which he found before covering them with muslin and placing beside each a bronze dipper and jug.

A great many girls were now entering, and Maia noticed that almost all, as they came through the colonnade and down the steps, made their way towards a tall, grave man wearing a Leopard cognizance on a crimson uniform like that of the slaves on the staircase. This, she guessed, must be the chief steward, for as each girl spoke to him, presumably giving her master's name, he would consult some sort of list or plan which he was holding, before directing her to one or another of the tables.

Meris plucked her sleeve. "Come on, Maia! We haven't got much time."

"D'you want me to-to ask him where we're to go?" asked Maia rather hesitantly; she felt timid of the authoritative, unsmiling figure, having just watched him snub with glacial propriety a little, merry-faced, black-eyed lass, rather like a nubile squirrel, whose manner he had evidently considered pert.

"Great Cran, no!" said Meris. "We don't have to ask where the High Counselor's couch is!"

They threaded their way among the girls and slaves, Meris leading. Maia, stopping to gaze with wonder at the coruscating pool, grew absorbed and came to herself to find that she was alone. A moment later, however, she caught sight of Meris stepping up onto the dais, and hurried to rejoin her. Stumbling against a lad carrying a tray full of silver salt-cellars, she clutched at his shoulder to save herself from falling.

"Oh-I'm so sorry-I-"

The boy turned towards her, the oath that he had been about to utter dying on his lips. " 'S all right," he answered, smiling. "You can bump me with those as much as you want. Like some salt on them?"

He seemed about to oblige her without waiting for a reply, but Maia-who in Meerzat would have been well up to a little banter of this sort-only hastened quickly away.

On the dais, Meris was already engaged in altercation with an elderly slave lugging a wheeled basket full of cushions, some of which he had just given her.

"Come on, far more than that, damn you!" she said, stamping her foot.

"There's no more to spare," answered the man gruffly. "I must go and do-"

"You must do-" Meris gripped him by the shoulder- "what I tell you to do! Either you put ten more cushions on that couch at once, or I'm going to the chief steward."

"There's others-" began the man.

"I don't give a baste for the others," snapped Meris. "I'm here to see the High Counselor has what he needs. Now get on with it, unless you want a whipping!"

They were both standing beside a huge, upholstered couch, measuring something like ten feet by five, placed close to the Lord General's table. This was already thickly strewn with cushions and two or three leopard-skins, while beside it stood an array of basins, ewers, towels, two urns of water and a tray covered with bunches of herbs and jars of oil and ointment. As the slave, still grumbling, began taking more cushions from his basket and putting them on the couch, Meris turned away to inspect these various items.

"I only wish to Cran Terebinthia was here," she said to Maia, whose brief absence she had apparently not noticed. "Tell you the truth, I don't know as much as I ought to about all this stuff. Let's only hope the chief steward does. He must have looked after Sencho plenty of times before now."

"But what's it all for?" asked Maia, as Meris dipped her finger in a jar of ointment, rubbed her forearm and smelt it.

"Why, to help him to stuff himself silly, of course," answered Meris. "You've never done this before, have you? Never mind. Long as we've got all we need, I can tell you want to do. For a start, you can bank those extra cushions up so that they overlap each other. No, not like that! They have to curve out and round, to support his belly; and we'll keep a few back, so that we can add more when he wants them."

She continued their preparations energetically, twice sending Maia with fresh demands to the household slaves. At length, standing back, she said, "Well, that's all I can think of. And we sit on these stools here. I should think the guests'U be up any minute."

All the girls were waiting, now, in their places; some seated on stools, like Meris and Maia, others standing behind the benches. The slaves were ranged along the walls

and the carvers behind their tables. The hall had fallen quiet and there was a general air of expectancy.

After about a minute a soldier, dressed in black and gold, appeared between the central columns and sounded four notes on a long, slender trumpet. This done, he made his way to the dais, taking up a position not far from Maia and Meris. Behind him the guests began entering the hall in groups, talking and laughing together as they came.

Back in Tonilda, Maia's path had very seldom crossed that of rich men. Once, when she was no more than nine and swimming in the lake, some noble of Serrelind, sailing his boat, had shouted to her to get out of the way as the bow came gliding swiftly down upon her. Frightened, she had had time to stare up a moment into his intent, else-. where-gazing face as the boat swept past, leaving her bobbing in its wash. And again, during a festival in Meerzat, she had watched as two roistering young blades, in great boots and feathered hunting-caps, set upon a fisherman and then carried off his pretty young wife, laughing at her screams and shouting that it was all in sport.

Now the room was full of such voices and such men, dressed in splendid robes or brilliant, open-weave shirts and silken breeches, carrying silver goblets and tooled leather knife-cases, conversing with confident indifference to everything but themselves and their own affairs. They made her so nervous that as a group approached the dais it was all she could do to remain seated on her stool. 'Keep still!' whispered Meris. 'Stop fidgeting!'

Among the guests walked several shearnas, and at these Maia looked with some surprise. She had been expecting a galaxy of outstanding beauty, and at first felt puzzled and rather disappointed that while some were certainly beyond argument beautiful, as well as being magnificently robed and jewelled, many struck her as nothing out of the ordinary. Suddenly (and thereupon feeling even more acutely her own lack of experience and maturity) she recalled what Occula had said about authority and style. These girls were strolling, talking and laughing among the nobles with assurance, treating them as equals and giving every appearance of being entirely at ease.

In that moment it dawned upon her that a girl like Meris was nothing but a pretty face one end and a hot tairth the other, and that this was Sencho's compass-all he could rise to. She realized intuitively that for all his wealth and

power, few of the girls sauntering among these nobles would care to consort with the High Counselor, any more than an intrepid hunter would want to go ratting. They fairly emanated style, accomplishment and wit. Whom they would they encouraged and whom they would they teased or brushed aside. What they were offering to their admirers, she grasped with some awe, was their company; just that; as much out of bed as in. Occula, she remembered, had remarked that they themselves had got to be better than the others. Well, here were the others. She felt disheartened. 'S'pose they feel like I do when I'm swimming,' she thought. And then, 'But where do such girls come from, I wonder, and how do they get to be-'

Suddenly her thoughts were interrupted and she started. Through the colonnade, not forty feet away from her, appeared the young man who had spoken to Occula and herself in their jekzha at the top of the Khalkoornil. Dressed in a saffron-colored robe embroidered across the breast with a snarling, crimson leopard, he was talking animatedly to a brown-haired, demure-looking girl who, as Maia watched, smiled at him sidelong and then said something which made him turn towards her with a quick burst of laughter, laying one hand on her wrist.