“Kundalimon,” the stranger repeated, nodding, tapping his chest, smiling something that was close to being an actual smile.

Hresh touched his own breast. “Hresh.”

“Hresh,” said the stranger. “Hresh.”

He looked toward Nialli Apuilana.

“He wants to know your name too,” Hresh said. “Go on. Tell him.”

Nialli Apuilana nodded. But to her horror her voice wasn’t there when she called upon it. Nothing would come from her throat but a cough and a tight hoarse rasping that could almost have been a hjjk-sound. Dismayed, embarrassed, she clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Tell him your name,” said Hresh again.

Silently Nialli Apuilana tapped her throat with her fingers and shook her head.

Hresh seemed to understand. He nodded to Kundalimon and pointed to her. “Nialli Apuilana,” he said, in the same clear high tone as before.

“Nialli — Apuilana,” Kundalimon repeated carefully, staring at her. The supple vowels and liquid consonants did not seem to rise easily to his lips. “Nialli — Apuilana—”

She looked away, as if scalded by his gaze.

Hresh took the Barak Dayir and closed his eyes again, and disappeared once more into his trance. Kundalimon stood statue-still before him. There was utter silence in the room.

Shortly Hresh seemed to return, and after a time he said, “How strange his mind is! He’s been with the hjjks since he was four. Living in the great main Nest, the Nest of Nests, far in the north.”

The Nest of Nests! In the presence of the Queen of Queens Herself! Nialli Apuilana felt a surge of envy.

She found her voice and said softly, “And do you know why he’s come here, father?”

In a curious muffled tone Hresh said, “The Queen wants to make a treaty with us.”

“A treaty?” Husathirn Mueri said.

“A treaty, yes. A treaty of perpetual peace.”

Husathirn Mueri looked stunned. “What are the terms? Do you know?”

“They want to draw a line across the continent, somewhere just north of the City of Yissou. Everything north of the line is to be considered hjjk, and everything south of it will remain the territory of the People. No one of either race will be allowed to enter territory belonging to the other.”

“A treaty,” Husathirn Mueri said again in wonder. “The Queen wants a treaty with us! I can’t believe it.”

“Nor can I,” said Hresh. “Almost too good to be true, isn’t it? Hard and fast boundaries. A no-trespass agreement. Everything clear, everything straightforward. In one stroke, an end to the fear of war with them that’s been dangling over us all our lives.”

“If we can trust them.”

“If we can trust them, yes.”

“Have they sent an emissary to the City of Yissou also, do you know?” Husathirn Mueri said.

“Yes. They’ve sent them to each of the Seven Cities, so it appears.”

Husathirn Mueri laughed. “I’d like to see King Salaman’s face. Out of nowhere, peace breaks out! Perpetual peace with the great insect enemy! What then becomes of the holy war of extermination that he’s been aching to launch against them for the past ten or twenty years?”

“Do you think Salaman was ever serious about a war with the hjjks?” Nialli Apuilana asked.

Husathirn Mueri looked at her. “What?”

“It’s all politics, isn’t it? So he can go on building his great wall higher and higher and higher. He keeps saying the hjjks are about to invade his city, but in fact the last time they did was before most of us were born. When Harruel was king up there, and Yissou had just been founded.”

He turned to Hresh. “She has a point. Despite all of Salaman’s fretting, there haven’t been any real hostilities between the hjjks and the People in years. They have their lands, and we have ours, and nothing worse than a few border skirmishes ever takes place. If all the treaty does is ratify the status quo, what meaning does it have? Or is it some kind of trap?”

“There are other conditions besides the one I spoke of,” Hresh said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“That had best be saved for discussion in the Presidium, I think,” said Hresh. “Meanwhile we have a weary stranger here. Give the boy a place to stay, Husathirn Mueri. See if you can find something for him that he’s willing to eat. And make sure that his vermilion is cared for, also. He’s very worried about his vermilion.”

Husathirn Mueri signaled to one of the bailiffs, who came lumbering forward.

“No,” Nialli Apuilana said. Her voice was a harsh croak again, but she managed to make herself heard. “Not you.” She held out her hand to the stranger. “I’ll take charge of getting him his food. I know what kinds of things he eats, better than anyone else here. Don’t forget I’ve been in the Nest myself.” She glanced defiantly around the room. “Well? Any objections?” But no one spoke.

“Come,” she said to Kundalimon. “I’ll look after you.”

As it should be, she thought.

How could I let anyone else? What do they know, any of them? But we are both of the Nest, you and I. We are both of the Nest.

2

Masks of Several Sorts

Afterward, when he is alone again, Hresh closes his eyes and lets his soul rove forth, imagining it soaring in a dream-vision beyond the bounds of the city, far across the windy northern plains, into that unknown distant realm where the hordes of insect-folk scurry about within their immense subterranean tunnels. They are a total enigma to him. They are the mystery of mysteries. He sees the Queen, or what he imagines to be the Queen, that immense remote inscrutable monarch, lying somnolent in Her heavily guarded chamber, stirring slowly while acolytes chant harsh clicking hjjk-songs of praise: the hjjk of hjjks, the great Queen. What hjjk-dreams of total world domination is She dreaming, even now? How will we ever learn, he wonders, what it is that those creatures want of us?

“Your abdication?” Minguil Komeilt cried, astonished. “Your abdication, lady? Who would dare? Let me take this paper to the captain of the guards! We’ll find the one who’s behind it and we’ll see to it that—”

“Peace, woman,” Taniane said. This fluttery outburst from her private secretary was more bothersome to her than the actual petition had been. “Do you think this is the first time I’ve had a note like this? Do you think it’ll be the last? It means nothing. Nothing. ”

“But to throw a stone at you in the streets, with a message like this attached to it—”

Taniane laughed. She glanced again at the scrap of paper in her hand. YOU STAY MUCH TOO LONG, it said, in huge crude lettering. IT’S TIME YOU STEPPED ASIDE AND LET RIGHTFUL FOLK RULE.

The words were Beng, the handwriting was Beng. The stone had come out of nowhere to land at her feet, as she was walking up Koshmar Way from the Chapel of the Interceder to her chambers in the House of Government, as she did almost every morning after she had prayed. It was the third such anonymous note she had received — no, the fourth, she thought — in the last six months. After nearly forty years of chieftainship.

“You want me to take no action at all?” Minguil Komeilt asked.

“I want you to file this wherever you file outbursts of this sort. And then forget about it. Do you understand me? Forget about it. It means nothing whatsoever.”

“But — lady—”

“Nothing whatsoever,” said Taniane again.

She entered her chambers. The masks of her predecessors stared down at her from its dark stippled walls.

They were fierce, vivid, strange, barbaric. They were emblems out of a former age. To Taniane they were reminders of how much had changed in the single life-span since the People had come forth from the cocoon.

“Time I stepped aside,” she said to them, under her breath. “So I’ve been told.” Rocks thrown at me in the street. Bengs who don’t care for the Act of Union. After all this time. Restless fools, that’s all they are. They still want one of their own to govern. As if they knew a better system. I should give them what they want, and see how they like it then.