Maia saw all this as clearly as Occula would have seen it. She knew that she would never want Tharrin again in a hundred years: yet she had hazarded her standing and risked her safety on his account, and was determined to go on doing so as long as necessary. Why? She knew why. He was an integral part of herself-of where she had come from and what she was-he was part of the furniture of her life. "No, I'm just not
She smiled, and motioned him to sit down opposite her.
"Tharrin, I'm as certain as I can be that this time tomorrow you'll be free."
She wasn't, of course: she only hoped to Cran she was right. But there was no point in "perhaps" and "maybe" and "if only I can." What he desperately needed was confidence and peace of mind. For him, uncertainty would be almost as bad as hopelessness, sitting in this place with nothing to do all day, waiting and thinking.
Across the table, he grasped her hand in both his own, smiling almost jauntily.
"Maia! I knew you could do it! You're the most wonderful girl! I'll never, never forget what you've done for me. My beautiful, golden fish!"
You bastard, she thought. You came home and found I'd been carted off to Bekla and you never lifted a finger even just to find out what had become of me. Beautiful, golden fish my venda! And yet I can't-how funny-help feeling a sort of affection mixed up with contempt.
But now it was time to get down to business and no messing.
"Tharrin, what do you mean to do once you're free? Will you go back to mother and the girls and take up where you left off, or do you want to take them away and start somewhere else?"
He paused. Well, her question certainly must have come a bit sudden, of course; but unless she was very much mistaken, his mind hadn't been altogether free from the notion that he might just baste off and try his luck somewhere else.
"You do
"Oh, yes, yes, Maia, of course! Oh yes, naturally. Have to look after them, yes; oh, always do that."
"You see," she said, smiling and stroking his hand, "you'll be sort of on parole, Tharrin. If you-well, you know, if you was to get into any more trouble-I know you won't- but they'd take you in again, and I wouldn't be able to help you a second time. You do understand, don't you?"
He understood all right: she was pretty sure of that. What an extraordinary fellow he was, she thought. Talk about volatile! Just escaped from death by torture and in a wink he was almost sprightly, and then within the minute he was disappointed at being foiled in a little dodge to go off on the loose. Ah, to the rebels in Chalcon, very like. She'd bet anything that that had already occurred to him. Yet for the life of her she couldn't entirely dislike him. He'd got-well, humanity, kind of.
"Dearest," she said, still holding his hand "-and I must call you that, even though we're not lovers any more- you've got to realize I've got a fair old bit of influence now."
He laughed. He even slapped his thigh-at which his threadbare breeches gave off a puff of dust.
"I know! 'Maia swam the river: Maia saved the city.' I wonder what they said down at 'The Safe Moorings,' don't you? I haven't been there for weeks, so I can't tell." He paused. "In some ways it's a pity you did save the city, golden Maia. If you hadn't, Karnat would have been in Bekla by now."
"Don't you give me that!" she flashed at him. "If I hadn't, three hundred Tonildan boys'd be laying dead and done in Paltesh, and that'd have been just for a start! Anyway, Tharrin, don't you try and act up to me as you've got political principles about heldril and Leopards, nor none of that old moonshine. What you did was done for money, and you basting well know it. Not but what you weren't always generous with it," she added, relenting a little. "I'll give you that."
"Kept a roof over our heads," he muttered, his eyes on the floor.
"Well, just you see as you go on doing that, else I'll know the reason why."
At that he looked up at her, straight and serious.
"Maia, I can't see why you should be bothering yourself so much about Morca; that I can't. She sold you into slavery, didn't she? A real dirty trick that was."
The picture this called into Maia's mind-namely, of Morca as she had last seen her-prompted her next question.
"Is she all right? What was the baby-a boy?"
"No, another girl. Yes, she's all right as far as I know. Was when I left for Thettit, anyway. I was arrested in Thettit, you know. All the same, it's bound to have been rough on them with me gone. I dare say Kelsi and Nala-"
