning to the upper city.

  Ah yes! and there, sure enough, was the sweet-shop, on the opposite side of the street, just before it came out into the Sheldad. Today, in fine summer weather, it had a different look, as revisited places often do; yet there was no doubt about it. Maia stopped the jekzha, crossed the street and went in.

  The old woman was sitting behind her scales, and her lad could be heard clumping about somewhere in the back. A big, portly man, who looked like an upper servant, was making a great to-do over buying all manner of sweet-meats-no doubt for some supper-party of his master's- and it was plain that the old woman meant to take her time over obliging so good a customer. Maia waited. After a minute or two the lad appeared and came up to her, but she only shook her head, pointing and murmuring something about "your mother."

  At last the self-important butler was done and strutted out, pocketing his list and giving an address in the upper city to which the stuff was to be delivered that day without fail. Maia went up to the old woman while she was still bowing and smiling behind him in the doorway.

  "Good evening, mother," she said in a low voice, "and may Colonna and Bakris bless you. Last time we met, you told me I shouldn't never have come, so I'll be a bit quicker today. Occula-the black girl who was arrested when the High Counselor was killed-she's still alive and sends you greetings. She says you're to get out now, at once, without stopping for anything."

  "I've been expecting it," replied the old woman. "Did she say where?"

  Maia, shaking her head, produced a ten-meld piece. "How about Urtah? Now sell me some sweets-anything you like-for the jekzha-man to see when I come out, and I'U be gone."

  Two minutes later she was back in her jekzha, out in the Sheldad and turning left towards the Caravan Market. After a few moments, however, she realized that they were

  not making any progress. Something ahead had halted the traffic and everybody seemed to be being pressed back against the shop-fronts on either side of the street. Her jekzha-man, jostled by four or five cursing porters, staggered a moment against another, righted himself, slewed round on the axis of one wheel and halted, wiping his face with his sleeve.

  "Can't you go on?" she said impatiently. "I want to get home."

  "Got to wait a bit, saiyett, I'm afraid. Here's the soldiers coming now, see 'em?"

  She looked up the highway. Two files of soldiers were approaching, one on either side of the road; but very oddly, for they were side-stepping, facing outwards and pressing the people back against the walls with their spears held sideways. From further up, in the direction of the Caravan Market, there could now be heard a raucous clamor-ugly and malign, it sounded-coming gradually nearer, until one could distinguish individual, strident voices, like nails sticking out of the head of a cudgel.

  "Oh, whatever is it?" she asked, frightened. The man did not answer and she rapped sharply on the rail. "What is it? Tell me!"

  "Won't be more'n a minute or two, I dare say, saiyett," he answered. "I reckon they're bringing in the prisoners from Tonilda-them heldro spies. I heard tell as they'd be here today."

  Even as he spoke she saw, across the heads in front of her, a tryzatt appear from the left, walking slowly yet somehow tensely and impatiently up the center of the paved thoroughfare. Behind him came perhaps a dozen soldiers, spaced out on either side and carrying not spears, but leather whips coiled in their hands. They looked harassed and stretched to the limit, as men might look after hours spent in policing a plague-stricken town or struggling to bring home a leaking boat in bad weather. Their dust-grimed faces were streaked with sweat. They glanced continually this way and that and from moment to moment one or another would fling out his arm, pointing quickly, or call a hasty warning to a companion.

  Yet it was not at the tryzatt nor yet the soldiers that Maia stared aghast, but at those walking between them- if walking it could be called. Singly-in twos and threes- in huddling, flinching groups like driven animals-little by

  little there came into view a dreadful procession. No wounded of a defeated army, stumbling from the battlefield, could have presented so terrible a sight. All were ragged, gray-faced, hollow-cheeked, staring about them either in deadly fear or else in a glazed, unseeing stupor of despair worse than any fear. Among them were a few women, one or two of whom might once have been attractive; and these, with their filthy faces, matted hair and look of exhausted misery, filled Maia with unspeakable anguish, so that she began to tremble and her head swam; so much worse they seemed than the rest, so much more a distorted travesty of what they must once have been. One man, tall and bony in his tatters, seemed to be attempting bravado, swaggering along alone and apparently trying to sing. As he came closer, however, it became plain that he was mad and virtually oblivious of his surroundings. Two more, as they limped forward, were supporting a woman between them and staggering from side to side. A fourth, with wrists chained together, was holding his hands in front of him and elbows to his sides, swaying in a kind of grotesque rhythm like a cripple trying to dance. Among them all-how many? Forty, fifty?-there was not one whom children would not have been terrified to see coming up a village street.

  As they came on down the Sheldad, with its multi-colored shops and ornate, stylish buildings, the crowd on either side broke into jeering and brutal laughter. A tradesman, lifting the pole which he used for raising and lowering the pent-shutter of his shop, jabbed with it, over the shoulders of the soldiers, at the man who was trying to sing. Missiles showered upon the prisoners-garbage, broken pieces of wood, a stone or two, an old shoe, a dead rat. One who tripped and fell was pelted until the nearest soldier, with a kind of rough sympathy, pulled him to his feet and supported him for a few yards, so that his tormentors were obliged to desist. Over all the hubbub carried the sharp, intermittent voice of the tryzatt, looking over his shoulder and continually urging his men to keep the prisoners closed up and moving.

