Tightly Thu-Kimnibol said, “You make me think my mission’s pointless, cousin. You tell me to my face that I speak for a nation of cowards.”

There has been a sudden shift in mood. The two men stare at each other in a way that is very much less friendly than it was only a little while before. The rebuke hangs in the air between them for a long silent moment. Down below, the feast is still going on: harsh sounds, sounds of rending and crunching, drift upward on the cool evening air.

Salaman says, “It was weeks ago that you said you’re here to propose an alliance, that Dawinno wants to join forces with us and make war against the hjjks. Exterminate them like vermin, that’s what you said you’d like to do. Fine. Excellent. And now you put forth this pretty vision of our two armies joining and marching north. Splendid, cousin. But forgive me if I’m skeptical. I know what people are like in Dawinno. Alliance or no alliance, how can I be sure that your people will actually come up here and fight? What I want is a guarantee that you can deliver the army of Dawinno to me. Can you give me that guarantee, Thu-Kimnibol?”

“I think I can.”

“Think-you-can isn’t good enough. Take another look down there, cousin. See them gnawing and grinding their comrade’s flesh. Can you make your people see what you see now? Those are hjjks, just a few hours’ ride from my city. Every year there are more of them. Every year they get a little closer.” Salaman laughs bitterly. “What does it matter to the people of Dawinno that the hjjks are camped on our doorstep, eh? It’s the flesh of our sons and daughters, not theirs, that they’ll be feeding on one of these days, eh, cousin? Do they realize, down south, that when the hjjks are through here, they’ll go on to pounce on Dawinno? Their appetites can’t be checked. They’ll go south, sure as anything. If not right away, then twenty, thirty, fifty years from now. Are your people capable of looking that far ahead?”

“Some of us are. Which is why I’m here.”

“Yes. This famous alliance. But when I ask you if Dawinno will really fight, you give me no answer.”

Salaman’s eyes are bright with fierce energy, now. They drill remorselessly into Thu-Kimnibol’s. Thu-Kimnibol’s head is beginning to ache. Diplomatic lies are on the tip of his tongue, but he forces them back. This is the moment for utter honesty. That too can sometimes be a useful tool.

Bluntly he says, “You must have good spies in Dawinno, cousin.”

“They do a decent job. How strong is your peace faction, will you tell me?”

“Not strong enough to get anywhere.”

“So you actually think your people will go to war against the hjjks when the time comes?”

“I do.”

“What if you overestimate them?”

“What if you underestimate them?” Thu-Kimnibol asks. He stares down at the king from his great height atop his xlendi. “They’ll fight. I give you my own guarantee on that, cousin. One way or another, I’ll bring you an army.” He points with a jabbing finger into the canyon. “I’ll find a way of making them see what I see now. I’ll wake them up and turn them into fighters. You have my pledge on that.”

A disheartening look of continuing skepticism flickers across Salaman’s face. But almost immediately other things seem to be mixed into it: eagerness, hope, a willingness to believe. Then the whole mixture vanishes and the king’s expression once more becomes guarded, stony, gruff.

“This needs further discussion,” he says. “Not here. Not now. Come. Or we’ll be riding back in the dark.”

Darkness was indeed upon them by the time they reached the city. Torches blazed atop the wall, and when Salaman’s son Chham rode out from the eastern gate to greet them the look of anxiety on his face was unmistakable.

The king laughed it away. “I took our cousin out toward Vengiboneeza, so that he could smell the breeze that blows from that direction. But we were never in danger.”

“The Protector be thanked,” Chham exclaimed.

Then, turning to Thu-Kimnibol: “There’s a messenger here from your city, lord prince. He says he’s been riding day and night, and it must be true, for the xlendi he arrived on was so worn out it looked more dead than alive.”

Thu-Kimnibol frowned. “Where is he now?”

Chham nodded toward the gate. “Waiting in your chamber, lord prince.”

The messenger was a Beng, one of the guardsmen of the justiciary, a younger brother of the guard-captain Curabayn Bangkea. Thu-Kimnibol recalled having seen him on duty at the Basilica now and then. Eluthayn was his name, and he looked ragged and worn indeed, a thin shadow of himself, close to the point of breaking down from fatigue. It was all he could do to stammer out his message. Which was a startling one indeed.

Salaman came to him a little while afterward.

“You look troubled, cousin. The news must be bad.”

“Suddenly there seems to be an epidemic of murder in my city.”

“Murder?”

“During our holy festival, no less. Two killings. One was the captain of our city guard, the older brother of this messenger. The other was the boy the hjjks sent to us carrying the terms of the treaty they were offering.”

“The hjjk envoy? Who’d kill him? What for?”

“Who can say?” Thu-Kimnibol shook his head. “The boy was harmless, or so it seemed to me. The other one — well, he was a fool, but if simply being a fool is reason to be murdered, the streets would run red with blood. There’s no sense to any of this.” He frowned and went to the window, and stared off into the shadowy courtyard for a time. Then he turned toward Salaman. “We may have to break off our negotiations.”

“You’ve been recalled, have you?”

“The messenger said nothing about that. But with things like this going on there—”

“Things like what? A couple of murders?” Salaman chuckled. “An epidemic, you call that?”

“You may have five killings here every day, cousin. But we aren’t used to such things.”

“Nor are we. But two killings hardly seems—”

“The guard-captain. The envoy. A messenger racing all this way to tell me. Why is that? Does Taniane think the hjjks will retaliate? Maybe that’s it — maybe they think there might be trouble, maybe even a hjjk raid on Dawinno—”

“We killed the envoy that was sent to us, cousin, and we never heard a thing about it. You people are too excitable, that’s the problem.” Salaman stretched a hand toward Thu-Kimnibol. “If you haven’t been officially recalled, stay right where you are, that’s my advice. Taniane and her Presidium can take care of this murder business without you. We have work of our own to do here, and it’s only barely begun. Stay in Yissou, cousin. That’s what I think.”

Thu-Kimnibol nodded. “You’re right. What’s been happening in Dawinno is no affair of mine. And we have work to do.”

Alone in his chambers atop the House of Knowledge in the early hours of the night, Hresh tries to come to terms with it all. Two days have gone by since Nialli Apuilana’s disappearance. Taniane is convinced that she is somewhere close at hand, that she’s gone into seclusion until her grief has burned itself out. Squadrons of guardsmen are at work combing the city for her, and the outlying districts.

But no one has seen her. And Hresh is convinced that no one will.

She has fled to the Queen: of that he’s sure. If she reaches them safely, he thought, she’ll spend the rest of her life among them. A citizen of the Nest of Nests, that’s what she’ll be. If she thinks of her native city at all, it’ll be only to curse it as the place where the man she loved was murdered. It’s the hjjks that she loves now. It’s the hjjks, Hresh tells himself, to whom she belongs. But why? Why?

What power do they have over her? what spell did they use to pull her toward them?