"Yes. Is Belain your leader?" Her eyes gave him the answer. "Never mind. He set you to watch and to give a signal if anyone should follow, right?" Again he watched the flicker of starlight reflected from her eyes. As a conspirator she lacked practice. "What is going on?"
"You said you weren't interested."
"I'm not, just curious. Maybe I could help?" He waited then said, "Just as you wish. Are you sure you didn't see Ursula?"
"No, but I heard something before you came. Someone running up the path."
"A woman?"
"It sounded like a woman, yes."
Ursula, seeking heights and brightness and not depths and darkness, in that he had been wrong. Or she could have some private place in which she could sit alone to nurse her injured pride. To think and, perhaps, to plan her revenge. Sardia had been a fool and to delay longer would be to accentuate her folly with his own.
He said, "Pellia, tell me, has your mistress a favorite spot on an upper level? Ursula is your mistress?"
"No."
An assumption he had made without foundation- why should she belong to the household simply because he had discovered her close? And yet no establishment in a place like this was isolated; servants would talk, gossip would flow and the habits of one would be the knowledge for all.
"But you would know if she had such a place," he said gently. "Somewhere she would choose to be if hurt or upset in any way. I need your help. It is important that I find her and soon."
"Then ask another of the Choud."
"How would they know?" His hand fell to her shoulder, rose, a finger softly touching the spot of blood which marred her cheek. "For this I apologize. If you know where Ursula is to be found tell me and I will forget I've seen you here tonight. A bargain?"
"She is fond of heights," said the woman and her voice held bitterness. "It pleases her to look down on others. It pleases all the Choud. But if she has been thwarted you will find her on the upper terrace. There is a turret of stone surmounted by a crouching beast. In it she plots her revenge."
It rose like a ghostly castle in the starlight, a miniature palace set with fretted stone, dark with sprawling lichen, the beast above it a snarling, fanged shape radiating fury. Inside it was thick with shadows but the air held the taint of a familiar perfume and a section seemed lighter than the rest. A patch which moved and a face which caught the starlight and reflected it in the colorless semblance of a corpse.
"Ursula?" Dumarest stepped through the opening. "Are you here, my lady?"
"Why have you followed me?"
"I was concerned." The air held more than the odor of the perfume she wore, there was an acridity which spoke of insects and cobwebs and things which hid during the light of day. Imagination, probably, if she used this place then servants would have kept it clean. Or did she have a perverse attraction for mold and decay? "I came to escort you back to the house."
"So your harlot can gloat?"
"So she can apologize."
"Why?"
"She is a trained dancer, a prima ballerina. Almost her entire life has been spent in learning how to manipulate her body. The challenge was a farce from the beginning and one she should never have taken advantage of. It was the wine-she rarely drinks. And, too, I think she was more than a little jealous."
"Of me?"
"Can you doubt it?" Dumarest found a bench and sat down beside the woman. "Must I illustrate the obvious? You are younger than Sardia and she resented it. Your beauty also. Always until recently she has been the center of attraction and, in you, she saw mirrored what had been and would be no longer. Youth, charm, the ideal of men. Can you blame her for taking the only advantage she had?"
"The dance," said Ursula. "The dance."
"All she can do and even so her art is failing." It was no time to hesitate at a lie. "I watched you both. She bested you and you are woman enough to admit it, but in a year or two?" Dumarest shook his head. "A tree grows old and gains beauty with age. A woman gains maturity and can add to her attraction by the depths of her mind. But a woman who had nothing to commend her but muscular obedience-Ursula, she should be pitied, not blamed."
She said quietly, "I had planned to kill her."
And would have done and still could unless he could make amends. Sardia had been cosseted too long and had been forgotten if she had ever learned how vicious those born to wealth and power could be. The assassin, the subtle drug, the nerve-twisting poison, the killing bacteria-all were weapons easily at hand.
And who would mourn or revenge a lone traveler dying on a remote world?
"A guest," said Dumarest. "You would kill a guest?"
"Cornelius's, not mine."
"But still a guest of the Choud," he reminded. "At times, Ursula, we need to remember who and what we are. You are among those who rule on this world while Sardia is only a woman who acted unwisely while under the influence of wine. Already she regrets what she has done and wishes she could make amends."
"Such as an apology?"
An act she would detest but would do if he had to force her to her knees. Too much was at stake for him to pander to her pride.
"Yes," said Dumarest. "Even that."
"Even that?" Ursula lifted her eyebrows. "She means something to you?"
"We traveled together."
"And?" Her eyes watched his face; orbs filled with reflected starlight, pale ovals which glinted and looked as blind as glass. "Are you lovers?" She sighed at his nod. "So Tuvey mentioned to Ellitia. And yet you berated her for being less than kind. And you left her at the moment of her triumph when she needed you most. Your woman, Earl."
Dumarest said, "Not my woman, Ursula. Sardia isn't property. She isn't a slave."
"All women are slaves of their passion," she snapped. "As all men are victims of their ambition. It drives them like a goad and it can destroy them as love can destroy a woman. What is your ambition?"
"To travel."
"Why?"
"To search. To find."
"What? Happiness?" The turn of her head signaled her irritation. "What is happiness? Is it the contentment of a well-fed beast? Is it the lack of pain? Of hunger? Of doubt? Can you buy it? Make it? Find it in some forgotten place. Tell me, Earl, where can I find this precious thing?"
"In your heart, perhaps, Ursula. I know of nowhere else."
"Then why do you search?"
"For knowledge." He stretched and shifted so that his hand rested on his knee close to the hilt of the knife in his boot A habit born of time spent in shadowed darkness with things which threatened from the gloom. "It pleases me to discover odd facts associated with various legends. The mythical planets, for example. You must have heard of them?"
"No."
"Worlds that are supposed to exist and yet which no one seems able to find." His tone was casual. "Worlds such as Earth."
"Earth is no myth."
"So I am convinced and I came to Ath in search of it as I told you earlier. And you reaffirm my belief. The details you gave were fantastic. Such precision. You could even know the spatial coordinates. If so then it would be possible to locate the planet." He paused, waiting, but she made no response. "Do you know the coordinates?"
She said, "Earl, let us not concern ourselves with that now. Tell me, and be honest, do you find me more attractive than Sardia?"
"Yes."
"Are you positive?"
"Yes." She was talking about physical beauty and he was thinking of far more than that, but even so she held an attraction which set her high as the dancer though in a different style. Hers was the loveliness of carved perfection while Sardia held the warmth of all humanity, the fire and the passion of seeding and harvest. "Yes, Ursula. Yes!"