That can't be what Akma intended. If he understood it the way Khideo does, wouldn't he stop?
I should talk to Mon, not Akma, she told herself-not noticing that she must already have decided to talk to Akma. If I could get him to break ranks with the others... but no, she knew that was impossible. None of the brothers would betray the others; that was how they'd see it. No, it had to be Akma. If he changed his mind, they would change theirs. He would persuade them.
She kept hearing Luet's despairing voice: "There's nothing left in him, Edhadeya. Nothing there but hate." If that was true, then talking to Akma would be a waste of time. But Luet couldn't see into his heart. If Khideo had a spark of decency in him, couldn't Akma also? He was young, still; he had been damaged in childhood far more than Khideo had. The world had been misshapen for him ever since; if once he saw the truth, couldn't he choose to be a different man in a very different world?
These were the thoughts that drove her as one night she locked the school, leaving Khideo-no, Lissinits-as caretaker of it. Then, torch in hand, she walked in the brisk autumn air to her father's house. On the way she thought: What if there were no safety? If I were an earth woman-or man, or child-I wouldn't dare to make this walk in darkness, for fear of being set upon by cruel men who hate me, not because of anything I've done, but because of the shape of my body. For those people these streets are filled with terror, where all my life I've walked without fear, day and night. Can they truly be citizens, when they haven't the freedom to walk the city?
As she expected, Akma was in the king's house, in the library wing, where he slept most nights now. Not that he was asleep. He was up, reading, studying, jotting down notes to himself in the wax on a bark; one of dozens of barks covered with scribbling. "Writing a book?" she asked.
"I'm not a holy man," he said. "I don't write books. I write speeches." He swept the barks to one side. She liked the way he looked at her, as if he had been hoping she would come. She had his full attention, and his eyes didn't wander over her body the way most men's did. He looked into her eyes. She felt as though she ought to say something very clever or very wise, to justify his interest in her.
No, she told herself sternly. That's just one of his tricks. One of the things he does to win people over. And I'm not here to be won over. I came to teach, not to be taught.
No wonder I once loved him, if he always looked at me like that.
To her surprise, what she blurted out now was nothing like what she had come to say. "I used to love you," she said.
A sad smile came over his face. "Used to," he whispered. "Before there was any issue of belief."
"Is it an issue of belief, Akma?" she asked.
"For two people to love each other, they have to meet, don't they? And two people who live in utterly different worlds have no chance of meeting."
She knew what he meant; they had had this conversation before, and he had insisted that while she lived in an imaginary world in which the Keeper of Earth watched over everyone, giving purpose to their lives, he lived in a real world of stone and air and water, where people had to find their own purposes.
"Yet we're meeting here," she said.
"That remains to be seen." His words were cold and distant, but his eyes searched her face. For what? What does he want to see? Some remnant of my love for him? But that is the one thing that I dare not show him because I dare not find it in myself. I can't love him, because only a monstrous, callous woman could love the man who caused so much pointless suffering.
"Have you been hearing the reports from the provinces?"
"There are many reports," said Akma. "Which did you have in mind?"
She refused to play along with his pretense of innocence. She waited.
"Yes, I've heard the reports," he said. "A terrible business. I wonder your father hasn't called in the military."
"To attack what army?" she asked scornfully. "You're smarter than that, Akma. An army is useless against thugs who melt away into the city and hide by wearing the clothing of respectable men of business, trade, or labor during the day."
"I'm a scholar, not a tactician," said Akma.
"Are you?" she asked. "I've thought about this a great deal, Akma, and when I look at you it's not a scholar that I see."
"No? What monster have you decided that I am?"
"Not a monster, either. Just a common thug. Your hands have torn holes in the wings of angel children. Diggers hide in terror during the night because they fear seeing your shadow come between them and the moonlight."
"Are you seriously accusing me of this? I have never raised my hand in violence against anyone."
"You caused it, Akma. You set them in motion, the whole army of them, the whole nasty, cruel, evil army of child-beaters."
He shuddered; his face contorted with some deep emotion. "You can't be saying this to me. You know that it's a lie."
"They're your friends. You're their hero, Akma. You and my brothers."
"I don't control them!" he said. He only barely controlled his voice.
"Oh, you don't?" she answered. "What, do they control you then?"
He rose from the table, knocking over his stool as he did. "If they did control me, Edhadeya, I'd be out preaching against Father's pathetic little religion right now. They beg, they plead. Ominer's all for doing it, Pour the bronze while it still flows, he tells me. But I refuse to lend my name to any of these persecutions. I don't want anybody hurt-not even diggers, despite what you think of me. And those angels, with holes torn in their wings-do you think I didn't hear that with the same rage as any decent person? Do you think I don't want the thugs who did that punished?" His voice trembled with emotion.
"Do you think they would have had the boldness to do it if it weren't for you?"
"I didn't invent this! I didn't create hatred and resentment of the diggers! It was our fathers who did it, when they changed the whole religious structure of the state to include the diggers as if they were people-"
"Thirteen years since they made those changes, and in all those years, nothing happened. Then you announce that you've ‘discovered' that there is no Keeper-in spite of my true dream by which the Keeper saved the Zenifi! In spite of knowing that it was only by the power of the Oversoul that the very records from which you took your ‘proof were translated. You persuade my brothers-even Mon, I don't know how-even Aronha, who always used to see through silliness-and then, the moment that Father's heirs are united in their unbelief, the floodgates open."
"You might as well blame my mother, then. After all, she gave birth to me."
"Oh, I think there is blame before you. I found out, for instance, that Bego has been part of a longtime conspiracy against Akmaro's teachings. If you search your memory honestly, I wonder if you won't find that it was Bego who led you to your ‘discovery' of the nonexistence of the Keeper."
"Bego isn't part of anything. He lives for his books. He lives in the past."
"And your father was inventing a new future, doing away with the past. Yes, Bego would hate that, wouldn't he? And he's never believed in the Keeper, I realize that now-insisting on a natural explanation for everything. No miracles, please-remember him saying that over and over? No miracles. The people of Akmaro escaped because it was in the best interest of the digger guards to let them go. The Keeper didn't make them sleep. Did anybody see them sleeping? No, Akmaro simply dreamed a dream. Go with the simplest explanation every time, that's what he taught us."
"He taught us that because it's true. It's intellectually honest."