'Do be seated. I will send for tea.' Lady Kurrekai clapped her hands, subsiding back on to her couch in a rustle of silk. Vanda thrust a hassock behind her mother, and Gilla, who was finding that her knees had an alarming tendency to give way, sat down gratefully.
'Your daughter has been very helpful to me,' the lady continued languidly. 'She is quick, and oh, such pretty hair.'
Vanda blushed and took the tea tray from the Beysib woman who had brought it to the door, set it on a low table of some intricately carven dark red wood, and began to pour. The tea service was made from a porcelain so fine it seemed translucent, and Gilla was abruptly conscious of the fact that she had not changed her gown since Lalo fell ill, and that her hair was coming down.
She wanted to get to the point of this visit and get out of here, but the Beysib noblewoman was inhaling the fragrance of her tea as if nothing else in the universe mattered just now. Vanda remained kneeling before her, until Kurrekai nodded and finally took one ceremonial sip; then she swivelled around to pour tea into her mother's cup and her own. Gilla tasted the brew suspiciously and found it oddly pleasant. She drank it quickly and then held her cup awkwardly in her lap while the lady, with endless deliberation, absorbed her own.
Then, finally, she sighed and set the cup down.
'My Lady,' said Vanda eagerly, 'I told you about my father's strange illness. We have found no one in this city who can bring him back, but your people are wiser than we. Will you help us now?'
'Child, your sorrow is my own, but what do you suppose I could do?' Kurrekai's head turned within the stiff collar and her slow voice held concern.
'I have heard,' Vanda swallowed and her voice went up a note, 'I have heard that the venom of the beynit has many properties ...'
'Ah, my companion,' sighed Kurrekai. She leaned back, and from within one hollow pannier appeared a flicker of crimson, followed by a slim black body as the serpent slid slowly out of hiding and coiled itself lazily in the fold of her petticoat. Gilla stared, fascinated, at the darting scarlet tongue and the jewelled eyes.
'What you say is true. The venom can be a powerful stimulant if it is properly ... changed ... But your father is not of my people. For him, only the venom's fatality would be sure.'
'But there is a chance?' All the anguish of the past three weeks met in this moment and Gilla found her voice at last. This woman must agree to help them!
'I do not wish to, kill a man of Sanctuary.' The turn of Lady Kurrekai's head held finality.
But Gilla rose, and while Vanda still stared and the Beysib woman was just beginning to look around, launched herself across the room. When she stopped, the beynit was barely a foot from her outstretched hand. The crimson head darted upward like a flame and began to sway.
'Mother, don't mover Vanda's shocked whisper hissed in the air.
Gilla remained still, now that she had reached her goal, looking for the first time directly into Lady Kurrekai's round eyes. 'And a woman of Sanctuary?' she said hoarsely. 'Why not? Lalo will die anyway and I will die too. Why not here?'
For an endless moment, Gilla held the other woman's unblinking stare. Then Lady Kurrekai shrugged, and with an almost careless movement interposed her fingers between Gilla and the red blur that was striking at her hand.
Stomach churning, Gilla sagged back on her heels. For perhaps the space of a minute the beynit hung with its fangs still embedded in the fleshy part of Lady Kurrekai's thumb. Then it began to wriggle, and the Beysib woman grasped it by the middle, with a little shake detached it, and encouraged it to slide back into the .shelter of her pannier once more.
'In the name of Bey the Great Mother, the Holy One!' Kurrekai spoke suddenly, strongly, and then became very still, and though her eyes were open, they had become as lightless as Lalo's. Gilla watched, shivering with nightmares of what would happen if a woman of the Beysib died here. Vanda had crept to her side and was holding to her as she used to when she was a little girl.
There was a long sigh as the lady moved at last, and Gilla was not sure from which of the three of them it had come. A great drop of blood like a cabochon garnet was welling from Lady Kurrekai's thumb. She looked around, gesturing to Vanda with a movement of her head.
'Get me the little crystal vial fronrthe cabinet - the one with the dipper that used to hold perfume.'
Vanda got to her feet to obey as Lady Kurrekai faced Gilla again. 'I have attempted to transform the venom by altering the nature of my blood, but it must be used immediately. Scratch your husband's flesh so that the blood comes and touch a drop of this to the wound.' She took the stopper from the vial Vanda was holding out to her, touched it to the drop of blood, and inserted it back in the vial with a little shake, squeezed her hand to produce a second drop, and a third.
'Go now as I have told you, and quickly.' She thrust the stopper home firmly and handed it to Gilla, then delicately licked the smear of blood from her thumb. 'And remember I warned you - it may fail.'
'The blessing of the All-Mother be on you. Lady, and be you free of any blame.' Gilla was already on her feet. 'At least you were willing to try!'
They hurried down the corridor, Vanda skipping to keep up with her mother's longer strides and trying to keep her voice down.
'Mother, how could you do that? I was terrified! Mother, you could have died!'
Gilla forged ahead silently, while those they encountered scattered from her path. It was not until they had crossed the Square and passed through the Westgate that opened out on to the familiar streets of Sanctuary that she paused for breath and turned to meet her daughter's wide eyes.
'Vanda, you are a woman now, old enough to take care of the younger ones if you must, and old enough, perhaps, to understand. If this works, you must promise never to tell your father what I have done for him.'
'And if it doesn't?' Vanda said in a very small voice.
Gilla gazed at the teeming life around her, sunlight glaring harshly off browned faces, sounds of quarrelling and laughter, the rich mixture of odours from the street, and for a moment felt as if she had lost her skin and had become a part of all of these.
'I have borne seven children and seen two die, and lived with the same contrary man for twenty-six years,' she said slowly, 'and I have just realized that I would sacrifice this whole city for one lock of his hair. If this stuff I am going to give him kills him,' she shook the hand in which the crystal vial lay hidden, 'I'm sorry, Vanda, but I will go after him.'
Lalo the god was creating a woman, a goddess as beautiful as Eshi, as bountiful as Shipri, as wise as Sabellia, as dear to him as someone - he could not remember, but the brush splashed gold like sunlight across Her hair. There, the ripeness of breasts that could feed a dozen babes, and the opulence of haunch and thigh, and skin smoother than the silk of Sihan ... Lalo smiled, and the brush moved as if of itself to suffuse that white flesh with a rosy glow like the inside of a shell.