and portions were in cipher-which Aijuan copied laboriously without knowing their contents. It bore the seal of one of Prince Eselne’s privy chamberlains. This was not at all the sort of thing one should leave lying about!
Concerned now, he went around the hearth to the door of their sleeping room. It was shut. More, it was barred from within, and no little Meshqu plaque hung here either to tell him Mrika was sleeping or indisposed. He tapped twice upon the panel, but there was no response. Again, louder. Then he tried the latch, but this time it was locked.
Was Mrika ill? Did she sleep so deeply, then? Worse, his little internal voice asked, had she left him? Was this the day he dreaded? He pounded on the door, then spent anguished minutes fishing for the latchstring with the key-rod that he kept hidden under the hearthstone.
The door opened upon blackness. Mrika always kept the one window covered against the midday blaze. She did not like sunlight and, like many girls of the lower clans who longed to be pampered aristocrats, strove to keep her complexion as pale as possible. It took more time for his eyes to adjust so that he could see what lay inside.
It was the smell that struck him first, however: an odour of milk gone bad, of spoiled food, of garbage left too long on a muddy riverbank. There was a huddled form beneath the clean Firya — cloth sheet upon the sleeping platform. Mrika must have been terribly sick, vomited perhaps, and then passed into unconsciousness.
He ran to draw back the sheet.
What he saw was so unexpected that he could make no sense of it at all. The fabric was stained with a greyish, milky mulch that stuck to his fingers. Beneath, scattered roughly in the shape of a human body, were objects, things that he could not recognise, strange lumps and wetly shining bluish-white blobs of a substance that resembled spoiled cheese! They stank, and they lay in a pool of pallid, oozing wetness.
Revolted to the core of his being, Aijuan thrust himself away, furiously wiping his hands upon his ink-stained kilt. He gagged and staggered from the room. When he could think again he found himself outside upon the hot flagstones of their clanhouse verandah, clutching his stomach and still vomiting into Mrika’s neat bed of Naludla- flowers.
His thoughts whirled round and round but always came back to the one logical conclusion. She had left him. She was gone. Certainly that was not Mrika there on the sleeping mat!
What else was possible?
Yet why? Why not tell him, at least? Why this awful affront to his dignity-the hideous, insulting mess upon their sleeping mat? He might not have been the most ardent of lovers, but that-! The humiliation was unbearable. He flung back his head, cursed, groaned, and beat his fists upon the damp stones.
Their neighbour, Betkanur hiFashan, found him thus, took him inside, cooled his brow with a damp cloth, gave him strong Dna — grain beer, and sent his little daughter scampering to the Temple of Lord Ketengku to summon the physicians.
By evening the tale of Mrika’s vanishing had spread. The city watch came with questions for him, and his superior, Genemu hiNayar, also arrived with a priest and two senior scribes from the Palace of the Realm. What had happened to Mrika was riddle enough, but these worthies were even more concerned about the copies of various documents-some important-in Mrika’s handwriting concealed within her gaily painted cosmetics box by their sleeping mat. And what was the amulet they found there, too? An amulet made of some pale, bone-like substance, covered all over with spidery writing in a tongue no one could identify? The script, opined one of the Genemu’s colleagues, was clearly nonhuman, but it was not of the Ahoggya, the Shen, the Pe Choi, the Mihalli, or even the dreaded Ssu.
Aijuan hiDaranu denied all knowledge of the affair. He begged them to find Mrika, but no one heeded him much. The priests, soldiers, and later a blue-and-gold uniformed officer of the Omnipotent Azure Legion only pestered him with serious-sounding inquiries about such matters as spies and agents, Yan Kor and Mu’ugalavya, and the like. He did not care. He pleaded ignorance, and eventually they all went away.
He curled himself into a ball upon Betkanur’s unfamiliar sleeping-mat and wept.
The drooping Ja'atheb — tree fronds sketched a ballet in silver silhouette above the Shadow Gods’ ponderous temple pyramids. It was not yet dawn, and the city of Tsamra still slept, although Siyuneb could hear the yawning, querulous voices of servants from the labyrinth of buildings and gardens below. The palace of her master, Lord Ketkorez Tanakku, was awakening.