  Maia, cowering in the jekzha, felt as though trapped in a nightmare. It was all she could do not to get out and run away. This kind of cruelty was entirely foreign to anything in her nature. The whipping of Meris had been altogether different-for one thing, those whom she considered her

  superiors had been in deliberate control of it-from this unforeseen, frenetic, all-enveloping savagery. Intuitively she knew that these people were going to die. One had only to look at them: they could never come back from the place where they were. Some might well be close to death now: they looked it. Animals could not have suffered like this, for their owners, if only out of consideration for the
ir own gain, would never have allowed animals to be treated half so badly.

  And then, suddenly, she caught her breath; mouth open, hands pressed either side of her chin, rigid with incredulous, unspeakable horror; with a shock even beyond screaming. For it was Tharrin out there in the road: Thar-rin lurching, tottering, wild-eyed, a long streak of blood down one side of his face, dragging his feet in broken sandals, suddenly flinging up one arm and ducking away from nothing, from an anticipated missile that he had only imagined. For one long moment-as though to put her in no doubt-he turned his head and stared full at her, but with no more recognition than a crazed cat looking down from a burning roof. Never in her life had she seen so appalling a look on any human face. Even if it had not been Tharrin's, it would have been enough to put her beside herself.

  After a white-how long?-they were gone, followed by a rag-tag of urchins running behind, shouting with glee. The crowd broke up, the jekzha moved on. They were turning into the Caravan Market before the jekzha-man realized that Maia was sobbing hysterically.

  "Yes, nasty business, saiyett, ain't it?" he remarked paternally over his shoulder. "I don't go a lot on it meself. But you've no need to take on that way, y'know. They're all villains, the 'ole lot of 'em, else they wouldn't be there."

  "Where-where are they going?" she faltered, digging her nails into her palm and forcing herself to speak with something approaching self-control.

  "Oh, it'll be the Old Jail," he answered. "The one down in the Shilth."

  "Where's that?"

  "The Shilth? That's the butchers' quarter, saiyett, about half-way between here and the Sel-Dolad Tower. Rough-ish kind of neighb'r'ood, that is, 'specially at night."

  "Take me there, please."

  "What's that, saiyett? Did you say take you there?"

  "Yes, please."

  He stopped, looking back at her puzzled.

  "Now, you mean?"

  "Yes, please."

  He hesitated. "Saiyett, it's none of my business, but-"

  "Please do as I ask: or if you prefer, get me someone else. I realize I've kept you rather a long time already."

  She passed him down ten meld, at which he nodded, shrugged and turned back into the Sheldad.

  During the next twenty minutes the facade which presented to the city the buoyant, resourceful and heroic Ser-relinda crumbled, exposing a shocked and panic-stricken girl of sixteen, as devoid of worldly-wisdom as of dissimulation. Yet though she sat trembling and weeping in the jekzha, never for a moment did it occur to Maia to go home and concern herself no further with the condemned wreck who had once been her lover. On the contrary, by the time they had turned off the Sheldad and begun picking their way uphill through the fetid, fly-buzzing lanes of the Shilth, Maia had in effect been stripped of every coherent thought save her determination first to see Tharrin and then to do everything in her power to save him.

  Outside the walls of the jail-a dirty, ill-repaired but nonetheless very solid group of buildings, once a shambles, enlarged and converted some years before to meet the Leopards' need for another prison-she paid off the jek-zha-man and told the gatekeeper that she wished to see the governor. The gatekeeper, an aging man with conjunctive, mucous eyes, did not trouble himself to look directly at her while telling her that it was out of the question. She repeated her request peremptorily.

  "Come on, now, lovey, run away," he said, scratching himself and breathing garlic over her. "It's no good, you know-you'd never be able to pin it on him, anyway. Do you know how many girls have come here trying, eh?"

  Maia lowered her veil and threw back the hood of her cloak.

  "I've no time to waste, and I'll be damned if I'm going to bribe you a meld! I'm Maia Serrelinda, from the upper city, and if you don't take me to the governor at once, I'll see to it that the Lord General himself learns that you refused to do as I asked."

  He stared at her, a stupid man taken aback, resentful but slow to react.

  "You say you're the Serrelinda-her as swum the river?"

  "Yes, I am. And don't have the impertinence to ask me why I'm here: that's no business of yours. Are you going to do as I say, or not?"

  "Well," he muttered. "Well. Just that it's awkward, that's all." He seemed to be trying to weigh up which would be worse for him-to refuse her or to risk the governor's displeasure. At all events this was what his next question suggested.

  "You can't-well-tell me what it's about, saiyett?"

  "Certainly. I wish to see a prisoner."

  His face cleared. "Oh, you didn't say. If it's n'more'n that-" She waited. "Only he's busy with the prisoners himself, saiyett, y'see. Don't know what he'll say. Still, I'll take you-"He turned away and she, following, stepped through the postern door to one side of the barred gate, which was promptly closed behind her.

