Tarrano the Conqueror, page 118 by Raymond King Cummings
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tampered with, that none of these events should be shown.
There were, scattered throughout the festival, fully a hundred men of Tarrano's guard. Some of them I knew by their uniforms; others were concealed by red masks and robes like myself. When first we entered the pavilion, some twenty or thirty of them had been there with us. But many of them did not stay; and now I remembered that, one by one, I had seen them slip away, lured by the slim, white shapes of girls who came from the pool to beguile them.
I realized now that these girls of the scented pool were very possibly all working for Maida. Most daring of all at the festival, these fifty girls who now disported themselves in the water at my feet. All beautiful, none beyond the first flush of earliest maturity. Slight, grey-white nymphs, laughing as they discarded their hampering veils, tossing their white hair as they plunged into the shimmering pool. Seemingly the most seductive, most abandoned of everyone.
Yet, as I stood there, I saw three of them climb from the water and, with gay shouts, rush into the pavilion. Back in a moment; and with them a flushed man--one of Tarrano's guards--flushed and flattered at their attention. His hat was gone, his robe disheveled, as the girls fought for him. They stopped quite close to me; and I saw that one of them was Alda.
"You shall not have him!" she shouted to her companions. "He is mine! He loves me--none of you!"
From her thick hair I saw her draw a tiny cylinder, wave it in the man's face. And, with another laugh, she flung her arms around his neck and fell with him into the water. I watched the splash and the ripples where they went down. In a moment, the girl came up--but the man did not. In all the confusion of the crowded pool, it was not very obvious.
A dozen, perhaps, of such incidents, which now, that I was alert to understand, were apparent. The mirrors might have shown some of them--but the mirrors always went dark just in time.
Tarrano's guards