He sighed and called out for a servant. Moments later a bent, older Hikeda’ya whose name Viyeki always had difficulty remembering crept in on silent, bare feet.

“Please remind Lady Khimabu that I am called to attend the queen herself at the evening bell, may she reign over us always,” Viyeki told him. “I do not know when I will return, because I will be at the disposal of the Mother of All, so please give my wife my most sincere regrets and bid her dine without me.”

The servant bowed and withdrew. The interruptions had long ago sent the birds swooping back up the shaft, so the pond was again still. For a moment Viyeki hoped he might calm his thoughts once more and try to find a measure of peace, but the garden now seemed corrupted, the shaft of falling light too harshly bright, the pond too shallow, as though the darkness that had been lurking in his heart since the summons now touched his eyes and ears as well.

Why do I fear the one who has given us so much? What is wrong with me that I cannot unreservedly love and trust our queen, who protects us against a world that hates us?

Viyeki could find no answer to that. He stood, straightened his clothing, and went in search of his mortal concubine, hoping that she had returned by now from the market outside the gates.

•   •   •

As they lay naked in her narrow bed, the great stone bell in the distant Temple of Martyrs tolled once for the mid-hour.

“I must rise again,” said Viyeki.

“I look forward to that.”

“Don’t be wicked, Tzoja. I am called to the queen.” But he did not wish to leave her embrace. Her warm skin against his seemed a sort of magic that defeated worry. How strange, he thought, that this mortal slave, this savage, short-lived creature from despised Rimmersgard, should be able to bring him peace when nothing and no one else could.

“Then you must go, of course,” she said. “Surely you won’t refuse?”

“Refuse?” Viyeki almost laughed, but the surprise of it was like a stumble while walking on a thin bridge above an abyss—even to be amused was to be reminded of the depths that yawned beneath him. “I know you are ignorant of many things, little mortal, but any other of my people would strike you for that. Refuse the queen? I might as well tear my heart out of my breast and step on it.”

“But surely you have nothing to fear from her, my great lord. While she slept, you have done everything she would wish and done it well.” Tzoja sat up a little, resting on one elbow, and her breasts settled against his arm. Viyeki reached out and let his finger trail across them. How innocent she was! And how little she knew of the thorny tangle that was life in the queen’s service. “Even I have done my part,” she said brightly. “Did I not provide her with a warrior for our great Order of Sacrifice?”

“Do not jest!”

Tzoja frowned. Her dark hair was disarranged and damp with sweat. She shook the strands out of her face. “I didn’t intend to, my lord. Together we made a daughter so clever and capable that she was chosen to be a Queen’s Talon at a younger age than any other. Your true wife cannot make such a claim—although she treats me as if she birthed Nezeru and I only order supper for you.”

“Enough,” said Viyeki. Why did everyone seek to trouble him today? “We will speak of this no longer. Our laws come from the Garden itself and are not to be disputed. If anyone hears you speak this way you will die in pain and there will be nothing I can do to save you.”

Tzoja fell silent. Viyeki nodded his approval. Mortals, even the cleverest ones, were like the birds of the meadows, chattering and piping at all hours. But this one still charmed him, he had to admit, even as the first signs of her mortality began to show on her face and body. Even in the brief bloom of her youth she had never possessed anything like the icy beauty of his wife Khimabu, but something in her had drawn him from the first. Tzoja’s youth was fading now, in the same way the end of summer taught the edges of the leaves to curl, but the thing that had drawn Viyeki—the thing that even now he could not name—still burned in her every glance, every movement.

Is it that mystery itself that fascinates me? he wondered. Or the terrifying pleasure of something stolen, something forbidden? After all, if any of his underlings saw him this way, talking freely with a mortal animal as if she were the equal of a Hikeda’ya, they would denounce him immediately.

Thus the problem with climbing to a great height, he thought, weary already, and with the true ordeal still ahead. All the more can look at you with envy, and the height of the waiting fall grows with each upward step.

He rose from her bed and began to dress.

“I will miss you, my lord,” she said. “My days are lonely.”

He ignored her. She always said such things after they coupled. He did not know how to respond, any more than he would if his warhorse or hunting owl should speak to him the same way.

When he had pulled his robe tight and belted it, Viyeki patted himself to make sure he carried no weapon or other implement forbidden to the queen’s visitors. He wholeheartedly approved this ban, but it also seemed a bit foolish: after all, who would be so mad as to dare attack Utuk’ku the Ever-Living? And not only because of the constant presence of her personal guards, the Queen’s Teeth, the finest warriors in Nakkiga. No, the most daunting of all Utuk’ku’s defenses was the queen herself. Nobody living could even guess at the limits of her power. The Hikeda’ya’s immortal monarch inspired the reverence of all her people, but she inspired fear as well and in even the most potent of her underlings.

Viyeki was still annoyed with Tzoja for her irresponsible questions; he left her rooms without the usual sentimental exchange she so valued.

•   •   •

The royal summoner’s torch bobbed before him, serving more as a ritual banner than a source of light. Trailed by his secretary Yemon and a small contingent of his household guards, Viyeki followed the messenger up the great open stairway toward the third tier and the palace, past the dimly glowing expanse of the White Gardens, which stood on a high stone island midway between the tiers. Viyeki had always found the fungus gardens soothing. Once he had even brought Tzoja to see them, but instead of understanding, his mortal concubine had been disturbed by the forest of snaking, dead-white stems, the delicately spreading fans and huge parasol caps that nodded in even the smallest shift of air. She had told Viyeki they made her think of writhing worms in a shovel full of dark, moist earth, and had pressed him to take her out again after only a short time. He had been disappointed, almost irritated, at her inability to recognize the sublime beauty of the place, but Tzoja was only a mortal, after all. Small wonder she saw death and decay in everything.

Still, Viyeki would have given much to be walking in those gardens now, even with an unappreciative companion.

As the royal messenger led them upward, an almost imperceptible breeze lifted a cloud of spores that drifted to the summons party and swirled with every step they took. He found himself recalling what the poet Lu’uya had written about this very spot:

“When earthstar and snowtongue send up their seed, I walk the naked night, constellations dancing around my feet.”

More than a dozen Great Years had passed since Lu’uya’s death—almost eight mortal centuries—but what she had written of the White Garden was still true. The unchanging nature of Nakkiga was its greatest beauty.

As they drew closer and closer to the palace, uneasy thoughts followed Viyeki’s every step like Sun’y’asu’s beggars. He wanted to believe this summons was only part of ordinary protocol, the awakened queen summoning her highest ministers to an audience, but Viyeki knew that he had greater crimes on his conscience than simply reading forbidden verses.