This private room was like an extension of the young Dalai Lama’s throne—gold and gilt and silk brocade and wildly ornate tapestries with reversed swastikas embroidered everywhere amid images of opening flowers and curling dragons and spinning mandalas. The doors closed behind us and the sounds of the party would have been shut out completely except for the audio pickups of three video monitors set in the wall to our left.

Real-time video of the party was being fed in from different locations around the Main Reception Hall and the boy on the throne and his guests were watching it raptly. We paused until the Lord Chamberlain gestured us forward again. He whispered to us as we approached the throne and the Dalai Lama turned in our direction. “It is not necessary to bow until His Holiness raises his hand. Then please bow forward until after he releases his touch.”

We paused three paces from the raised throne platform with its shimmering quilts and draped cushions. Carl Linga William Eiheji, the Chief Crier, said in soft but resonant tones, “Your Holiness, the architect in charge of construction at Hsuan-k’ung Ssu and her assistant.”

Her assistant? I moved forward a step behind Aenea, confused, but grateful that the Crier had not announced our names. I could see the five Pax figures out of the corner of my eye, but protocol demanded that I keep my gaze directed toward the Dalai Lama but lowered.

Aenea stopped at the edge of the high throne platform, her arms still held in front of her, the scarf taut between her hands. The Lord Chamberlain set several objects on the scarf and the boy reached forward and whisked them off quickly, setting them to his right on the platform. When the objects were gone, a servant stepped forward and took away the white scarf. Aenea put her hands together as if in prayer and bowed forward. The boy’s smile was gentle as he leaned forward and touched my friend—my beloved—on the head, setting his fingers like a crown on her brown hair. I realized that it was a blessing. When he removed his fingers, he lifted a red scarf from a stack by his side and set it in Aenea’s left hand. Then he took her right hand and shook it, his smile broadening. The Lord Chamberlain gestured for Aenea to stand in front of the Regent’s lower throne as I stepped forward and went through the same quick ceremony with the Dalai Lama.

I just had time to notice that the objects set on the white scarf by the Lord Chamberlain and whisked away by the Dalai Lama included a small gold relief in the shape of three mountains, representing the world of T’ien Shan Aenea later explained, an image of a human body, a stylized book representing speech, and a chorten, or temple, shape representing the mind. The appearing and disappearing act was over before I had time to pay more attention to it, and then the red scarf was in one hand while the boy’s tiny hand was in my large one. His handshake was surprisingly firm. My gaze was lowered, but I could still make out his broad smile. I stepped back next to Aenea.

The same ceremony was quickly performed with the Regent—white scarf, symbolic objects placed and removed, red scarf. But the Regent did not shake hands with either of us. When we had received the Regent’s blessing, the Lord Chamberlain gestured for us to raise our heads and gazes.

I almost made a grab for the flashlight laser and started firing wildly. Besides the Dalai Lama, his monk servants, the Lord Chamberlain, the Regent, the State Oracle, the Crier, the short Cardinal, the three men in black cassocks, there was a woman in a black-and-red Pax Fleet uniform. She had just stepped around a tall priest so we could see her face for the first time. Her dark eyes were fixed on Aenea. The woman’s hair was short and hung over her pale forehead in limp bangs. Her skin was sallow. Her gaze was reptilian—simultaneously remote and rapt.

It was the thing that had tried to kill Aenea, A. Bettik, and me on God’s Grove some five of my years—more than ten of Aenea’s—ago. It was the inhuman killing device that had defeated the Shrike and would have carried Aenea’s head away in a bag had it not been for the intervention of Father Captain de Soya in his orbiting spacecraft; he had used the full fusion power of the ship to lance the monster downward into a cauldron of bubbling, molten rock.

And here it was again, its black, inhuman eyes fixed on Aenea’s face. It had obviously sought her across the years and light-years, and now it had her. It had us.

My heart was pounding and my legs felt suddenly weak, but through the shock my mind was working like an AI. The flashlight laser was tucked in a pocket in the right side of my cape. The com unit was in my left trouser pocket. With my right hand I would flash the cutting beam into the woman-thing’s eyes, then flick the selector to broad and blind the Pax priests. With my left hand I would trigger the squirt command to send the prerecorded message via tightbeam to the ship. But even if the ship responded immediately and was not intercepted by a Pax warship on its flight, it would be several minutes before it could descend through the palace skylight. We would be dead by then. And I knew the speed of this thing—it simply had disappeared when it fought the Shrike, a chrome blur. I would never get the flashlight laser or com unit out of my pockets. We would be dead before my hand made it halfway to the weapon. I froze, realizing that although Aenea must have recognized the woman at once, she had not reacted with the shock I felt. To outward appearances, she had not reacted at all. Her smile remained. Her gaze had passed over the Pax visitors—including the monster—and then returned to the boy on the throne.

It was Regent Reting Tokra who spoke first. “Our guests asked for this audience. They heard from His Holiness of the reconstruction going on at the Temple Hanging in Air and wished to meet the young woman who had designed the construction.”

The Regent’s voice was as pinched and ungiving as his appearance.

The Dalai Lama spoke then and his boy’s voice was soft but as generous as the Regent’s had been guarded. “My friends,” he said, gesturing toward Aenea and me, “may I introduce our distinguished visitors from the Pax. John Domenico Cardinal Mustafa of the Catholic Church’s Holy Office, Archbishop Jean Daniel Breque of the Papal Diplomatic Corps, Father Martin Farrell, Father Gerard LeBlanc, and Commander Rhadamanth Nemes of the Noble Guard.”

We nodded. The Pax dignitaries—including the monster—nodded. If there was a breech of protocol by His Holiness the Dalai Lama doing the introductions, no one seemed to notice.

John Domenico Cardinal Mustafa said in a silken voice, “Thank you, Your Holiness. But you have introduced these exceptional people only as the architect and her assistant.” The Cardinal smiled at us, showing small, sharp teeth. “You have names, perhaps?”

My pulse was racing. The fingers of my right hand twitched at the thought of the flashlight laser. Aenea was still smiling but showed no sign of answering the Cardinal. My mind galloped to come up with aliases. But why? Certainly they knew who we were. All this was a trap. The Nemes thing would never let us leave this throne room… or would be waiting for us when we did.

Surprisingly, it was the boy Dalai Lama who spoke again. “I would be pleased to complete my introductions, Your Eminence. Our esteemed architect is called Ananda and her assistant—one of many skilled assistants I am told—is called Subhadda.”

I admit that I blinked at this. Had someone told the Dalai Lama these names? Aenea had told me that Ananda had been the Buddha’s foremost disciple and a teacher in his own right; Subhadda had been a wandering ascetic who had become the Buddha’s last direct disciple, becoming a follower after meeting him just hours before he died. She also told me that the Dalai Lama had come up with these names for our introduction, apparently appreciating the irony in them. I failed to see the humor.