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there?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œI have been to the House Absolute also, but I have never seen the Well of Orchids. It is said that when the Autarch has a consort—as ours does not—she holds her court there, in the most beautiful place in the world. Even now, only the loveliest are permitted to walk in that spot. When I was there we stayed, my lord and I, in a certain small room appropriate to our armigerial rank. One evening when my lord was gone and I did not know where, I went out into the corridor, and as I stood there looking up and down, a high functionary of the court passed by. I did not know his name or his office, but I stopped him and asked if I might go to the Well of Orchids.”
    She paused. For the space of three or four breaths there was no sound but the music from the pavilions and the tinkling of the fountain.

    â€œAnd he stopped and looked at me, I think in some surprise. You cannot know how it feels to be a little armigette from the north, in a gown sewn by your own maids, and provincial jewels, and be looked at so by someone who has spent all his life among the exultants of the House Absolute. Then he smiled.”
    She gripped my hand very tightly now.
    â€œAnd he told me. Down such and such a corridor and turn at such a statue, up certain steps and along the ivory path. Oh, Severian, my lover!”
    Her face was radiant as the moon itself. I knew the moment she had described had been the crown of her life, and that she now treasured the love I had given her partially, and perhaps largely, because it had recalled to her that moment, when her beauty had been weighed by one she felt fit to rule upon it, and had not been found wanting. My reason told me I should take offense at that, but I could find no resentment in me.
    â€œHe went away, and I began to walk as he had said—a score of strides, perhaps two score. Then I met my lord, and he ordered me to return to our little room.”
    â€œI see,” I said, and shifted my sword.
    â€œI think you do. Is it wrong then for me to betray him like this? What do you think?”
    â€œI am no magistrate.”
    â€œEveryone judges me … all my friends … all my lovers, of whom you are neither the first nor the last; even those women in the caldarium just now.”
    â€œWe are trained from childhood not to judge, but only to carry out the sentences handed down by the courts of the Commonwealth. I will not judge you or him.”
    â€œI judge,” she said, and turned her face toward the bright, hard light of the stars. For the first time since I had glimpsed her across the crowded ballroom I understood how I could have mistaken her for a monial of the order whose habit she wore. “Or at least, I tell myself I judge. And I find myself guilty, but I can’t stop. I think I draw men like you to myself. Were you drawn? There were women there lovelier than I am now, I know.”
    â€œI’m not certain,” I said. “While we were coming here to Thrax …”
    â€œYou have a story too, don’t you? Tell me, Severian. I’ve already told you almost the only interesting thing that has ever happened to me.”
    â€œOn the way here, we—I’ll explain some other time who I was traveling with—fell in with a witch and her famula and her client, who had come to a certain place to reinspirit the body of a man long dead.”
    â€œReally?” Cyriaca’s eyes sparkled. “How wonderful! I’ve heard of such things but I’ve never seen them. Tell me all about it, but make sure you tell me the truth.”
    â€œThere really isn’t anything much to tell. Our path lay through a deserted city, and when we saw their fire, we went to it because we had someone with us who was ill. When the witch brought back the man she had
come to revive, I thought at first that she was restoring the whole city. It wasn’t until several days afterward that I understood