That was something new. “Nialli, is that her name?”

“Nialli Apuilana, yes. A difficult and unruly girl.”

“What else could be expected but unruliness and difficulty, from the child of Taniane and Hresh?” Salaman smiled grimly. “I knew Hresh when he was a boy, when we were in the cocoon. A mad little child he was, forever doing forbidden things. Well, so this Nialli Apuilana went insane and vanished. And the delay in your setting out, then — a period of mourning, was it?”

“Oh, she’s not dead,” said Gardinak Cheysz. “Though I hear it was a close thing. They found her raving and feverish in the swamps east of the city, a few days later, and the offering-woman nursed her back to health. But it was touch and go for days, they say. Taniane could deal with nothing else. Not a shred of government business transacted all the while the girl lay ill. Our permit to depart lay on her desk, and lay there, and there it lay, unsigned. And Hresh — he nearly went out of his mind himself. He locked himself up in the tower where he keeps all his old chronicles and hardly came out at all, and when he did he said nothing to anyone about anything.”

Salaman shook his head. “Hresh,” he muttered, with mingled respect and contempt. “There’s no mind like his in all the world. But a man can be brilliant and a fool all at once, I suppose.”

“There’s more,” said Gardinak Cheysz.

“Go on, then.”

“I mentioned the dead hjjk emissary, Kundalimon. They’ve begun to make him into a god in Dawinno. Or at least a demigod.”

“A god?” the king said, blinking several times very quickly. “What do you mean, a god?”

“Shrines. Chapels of worship, even. He’s considered a prophet, a bearer of revelation, a — I can hardly tell you what. It goes beyond my understanding. There’s a cult, that’s all I can tell you, sire. It seems absurd to me. But it’s caused tremendous commotion. Taniane, when she finally would turn her attention to something other than her daughter, sent out word that the new religion was to be suppressed.”

“I’d have credited her with more sense than that.”

“Exactly. They thrive under persecution. As she quickly discovered. The original order for suppression has already been rescinded, sire. The guards were trying to find the places where this Kundalimon is worshiped — there’s a new captain of guards, by the way, one Chevkija Aim, a young Beng, very ambitious and ruthless — and they were attempting to eradicate them. They’d desecrate the shrines, they’d arrest the worshipers. But it was impossible. The people wouldn’t stand for it. Therefore the persecutions have been called off, and the cultists’ numbers are growing from day to day. It’s happened so fast you wouldn’t believe it. Before we could leave for Yissou we had to take an oath that we weren’t believers ourselves.”

“And what’s this new faith all about, can you say?”

“I tell you, sire, such things are beyond me. The best I can make it out, it calls for surrender to the hjjks.”

“Surrender — to — the — hjjks?” Salaman said, slowly, incredulously.

“Yes, sire. Accepting Queen-love, sire. Whatever that may mean. You may know, the boy Kundalimon came bearing a proposal of a treaty of peace with the hjjks that would have divided the continent between us and them, with the boundary—”

“Yes. I know about that.”

“Well, the cult leaders are calling for immediate signing of the treaty. And more than that: for establishment of regular peaceful contact between the City of Dawinno and the land of the hjjks, with certain hjjks known as Nest-thinkers invited to live among us, as the treaty requires. So that we can come to understand their holy teachings. So that we can come to comprehend the wisdom of the Queen.”

Salaman stared. “This is madness.”

“So it is, my lord. And that’s why the caravan was delayed, because everything’s up in the air in the city. Perhaps it’s a little quieter by now. By the time we finally left, the chieftain’s daughter had apparently recovered — the story is going around that she’s become a leader of the new cult, by the way, but perhaps that’s only a story — and that gave Taniane time for government affairs again. And Hresh has reappeared too. So it may be that things are getting back to normal. But it was a hard few weeks, let me tell you, sire.”

“I imagine so. Anything else?”

“Only that we’ve brought eleven wagons full of fine goods, and look forward to a happy visit in your city.”

“Good. Good. We’ll talk again tomorrow, perhaps, Gardinak Cheysz. I want to hear all this a second time, by daylight, to see if it seems any more real to me then.” He grimaced and threw his hands high. “Make peace with the hjjks! Invite them to Dawinno so that they can teach their philosophy! Can you believe it?” He reached under his sash, pulled out a pouch filled with exchange-units of the City of Dawinno, and tossed it to Gardinak Cheysz. The spy caught it deftly and saluted. His drooping mouth jerked upward in what might have been an attempt at a smile, and he went from the room.

The same night, in a tavern in another part of the city. Esperasagiot, Dumanka, and a few other members of the crew of the caravan that brought Thu-Kimnibol to Yissou have gotten together with some of the newcomers. The hour is late. The wine has been going down freely. They are all old friends. The men of Thu-Kimnibol’s crew had often served in the regular merchant caravans that pass between the two cities. Among those who came in today was Esperasagiot’s brother, Thihaliminion, nearly as good a hand with xlendis as Esperasagiot himself. Thihaliminion had been wagon-master to the caravan that has just arrived.

There are some local folk in the party, too — a harness-maker named Gheppilin, and Zechtior Lukin, a meat-cutter, and Lisspar Moen, a woman whose trade is the making of fine porcelain dishes. Friends of Dumanka’s, they are. New friends.

Thihaliminion has been speaking for some time of the sudden rash of unusual events in the City of Dawinno: the murders, the disappearance and subsequent madness of the chieftain’s daughter, the emergence of the new cult of Kundalimon. Laughing into his wine, he says, “It’s like the end of the world. Everything is going strange at once.” He shakes his helmeted head. “But why am I laughing? It’s no laughing matter!”

“Ah, but it is,” says Dumanka. “When all else has gone foul, laughter still remains. When the gods send us disaster, what else can we do but laugh? Weeping won’t heal anything. Laughter at least buries our sorrows in merriment.”

“You were ever a mocker, Dumanka,” Thihaliminion tells the quartermaster. “You take nothing seriously.”

“On the contrary, brother,” Esperasagiot says. “Dumanka is one of the most serious men I know, behind that bawdy grin of his.”

“Then let him be serious, if he will. What’s happening in Dawinno is serious stuff, as you’ll find out when you get back there. It’s easy enough to laugh when you’re hundreds of leagues away.”

“Brother, he meant no offense! It’s only his way, don’t you see? He was only making sport with words.”

“No,” Dumanka says. “That wasn’t what I was doing.”

“No?” Esperasagiot says, frowning.

“I was being as serious as I know how to be, my friend. If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll explain myself.”

“We’re all wasting our breath with this talk,” Thihaliminion says, in something like a growl. “We could be drinking instead of talking.”

“No. Give me a moment. I think this is no waste of breath at all,” Dumanka says, and the others look at him, for they have never heard the quartermaster speak so solemnly before. “I said we should laugh when the gods send us misery, rather than weep, and I think I’m right about that. Or if not to laugh, then to shrug; for what good is it to moan and grumble over the will of the gods? These people here—”

“Enough, Dumanka,” Thihaliminion says, a little too sharply.