Maia

"There isn't-there isn't anyone else in the house now, miss, is there?" she faltered.

"Poor JarviFs dead," replied Maia. "And so are the two soldiers."

"Then they must have gone, miss." Ogma stood up hesitantly, clutching Maia's arm.

"You'd be the better for some djebbah," said Maia. "Come downstairs with me." It was clear to her now that Ogma, though badly shocked, was able to walk and in no danger of bleeding to death.

Together they went down to the kitchen. The fire was still in: Mai put on more wood. It did not occur to either of them to leave the house or run away. Maia, indeed, was beyond all deliberation and hardly knew what she was doing. She searched through two or three cupboards for the djebbah before catching sight of it in full view on an open shelf. The bite of the liquor cleared her head and partly pulled her round. She poured some for Ogma and made her sip it until it was all gone. The girl still sobbed and whimpered, fingering her bound-up cuts. Once, when a wood-knot exploded in the fire, she leapt up with a cry of fear.

Maia fetched a stool, sat down facing her and took her hands.

"Now; tell me what happened, Ogma." There was no pause in the girl's weeping and Maia shook her gently. "Come on, dear, pull yourself together! You must tell me!"

"Oh, Miss Maia-Lord Randronoth-" She stopped.

"What about him? Come on, Ogma, tell me!"

"Well, I'd just lit the lamps, miss, and put them round the house like I always do, when he came in from the garden, dressed just in his breeches. He seemed-oh, ever so angry and put out, like. So I asked him were you coming in to supper now, but he never answered me: he just went up to your bedroom and shut the door. So then I didn't know what to do, miss, and I went down the garden to look for you, but I couldn't find you: just your clothes, like, laying on the ground. I didn't know what to think. I was frightened."

Ogma stopped as though she had no more to say. She was clearly still in a state of shock, ready to retreat into stupor from her own recollections. Maia shook her again.

"Ogma! You can't go to sleep now? Go on!"

Ogma rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. "When I came back-when I came back into the house, miss, the soldiers-the soldiers asked where you were and I said I didn't know. So then they said Lord Randronoth had told them to watch from the roof and wake him when the soldiers came-"

"The Lapanese soldiers, you mean? Count Seekron?"

"I don't know, miss. They didn't say-just 'the soldiers'. But then they said, 'We'll have a drink first. Bring us some wine in the parlor,' they said. Well, I knew that was wrong, Miss Maia, but I was frightened of them, you see, and I didn't know where you were or when you was coming back, like, so I did what they told me. I'm sorry, miss-"

"That doesn't matter now. Just go on."

"Well, I brought the wine, miss-only not the best, it wasn't: I thought for the likes of them-"

"Oh, never mind that! What happened, for Cran's sake?"

"Well, miss, they got to drinking, see, in the parlor, and then there come a knock, and I don't know why, I reckoned it might be you, though why you'd be knocking on your own door, but I wasn't really thinking, see-"

"So then?"

"Well, then I went to the door, miss, and Jarvil had opened the panel, see, to look who it was, and then he shut it and he turns round to me and he says, 'I don't know what to do,' he says. 'It's the Sacred Queen.' "

"The Sacred Queen!" cried Maia incredulously. "That's not possible! She's miles away, out on the plain, this very minute."

"No, miss: I looked out and it was the Sacred Queen there; her and a big, rough-looking man dressed like an officer, miss, and the queen was sort of dressed up like a soldier, too, and they was all covered with dust, like they'd come a long way; and the queen, she calls out, very angry-like, 'How much longer am I to be kept waiting?' she says. 'Are you going to open this door or do you want to hang upside-down?' she says. Oh, and when I looked out through the panel, the way she looked back at me, miss, it frightened me that much, you can't imagine-"

"Oh, yes, I can! Well, so what happened then?"

"I opened the door, miss, and-"

"You opened the door?"

"Yes, miss. Well, you weren't there to ask, see, and she was that angry, I didn't know what else to do-"

"Ogma, did you know that she hates me and wants to kill me? That she has done for weeks?"

"No, I didn't know, miss: I'd no idea. Leastways, not then I hadn't-"

Maia could scarcely believe her ears. Bitterly, she recalled the advice of Nennaunir and her other friends about engaging a shrewd, quick-witted woman to run her household.

"Well, go on." ' '