"Why d'you reckon Nennaunir agreed, then? I mean, if she doesn't really fancy him?"

"Why, because she-knows."

"What does she know, my lord?"

"She knows how much Bekla needs her help. And Bekla needs your help, too, Maia."

"My help?"

"Well, you told my father you were ready to help us, didn't you?"

She drew in her breath sharply, and for an instant shrank down where she lay in his arms. In her simplicity, it had not for one moment occurred to her that her undertaking to the Lord General would be required of her tonight.

He smiled. "You weren't expecting me to say anything like this?"

"No, my lord!" She was close to tears. "I thought-I thought you'd asked me here because-because you wanted me-because of what you said to me at the banquet-"

"Oh, Maia, I meant every word I said at the banquet! I still mean it. You're wonderful! You're not like-well, you're not like that hard-faced Belishban girl you were with that night, for one. Don't ever stop being yourself. Don't ever stop talking like a Tonildan girl; promise me!"

She laughed. "That's easy to promise, I reckon."

But now he was grave again. "What do you want most in all the world, Maia? To be free? To be rich-as fine a shearna as any in Bekla? Or would you rather go back to Tonilda-live in your own house, with servants to wait on you and tenants to work on your land? All those things are possible."

"Oh, now you're just making fun of me, my lord."

"By Cran and Airtha, I'm not! You don't understand,

do you? If only you can succeed in doing what we want, no reward will be too great."

Maia was silent. At length she said, "I must believe you, my lord. Only 'tain't easy for me to take it all in, see? Seems only just the other day as I was back home, wearin' sacking and glad of a bit of black bread."

"But my father told you, didn't he? A girl who really is a banzi straight from the back of beyond, that's a thing that can't be faked; not day in day out. We've got to have someone who really is what she seems to be."

She slipped out of his embrace, sitting up in the bed and tossing back her hair. He reached up and gently fondled one breast.

"What is it, then, my lord, that you want me to do?"

"All we want you to do tonight is to turn someone else's head as thoroughly as you've turned mine. No more than that. Don't, whatever you do, give him what you've just given me. Just make him very much want to see you again. Can you do that?"

"All depends, my lord, doesn't it, whether he's goin't' fancy me?"

"He'll fancy you all right. Just pretend you're back home in your own village and be yourself. Listen: I'll tell you a story. When Durakkon's wife went into labor a year or two ago, the doctor was very nervous to think he was attending the wife of the High Baron. Durakkon told him to imagine he was delivering a girl in the lower city. It worked like a charm. I bet you had one or two lads on their toes in Tonilda, didn't you, before you came here?"

"But this man, my lord-he'll know I've been with you."

"He won't: I took the greatest care. They'll just be starting supper now. Come with me and I'll show you your man without him seeing you. Then we'll go down to the hall separately."

Obediently, Maia got out of bed and dressed. Picking up a lamp, Elvair-ka-Virrion guided her along an empty corridor and up a steep flight of steps. At the top he blew out the lamp and opened the door of a small, unlit room. She could hear the rain drumming on the roof overhead.

The opposite wall consisted of nothing more solid than decorative wooden tracery, through which lamplight was shining. From below rose sounds of talk and laughter and the clatter of plates and goblets. Elvair-ka-Virrion, turning

to her with a finger on his lips, led her across to the tracery wall.

Through this Maia, from a height of perhaps thirty feet, found herself looking down into the Lord General's dining-hall. It was less crowded than on the night of the Rains banquet, for Elvair-ka-Virrion had invited no more than sixty or seventy people altogether, men and girls. The serving-tables were spread with food-the mere sight of them, together with the smells of roast meat, vegetables, herbs and sauces, aroused Maia's appetite-and the flower-crowned guests were moving among them for slaves to fill their plates and goblets. Several men had already seated themselves at tables on the dais itself, while others, accompanied by their girls, had strolled further down the hall, forming casual groups. Maia could see Nennaunir, in a saffron robe and a necklace of what looked like real rubies, talking with two young men who were obviously competing for her favors. As she watched, one of them suddenly turned towards the other with a quick look of anger, whereupon Nennaunir burst out laughing, slapped his hand and held out her goblet for him to go and refill.

Elvair-ka-Virrion pointed towards the right-hand side of the dais. Here a little knot of five men were talking among themselves as they sat together round the end of one of the tables. All had long hair gathered behind their necks in the Urtan style, and wore daggers at their belts. In guests from any other part of the empire this last would have been regarded as an insult to their host, but among the Urtans wearing daggers at all times was a custom so obstinately retained that it had become tolerated, so that shearnas were sometimes asked jestingly whether they wore them in bed.

Although the group included no girls, they were plainly enjoying themselves, laughing and talking animatedly and sometimes turning their heads to call out to passers-by or guests at other tables. Suddenly Maia saw Occula (to whom Terebinthia had given a tunic made entirely of overlapping, scarlet feathers, which left her oiled limbs bare except for a pair of belled anklets and a serpentine brass torque on one arm) saunter across to where they were sitting and offer one of them-an older man who looked to be in his mid-thirties-a dripping rib of beef. As she bent and whispered something in his ear he laughed, whereupon she sat down on his knee and, with one arm around his neck,

shared the meat with him, from time to time putting her hand on his to turn the bone for the next bite of her gleaming teeth.

Maia, eyebrows raised, turned inquiringly toward El-vair-ka-Virrion, but he shook his head, whispering, "No, that's Eud-Ecachlon, the heir of Urtah."

"Then which?"

"The man on his right; his half-brother."

Maia looked down once more. Beyond Occula's be-feathered, red shoulder she now observed a thin, dark man; rather tall, it seemed. Half a fowl was lying on the dish before him, and as she watched he put down the drumstick he had been gnawing and turned for a moment to speak to Occula. Maia, quick as always to form a first impression, thought she perceived in his manner a kind of detachment, almost distaste. As he looked at the black girl where she sat on Eud-Ecachlon's knee, his rather narrow, unsmiling face had an expression she could only describe to herself as haughty. A clever but humorless man, she thought: tense, highly-strung yet tenacious, not altogether at ease among his companions; for that matter not at ease, perhaps, in the world itself, yet determined to hold his own. He might be twenty-four or twenty-five, but the lamplight and the distance made it hard to judge.

As she watched him talking to Occula-the black girl leaning across to answer him, so that her necklace of teeth hung forward like a row of tiny, curved knives-she noticed something odd. The Urtan sitting on his further side- a big, good-natured-looking fellow with a fair beard and gold earrings-leant across, took the fowl in one hand and proceeded to slice it with his knife. The dark man glanced towards him with a nod of thanks, then stuck the point of his knife into a piece of the cut-up meat, dipped it in the sauce beside his dish and ate it.