Maia

At length Megdon, with the air of one compelling himself to act, went across to Occula. He seemed about to speak when the girl-taller than he-raised her head and stared at him. His words died on his lips and after a moment she, as though giving a command to some animal- an ox in the shafts, perhaps, or a dog-uttered the one word: "Hirdo!"

Megdon seemed about to reply when suddenly Perdan forestalled him.

"Let her go, the damned black witch, before she kills us all with her sorcery!"

"Ay, ay! In Cran's name!" whimpered the old woman.

Megdon said nothing. Occula turned and walked slowly back into the kitchen; and here the others, following one by one-Maia a little behind the rest-found her leaning, with folded arms, against the side of the hearth. The fire was burning normally, but the entire room and everything in it was coated with a foul soot clinging alike to walls and furniture. There was a disgusting, vellicative reek, as of burnt bones.

The old woman began to weep-from fear, it seemed, as much as from dismay.

Megdon turned to Perdan. "The girls Genshed's bring-ing'U have to clean this up tonight. It'll take hours. Shirrin can't do it on her own."

Perdan made no reply.

"Go and get one of the carts ready," said Megdon.

Perdan looked up. "I'm not taking her!"

"I'll drive it," replied Megdon. "Just go and get the damned cart ready, Perdan, that's all!"

Occula spoke from the fireside. "Food." She jerked her thumb towards Maia. "Get her some hot water. Fresh. clothes."

Half an hour later Maia, washed and changed, but still feeling as unsteady as though she had escaped from drowning, carried a pail of hot water up to Occula's room. The black girl was lying naked on the bed, her fouled shift crumpled across one of the stools. She had vomited into an old earthenware pot, and one arm was hanging down from the bed as though to grab it again at need. She looked up and grinned weakly at Maia.

"Cran! I thought we'd done for ourselves, banzi, didn'

you? I just hope they felt as bad as we did, that's all. Think you can clear this away without anyone seein' you? Oh, chuck the lot out the damned window-what's it matter? When they're ready to go, call me, and send that lout up to fetch my chest."

9: OCCULA'S COMFORT

At Hirdo the track ran into the paved road between Thettit and Bekla. In this town the slave-dealers had no private quarters, as at Puhra, but paid the keeper of one of the inns to provide accommodation as often as they might require it.

The journey from Puhra, in the heat of the day, took more than four hours, and by the time they arrived both the girls-whom Megdon had been content merely to chain together by one ankle-were weary, less with actual fatigue than with that general sense of bodily discomfort peculiar to prolonged traveling. Maia, unable, during the afternoon, to keep from brooding on her betrayal and misery, would more than once have wept, but the black girl would not suffer it, scolding her fiercely in whispers and more than once threatening to abandon her altogether if she gave way in front of Megdon. (Megdon himself, leading the bullocks #nd obviously preferring to keep as far away from Occula as possible, was out of hearing.) Maia, knowing now what Occula was capable of and more than anxious not to antagonize her only friend, choked back her tears as best she could.

On reaching the inn Megdon had a stroke of luck, finding there a young man named Zuno, a kind of steward whom Lalloc employed as an agent, a traveling auditor of slave quotas and the like. Zuno was on his way back to Bekla; having just completed an errand to Thettit. Megdon at once insisted on handing the girls over to him (making use of the innkeeper as a witness) and forthwith departed precipitately, not even stopping to eat.

To Maia this young Zuno, with his quiet, authoritative drawl, seemed the finest gentleman she had ever set eyes on. Not only his dandified clothes but his aloof air intensified her already dismal sense of being altogether out of her depth among contemptuous strangers to whom she was

nothing but a little hoyden-a body for sale. She could not imagine herself conversing with him on any level at all, so cold and superior was his manner. And his appearance reinforced it. His long hair and curled beard were scented with sandalwood. The large bone buttons-eight in number-decorating his sky-blue abshay were each carved in a different likeness; one of a fish, another of a lizard, a third of a naked boy, and so on. His breeches of soft, thin leather clung close to his hips and thighs and were gathered into green, gold-tasselled half-boots. With him, in a wicker basket, he carried a long-haired, white cat; and to this, in his quiet, mincing voice, he talked a good deal, while saying little to anyone else.