They have formed your body and your destiny. You have grown strong; yes, you feel the life in you, but you will die. Even you. Once dead, where then? Here?” And Aspe could see the secretary’s hands conjuring in the dark, describing circles around one of the small spheres. “No. For flesh as massive as yours, as arrogant, as rebellious, this one, I think. This one.” He gestured towards a smaller planet, one that burned bright red as it brushed the sun, and then cooled to onyx at the extremity of its orbit. “How many lifetimes here will it take to burn that flesh away? How many lifetimes before your spirit rises back to Paradise like a gassy cloud?”

The secretary was silent. Colonel Aspe sat as if in a daze, the planets revolving around him. He was only vaguely aware of the atmosphere changing, of a door opening and closing, of a sweet voice saying,

“Please don’t scold me. I came as fast as I could. Is this the man?”

Nobody answered. Aspe half turned in his chair, and he saw a beautiful young woman, almost a girl, perhaps a thousand days past puberty. She was dressed in loose white clothes, and was surrounded by a cloud of light. He watched her with an unfocused mind, absorbed by little things, the play of light around her head, the sound of her breathing. She stood quite close to him. “Is this the new commander?”

“No,” answered the secretary. “This is the last joke of a decadent emperor, a man who has forgotten God. He has sent an atheist to laugh at us.”

“Are you sure? He looks like a real soldier. How strong he is!”

“No, ma’am. He’s a savage. You are too young to remember. Before you were born, he led a band of atheists down through the snow almost to our borders. They were murdering your animals and eating human flesh. We captured him and sent him to the emperor for a cage in his garden, though if I had had my way he would have died in the topmost cell of the Tower of Silence. He may yet. I was not consulted, ma’am. Watch when he speaks. He has bewitched the emperor into freeing him, and now he has come here. It must not be. He is a dangerous man. Very . . . dangerous.”

“I can see that for myself,” came the bishop’s soft, sweet voice. “He has rejected love. It’s evil, isn’t it, for a man to be so hard?”

Colonel Aspe listened almost without understanding. He was staring at the bishop, because one look at the bishop’s face had awakened memories he didn’t know he had. Her face reminded him of a life immeasurably far away, up above Rang-river, where he had sung his music, before he lost his hand. How had he come so far? He didn’t know. Stung by memory, he sprang up from his chair as she bent over him, a look of terrible compassion on her face. He seized her underneath the jaw and forced her down, until he could see her expression change. And then he let her go; she stumbled to the ground, looking up at him with such sweet and fearless eyes, he found himself stripping off his glove, and with his bare fingers he reached down to touch her face so lightly, and push her hair back so tentatively, as if asking her a question when he was afraid to hear the answer. The priests raged feebly around him. The candles had come up, and the fire burned up brightly. He turned to it, suddenly sickened by the perfumed flame, and he stamped it underfoot and kicked the cinders with his boot. “I can’t wait for your reply,” he said loudly.