Maia

Maia felt no jealousy, Occula being the only person in the world whom she sincerely loved. Besides, she well remembered the black girl's genuine pleasure when she herself had been preferred to go to the Rains banquet and subsequently summoned to gratify the Lord General. No; any difference in success between her and Occula, she felt, could only be for herself to adjust. As Occula had said, in the upper city mere beauty was not enough; she had to develop a distinctive style of her own. Stories began to filter back to her, through Terebinthia, through Ogma and the other servants, of Occula's prowess-how she sometimes terrified her lovers in bed, snarling like a beast in transports of savage pleasure and sinking her teeth and nails in their naked flesh; of an extraordinary kura that she had performed with three young men simultaneously; of a wager she had won that she would drink half a gallon of wine on a tight-rope; of how, to make up for the night when she had won his two hundred meld, she had led half a dozen girls in stripping naked and playing a game of blind-man's buff with Ka-Roton and two other Urtans, the understanding being that they should then and there enjoy anyone whom they might succeed in catching. Occula, relaxing for an hour in the pool, or returning after midnight to find Maia waiting up for her, never recounted these exploits herself, and if Maia asked for corroboration of what she had heard, would merely make some such reply as "Randy bastards pay best" or "Which blind man told you that?" Often she would bring back forty or fifty meld over and above her sealed lygol, and this she invariably split with Maia, the two girls hiding the money, wrapped in old rags, under the floor-boards. Maia felt that she would do anything in the world for Occula.

Quite early one morning, towards the end of the month Thakkol, Eud-Ecachlon's servant appeared at the gate with a letter for Occula. This was brought to her personally in the women's quarters, since Terebinthia was not yet up and would have bitten the head off any household slave who had ventured to disturb her. Occula, however, uncertain of the Urtan handwriting, made no bones about waking Dyphna to read it. Eud-Ecachlon wrote that owing to the illness of his father, the old High Baron, he had been called back to Urtah urgently, would be leaving Bekla next morning and earnestly begged Occula to spend a last afternoon or evening with him.

"That one-balled Urtan goat!" said Occula, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and pulling up her night-shift to scratch her ribs. "Thanks, Dyphna. He can't even do it- he jus' enjoys tryin'."

"I expect you can get him up to it, can't you?" asked Maia.

"Cran and Airtha, banzi!" answered the black girl. "You talk as if he'd been on and off me like a crow on a roof! Idoan' spend any more time with the Urtans than I've got to, you know. All the same," she continued, as they left Dyphna and strolled back to the pool room, where Ogma was waiting for the reply, "I'll have to go, little as I fancy it."

"Why, dearest?" asked Maia.

"Because," replied Occula, whispering, "Elvair-ka-Vir-rion told me at a party the other night that if we got the chance, one of us-you or me-must do all we could to spend more time with Eud-Ecachlon before he left Bekla and report anythin' he might say about Suba: that's why. Ogma, will you tell Lord Eud-Ecachlon's man that I'll have to speak to the saiyett as soon as she's up, but I'll probably be able to come this afternoon?"

An hour after mid-day, however, she slipped down from the garden room, where Sencho was dining-after a fashion-with the help of Terebinthia and herself, and interrupted Maia's dancing-practice.

"I'm not goin', banzi," she said. "Doan' ask me why; I'll tell you another time. I've told Pussy and she's agreed that you're to go instead."

"Me?" said Maia, astonished.

"Yes, you!" replied Occula impatiently. "Doan' look so damn' surprised, as if you didn' know a zard from a parsnip. Get your deldas pulled up and your dress on. And look sharp too-the jekzha's here."

The next moment Terebinthia appeared to corroborate Occula. "The High Counselor says he can't spare her this afternoon," she said. "He's still not himself, I'm afraid. Your powder-blue dress will do very well, and as it's an Urtan you'd better wear plenty of jewels-that always impresses them."

"Now listen, Maia," she added later.when she had given her her cloak and was walking with her to the courtyard, "Eud-Ecachlon's lodgings are in the lower city-somewhere near the Tower of the Orphans, I believe. You're