“I said, have I done something wrong?”
“Nothing, lady. Nothing.”
“Then why am I summoned?”
“Because — because—”
“What are you staring at? Haven’t you ever seen a hjjk star before?”
The bailiff looked guiltily away. He began to groom himself with quick uneasy strokes. “His lordship the court-captain wishes your help, that’s all,” he blurted. “As a translator. A stranger has been brought to the Basilica — a young man, who seems to speak only the language of the hjjks—”
There was a sudden roaring in Nialli Apuilana’s soul. Her heart raced painfully, frighteningly.
So stupid. Waiting this long to let her know.
She seized the bailiff by a sash. “Why didn’t you say so right away?”
“I had no chance, lady. You—”
“He must be a returning captive. You should have told me.”
Images rose from the depths of her mind. Powerful memories, visions of that shattering day that had changed her life.
She saw her younger self, already long-legged and woman-sleek but with her breasts only barely sprouting yet, innocently gathering blue chilly-flowers in the hills beyond the city walls on the day after her first twining. Black-and-yellow six-limbed figures, weird and terrifying, taller than any man of the city, taller even than Thu-Kimnibol, emerging without warning from a deep cleft in the tawny rock. Terror. Disbelief. A sense of the world she had known for thirteen years crumbling to fragments about her. Monstrous sharp-beaked heads, huge many-faceted eyes, jointed arms tipped with horrid claws. The chittering noises of them, the clickings and buzzings. This is not happening to me, she tells herself. Not to me. Do you know whose daughter I am? The words won’t leave her lips. They probably do know, anyway. All the better, getting someone like her. The pack of them surrounding her, seizing her, touching her. Then the terror unexpectedly disappearing. An eerie dreamlike calmness somehow taking possession of her soul. The hjjks carrying her away, then. A long march, an endless march, through unknown country. And then — the moist hot darkness of the Nest — the strangeness of that other life, which was like some different world, though it was right here on Earth — the power of the Queen impinging, surrounding, engulfing, transforming—
And ever since, the loneliness, the bitter sense that there was no one else at all like her anywhere in the world. But now, at last, another who had experienced what she had experienced. At last. Another who knew.
“Where is he?” she demanded. “I have to see him! Quick! Quick!”
“He is at the Basilica, lady. In the throne-chamber, with his lordship Husathirn Mueri.”
“Quick, then! Let’s go!”
She rushed from her room, not even bothering with her sash. Her nakedness mattered nothing to her. Let them stare, she thought. The bailiff came running along desperately behind her, huffing and wheezing, as she raced down the stairs of the House of Nakhaba. Astonished acolytes in priestly helmets, scattering before her onslaught, turned to glare and mutter, but she paid no attention to them.
On this day in late spring the sun was still high in the western sky, though the afternoon was well consumed. Soft tropic warmth wrapped the city like a cloak. The bailiff had a wagon waiting outside, with two docile gray xlendis in the harness. Nialli Apuilana jumped in beside him, and the placid beasts started down the winding streets toward the Basilica at a steady, unhurried trot.
“Can’t you make them go faster?” she asked.
The bailiff shrugged and laid on the whip. It did no good: one of the xlendis twisted its long neck about and looked back over its shoulder with great solemn golden eyes, as if puzzled that anyone would expect more speed of it than it was providing. Nialli Apuilana forced herself to hold her impatience in check. The returnee, the escaper, whatever he was, the one who had come from the Nest, wasn’t going anywhere. He would wait for her.
“Lady, we are here,” the bailiff announced.
The wagon halted. The Basilica stood before them now, the high-vaulted five-domed court building on the east side of the city’s central plaza. The westering sun lit the green-and-gold mosaics of its facade and kindled them to brilliant flame.
Within the building flickering glowglobes gleamed in dark metal sconces. Court functionaries stood stiffly in the hallway, performing no apparent function except to bow and nod as they went by.
The stranger was the first person whom Nialli Apuilana saw, sharply outlined in a cone of light entering through a triangular window far up near the summit of the lofty central cupola. He stood in a downcast way, shoulders slumped and eyes averted.
There was a Nest-bracelet on his wrist. There was a Nest-guardian hanging from a lanyard on his chest.
Nialli Apuilana’s heart went out to him. If she had been alone, she would have run to him and embraced him, and tears of joy would have flowed from her eyes.
But she held herself back. She looked toward the judge’s ornate throne under the network of interlaced bronze struts that formed the cupola, where Husathirn Mueri sat, and allowed herself to meet his keen, brooding stare.
Husathirn Mueri seemed rigid and tense. A perceptible odor, something like that of burning wood, came from him. The language of his body was explicit and not at all difficult to decode.
There was hunger for her in his gleaming amber eyes.
That was the only word she could find for it. Not lust, though no doubt lust was there; not the desire for her friendship, though he might well feel that; not anything tender that could readily be called love, either. No, it was hunger. Simple but not at all pure, and not so simple, either. He seemed to want to fall upon her and devour her and make her flesh a part of his own. Every time he saw her, which was no more often than she could manage, it was the same thing. Now, as he gazed at her across the vast space of the courtroom, it was almost as though Husathirn Mueri had his face between her thighs, gnawing, consuming. What a strange man! And yet quite appealing physically: slim, elegant, graceful, even beautiful, if a man could be called beautiful. And intelligent, and gentle in his way. But strange. Nialli Apuilana had no liking for him at all.
To the right of the throne stood the great brawny guard-captain, Curabayn Bangkea, half entombed within his gigantic helmet. He was looking at her in a pretty lascivious way also, but she knew it was something much less complex that was on his mind. Nialli Apuilana was accustomed to being stared at by men of all sorts. She realized that she was attractive: everyone said that she was the image of her mother Taniane when Taniane was young, with glossy, silken red-brown fur and long slender legs; and her mother had been the most beautiful woman of her day. Even now she still was splendid. So I am beautiful too, and so they stare at me. An automatic thing, for them. She had some notion also that the air of absolute unapproachability in which she usually wrapped herself might add to her appeal, for some.
Unctuously Husathirn Mueri said, “Dawinno guide you, Nialli Apuilana. Nakhaba preserve and cherish you.”
“Spare me these hypocrisies,” she said sharply. “You want my help as a translator, your bailiff says. Translating what?”
He indicated the stranger. “The guards have just brought him in. All he speaks is hjjk, and a few stray words of ours. I thought you might remember enough of the language of the bug-folk to tell me what he’s trying to say.”
She gave Husathirn Mueri a cool, hostile stare. “The language of the bug-folk ?”
“Ah. Sorry. The hjjks, I should have said.”
“I find the other term offensive.”
“Your pardon, lady. I mean that. I used the term too lightly. I won’t use it again.” Husathirn Mueri seemed to squirm. He looked genuinely dismayed. “Will you speak with him, now? And see if you can learn why he’s here.”