Husathirn Mueri looked away. “My mother was offering-woman before her, did you know that? Torlyri. It was in the old days, in Vengiboneeza. Who’ll be offering-woman now, I wonder? Will there even be a new one? Does anyone still know the rituals and the talismans?”

“These are strange days, sir.”

“Strange indeed.”

They fell silent.

“How quiet the city is,” Husathirn Mueri said. “Everyone gone to fight the war except you and me. Or so it seems.”

“Our duties prevented us, sir,” said Chevkija Aim tactfully. “Even in wartime, there has to be a justiciary, there have to be guardsmen in the city.”

“You know I oppose the war, Chevkija Aim.”

“Then it’s best that your duties here kept you from having to go. You wouldn’t have been able to fight well, feeling as you do.”

“And would you have gone, if you could?”

“I attend the chapels now, sir. You know that. I share your hatred of the war. I yearn only for the coming of Queen-peace to bring love to our troubled world.”

Husathirn Mueri’s eyes widened. “Do you? Yes, you do: I forgot. You follow Kundalimon’s teachings now too. Everyone does, I suppose, who’s still here. The warriors have gone to war and the peace-lovers stay behind. As it should be. Where will it all end, do you think?”

“In Queen-peace, sir. In Queen-love for all.”

“I surely hope so.”

But do I? Husathirn Mueri wondered. His surrender to the new faith, if surrender was what it really was, still mystified him. He went regularly to the chapel; he chanted in rote, repeating the scriptures that Tikharein Tourb and Chhia Kreun recited; and it seemed to him that he felt something close to a religious exaltation as he did. That was an experience entirely new to him. But he had never been sure of his own sincerity. It was only one of the many strangenesses of these days, that he should find himself kneeling to chant the praises of the Queen of Queens, that he should be praying to the monstrous hjjks to deliver the world from its anguish.

He looked toward the hall, as if hopeful that some gaggle of angry merchants would burst in, waving a clutch of legal papers and crying curses at each other. But the Basilica was quiet.

“An empty city,” he said, as much to himself as to the guard-captain. “The young men gone. The old dying off. Taniane wanders about like her own ghost. The Presidium never meets. Hresh is gone, who knows where? Hunting for mysteries in the swamps, I suppose. Or flying off on his Wonderstone to the Nest to have a chat with the Queen. That would be like him, something like that. The House of Knowledge empty except for the one girl who hasn’t gone off to the war. Even Nialli Apuilana’s gone to the war.” Husathirn Mueri felt a pang of sadness at that thought. He had watched her ride away, the day the troops departed, standing proudly beside Thu-Kimnibol, waving excitedly. The girl was mad, no doubt of that. First telling everyone what wondrous godlike beings the hjjks were, and involving herself in that affair with the envoy Kundalimon after rejecting every logical mate the city had to offer, and then joining the army and going off to fight against the Queen: it made no sense. Nothing that Nialli Apuilana had done had ever made sense.

Just as well, Husathirn Mueri thought, that she and I never became lovers. She might have pulled me down into her madness with her.

But it still made him ache to think of her, mad or not.

Chevkija Aim said, “I think we could close the Basilica, sir. No one came yesterday when Puit Kjai was here, and I think no one will come today. And you’d be able to pay your respects to Boldirinthe before it’s too late.”

“Boldirinthe,” Husathirn Mueri said. “Yes. I ought go to her.” He rose from the justiciary throne. “Very well. The court is adjourned, Chevkija Aim.”

Ascending the spiral path from the Queen-chamber should have been more taxing than the descent; but to his surprise Hresh found himself oddly vigorous, almost buoyant, and he strode briskly along behind Nest-thinker, easily keeping pace step for step as they rose from that deep well of mysteries toward the by now familiar domain of the upper Nest.

Strange exaltation lingered in him after his meeting with the Queen of Queens.

A formidable creature, yes. That pallid gigantic thing, that quivering continent of monstrously ancient flesh. Hundreds of years old, was She? Thousands? He couldn’t begin to guess. That She had survived from the time of the Great World he doubted, though it was possible. Anything was possible here. He saw now more deeply than ever before how alien the hjjks were, how little like his own kind in nearly every respect.

And yet they were “human,” he thought, human in that peculiar special sense that he had long ago conceived: they maintained a sense of past and future, they understood life as a process, an unfolding, they were capable of the conscious transmission of historical tradition from generation to generation. The little flitting garaboons gibbering in the forest added nothing to nothing, and ended with nothing. That was true of all the beasts below the human level, the gorynths wallowing in their oozy swamps, the angry chattering samarangs, the jewel-eyed khut-flies, and the rest. They might as well be stones. To be human, Hresh thought, is to be aware of time and seasons, to gather and store knowledge and to transmit it, above all to build and to maintain. In that sense the People were human; even the caviandis were human; and in that sense the hjjks were human too. Human didn’t simply mean one who belonged to that mysterious ancient race of pale tailless creatures. It was something broader, something far more universal. And it included the hjjks.

To Nest-thinker he said, “That was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I thank the gods I could live long enough to reach this day.”

The hjjk made no reply.

“Will I be summoned to Her again, do you think?” Hresh asked.

“You will be if you are,” said Nest-thinker. “That is when you will know.”

There seemed to be a surliness to Nest-thinker’s tone. Hresh wondered if the hjjk envied the depth of the communion he had achieved with the Queen. But there was danger in attributing People emotions to things that hjjks might say.

They were near the upper level now. Hresh recognized certain artifacts set in niches in the wall, a smooth white stone that looked almost like a huge egg, and a plaited star like the one Nialli had had, but much larger, and a small red jewel that burned with a brilliant inner flame. He had noticed them when he began his descent. Holy hjjk talismans, perhaps. Or perhaps mere decorations.

Since coming to the Nest Hresh had lived in an austere cubicle in an outlying corridor, structure — a kind of isolation ward, perhaps, for strangers from outside. It was a round chamber with a low flat ceiling and a thin scatter of dried reeds on its hard-packed earthen floor to serve him as a bed; but it was comfortable enough for his undemanding needs. He looked forward to it now. A time to rest, a time to think about what he’d just undergone. Perhaps later they’d bring him a meal of some sort, the dried fruit and bits of sun-parched meat that seemed to be the only fare in this place and to which he had adapted without difficulty.

Now they had reached the head of the spiral ramp, the place where they re-entered the upper level. Nest-thinker turned here, not to the left where Hresh’s cubicle was, but in the other direction entirely. Hresh lingered behind, wondering if his sense of direction had misled him again, as it had so many times during his stay here. This time he was sure, though. His chamber lay to the left. Nest-thinker, by now a dozen paces away, swung about and looked back, and gestured brusquely to him.