"That's Akma's gift," said Mon.
Ominer hooted derisively. "Come on, Mon. We always used to joke, Is Mon awake? I don't know, is he talking? Then he's awake."
The words stung, even though Ominer clearly didn't mean them to be hurtful. Mon clamped his mouth shut, determined to say nothing else until they begged him to speak.
"My point," said Akma, "is that we have to act with perfect solidarity. If all the sons of Motiak and the son of Akmaro are united in opposing this new policy, then it will be clear to everyone that no matter what the present king decides, the next king will have a kingdom in which diggers are not citizens. This will encourage the newly freed diggers to leave and return to Elemaki territory where they belong. And nobody can say we are against freedom, because our plan is to free all the slaves at once-but free them at the border, so we won't be creating any new free diggers who will want to be made citizens of a nation they don't belong in. It's a kind policy, really, to recognize the insurmountable differences between our species and bid a gentle but firm farewell to all those diggers who imagine themselves to be civilized."
The others agreed. It was a good program. They were united in support of it.
"But if one-even one-of the sons of Motiak is perceived as disagreeing with any part of this program, if even one of the sons of Motiak shows that he still believes in that nonsense about the Keeper that Akmaro is trying to get people to believe. ..."
That our people have always believed in since the days of the Heroes, thought Mon silently.
"... then everyone will assume that Motiak will simply make that son his heir and disinherit the others. The result? A lot of powerful people will oppose us simply for political reasons, in order to be on the obvious winning side. But if they know that there is no possible heir except those of us who repudiate Akmaro's entire digger-loving conspiracy, then they'll remember the fact that kings don't live forever, and they'll at least keep silent, not wanting to antagonize the future king."
"Don't be modest," said Mon. "Everyone expects that the high priest's job will be yours when your father, uh, sheds his spirit like an old cloak." The others chuckled at the old-fashioned euphemism.
Aronha, however, seemed to have caught some glint of an idea in Khimin's face, and so at the end of his chuckle had directed a pointed comment at his father's youngest son. "And in case someone here thinks of breaking ranks with us in order to become the heir, let me assure you that the army won't respect any heir but me, as long as I'm alive and want the throne after my father is through with it. If your prime motive is a hope of power, the only way you'll get it in the long run is by staying with me."
Mon was shocked. It was the first time he had ever heard Aronha threaten anyone with his future power, or speak so nakedly of what might or might not happen after Father's death. Mon also didn't like the way Aronha said "my father" instead of "our father" or even, simply, "Father."
Akma suddenly wailed, "No! No, no," and bent over on his chair, burying his face in his arms.
"What's wrong?" They all rushed to him or at least leaned toward him as if they thought he was having some sort of physical crisis.
Akma sat upright, then rose from his chair. "I've done this. I've driven a wedge between you. I've made Aronha speak unspeakable things. None of this is worth that! If I had never made friends with Mon, if we had never come back to Darakemba, if we had had the dignity to die there under the whips of the diggers and their toady human rulers in Chelem, then Aronha would never have said such a thing."
"I'm sorry," said Aronha, looking truly ashamed of himself.
"No, I'm sorry," said Akma. "I came to you as a friend, hoping to win you to the cause of truth to save this people from my father's insane theories. But instead I've turned brother against brother and I can't bear that." He fled the room so quickly that he knocked over his chair.
The four of them sat or stood in silence for a long moment, and then Khimin and Aronha burst into speech at the same time.
"Aronha, I never would have turned against you! It never even crossed my mind!" cried Khimin, at exactly the same time that Aronha cried out, "Khimin, forgive me for even imagining that you would think of such a thing, I never meant for you to-you're my brother no matter what you do, and I-"
Good old inarticulate Aronha. Sweet little lying hypocritical Khimin. Mon almost laughed out loud.
Ominer did laugh. "Listen to you. ‘I didn't think a single bad thought about you!' ‘I Aid think bad thoughts but I'm really really sorry.' Come on, all Akma asks is that we stick together before we do anything public. So let's work on it, all right? It's not hard. We just keep our mouths shut about stuff one of us does that bothers the others. We do it all the time in front of Father-that's why he doesn't know how much we all hate the queen." Khimin blanched, then blushed. "I don't."
"See?" said Ominer. "It's fine if you don't agree with us, Khimin. All Aronha was saying was, Keep your mouth shut about it and we can still accomplish everything we need to accomplish."
"I agree with you about everything except... Mother," said Khimin.
"Yes yes," said Ominer impatiently, "we're all so dreadfully sorry for her, the poor thing, dying as she is of the world's slowest plague."
"Enough," said Aronha. "You preach to us of keeping peace, Ominer, and then you fall back into teasing Khimin as if the two of you were still toddlers."
"We were never both toddlers," said Ominer acidly. "I stopped being a toddler long before he was born."
"Please," said Mon quietly, inserting the word into a momentary silence so that all would hear it. His very softness won their attention. "To hear us, you'd think there really was a Keeper, and that he was making us all stupid so we couldn't unite and oppose his will."
Aronha, as usual, took his words too seriously. "Is there a Keeper?" he asked.
"No, there's not a Keeper," said Mon. "How many times do we have to prove it to you before you stop asking?"
"I don't know," said Aronha. He looked Mon in the eye. "Perhaps until I forget that whenever you told me something was right and true, ever since you were little, it turned out to be right and true."
"Was I really right all those times?" asked Mon. "Or were you simply'as eager as I was to believe that children our age could actually know something?"
Wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong.
Mon kept his face expressionless-he hoped.
Aronha smiled half-heartedly. "Go get Akma," he said to Mon. "If I know him at all, he's not far off. Waiting for one of us to go and get him. You do it, Mon. Bring him back. We'll be united with him. For the good of the kingdom."
Khideo greeted Ilihiak with an embrace. No, not Ilihiak. Ilihi. A man who was once a king, now insisting that there was nothing extraordinary about him, that he had not been touched by the hand of the Keeper. It seemed so odd, so much like a kind of failure. But not Ilihi's failure, really. More as if the universe itself had failed.
"And how is the-how is your wife?" asked Khideo.
The normal meaningless greetings took only a few moments; they were made all the more brief because Khideo's wife had died many years before, in trying to give birth to their first child. It would have been a boy. The midwife said that the child was so big, like his father, that the head tore her apart passing through the channel of life. Khideo knew then that he had killed his wife, because any child of his would be too large for a woman to bear. The Keeper meant him to be childless; but at least Khideo didn't have to kill any more women trying to defy the Keeper's will. So Ilihi, who knew all this, made no inquiries about family.