Maia полностью

She answered nothing. She believed him now; her mouth was dry; she felt sick. A moment later he had stepped inside the cell and she followed him.

Tharrin's body was lying on a narrow plank bed in the further corner. The clothes were those she had seen the day before and he still looked, as he had then, tidy and clean. Yet in the horror of recognition she noticed nothing of this. His head was twisted to one side, the neck distorted and encircled by a livid ring of bruised flesh. In places blood, now darkly clotted, had oozed from the chafed skin. The tongue protruded and the eyes were wide and fixed. One or two flies were walking on the face, which had already assumed a rigid, waxen quality. One arm hung down, the backs of the clenched fingers touching the floor. As she looked away, moaning and holding her hands to her mouth, Maia noticed a length of rope, one end of which was knotted round a bar of the high window. The lower end was still tied in a running noose.

Half-fainting, she fell on her knees beside the bed, took the cold hand in her own and tried to lay it across the body; but the arm was stiff and resistant.

She began to cry, stroking his other hand and kissing the mutilated neck and bared shoulders. He was cool and smooth as the parchment and stiff as a frosted branch. As the reality came flooding more deeply into her she wept passionately, on and on because it was easier than stopping, because she was afraid to think what would happen when she stopped. She felt consumed with pity for poor, shiftless Tharnn and the ugly squalor of his end. As she

remembered his arms around her in pleasure, his easy laughter and the game of the golden fish in the net, her grief burst out yet more intensely, prostrating her so that she laid her head on his chest, grasping his shoulders and crying as though to sob the breath out of her body.

At last Pokada, putting his hands under her armpits, pulled her, still weeping, to her feet. As he made to wipe her face with the cloth at his belt she flung away from him, setting her back against the wall of the cell and glaring at him from reddened eyes that still poured tears.

"You killed him! You killed him! I'll see you hang upside-down for this!"

She was shouting hysterically, and he took a step towards her.

"Don't think you can kill me too! There's them as knows I'm here!"

"Saiyett, I give you my word I didn't kill him and nor did any of my men. He killed himself."

"But he knew I was coming! He knew I was coming today to get him out! He couldn't have killed himself!"

Pokada hesitated. After a few moments he said, "Saiyett, you'd better come back to my room. This is no place for us to talk."

"Talk? You think I want to talk to you? I want to see you dead and damned, you bastard, and I will, if it's the last thing I do!"

Now he suddenly assumed a kind of stilted, homespun dignity and authority, like that of a gate-porter or a domestic steward. Perhaps, after all, he had not been made governor of the prison for nothing.

"Saiyett, little as you may wish it, I must request you to come back to my room, for I have something to say to you of a private nature. I regret to inform you that you have no choice, for the gates are locked and I can't let you leave until you've heard me. I've no wish to hurry you, however. You can either come with me now or stay here and come as soon as you feel ready."

"Very well," she said, "I'll come. But before I do-" She pointed to Tharrin. "Bring someone now-now!-to close his eyes and lay him out properly. And then see that he's treated decently and burned as he should be. I'll pay for everything. Will you promise me that?"

"Yes, saiyett: in fact I'll go and see to it at once." He went out, and she heard him call a name: there were foot-

steps and muttered instructions, too low for her to catch the words.

They walked back together in silence. Once Maia stopped short, clutching the governor's arm as from somewhere not far off sounded a scream. He only grasped her wrist and led her on, through the iron-bound door and back down the passage to his room. Here she was overcome by a fresh seizure of grief; but now, from very exhaustion, she wept almost silently, sitting at the table, her head on her arms. At length, regaining some degree of composure, she said in a voice of cold accusation, "U-Pokada, when I first came here, the day before yesterday.'you asked me whether I'd brought poison, and told me as you had to make sure prisoners didn't kill themselves."

He nodded, looking at her with pursed lips, like a man with something on his mind and unsure whether to tell it or not.

"Tharrin had no reason to hang himself. So if one of your men didn't hang him, who did, and why? And how did he get a rope?"