She rose, as supple as a spray of Ja'atheb — blossoms herself, to wash away the telltale signs of their night of pleasure. The flower-filled pool that occupied a quarter of this, the topmost terrace was cool enough to sting her golden skin and drive away the fumes of the evening’s wine. Between the ornate columns, the pre-dawn breeze fluttered the Thesun-gauze draperies, brought from distant Tsolyanu, like the wings of little birds, and made the glass-chimes twitter and tinkle upon their tall poles at the comers of their couch.
Soon the sun would stride forth from the Halls of the Underworld to strip away Siyuneb’s illusions of youth and beauty. It were best if she were gone before then. The slight thickness beneath her chin, the delicate web of lines at the comers of her eyes, the too-ripe roundnesses of hips and thighs, all would be laid bare by the merciless glare of Lord Qame’el’s ball of pale flame.
Siyuneb slipped out of the filmy garments of Lord Ketkorez had chosen for her. She bathed completely and washed the sparkling Niritleb — powder from her hair. She also washed the curious implements that enhanced the joys of their coupling. With these-and with the arts her body knew-she could hold Lord Ketkorez for yet another year, two at most. After that she did not want to think. He might never reduce her to the ranks of the serving maids, but to live on in solitary comfort in some back apartment of the palace, to pass her days in gossip and idle make-work tasks, to grow old and fat and raise the children of some chamberlain or guardsman, was no life for one who had slept upon her master’s High Terrace!
Oh, there were other fates: she might become a priestess of Lord Qame’el: a functionary within one of the temples, glorying in each exercise of petty power; she might take the jewellery and gifts Lord Ketkorez had bestowed upon her and purchase a villa in some remote-and inexpensive-seaside town; she might become a courtesan, a shop-assistant for one of the mercantile clans-many things.
It took a great deal of self-control for her to bring herself back to the much more enjoyable present.
She stretched and spread her black mane to dry. The insect-netting was still closed; her master slept. Siyuneb sat down cross-legged upon the marble balustrade and ran the golden comb Lord Ketkorez had given her through damp-tangled locks. The lines of red and blue tattooed Aomiiz upon her wrists caught her eye. She was not allowed the symbols of an aristocratic clan and a high position within the temple hierarchy, mayhap, but her present status as First Concubine was not without its rewards. It was a far cry from her peasant forebearers, she thought: better the lady of a great aristocrat than a farmer’s wife with no tattooing other than the mud of the fields and the wrinkles of a life of toil.
She was awakened from her revery by Chakkunaz, the least obnoxious of Lord Ketkorez’ body-servants. He was both young and well-made, and his infatuation for her was no secret. Her master was not unkind; he turned a blind eye to an occasional dalliance, and she had wheedled more favours from Chakkunaz than even Lady Lailueb, the Chief Wife. Certainly Chakkunaz was more to her taste than Esudaz or Qelyuz or any of the other chamberlains. She carefully refrained from comparing him, even to herself, with Lord Ketkorez. Her master might be as young, as learned, as mannered, and as well turned out as any noble in the Five Empires, but he lacked a certain fire; he was a trifle cold, indifferent, and hard to arouse. He had been thus, the old crones of the palace said, ever since he had turned eighteen, after some sort of undiscussed accident in the mountains near the city of Dlash. Lately Lord Ketkorez had seemed preoccupied and even less susceptible to her wiles than usual. It was this that made Siyuneb’s array of special implements so necessary.
“He is not awake, lady?”
“He has not moved since I arose. The wine and the drug-powders and all of Retumez’ greasy cooking last night…” Chakkunaz pulled the netting aside. He bent over the sleeping figure on the dais, and the red-dawning sun upon his muscled shoulders awakened desire within her. She would have summoned him and whispered of an assignation later, but his stance gave her pause. The young chamberlain stood frozen, astonishment-shock- apparent in the lines of his back, even though she could not see his face.
“Siyuneb,” he called softly. “Come here.”
She did not protest the use of her personal name as she might otherwise have done. His tone told her that there was something very wrong.
She obeyed. He had pulled back the coverlet, and at first she thought that Lord Ketkorez was not there at all,
