“And they swallow what he tells them?” Husathirn Mueri asked. “They believe him?”

“He’s very persuasive.”

They were in the reception-room of Husathirn Mueri’s imposing house in the Koshmar district of the city, overlooking the bay. “Hard to imagine,” Husathirn Mueri said. “That he’s actually getting children to overcome their prejudice against hjjks. Children dread them. Always have. Great hideous hairy-legged bug-monsters, creeping stealthily around the countryside trying to grab little boys and girls — who wouldn’t despise them? I did. You must have. I had nightmares about hjjks, when I was young. Sweats and screaming. Sometimes I still do.”

“As do I,” said Curabayn Bangkea.

“What’s his secret, then?”

“He’s very gentle. Very tender. They feel his innocence, and children respond to innocence. They like to be with him. He leads them in meditation, and little by little they join with him in chanting. I think he snares their minds somehow with the chanting. He does it so subtly they don’t realize that what he’s selling them is a pack of ugly monsters. When he talks of hjjks, they don’t see real hjjks, I think. What they see is fairy-tale creatures, kindly and sweet. You can make any sort of monster seem sweet, your grace, if you tell the story the right way. And then the children are lost, once he’s made them stop fearing and hating the hjjks. He’s very clever, that boy. He reaches right into their minds and steals them from us.”

“But he can barely speak our language!”

Curabayn Bangkea shook his head. “Not true. He isn’t the uncouth wild man any more that he was when he first came here, not at all. Nialli Apuilana’s done a tremendous job of teaching him. It’s all come back to him. He must have known how to speak our language, you know, when he was young, before he was captured, and he’s found it again, the words, everything. It never really goes from you, when you’re born to it. He sits there — there’s a park he likes to go to, and children meet him there — and he talks of Queen-love, Nest-bond, Thinker-thoughts, Queen-peace, all that filthy hjjk craziness. And they eat it up, your grace. At first they were disgusted by the thought that real people could live in the Nest and like it, that you could touch hjjks and they could touch you and it would somehow seem a loving thing. But by now they believe it. You should see them sitting there with their eyes shining as he pours out his spew.”

“He’s got to be stopped.”

“I think so, yes.”

“I’ll talk with Hresh. No, with Taniane. For all I know, Hresh’ll think it’s utterly fascinating that Kundalimon’s peddling stuff like Queen-love and Nest-bond to little boys and girls. He may applaud the idea. Probably he’s interested in learning more about such things himself. But Taniane will know what to do. She’ll want to find out what sort of creature it is that we’ve allowed into our midst, and what her daughter is spending so much time with, for that matter.”

“There’s another thing, your grace,” said Curabayn Bangkea. “Perhaps you ought to know it before you talk with Taniane.”

“And what is that?”

The guard-captain hesitated a moment. He looked unnerved. At length he said, quickly, with a flat intonation that twanged like an untuned lute, “Nialli Apuilana and the hjjk ambassador have become lovers.”

It struck Husathirn Mueri with the force of a thunderbolt. He sat back, staggered, feeling a sudden ache in the pit of his stomach, a dryness in his throat, a harsh stabbing pain between his eyes.

“ What?Coupling, are they?”

“Like monkeys in heat.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“My brother Eluthayn was on guard duty at Mueri House until recently, you know. One day he passed outside the room of Kundalimon while she was with him. The sounds that he heard from in there — the thumpings, the gaspings, the passionate outcries—”

“And if she was teaching him kick-wrestling?”

“I don’t think so, your grace.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because when Eluthayn reported this thing to me, your grace, I went to the door myself and listened. I tell you, I know the sounds of coupling from the sounds of kick-wrestling. I’ve done a little coupling myself, your grace. And some kick-wrestling too, for that matter.”

“But she won’t couple with anyone! That’s well known all around town!”

“She’s been in the Nest,” Curabayn Bangkea said. “Perhaps she was only waiting for someone else with the flavor of hjjks all over his fur to come along.”

Wild images leaped unbidden to Husathirn Mueri’s mind, Kundalimon’s hand between Nialli Apuilana’s smooth thighs, Kundalimon’s lips to her breasts, her eyes flickering with excitement and eagerness, their bodies coming together, their sensing-organs thrashing about, Nialli Apuilana turning to present her swollen sexual parts to him—

No. No. No. No.

“You’re mistaken,” he said, after a while. “They’re doing something else in there. Whatever sounds you heard—”

“It wasn’t the sounds, your grace.”

“I don’t understand.”

“As you say, the evidence of the ears alone isn’t enough. So I drilled a small observation hole in the wall of the room alongside his.”

“You spied on her?”

“On him, your grace. On him. He was in my custody then, may I remind you. It was correct for me to ascertain the nature of his activities. I observed him. She was there. It wasn’t kick-wrestling that they were doing, your grace. Not when he had his hands on her—”

“Enough.”

“I can assure you—”

Husathirn Mueri held up his hand. “By Nakhaba, enough, man! I don’t want to hear the sordid details.” He struggled to calm himself. “I’ll take it on faith,” he said coldly, “that your report is accurate. Close your spy-hole and don’t drill any new ones. Come to me daily with accounts of the ambassador’s preachings among the young.”

“And if I see him with Nialli Apuilana, your grace? In the street, I mean. Or in some public dining-hall. Or anywhere else, however innocent. Shall I tell you about that too?”

“Yes,” said Husathirn Mueri. “Tell me about that too.”

“I want to go into the Nest with you,” Nialli Apuilana said. “To feel Nest-bond again. To speak Nest-truths.”

“You will. When the time comes. When my work here is done.”

“No. I mean here, today, now.”

It was a quiet afternoon. The warm humid summer was over, and a strong autumn wind was blowing, hot but dry and crisp, out of the south. She and Kundalimon had coupled, and now they lay curled close together on his couch with limbs still entangled, grooming each other’s rumpled fur.

He said, “Now? How can that be?”

She gave him a wary look. Had she misjudged the moment? Was twining, was any sort of soul-intimacy, still as frightening to him as it had been at the beginning? He had changed so much since he had begun going out by himself into the city. He seemed different now in so many ways, stronger, less tense, more assured of himself in his flesh-folk identity. But still she was uneasy about risking his trust by crossing the unspoken boundaries that had been established between them.

He seemed calm, though. He watched her with easy, gentle eyes.

Cautiously she said, “You can guide me through your Nest-memories. By the touching of minds.”

“You mean the twining,” he said.

She hesitated. “That would be one way. Or through using our second sight.”

“You often speak of second sight. But I don’t know what that is.”

“A way of seeing — of perceiving the depths that lie beyond the surface of things—” Nialli Apuilana shook her head. “You’ve never felt yourself doing it? But everyone can do it. Young children, even. Although perhaps in the Nest, with no other flesh-folk minds around to show you what your own mind was capable of—”