  He was striding ahead across the yard, swinging a stick in one hand, but she-to some extent brought to herself by her annoyance-retained enough self-possession not to hurry after him, so that after a little he was obliged to wait until she came up with him at her own pace.

  The governor was a big, fleshy man with silver earrings and a beard dyed chestnut. He, too, evidently supposed at first that her errand must lie at his own door, for he began "Well, my dear, but you shouldn't have come here, you know." He drew up a rickety bench for her beside the table in a little, bare room looking out on an equally bare and dismal courtyard. It was twilight now and turning slightly chilly. Seeing him grope and fumble once or twice to close the window, she realized that his sight must be poor. Yet really so poor, she wondered, that he could not tell whether or not he had ever seen her before?

  "We have never met," she said coldly. "I am Maia Serrelinda, a personal friend of the Lord General Kembri B'sai."

  Instantly he had taken his cue, bowing and leering.

  "Friend of the Lord General? Oh, friend of the city, saiyett, friend of the empire! And let me assure you, you have a friend in me, too, if I'm not presuming. To what- er-to what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

  Maia, not unnaturally, could tell a lecher when she saw one, and realized with a touch of relief that this part of her task at least was going to be relatively easy.

  "Sir, I want to see-"

  "Ob-Pokada, saiyett, Pokada's my name; that's if you care to use it, of course."

  "U-Pokada, I need to talk to one of the prisoners who were brought in from Tonilda a little while ago."

  His face fell. "Oh. I see. Well, naturally, saiyett, I'd always prefer to oblige a beautiful lady like yourself if I could. If only it had been someone who's here for theft or frauds-that sort of thing, you know. But political prisoners: no one's ever allowed to see political prisoners. That's a strict rule."

  She got up and stood beside him, pretending to be weighing her words, letting her body's scent steal over him and slowly drawing through her fingers the sijk kerchief she carried at her wrist. After a little she murmured, "Well, I suppose-I suppose no one need know, U-Pokada. I mean, only you and me; I shan't tell anyone."

  He hesitated. "Well, saiyett-"

  In, a few minutes he had talked himself into promising that he would see what he could do tomorrow.

  "No, it must be now, U-Pokada: I want to see him now, and then I'll go away and no one else will know at all."

  It was getting dark in the room. He went to the door and called for lamps, continuing to look down the passage until they were brought by a disheveled old woman whose head jerked with a continual tic. When she had gone he came back and laid a hand on Maia's wrist, slightly clenching his fingers as he did so.

  "Saiyett, it's risky. I oughtn't to do this; but you know- well, 'Beauty's a key to unlock every door'. " He hummed a moment, delighted with himself for having hit on so apt a phrase. The line came from a popular tavern song of the day.

  "Is it a man?" She nodded. "His name?"

  "Tharrin. From near Meerzat, in Tonilda."

  "Your friend? A lucky-oh, well" (he laughed) "he would be a lucky man if only he wasn't here,
eh? But you've made me a lucky man, saiyett. Oh, yes, indeed!"

  At the door he stopped. "I have to ask: you haven't brought him poison?"

  She looked up in amazement, wondering whether she had heard aright. "Poison?"

  He nodded.

  "Brought him poison? Why ever should you think that?"

  "Well, sometimes, you know, saiyett, prisoners-especially political prisoners-want to die quickly, and their friends want to help them. I have to see that doesn't happen."

  She had heard tell of such things, but to find herself dealing with them in all earnest made her feel still more strange and bemused. She tried to collect her thoughts. The man needed convincing: the most convincing thing, it seemed to her, would be the truth.

  "U-Pokada, I mean to get this man released. I have influence. That won't harm you, will it?"

  "Harm me? Oh-no, saiyett, not in the least." He paused, apparently searching for something more emphatic. "No, no, I should be gladl Whatever would please you would please me. Wait here, I beg you, and be patient. I don't know the man, you understand, but I'll find him."

  Alone, she waited in the empty room for what seemed a long time. It grew quite dark outside. She thought of Luma, sitting lethargic for hour after hour on the kilyett as it drifted down the Nordesh. She herself could not sit still, now pacing up and down, now opening the window and leaning out to pick fragments off the grimy creeper below the sill. Surely by now the man had had long enough to find anyone in the prison? Could he have betrayed her- sent a messenger, perhaps, to the chief priest? Should she go now, quickly? Yet if he had in fact betrayed her, to run away would avail her nothing.

  The door opened behind her and she turned, but could not see clearly across the bright patch of light from the two lamps standing on the table between. As she came back to the bench the door closed and then she heard the lock click. Tharrin was standing before her, shivering in the stuffy room, not raising his eyes from the floor.

  She had forethought that he was bound to look bad at close quarters; but not that he would smell worse than any animal (animals groom themselves), that the rims of his eyes would be crusted, his beard matted with old crumbs and dried spittle and that he would mutter and shake ceaselessly, cringing and wringing his hands like an old beggar.