Maia

"Gives you a turn the first time, doan' it?" said the black girl. "That's why they do it, of course. 'Come all you jolly highway rogues, this warnin' take by me. The crows have pecked my bollocks off, as you can plainly see. But once when I was young and gay, I used to-' "

"Oh, Occula, can't we go away from here?" Maia was weeping. "Whatever can they have done?"

"How the hell d'you expect me to know?" replied Oc-

cula. "Dropped a plate on a Leopard's toe, I expect, or made Queen Fornis's bath too hot."

"Or possibly even made indiscreet jokes about the Sacred Queen," cut in Zuno from the jekzha. "But," he resumed after a few moments, "if all of us were to repeat everything we heard, it would give rise to too much awkwardness altogether, wouldn't it?"

Occula, who, as soon as he spoke, had stood up and turned toward him, made no reply, merely standing acquiescently as though awaiting an order. Unexpectedly, it was one of the Deelguy who next spoke, jerking his thumb towards the gallows.

"Make-onnemies. No good. Too monny, finish."

"Certainly there is seldom anything to be gained by making enemies," said Zuno. "We'll stop here for a few minutes," he added, extending a hand to show that he wished to be helped down from the jekzha. "Since there is no shade for miles, this place will do as well as anywhere else."

Having alighted, he sauntered away in the opposite direction from the gallows, while the Deelguy crawled under the wheels and began playing some game with tossed sticks in the dust.

"They're a nasty, cruel lot, these Leopards, by all I ever heard," said Occula, as soon as she was sure that Zuno was out of hearing. "Never mind, banzi; we'll take bastin' good care they never hang us up, woan' we?"

None the less, despite her indifferent manner and air of flippancy, she appeared by no means unaffected by the spectacle on the slope. Her smile, as Maia pulled her to her feet, seemed forced and unnatural, as did the four or five little dancing steps she took across the grass by way of beginning their stroll. When Maia caught up with her she was biting her lip and staring pensively at the ground.

"Yes, a nasty lot," she repeated. "And if you go to bed with a murderer, banzi, how sound can you sleep?"

"What?" asked Maia, frowning. "I don't understand."

"No; I'm the one who understands; may all the gods help me!" But thereupon she broke off and, drawing Maia round, pointed towards the purple-rimmed horizon.

"Look, banzi! Take a damn' good look! We've come far enough to see it, doan' you reckon?"

Half-closing her eyes against the glare, Maia gazed westward across the plain. Four miles away, a high, irregular

mass cutting the skyline, stood the solitary peak of Mount Crandor, the mid-day brilliance throwing its ridges and gullies into sharp contrasts of sunlight and purple shadow. Encircling it, she could just make out a thin, darker streak- the line of the city walls, broken at intervals by the points of the watch-turrets.

To Crandor's right, immediately below the heat-hazed slopes, lay Bekla itself. Maia, who had never seen even Kabin or Thettit-Tonilda, stared incredulously at the mile-wide drift of smoke above the tilted roofs, through which rose the slender columns of towers taller than any trees; clustered together, as it seemed from this distance, like reeds in a pool. Above the city, between it and the lower slopes of Crandor itself, the Palace of the Barons crowned the Leopard Hill, its ranges of polished marble balconies catching the noon-day sun and flashing gleams of light across the intervening plain. Even at this distance-or so, at all events, she thought-Maia's ears could catch, far-off and faint, a hum and murmur like that of bees about a hive.

"Turn Bekla upside-down?" she breathed at last. "Why, we'll just be goin' in there like-like coal to the blacksmith's, no danger!"

"Now stop it, banzi!" said the black girl quickly. "All right, I admit it's enough to poke your eyes out, sure enough; but stands to reason, doan' it, it's got to be like anywhere else-bung-full of randy sods with standin' rods? Get that into your head and keep on rememberin' it. You're not like a confectioner or a silk-merchant-someone people can do without at a pinch. You're like a baker or a midwife: life just can't go on without the likes of us. Whoever they are, they've got to be born, they've got to eat, they've got to baste and they've got to die."

"But I never imagined; it's so big!" Maia stared once more at the distant city with its array of tapering spires.

"Well, that's what the priestess said to the drover, but she found she could manage it all right after a bit. Look, there's old Puss-arse coming, see? Let's get back down before he starts calling us. And for Cran's sake doan' let him think you've got the wind-up about the mighty city of Bekla. You've got to learn to shrug- your shoulders and spit, banzi. Go on, do it now."

Smiling in spite of herself, Maia obeyed; whereupon Occula took her hand and ran with her down the slope.