“I can see it in the air around you.”
Salaman shrugged. “We’re not to have any of the Great World weapons, that’s all. Thu-Kimnibol must keep them for himself.”
“None for us? Not even one?”
“He says he doesn’t dare let them out of his hands.” Salaman spat. “Gods, I could have killed him where he stood! He wants all the glory of killing the enemy and winning the war — while sending us naked into the field against the hjjks.”
“Father, the weapons are his,” said Biterulve softly. “If we’d been the ones who found them, would we have offered to share them with him?”
“Of course we would! Are we animals, boy?”
Biterulve made no reply. But the king knew from the look in the boy’s gentle eyes that he was skeptical of what Salaman had said; and Salaman very much doubted that he believed it either.
Father and son regarded each other steadily for a moment.
Then Salaman, softening, put his arm over Biterulve’s thin shoulders and said, “It makes no difference. Let him keep his toys to himself. We’ll manage well enough by ourselves. But I tell you this, boy, and I vow it before all the gods as welclass="underline" that it’ll be the army of Yissou, and not that of Dawinno, that’ll be first into the Nest, if it costs me everything I have. And I’ll kill the Queen myself. Before Thu-Kimnibol so much as sets eyes on Her.”
And, the king added silently, I’ll see to it that I square things with my cousin Thu-Kimnibol when the war is over. But for the time being we are allies and friends.
It was Husathirn Mueri’s turn once more this day for judiciary throne-duty in the Basilica. With Thu-Kimnibol gone from the city again, he shared the task day by day with Puit Kjai. Not that there was much in the way of litigation for any of them to handle, with the city virtually deserted except for the very young and the very old.
Still, he sat obligingly under the great cupola, ready to dispense justice if anyone required it of him. In the idle hours his mind roved to the north, where even at this moment the war that he despised was being fought. What was happening up there? Had the hjjks overwhelmed Thu-Kimnibol yet? It gave Husathirn Mueri some pleasure to imagine that scene, the hordes of shrieking clacking bug-folk streaming down from the northern hills in implacable torrents, hurling themselves upon the invaders, cutting them to pieces, Thu-Kimnibol going down beneath the onslaught of their spears and perishing just as his father before him had—
“Throne-grace?”
Chevkija Aim had entered the Basilica while Husathirn Mueri sat dreaming. The guard-captain had chosen a helmet today of black iron plates, with two shining golden claws rising to a great height from its sides.
“Are there petitioners?” Husathirn Mueri asked.
“None so far, throne-grace. But a bit of news. Old Boldirinthe’s taken to her bed, and they say it’ll be for the last time. The chieftain has gone to her. Your sister Catiriil’s there also. She’s the one who sent me to tell you.”
“Should I go also? Yes, yes, I suppose I should: but not until my hours are done in the Basilica. Whether there are litigants or not, my duty is here.” Husathirn Mueri smiled. “Poor old Boldirinthe. Well, her hour was long overdue, in truth. What do you say, Chevkija Aim? Will it take ten strong men to carry her to her grave, do you think? Fifteen?”
The guard-captain seemed not to be amused.
“She’s the offering-woman of the Koshmar folk, sir. It’s a high office, they tell me. And she was a kind woman. I’d carry her myself, if I were asked.”
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.