“It was peaceful, sitting here with you, and if one of the sisters had come, I could have said I was waiting in case one of the sick should cry out.”

“I haven’t decided yet about what you said about Thecla. I’ll have to think about it a long time, probably for many days. People tell me I am a rather stupid man.”

She smiled, and the truth was that I had said what I had (though it was true) at least in part to make her smile. “I don’t think so. A thorough man, rather.”

“Anyway, I have another question. Often when I tried to sleep, or when I woke in the night, I have tried to connect my failures and my successes. I mean the times when I used the claw and revived someone, and the times when I tried to but life did not return. It seems to me that it should be more than mere chance, though perhaps the link is something I cannot know.”

“Do you think you’ve found it now?”

“What you said about people losing their humanity—that might be a part of it. There was a woman ...

I think she may have been like that, though she was very beautiful. And a man, my friend, who was only partly cured, only helped. If its possible for someone to lose his humanity, surely it must be possible for something that once had none to find it. What one loses another finds, everywhere. He, I think, was like that. Then too, the effect always seems less when the deaths come by violence....”

“I would expect that,” Ava said softly.

“It cured the man-ape whose hand I had cut away. Perhaps that was because I had done it myself.

And it helped Jonas, but I—Thecla—had used those whips.”

“The powers of healing protect us from Nature. Why should the Increate protect us from ourselves?

We might protect ourselves from ourselves. It may be that he will help us only when we come to regret what we have done.”

Still thinking, I nodded.

“I am going to the chapel now. You’re well enough to walk a short distance. Will you come with me?”

While I had been beneath that wide canvas roof, it had seemed the whole of the lazaret to me. Now I saw, though only dimly and by night, that there were many tents and pavilions. Most, like ours, had their walls gathered up for coolness, furled like the sails of a ship at anchor. We entered none of them but walked between them by winding paths that seemed long to me, until we reached one whose walls were down. It was of silk, not canvas, and shone scarlet because of the lights within.

“Once,” Ava told me, “we had a great cathedral. It could hold ten thousand, yet be packed into a single wagon. Our Domnicellae had it burned just before I came to the order.”

“I know,” I said. “I saw it.”

Inside the silken tent, we knelt before a simple altar heaped with flowers. Ava prayed. I, knowing no prayers, spoke without sound to someone who seemed at times within me and at times, as the angel had said, infinitely remote.

XI. Loyal to the Group of Seventeen’s Story-The Just Man THE NEXT MORNING, when we had eaten and everyone was Awake. I ventured to ask Foila if it was now time for me to judge between Melito and Hallvard. She shook her head. but before she could speak, the Ascian announced, “All must do their share in the service of the populace—The bullock draws the plow and the dog herds the sheep, but the cat catches mice in the granary. Thus men, women, and even children can serve the populace.”

Fiola flashed that dazzling smile. “Our friend wants to tell—”

“What!” For a moment I thought Melito was actually going to sit up. “Are you going to let him—let one of them—

She gestured, and he sputtered to silence. “Why yes.” Something tugged at the corners of her lips.

“Yes, I think I shall. I’ll have to interpret for the rest of you, of course. Will that be all right, Severian?”

“If you wish it,” I said.

Hallvard rumbled, “This was not in the original agreement. I recall each word.”

“So do I,” Foila said. It isn’t against it either, and in fact its in accordance with the spirit of the agreement, which was that the rivals for my hand—neither very soft nor very fair now, I’m afraid, though it’s becoming more so since I’ve been confined in this place—would compete. The Ascian would be my suitor if he thought he could; haven’t you seen the way he looks at me?”

The Ascian recited, “United, men and women are stronger; but a brave woman desires children, and not husbands.”

“He means that he would like to marry me, but he doesn’t think his attentions would be acceptable.

He’s wrong.” Foila looked from Melito to Hallvard, and her smile had become a grin. “Are you two really so frightened of him in a storytelling contest? You must have run like rabbits when you saw an Ascian on the battlefield.”

Neither of them answered, and after a time, the Ascian began to speak: “In times past, loyalty to the cause of the populace was to be found everywhere. The will of the Group of Seventeen was the will of everyone.”