“A good idea.”
The king glanced at the sleeping dancers, who had not moved from their scattered places on the floor.
“Would you like one of these girls to warm your bed tonight?”
Again, a surprise. The thought of Naarinta, only a few weeks in the grave, came to him. But it was impolitic to refuse Salaman’s hospitality. And what did it matter, one coupling more or less, this far from home? He was weary. He was on edge, after this strange conversation. A warm young body in his arms in the night, a bit of comfort before the real work began — well, why not? Why not? He didn’t intend to remain chaste the rest of his life. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I think I would.”
“What about this one?” Salaman prodded a girl with chestnut fur with his slippered toe. “Up, child. Up, up, wake up! You will be Prince Thu-Kimnibol’s tonight!”
The king sauntered away, moving slowly, lurching just a little.
Without a word the girl gestured and led Thu-Kimnibol off to his draped and cushioned bedchamber in the rear of the palace. By the dim amber bedlight he studied her with interest. She was short, and looked strong, and was wide through the shoulders for a girl. Her chin was strong, her gray eyes were set far apart. It was a familiar face. A sudden wild suspicion grew in him.
“What’s your name, girl?”
“Weiawala.”
“Named for the king’s mate, were you?”
“The king is my father, sir. He named me after the first of his mates, but actually I’m the daughter of his third. The lady Sinithista is my mother.”
Yes. Yes. Salaman’s daughter. That was what he thought. It was astounding. Salaman, who had refused him a daughter once to be his mate, giving him one now as a plaything for the night. A strangely casual gift; or did Salaman have some deep purpose in mind? Very likely the last merchant caravan from Dawinno had brought him word that Naarinta was close to death. But if he hoped to cement relations between Yissou and Dawinno by some sort of dynastic marriage, this was an odd way indeed of going about it. Then again, Salaman was odd. He must have many daughters by now: too many, perhaps.
No matter. The hour was late. The girl was here.
“Come closer, Weiawala,” he said softly. “Beside me. Here. Yes. Here.”
“He’s preaching to the children,” Curabayn Bangkea said. “My men follow him wherever he goes. They see what he does. He gathers the young ones to him, he answers all their questions, he tells them about life in the Nest. He says it’s wrong to think of the hjjks as enemies. He spins fables for them about the Queen, and the great love She has for all creatures, not only creatures of Her own kind.”
“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.”