After a while, Muma returned to Azel's table.
"For me?"
"For you. A sparrow."
"Let's go find that beer." Muma grinned. A few teeth were absent. "You're not going to jump on it?"
"I'm going to relax and have something to drink and eat. The pot will simmer along as nicely without me to watch." "No doubt. You serve too many masters."
"I serve only one. Myself."
"Perhaps that one is too exacting."
"Maybe." Azel thought about a couple of weeks in the silence and solitude of the sinkhole country. Qushmarrah could simmer without benefit of his watchful eye. Surely. Maybe in another week or two. Times were too interesting right now.
"A wonderful change of pace tonight," Medjhah said, staring into his bowl in feigned despair. "Raw instead of charred." "Is it wiggling?" Nogah asked.
"Too ashamed."
"Are the worms playing tag through it?"
"They're embarrassed to show themselves in this glop."
"Eat up, then. You'll grow up big and strong and brave and fierce and smartlike our beloved ..."
Some glint of mirth in the eyes of those opposite him warned Nogah. He glancedover his shoulder. "Mo'atabar. We were just talking about you."
"I heard the fierce and smart part, which touches on the truth as heavily as amaiden's blush. Meantime, your beloved leader wants, to see you and the kid.
No hurry! No hurry! I'm nothing if not civilized and compassionate. I'd beworse than a Turok savage if I denied men the once-in-a-lifetime chance tofill themselves with delicacies such as these. Eat up, Nogah. Eat hearty.
Enjoy while you can. Shall I have the cooks bring you more? They probably havea taste or two left."
"No. No. Wonderful as it is, I'll have to restrain myself. Have to set anexample for the men. Gluttony is an unforgivable and disgusting vice."
Mo'atabar went away smiling.
Yoseh said, "Fa'tad."
"Yes."
His stomach knotted. "Again."
"I'm thinking about gouging your eyes out, baby brother."
"Maybe I'll do it myself. Why does he have to see me?"
No one answered, not even to crack wise. Medjhah began muttering about how thedamned ingrate Qushmarrahan charity-case cooks were trying to poison theirbenefactors.
They downed what they could stomach, Yoseh drawing it out. Nogah told him,
"Stalling won't help. You still got to go."
The compound was more crowded than it had been the night before. They edgedaround to one side and that took them past the cause of the increasedcrowding, the pen for the prisoners taken in the maze. "Look," Yoseh said.
"Some of them are just kids."
Four children huddled in a corner of the pen, terrified. Yoseh was not good atguessing veydeen ages but figured them for five or six. Two yards from themlay a dead man. His skin had the waxy look that characterized all theprisoners except the children.
The dead man had a black arrow sticking out of his side. Nogah said, "He musthave tried something on the kids."
Yoseh grunted. He looked at the rest of the captives and decided he did notwant to find out what kind of hell existed deep in the Shu maze.
Yahada admitted them without bothering to announce them, indicating an out-ofthe- way corner where they could squat. They did so. Yoseh was so awed he kepthis gaze fixed upon his hands. His knuckles were bone-white.
Fa'tad's commanders were all crowded into his quarters. They were not discussing the arrival of the civil governor, as Yoseh expected, but what hadbeen learned from several prisoners who had been interrogated already. Havingarrived at the end, Yoseh did not follow it except to understand that duringthe next few days, while the Herodians were preoccupied, Fa'tad meant to scourthe city hidden beneath the Shu.
Yoseh got no sense of why that was important to al-Akla- except that Fa'tadwas now angry because two men had been killed and seven injured during themorning's invasion.
Fa'tad growled something about getting those damned kids out of that pen, hewanted them alive so he could parade them around in search of their parents.
Somebody went to take care of it.
"Yoseh. Come here, youngster."
Shaking, Yoseh rose and approached Fa'tad.
"They tell me you saw your friend from the labyrinth again today."
"Yes sir. He was one of General Cado's bodyguards. The one who stood nearesthim on his right."
"I pay little attention to the decorative people. Why didn't you say somethingat the time, when he was there for all to see?"
"I tried. I was told to keep quiet in ranks. I'm new at this. I have to trustthe judgment of my elders. Silence seemed to be their highest priority."
Fa'tad grinned and snorted. Joab slapped his knee. Nogah looked like he wouldmelt from embarrassment. Al-Akla said, "He's inherited his father's tongue."
Several of the older men chuckled. "Well, young Yoseh. What do you think? Whywould Cado have his bodyguards stealing children?"
"I don't know, sir. The ferrenghi are strange."
"They are indeed. I don't know why, either. It makes no sense. No matter how Ilook at it I can see nothing in it to profit Cado. And no way to find out."
"Maybe it's something the man does on his own, sir."
"Maybe. The ferrenghi are a cruel and corrupt race. You may go. If you seethat man again, drop everything else and find out whatever you can. I'd surelylike to talk with him."
"Yes sir." Yoseh retreated hurriedly.
Nogah was right behind him. "What the hell did you have to go mouthing offlike that for?"
"Sometimes I just can't help myself."
"No one is going to hurt you," the Witch told the child, who could not stopcrying. She could not keep the exasperation out of her voice. "You drink thisand you'll go to sleep for a little while. That's all. When you wake up I'llask you some questions. After that you can go home."
The child's sobs did not slacken, but he looked up at her, wanting to believe, unable to do so.
Torgo extended one huge hand, offering the boy a cup. The child refused it.
"You'll have to force him, Torgo." Always, they had to be compelled. The eunuch did it.
The potion worked quickly. The child fought but soon drifted off. The Witch said, "I wish there was some other way to do this. Why do they fear so much?
We don't mistreat them, do we?" "We treat them better than they get treated at home, my lady. But they're too young to appreciate that."
"I don't need your sarcasm." "Ma'am?"
"I know you don't approve of the way I've been doing this, Torgo. Too gentle- hearted, you think." Torgo did not answer her.
"Come. Get him moved to the catalfique. And get the things ready. You're getting entirely too sloppy. Everything should have been ready before we started."
It was not as if Torgo did not have plenty of time. But he was growing lackadaisical, clearly becoming convinced that they were wasting their time.
The same little fear had begun to gnaw at her heart. Failure after failure, and never a positive to encourage them to go on ... Except the probabilitythat every failure meant that they were a step nearer success.
It was hard to see failure in a positive light.
All was prepared to her satisfaction when the child began to show signs of recovering. She said, "Time for you to go, Torgo." And as he started to leave,
"Has Azel been in today?"
"No, ma'am."
"He'll be back."
Torgo did not reply.
The Witch stepped inside the heavy green velvet tent that enclosed the child. She checked the charcoal to make sure it was burning properly, then begandrinking water she drew from a jar with a tin cup. She drank till her stomachached. She was going to be in that hot tent a long time.
This part was far harder on her than it was on the children. It would take her two days to recover.
She removed a lid covering a silver bowl, used a glistening silver spoon toshake a little of the bowl's contents onto the coals. A sour, bitter smoke puffed up. She leaned back, trying not to inhale too much too soon.
She had to walk the saber's edge now, going into the twilight on the edge of sleep, where the wakening child would be held by the fumes, but remaining sufficiently in control to be able to lead the boy where she wanted him to go., It did not always work. Occasionally she had to do it over. She hated that.