ELEVEN - DEFEAT
Dudagu didn't want her husband to go. "I hate it when you're gone for so many days."
"I'm sorry, but no matter how ill you are right now, I'm still the king," said Motiak.
"That's right, so you have people to find out things and report to you and you don't have to go and see for yourself!"
"I'm king of the earth people of Darakemba as surely as I'm king of the sky and middle people. They need to see that I don't want them to leave."
"You issued that decree, didn't you? Forbidding people to organize boycotts of the diggers?"
"Oh, yes. I decreed, and immediately Akma and the royal boys went about declaring that in compliance with the law, they no longer advocated a boycott and urged people not to stop hiring diggers or buying goods made by diggers. Thus I can't arrest them while their boycott message is still being spread by their pretence of discontinuing it."
"I still think you should make them come home and stop letting them speak."
"It wouldn't change the fact that people know what they believe, what they want. Believe it or not, Dudagu, despite your high opinion of my powers, I'm helpless."
"Punish them if they boycott the diggers! Confiscate their property! Cut off a ringer!"
"And how would I prove that they're boycotting? All they have to say is, ‘I was never satisfied with his work and so I hire other people now. It has nothing to do with what species he belongs to-don't I have the freedom to decide whom to hire?' Sometimes it might even be true. Should I punish them then?"
Dudagu thought about this for a few moments. "Well, then, if the diggers are leaving, let them go! If they all leave, then the problem is solved."
Motiak looked at her in silence until she finally realized something was wrong and looked at him and saw the cold rage in his face.
She gasped. "Did I say something wrong?"
"When someone in my kingdom decides that some of my citizens are not welcome, and drives them out against my will, don't you dare to tell me that once they're all gone, the problem is solved. Every earth person who leaves Darakemba makes this nation that much more evil and I'm beginning to hate being their king."
"I don't like the sound of that," she said. "You wouldn't do anything stupid like abdicating, would you?"
"And put Aronha in charge years ahead of schedule? Watch as he re-establishes this Ancient Ways abomination as the official religion of the empire? I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. No, I'll be king until the last breath is dragged out of my body. I only hope that I have the strength never to hope that all my sons die before me."
Dudagu fairly flew off the bed, to stand before him in tiny, majestic rage. "Don't you ever say such a monstrous thing again! Three of them aren't my sons, I know that, and I know they hate me and think I'm useless but they're still your sons, and that's still more sacred than anything else in the world, and no decent man would ever wish his sons to die before him even if he is the king and they are wretched traitorous snots like my Khimin turned out to be." She burst into tears.
He led her back to her bed. "Come on, I didn't mean it, I was just angry."
"So was I, only I was right to be angry.," she said, "That's true, you were, and I apologize. I didn't mean it."
"Please don't go."
"I will go, because it's the right thing to do. And you will stop pestering me about it, because I shouldn't have to feel guilty about doing my duty as king."
"I won't sleep while you're gone. You'll be lucky if I'm not dead of weakness and exhaustion when you return."
"Three days? Try to stay alive for three days."
"You don't take my sickness seriously at all, Tidaka," she said.
"I take it seriously," said Motiak, "but I never have and never will let it stop me from doing my duty. It's one of the tragedies of royal life, Dudagu. If you died while I was away, doing my duty, I would grieve. But if I failed in my duty because you were dying, I would be ashamed. For my kingdom's sake, I would rather have my people grieve with me than have my people ashamed of me."
"You have no heart," she said.
"No, I have a heart," said Motiak. "I just can't always do what it tells me to do."
"I'll hate you forever. I'll never forgive you."
"But I'll love jyow," he answered mildly. And then, when the door was closed behind him and she couldn't hear, he muttered, "I might even forgive you for making my home life so ... unrestful."
He left his house in the company of two captains-as tradition required, one was an angel, the other a human. Outside, spies and soldiers were ready-only a dozen spies and thirty soldiers, but it was best to be prepared. In these tumultuous times, one never knew when a party of Elemaki might penetrate deeply into Darakemba. And before the journey was done, they would be far upriver, much closer to the border.
On the way out of the city, they were joined by Akmaro, Chebeya, Edhadeya, and Shedemei. Motiak greeted his daughter with an embrace, and met Shedemei with short courtesy; it was easy to assume a level of intimacy as if he had long known her. "Someday you must tell me where you're from," he said. "Show me on a map, that is. I have the original maps that Nafai drew, showing the whole gornaya. I won't have heard of your city, but I can add it to the map."
"It would do no good," said Shedemei. "It doesn't exist now."
"A grief that can hardly be imagined," said Motiak.
"It was for a while," said Shedemei. "But I'm alive, and my work requires all my concentration."
"Still, I'd like to see where your city was. People often build again on the same site. If there was a reason to build a city there once, another people will think of the same reason again." Polite conversation; they all knew what was really on Motiak's mind. But there was no use talking about it all the time; it wasn't as if they could do much. And it was Motiak's duty to make sure they were as comfortable as he could make them. That was one of the chief annoyances of being king. No matter where he was, no matter who was with him, he was always host, always responsible for everyone else's well-being.
Out on the road, their reason for this journey was immediately apparent. The encampment of emigrating diggers wasn't large, but then it wasn't meant to be. Quiet humans and angels manned the booth where food and water were distributed; lidded jars with thongs to loop around the neck would serve to help the diggers on their way. They would also mark them as emigrants, so that any who saw them on the road would know they were leaving Darakemba. They had taken the invitation of the Ancients; they had decided to live where they were not hated. But it gave them no joy. Motiak hadn't spent that much of his life around earth people that he could easily read the expressions on their strange faces. But it took no great experience to see the dejection in the slope of their backs, the way they tended to walk now on two feet, now touching a hand to the ground, as if in being called animals they had begun somehow to discover it was true, so now it took all their remaining strength just to keep from setting down the other hand to make it a foot again, as it had been for an ancient ancestor scurrying through the alleys of a human city, looking for something edible or wet or shiny.
Motiak led his party onto the road; the diggers moved aside. "No," he said, "the road is wide enough. We can share it."
They stayed motionless at the verge, watching him.