Maia

"Will you help me to get out of Bekla, then?" she asked him, smiling.

He did not smile back, however, only continuing to regard her steadily and gravely, as he might when considering some business proposition and taking care to display no reaction. She glanced across at Malendik, but he, his wine-cup buried in his great hands, was gazing down impassively at the dusty floor.

"I think it's rather a case of whether you'll be of any help to us, isn't it?" said N'Kasit at length. "They're going to try tonight. With all this confusion, they'll never have a better opportunity. Where do you come in?"

She shook her head. "I don't understand."

"Didn't Occula tell you? It was Occula sent you, I sup-pose?"

"She hadn't time to tell me anything, U-N'Kasit, except as my life was in danger from Fornis and I must get out at once."

She went on to speak of Randronoth, of the death of Milvushina, the murders at her house and finally of Oc-cula's frantic warning.

"Fornis is in Bekla now?" he asked, when she had finished.

"Yes. I couldn't hardly believe it myself."

He sat frowning. "I'm sorry for all you've been through," he said at length, though in a level, unemotional tone. "Poor young Milvushina! That's a great pity. I remember her father well; he came to see me once at Kabin. He was the one who suggested I should come here, and then Er-ketlis sent me the money to do it. I've never met him, though-not yet. It was one of his agents, a man called Tharrin, who brought the money. He's dead now; but he

never told them anything. He must have been a brave man." He paused. "What do you mean to do, then-get to Santil in Yelda? Is that your idea?"

"I don't know yet," she said. "I haven't thought."

"Occula didn't tell you about the others?"

"Well, there wasn't time, see? She just said to come here and you'd help me." She looked up at him appeal-ingly. "You will, won't you?"

But the level-headed man of business still seemed concerned less with the beautiful Serrelinda than with the problem she presented.

"If things were normal and you'd been able to leave the city publicly-the Serrelinda on a trip to Tonilda or something like that-we might have been able to send them with you disguised as servants, but as it is I can't see that you're any use to us at all. In fact, with Fornis after your blood you're a liability, aren't you?"

"I don't reckon Occula was thinking that way. She just wanted to save me."

"Do you want to hide here for a day or two, then, to see which way things go? I'd risk that much; for Occula I would."

She shook her head decisively. "No, I must get out tonight, whatever happens. Soon as possible, too, U-N'Kasit. There's-well-important reasons why I can't afford to wait."

He shrugged. "Well, at that rate I can only leave it to them to say whether or not they'll take you along."

He turned to Malendik. "You'd better bring them in here: then they can see her for themselves and make up their own minds."

Malendik gone, they sat in silence. Maia was thinking. "Whoever they are, they're not going to stop me going to the gaol."

She began imagining what she would say to Pokada, what he might reply and how she would set about prevailing upon him.

The blanket across the entrance was drawn aside and two people sidled in; a woman followed by a man. In the lamplight, Maia looked blankly for a moment at their pinched, bedraggled forms: then she uttered a startled cry.

"Meris!"

"Maia!"

The two girls stared at each other. Behind Meris stood

a gaunt figure-none other than the Tonildan pedlar, Zirek. He was pale as a plant kept long in the dark, hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed as any dungeon inmate, yet still with a faint touch of his old, vagabond swagger. Indeed, he was less changed than Meris, that one-time exquisite paragon of hard-bitten, worldly sensuality. She had all the look of a girl who, having endured months of anxiety, was now close to collapse. Her dark hair hung about her shoulders lank as rope. Her lips twitched continually and she could not keep her hands still. After a few moments, without another word, she sat down unsteadily on one of the benches. '

Zirek stepped forward and took Maia's hands.

"There's no hard feelings as far as I'm concerned, Maia."

"Hard feelings, Zirek? Why should there be?"

"Well, you saved the damned Leopards all right, didn't you, swimming the river? But just speaking personally, I wouldn't have cared to see the empire fall to Karnat: I'd rather see it fall to Santil. Perhaps it will now, if only the gods are kind. Besides, you helped us kill Sencho, didn't you, even if you didn't know it at the time? So I say, no hard feelings."

Magnanimity sat strangely on him, she thought. In his rags and pallor he looked squalid as any beggar. But he was clean-life in the upper city had made her sensitive and fastidious on this score-and there was something about him which suggested that in spite of everything he had retained both humor and self-respect.