Maia

" 'Well, I'll cut it short, esta-saiyett,' goes on Shenda. 'What it comes to is that the chief priest's sent me to tell you that the whole lower city's in a state close on disorder and riot. He sent me because he thought that as a wounded officer I'd be able to get through the streets without bein' set upon. There's no priest dares put his face outside the temple, you see. What the people are sayin'-and I beg you to bear in mind, esta-saiyett, that I'm only reportin' what the chief priest told me to tell you-is that you've murdered Maia Serrelinda. To be perfectly blunt, esta-saiyett, they're demandin' your life. The chief priest thinks you should leave Bekla at once, and keep out of the way for some time. He hopes you'll send him word where you are, and he'll let you know as soon as things are better.'

"And then, while Fornis was still chewin' on that, Shend-Lador added, "The chief priest particularly asked me to say, esta-saiyett, that if he can' assure the people that you've left the city, he woan' be answerable for anythin' that may happen.'

"Well, the next few hours were like a bastin' madhouse, banzi: you can' imagine it. Fornis insistin' she'd go down to the lower city herself and give them a piece of her mind, and Han-Glat preventin' her more or less by force: and then there were two more frantic messages from the chief priest, one brought by a pedlar and the other by a shearna called Nyllista (and I wonder what she was doin' in the temple, doan' you?). No one else could get through the mob, you see. You never heard such a shine in your life.

"Well, at last, in the middle of the night, above five or six hours after Shend-Lador had first come, Han-Glat told Fornis in so many words that she'd have to get out. And he flatly refused to come with her. He'd got Bekia and he meant to hang on to it. She raged and stormed and cursed, but he wouldn' budge an inch. And at last it began to dawn on Miss Fornis that if she refused he might even go the length of killin' her himself-that or else hand her over to the mob. The riotin' had been goin' on all night and we were half-expectin' them to come over the Peacock Wall any moment. The Pal-teshis were there to stop them, of course, but even they were pretty badly shaken by this time.

"Fornis's plan, when at last she'd been forced to accept the idea of leavin', was to rejoin her army-the army she'd left on the plain after she'd murdered Durakkon. She couldn' make out why they hadn' turned up: she'd been expectin' them every hour. And then, in the middle of that very night, while we were packin' up and gettin' ready to go, a couple of Palteshi soldiers arrived with news that must have shaken even her.

"Sendekar-good old Sendekar, out on the Valderra- he'd heard the rumor that Fornis had murdered you. Well, of course, banzi, if ever you had a friend in the whole empire it was Sendekar. And since he'd found out that Karnat had gone off to western Terekenalt and any sort of attack across the Valderra was unlikely for the time bein', he'd turned half his lads round and gone east. He'd joined up with Kerith-a-Thrain and between them they'd attacked the Palteshis a second time and made quite a mess of them. Just how bad a mess we couldn' make out, but the two soldiers were quite clear that there was no longer any chance of the Palteshis reachin' Bekla. And by the same token Fornis couldn' hope to get to them.

"You had to admit she had courage, the bitch. She heard the messengers out without a tremor; and then she said to

Han-Glat, as cool as you like, 'Very well,' she said, 'since you're so anxious to see the back of me, you cowardly bastard, I'll go to Quiso, and Cran help you when I get back. I shan' need anythin' from you, except half a dozen soldiers. Here are the names of the particular men I want: go and get them yourself, now.' And do you know, banzi, Han-Glat just took the list out of her hand and went off to fetch them? 'And you, Shakti,' she said, 'get my clothes and stuff together, and hurry up about it. I'm takin' you and Zuno and Occula, that's all.'

"So about an hour later, banzi, we were let down a rope over the eastern wall of the upper city, hardly a quarter of a mile from your house. There was no other way out, you see: we couldn' go into the lower city, and as for the Red Gate, Eud-Ecachlon had the citadel and that was that.