"Bayub-Otal?" said Kembri sharply. In all the turmoil of the last few days he had forgotten this girl's connection with Bayub-Otal-a suspect if ever there was one. Now it returned to him forcefully. "Well, and what did he say to you?"

"He said, my lord, as I needn't go on being a slave-girl if I didn't want. And then-"

"He said what?" asked Kembri. The chief priest, who had been conferring with the governor of Tonilda, looked up sharply.

"My lord, he said if ever I wanted to leave Bekla I'd only to tell him."

Kembri and the governor looked at each other.

"And what did you reply to that?" asked the governor.

"I said, my lord, that if he meant as he wanted to buy me, he'd better speak to the High Counselor, not to me: and then he was off, he just went away very sharp, like."

"To speak to the High Counselor, you mean?"

"I can't say, my lord. At the time I reckoned he must have, and I thought as that was likely to make the High Counselor mad at me. I mean, he might think I'd suggested the idea myself, like. So I reckoned I'd wait a little while 'fore I went back; only he was always in a better frame of mind after he'd been with a girl, you see."

"You mean, you thought you'd leave him to Occula?"

"Yes, my lord, I did think that."

"Well, and what then?' said the governor.

"So while I was waiting, Lord Elvair-ka-Virrion, he came up to me again, and asked was I a good swimmer."

"Why did he ask you that?"

"Well, his friends was all playing round the water, see? So I says yes, I was good, and then he said if I could swim so well I'd better show everyone. So I just done what he said." She paused; then burst out passionately, "It's true, my lord! He'll tell you himself!"

"You can leave that to us," said Kembri. "All right; take her away!"

When the soldiers had gone he said, "My son's already told me that it was he who put her up to the swimming game: but I wanted to hear what she had to say herself. Actually, I doubt she was deliberately trying to distract attention from the killing."

"Still, both girls had better be tortured," said the chief priest. "Don't you agree?"

Kembri made no immediate reply. The truth was that for various reasons he felt disinclined to consent. Judicial torture in Bekla (which by law could be used only upon slaves) was a function of the priesthood of Gran. Kembri had never liked the chief priest, whom he had always suspected of being in some sort of secret understanding with Sencho. It now appeared to him that the chief priest-a celibate but not a eunuch-seemed distastefully eager for a little torture-more so than he would have been if the suspects had been laborers rather than pretty girls. As concubines these two were above average and likely to become excellent shearnas. They were popular. One of two of the young Leopards, in fact, had already mentioned to him privately that they hoped he might be able to avoid torturing them. Besides, they were valuable property, no less than jewels or silver. Sencho had left no heir and everything he had possessed now belonged to the state- strictly speaking, to the temple: but Kembri himself and other Leopard leaders would come in for a cut. The idea of torturing, and thereby ruining, or at least gravely damaging, a couple of girls worth fourteen or fifteen thousand meld apiece, simply on the chance that they might know a little-not much-more than they had already told, struck him, on balance, as more loss than gain. What he was really seeking at this juncture was clear evidence against Santil-ke-Erketlis, which was more likely to be obtainable from arrested Tonildans than from secluded Beklan dwellers like these girls. Lastly and most important, what the Tonildan child had said about Bayub-Otal had just sug-

gested to Kembri an entirely new means of gaining information, which he felt strongly ought to be made all possible use of.

The governor and the chief priest were awaiting his answer. He thought quickly. It would hardly do simply to set aside the chief priest altogether and order the release of both girls: better to settle for releasing the Tonildan, who in any case was almost certainly innocent and for whom he now had a special use. The black girl, against whom suspicion was stronger, would have to be relinquished to the priests. A pity, but there it was.

"The black girl, yes," he replied. "As for the Tonildan, though, I'd like to tell you something that's just occurred to me with regard to Bayub-Otal. If I'm not mistaken, it could turn out very valuable indeed."

Once more Maia, this time with unchained hands and no soldiers behind her, sat on the bench facing the Lord General. Until this moment, she had been close to hysteria and collapse. Only her fear of her questioners had enabled her to control herself sufficiently to answer them. During the past few days, since the killing, she had suffered unspeakable agonies of terror and anxiety, unable to eat and scarcely to sleep, anticipating every dreadful conclusion to what had become a continuous, waking nightmare. Often she called to mind the ghastly corpses which she and Oc-cula, on their way to Bekla, had seen hanging by the road; and at such times, crouching in the cell where they had locked her, she would cover her face and rock to and fro, sobbing and calling on Lespa and Shakkarn to put an end to her fife. The knowledge that she was innocent comforted her no more than it has ever comforted any helpless person in arrest under a despotism. What she knew was that she was in dire trouble, that the authorities were looking for culprits and that she had no influential friend to speak for her. She had given herself up for dead and hoped only that the horrible business might somehow be over quickly.

Throughout all this time her one coherent thought had been for Occula, whom she had not seen since they had parted in the moonlit gardens by the Barb. Occula, she now realized, must of course have played a vital part in the killing of Sencho, the killing itself having been carried out by the pedlar Zirek, no doubt helped by Meris. Yet

this-or so it seemed to her-could be proved only if she herself were to tell all she now knew-of the messages passed by means of the pottery cats, of the old woman in the sweet-shop, the omen of the hunting owl and her own brief glimpse of Zirek and Meris in the crowd near the Peacock Gate. Only these could condemn Occula, for to all appearances it was plausible enough that she and Sen-cho should have taken the boat up the lake to a secluded place. Maia, of course, was ignorant that Kembri and Sen-cho themselves had sent Meris to the Lily Pool in Thettit or that Zirek, as an agent of Sencho, had been ordered to collect her from there and take her to Chalcon. She supposed that if only she herself could succeed in maintaining the appearance of one who knew nothing, there could be no case against Occula, since Sencho had enemies enough for forty men.

She had come back into the room full of dread. Yet now, facing Kembri for the second time, she almost at once perceived intuitively-as does any accused or suspect, if it occurs-a certain easing of the atmosphere. At first with incredulity, for she was superstitiously afraid even to entertain the idea, she sensed that apparently it was no longer their intention to fasten guilt upon her: their questions were no longer directed to suggesting that she might have devised the swimming game as a distraction to cover the murder. Then it occurred to her that Elvair-ka-Virrion must have corroborated what she had already told them about his part in it.

"We know, because the soldiers and the black girl have told us," said the Tonildan governor, "that in fact Bayub-Otal didn't speak to the High Counselor about buying you."

This came as a surprise to Maia who, ever since Occula had warned her, in the gardens, not to return to Sencho, had continued to suppose that Bayub-Otal must have asked him to sell her. Yet if he had not, this only made it all the more vital that no one should learn that Occula had sought her out and told her to keep away. She said nothing.