Maia

"Look, banzi! Take a damn' good look! We've come far enough to see it, doan' you reckon?"

Half-closing her eyes against the glare, Maia gazed westward across the plain. Four miles away, a high, irregular

mass cutting the skyline, stood the solitary peak of Mount Crandor, the mid-day brilliance throwing its ridges and gullies into sharp contrasts of sunlight and purple shadow. Encircling it, she could just make out a thin, darker streak- the line of the city walls, broken at intervals by the points of the watch-turrets.

To Crandor's right, immediately below the heat-hazed slopes, lay Bekla itself. Maia, who had never seen even Kabin or Thettit-Tonilda, stared incredulously at the mile-wide drift of smoke above the tilted roofs, through which rose the slender columns of towers taller than any trees; clustered together, as it seemed from this distance, like reeds in a pool. Above the city, between it and the lower slopes of Crandor itself, the Palace of the Barons crowned the Leopard Hill, its ranges of polished marble balconies catching the noon-day sun and flashing gleams of light across the intervening plain. Even at this distance-or so, at all events, she thought-Maia's ears could catch, far-off and faint, a hum and murmur like that of bees about a hive.

"Turn Bekla upside-down?" she breathed at last. "Why, we'll just be goin' in there like-like coal to the blacksmith's, no danger!"

"Now stop it, banzi!" said the black girl quickly. "All right, I admit it's enough to poke your eyes out, sure enough; but stands to reason, doan' it, it's got to be like anywhere else-bung-full of randy sods with standin' rods? Get that into your head and keep on rememberin' it. You're not like a confectioner or a silk-merchant-someone people can do without at a pinch. You're like a baker or a midwife: life just can't go on without the likes of us. Whoever they are, they've got to be born, they've got to eat, they've got to baste and they've got to die."

"But I never imagined; it's so big!" Maia stared once more at the distant city with its array of tapering spires.

"Well, that's what the priestess said to the drover, but she found she could manage it all right after a bit. Look, there's old Puss-arse coming, see? Let's get back down before he starts calling us. And for Cran's sake doan' let him think you've got the wind-up about the mighty city of Bekla. You've got to learn to shrug- your shoulders and spit, banzi. Go on, do it now."

Smiling in spite of herself, Maia obeyed; whereupon Occula took her hand and ran with her down the slope.

Maia noticed, however, that she still kept her eyes averted from the opposite rise.

14: BEKLA

A little less than two hours later they found themselves on the northeastern outskirts of Bekla and approaching the Blue Gate. The mid-day heat was begi

Although their journey had been only half as long as those of the two previous days, both girls were spent with the heat. Maia's left ankle was swollen and she winced at every step. As they followed the jekzha under the arch of the gate she suddenly stumbled and clutched at Occula's arm, leaning her head against the wall and panting.

Five or six passers-by, attracted by the sight of such a pretty girl in obvious distress, formed a small crowd, chattering to one another and proffering advice, until a respectable-looking, elderly woman, attended by a slave carrying her basket, stepped forward and helped Maia to a stone bench recessed in the wall.

Whether Zuno felt some slight twinge of conscience; whether he thought that it might look better if the girls did not arrive at Lalloc's in a state of sweating and bedraggled exhaustion; or whether he simply wished to avoid

a street-row (for some of the crowd were begi

The soldiers off-duty were sympathetic to the girls, as most common people, themselves all-too-familiar with hardship and adversity, usually are towards anyone whom they perceive to be in genuine distress. When Occula had explained the reason for Maia's exhaustion there was a good deal of indignation.

"Made 'em walk from Naksh, tryze, since this morning," said one of the soldiers to the guard-commander, who had just returned from a quick and illicit drink with Zuno across the road. "And that fancy bastard of Lalloc's riding along in the shade."

"Rotten sod!" replied the tryzatt, his eyes taking in Maia from head to foot as she lay on a bench against the further wall. "Mean 'e never give 'em no water nor nothing? Well, Cran knows a soldier's life's nothing to shout about, but I'd rather that than yours, y' poor lass," he said to Occula.

"Oh, you jus' wait a bit," replied Occula, gri

There was a general laugh, but the tryzatt, unhooking the wine-skin from the wall and tilting it to her mouth, put a fatherly hand on her shoulder.

"Well, just you be careful how you do go jumping into Leopards' beds, my girl-that's if you ever get that far. There's plenty don't come so well out of that game as they reckon they're going to."

"Ah, that's right," said another soldier. "You don't have to shake the melikon for the berries to fall."

"Oh, bugger the melikon!" said Occula. "This banzi's not sixteen and you start talkin' about berries fallin'! As you're all bein' so kind," she went on, "I wonder whether

there's any water we could wash in, if it's not too much trouble?"

The guard-quarters boasted a small, brick-floored bathhouse, with a piped supply from the Monju Brook-the outfall stream of the lake called the Barb. Here the girls stripped and sluiced each other down. When Zuno reappeared a quarter of an hour later they were both feeling- and looking-in much better shape; Occula in her orange metlan and Maia in the powder-blue robe, with a scarlet trepsis bloom, given her by one of the soldiers, stuck behind her ear. The guard-commander, having civilly but firmly refused a tip from Zuno, helped the girls into the hired jekzha, which thereupon set off, following the two Deelguy down Masons Street towards the Kharjiz.