Maia, however, shared none of this disquiet; for her there was only the simple, delightful knowledge that the queen was gone. She had not realized how badly she had been afraid of Fornis, or in how many respects her fear had been affecting her life. She had in fact been afraid whenever she made new friends, afraid to entertain in her own house, to go freely about the upper city, to enjoy to the full her public popularity. Now, like an animal venturing little by little out of concealment, she began gradually to do all these things. She gave a party for thirty guests (the limit, she reckoned, for her house, and of course she had to hire extra servants for the occasion). Among those who came were one or two of the first wounded officers back from Chalcon, and little good it was that they had to tell. Guided by Nennaunir and Otavis as to who would be suitable, she began to invite a few of her better-connected admirers to call on her for wine and talk. Maia, of course, was no brilliant conversationalist, but she was
a good listener, lively and quick to both sympathy and laughter, and with these qualities added to great beauty no girl has ever been able to go far wrong. By listening, too, she learned a good deal about affairs in the provinces, and began to understand what Kembri had meant by saying that men were apt to speak more freely and indiscreetly in the company of a beautiful girl whom they wished to impress. Indeed, she heard one or two things which she guessed that the Lord General would have been most interested to learn. However, she had not seen him since the morning when she had gone to the Barons' Palace to plead for Tharrin, and anyway she no-longer regarded herself as his agent. As far as she was concerned, that had come to an end on the banks of the Valderra. She no longer had any need to better herself by bearing tales. Also, she felt intuitively that she had fallen out of favor with Kembri, and this she attributed to his having decided upon Milvushina and not herself for Sacred Queen. That, however, troubled her little, for she did not believe that he would go the length of seeking her life or her ruin.
So she fared abroad, and bought fine clothes, and slept till noon when she chose, and dined or supped with Sarget, and with Bodrin the Gelt iron-master, and such Leopard lords as her friends approved; and shed tears of rapture as Fordil's fingers called forth from the hinnari a divine sorrow in which all her own-and the world's-was dissolved. In the moment of awakening, and before ever her sleepy mind had fastened upon the actualities of the coming day, it would be filled with a delightful assurance that all was well. All, indeed, until she thought of Tharrin's ashes blowing on the easterly wind-ah! whither? Towards that remote west-Suba, Katria, Terekenalt-which somewhere in its immensity contained her own Zen-Kurel. She, the Serrelinda, who had saved the city, had been made a victim of the Sacred Queen's cruelty, wronged and cheated beyond anything that any honest heart should brook unavenged. And incomparably fortunate though she might be, she yet lacked the simple luck of thousands of peasant lasses whose lot lay far beneath her own; namely, to laugh and chide and bed and wake with her rightful man.
"Zenka! Zenka!"
"Did you call, miss?" said Ogma, coming into the steamy, perfumed bathroom where she lay naked as a bride and lonely as a widow.
"Oh, don't mind me, Ogma," answered Maia, stretching for a towel to wipe her wet face. "I'm all upside-down this morning! Dreams-star-gazing-never mind." She broke off. "Oh, but listen-I want to go down to the silk market later, will you tell Brero? There's a new trader up from the south: Otavis thought we ought to take the opportunity."
"Opportunity, miss? Strikes me you're not taking all what you might." For Ogma had been completely bowled over by Randronoth and the dawn delivery of the nine thousand meld (which she supposed to have been safely stowed somewhere or other) and had continually in her mind the prospect of a whole succession of lustful governors, councilors, merchants and what-not, whose tips to the Serrelinda's lady's maid (for Randronoth had been liberal) would carry her as far beyond her wildest dreams as ever Maia had been carried beyond hers. Nor, perhaps, could she-who had so often seen Maia return tousled from the couch of Sencho-altogether be blamed for wondering why on earth her mistress seemed too fastidious either to make three times as much money as any shearna in Bekla, or (if that was not to her fancy) at least to set about achieving a noble and wealthy marriage. There could be only one explanation.
"Miss?"
"Yes, Ogma?" Maia stepped out of the bath, flinging back her head and shoulders as she toweled her back. Then, as Ogma hesitated, "Well, what?"
"D'you reckon they're going to make you Sacred Queen at the end of this year?"
