Maia

"Poor girl!" he said. "I suppose they must have done away with her. What a shame! She had such style, hadn't

she? I don't mind telling you, that night when she made Ka-Roton stab himself I was terrified; but I must admit he had asked for it. Got a bit more than he bargained for, didn't he?"

Later, when di

It was while Eud-Ecachlon was still holding the cabinet in his hands and at any rate giving the appearance of examining it that he remarked, with no particular alteration of expression or ma

"The High Baron, Euda? I'm very sorry to hear it. I hope it's not serious?"

He closed the little doors and latched them. "Well, he's old, you know: I'm afraid he may not recover. Everyone in Urtah thinks the same, really."

"I know you both love him-you and Bayub-Otal. And you're the heir, of course. It must be a worrying time for you, as well as a sad one." And then, in her way of often coming straight out with anything that entered her mind, "What's brought you back to Bekla, then, at such a time as this? I s'pose you have to see Kembri and the Council, do you, on behalf of your father?"

"Yes, well-that, I suppose." He put the cabinet back in its place and sat down. "Urtah's not an easy province to govern, you know."

Well, you can't very well try another one, can you?"

He looked up with a puzzled expression, as though taking what she had said seriously and considering it. He'd always been a bit slow, she recalled. "I was only teasing, Euda. I'm sorry you've got all these problems, honest I

am. I cert'nly wouldn't like to have to govern a province- any province."

"Oh-wouldn't you? Wouldn't you really?" He looked up at her earnestly, with a kind of concern in his voice. He really was a fu

"Well, that's one thing I'm not likely to find myself doing, so I needn't worry, need I? Euda, tell me, Anda-Nokomis-that's to say, Bayub-Otal-will they let him out, do you think? Is that what you came to talk to me about? Could I help? I mean, if your poor old father's dying, like you say-"

"WeH, that's one thing, that's part of it, yes." He paused. "Yes, of course, I came to see Kembri. Urtah's a divided province and that's its trouble, I suppose; and it's the Leopards' trouble too-they can't rely on it as they'd like to. Suba-it was Kembri and Fornis who sold it to Karnat, you know. Then my brother tried to get it back for himself-and the price was helping Karnat to take Bekla." (But he must know I know all this, she thought.) "And he'd have succeeded too, if you hadn't stopped him. What that would have meant for Urtah nobody knows, do they, since it didn't happen?"

As Ogma came in to clear away the di

"But all most people in Urtah want is a quiet life," he continued, as they strolled down towards the Barb. "Like most people anywhere, I suppose. You see, it's eight or nine years now since Suba was given to Karnat, and what's Suba to an Urtan farmer with his beasts to feed and his harvest to get in? But then, on the other hand, there's my poor old father. He loves Bayub-Otal, and ever since the fight at Rallur he's been breaking his heart to think of him shut up in that fortress at Dari-Paltesh. I believe that's what's killing him-the uncertainty. We've been entreating Kembri for months to pardon Bayub-Otal, simply so that the old man can die in peace. But Kembri doesn't trust us, it seems. He doesn't trust Urtah not to try to regain Suba, not to use Bayub-Otal against Bekla."

"And you want me to try to persuade him: is that it?"

"Oh, no, Maia. No, no, that isn't why I came at all." Eud-Ecachlon came to a kind of indeterminate stop in his walk, looking down and kicking with one foot at the grass. "They all think the world of you in Urtah, you know. Oh, yes, everybody does, I assure you.".

"Well, I must say you do surprise me, Euda, saying that. I'd have thought-well, you know-the girl who put paid to poor Anda-Nokomis-"

"Oh, no, Maia, no; the girl who stopped the bloodshed and saved Uriah from Karnat. That was what you did it for, wasn't it? That's what I was told you've always said, anyway; that you did it to stop the bloodshed."

"So I did. I've nothing against Anda-Nokomis-leastways, not any more. I'd be real glad to hear as he'd been let out. Time 'twas all forgot, I reckon."

They had almost reached the shore, and she turned aside to that same marble seat where she had sat to listen to Randronoth's emissary Seekron.

"Of course," said Eud-Ecachlon, looking out across the water, "I've never been married, you know. I was betrothed to Fornis once-did you know that? It was-oh, long ago now, when we were both young; before her father died, and before the Leopards came to power. I was in love with her. Can you believe that? I thought she was wonderful-a girl like a goddess. Her father, Kephialtar of Paltesh-he wanted the marriage, but she didn't. She took her father's boat on the Zhairgen and sailed it two hundred miles to Quiso. You've heard the story, I expect."

"I've-yes, well, I've heard something about it, Euda, of course. But 'twas all before I was born, you know. Want my opinion, though, I reckon you were lucky. Married to Fornis? Doesn't bear thinking about, does it?"

He gave a short laugh. "You're right, Maia, of course. But somehow that business knocked the stuffing out of me. You know-to be made a fool of, publicly, by someone you love, when you're young and-well, ardent, I suppose you'd say. Somehow I never could face the idea of marriage after that. Of course it's always disappointed my father; worried him, too. The succession, you know."

Maia, while not unsympathetic, was now begi

But he was still speaking. "I've always known I haven't really got what anyone would call great powers of leadership-not for a ruler, that is. People don't actually dislike me, but they don't fall down and offer to die for me, either; not like the Terekenalters for Karnat, or even the Subans for Bayub-Otal, come to that. But with a girl like you- well, they'd only have to see you, wouldn't they?"

She was still preoccupied with what she had been about to say. "I'm sorry, Euda, I'm afraid I wasn't just exactly following you."

He turned beside her on the seat and took her hand.

"My father would rest in peace. And you-p-you've got dangerous enemies here-it's common knowledge. You'd have none, would you? And it would do more than anything else to reconcile Urtah to Bekla."