"I think I'd be good at it," said Akma. "If it weren't so likely that I'd be arrested for treason."
Bego nodded. "That is the problem, isn't it?" he said. "That's why you need to bide your time. Work with your brothers, Mon. Help him, Akma. Don't push them too hard, just suggest things, raise questions. Eventually you'll win them over."
"The way you did with us?" asked Akma.
Bego shrugged again. "I never suggested treason to you. I don't suggest it now. I want you to discover truth for yourself. I don't ram it down your throats like some do."
"But what guarantee do we have that anything will change?"
"I think that by getting rid of priests appointed by the king, Akmaro and Motiak started down a road from which there's no retreat," said Bego. "Eventually it will lead them to a point where religion is completely separate from government. And when that day comes, my young friends, the law will no longer stand between you and any preaching that you want to do."
Mon hooted. "If I still believed in my own gift, I'd say that it was certain that Bego is right! Someday soon it will happen. It has to."
"And now that you have planned how to save the kingdom from Akmaro's excessively inclusive beliefs, may I go inside and find a perch where I can dangle myself to stretch out my aching muscles?"
"We can carry you in, if you want," offered Mon mischievously. "Save me even more trouble by cutting off my head and carrying it inside. The rest of my body isn't much use to me these days anyway."
They laughed and got up from the grass. They walked more slowly returning to the king's house, but there was a dance, a spring in the way the boys walked-no, bounced-along the path through the king's park. And when they passed Khimin, who was trying to memorize a long poem and having a miserable time of it, they shocked him utterly by actually inviting him to walk along with them. "Why!" Khimin demanded suspiciously.
"Because even though your mother is a certified idiot," said Mon, "you're still my brother and I've treated you shamefully for too many years. Give me a chance to make it up to you."
As Khimin slowly and guardedly made his way toward them, Akma whispered to Mon, "You're committed now, you know."
"Who knows?" asked Mon. "He may be decent company after all. Edhadeya always says he's all right, if we only give him a chance."
"Then Edhadeya will be very happy," said Akma. Mon winked at him. "If you like, I'll tell her that including Dudagu Dermo's spawn was your idea."
Akma rolled his eyes. "I'm not casting covetous eyes on your sister, Mon. She's three years older than me."
"My gift may not come from the Keeper," said Mon, "but I still know a lie when I hear one."
With that, Khimin was near enough to overhear them, and the conversation changed to include him. By the time they reached the king's house, Akma and Mon had both used so much charm on the poor eighteen-year-old that he was utterly besotted with them and would have believed them if they told him his own feet were tree stumps and his nose a turnip.
Bego left them as soon as they were inside, and on his way through the corridors he did use his wings a bit, skittering along the floor and singing snatches of happy songs to himself. Clever boys, he said to himself. They'll do it, if we give them half a chance. They will do it.
Luet loved it when Mother went to call on Dudagu in the king's house, because after a few moments of being polite to the queen, who was not aging well and spent her days complaining of ill health, she was always excused and allowed to go off in search of Edhadeya. She had begun the custom when she was only five, and Edhadeya was a lofty ten-year-old; she marveled now, thinking back, that the king's daughter had been so kind to a child half her age who had so recently been a slave to diggers. Or perhaps that was the reason-Edhadeya had taken pity on her, having heard the story of her suffering. Well, however it began, the friendship was in full bloom now, with Edhadeya twenty-three years old and Luet eighteen and a woman.
She found her friend working with the musicians, teaching them some new composition. The drummers seemed not to be able to get the rhythm right. "It isn't hard," Edhadeya was saying. "It's only hard when you put it together. But if you can hear how it goes with the melody... ." Whereupon Edhadeya began to sing, a high sweet voice, and now the one drummer, now the other, began to feel how the beat she had been teaching fit with the tune she sang, and without even thinking what she was doing, Luet began to spin and raise her arms and hop in the steps of an impromptu dance.
"You shame my poor tune!" cried Edhadeya.
"Don't stop, it was beautiful!"
But Edhadeya stopped at once, leaving the musicians to work on the song while she walked with Luet out into the vegetable garden. "Worms everywhere. In the old days we used to have slaves whose whole job was picking them off the leaves. Now we can't pay anyone enough to do it, so all our greens have holes in them and every now and then a salad moves of its own accord. We all pretend it's a miracle and go on eating."
"I have to tell you that Akma is in one of his vile moods lately," said Luet.
"I don't care," said Edhadeya. "He's too young for me. He's always been too young for me. It was a form of madness that I ever thought I was in love with him."
Luet looked up at the sky. "What? All those clouds? I thought you loved my brother whenever it rained."
"At the moment it's not raining," said Edhadeya. "And is today one of the days you're in love with Mon?"
"Nobody," said Luet. "I don't think I'd make a good wife."
"Why not?" asked Edhadeya.
"I don't want to stay in a house and order work all day. I want to go out like Father does and teach and talk and-"
"He works."
"In the fields, I know! But I'd do that! Just don't make me stay indoors. Maybe it was my childhood labor in the fields. Maybe in my heart I'm always afraid that if I'm not working, some digger twice my height will-"
"Oh, Luet, I get nightmares whenever you talk like that."
"Found one," said Luet, holding up a worm.
"How attractive," said Edhadeya.
Luet crushed the worm between her fingers, balled up the remnants of its body, and dropped it into the soil. "One more salad that will not move," she said.
"Luet," said Edhadeya, and in the moment the whole tone of the conversation changed. No longer were they playful girls. Now they were women, and the business was serious. "What has your brother come up with lately? What's going on between him and my brothers?"
"He's always over here with Mon," said Luet. "I think they're studying something with Bego. Or something."
"So he doesn't talk to you?" said Edhadeya. "He talks to them."
"Them?"
"Not just Mon now. He talks to Aronha and Ominer and Khimin."
"Well, it's nice that he's including Khimin. I don't really think the boy is as awful as-"
"Oh, he's awful, all right. But potentially salvageable, and if I thought it was salvage that Akma and Mon had in mind, I'd be glad," said Edhadeya. "But it's not."
"Not?"
"Yesterday someone mentioned true dreams and looked at me. It was nothing, just a chance comment. I can't even remember-one of the councilors, coming to meet with Father, and he looked at me. But I happened to turn away just at that moment and saw Ominer rolling his eyes in ridicule. So I followed him and once we were alone in the courtyard I threw him up against the wall and demanded to know why he was making fun of me."
"You're always so gentle," murmured Luet.
"Ominer doesn't hear you unless he's in physical pain," said Edhadeya. "And I'm still stronger than he is." ffi
"Well, what did he say?"
"He denied he was making fun of me. So I said, Whom were you making fun of? And he said, Him."