Maia полностью

"Well, I would have been back a lot sooner, Miss Maia," said Ogma, her voice taking on the querulous, defensive tone with which Maia had become familiar, "if only it hadn't been for being bothered and pestered and-and followed all up the street and made to look that much of a fool until I didn't know if I was coming or going. And when you're a slave there's nothing you can do about it and-and 'tisn't likely, miss, that anyone's going to interfere to help the likes of me," ended poor Ogma, who was obviously on the point of tears. "It's all right for some, as has soldiers to pull them about in jekzhas-"

"Now, Ogma," said Maia quickly, though inwardly she was fuming at this additional waste of time; it would have to happen now, she thought. "Just try to calm yourself! It's all over now. Were they street louts, or what? You tell me who it was and I promise you I'll see they get something to remember. Did you tell them who you were and that you work for me?"

"Why, he knows very well as I work for you, miss. 'Course he does! That's why he was on pestering me and wouldn't go away. I had to call out to the guards on the Peacock Gate, else I couldn't have got away from him or got back here at all."

Who the hell could this be? thought Maia. Not Ran-

dronoth-no, nor anyone else she could think of: presumably some boorish stranger from one of the outer provinces, besotted by having got a sight of the Serrelinda and ready to try anything. Well, there'd be an end to all that soon enough now.

"You say he knows you work for me?"

"Well, 'course he does, miss. That's why he wouldn't go away. 'You take me through the gate with you,'he says. 'They know who you are and they'll let me through if you tell them the Serrelinda wants to see me urgently.' So I says, 'No,' I says. 'The Serrelinda's got a dinner-party today,' I says, 'and you've made me late as it is. What I'll do, I'll tell her you're here,' I says,' 'cos last time she said I ought to have let her know that much, but if you think I'm going to take a branded man through the gate into the upper city,' I says-"

"Ogma! A branded man?"

"Yes, that there Sednil, miss, of course! He-"

"Sednil? You mean to say he's back here-already?"

"I don't know nothing about back already, miss, but that's who it was."

"Ogma, never mind about the dinner! Just put all those things in the kitchen, quickly: then come back here. I'll write you a note for the guards on the gate. You're to go back at once, find Sednil and bring him here as quick as you can, understand? No, don't say any more; just do as I tell you!"

Snatching up her brush and ink, she sat down and began with laborious care, "The barer of this worront is Sednil of Dari…"

"But Sednil, what brought you back so soon? I wasn't expecting you for-oh, for weeks! You've never been to Urtah, surely?"

"No," he replied. "No, I didn't go to Urtah; I just went to Dari."

They were sitting side-by-side on the roof. Shortly after the flustered and thoroughly disgruntled Ogma had left on her errand, Brero had returned from the Lord General's house with the message that Eud-Ecachlon would certainly come as soon as possible, but regretted that he might be delayed by an important Council meeting about to be held at the Barons' Palace. He had not yet appeared, and Maia had taken Sednil up to the roof, partly because it was the

most secluded place in her small house and partly in order to make sure of giving a convincing impression that she was not at home for the moment, having had to go out for a short time-which was what Ogma had been told to say.

"But why? Oh, Sednil, you mean you've come back without finding anything out? After I'd given you all that money-"

"No, no," he answered. "I didn't need to go to Urtah, Maia: I found out all there is to be found out in Dari."

His manner, grave and unsmiling, roused in her a quick trepidation. "You mean-you mean Zen-Kurel's dead? You've found out that he's dead!"

"No, he's not dead. He's a prisoner in the fortress at Dari. There were quite a few, you know-Terekenalters, Katrians, Subans as well-taken in the fight at Rallur. Bayub-Otal was one of them, as everybody knows. Well, your Zen-Kurel was another. Apparently he was fighting like a perfect devil when he slipped and went down in the mud. Someone noticed from his badges that he was a staff officer and reckoned he might be worth a ransom, so they jumped on him and took him prisoner."

"How did you find this out?"