"I am Motiak," he said. "Don't you understand that you are citizens? You don't have to go. I've opened up the public larders in every city. You can wait this out. It will pass."
Finally one of them spoke. "When we go there, we see the hatred in their eyes, sir. We know you meant well for us, setting us free. We don't hate you."
"It's not the hunger," said another. "You know it's not that."
"Yes it is," said a woman, holding three small children near her. "And the beatings. You won't live forever, sir."
"Whatever else might be true of my sons," said Motiak, "they will never permit the persecution."
"Oh, they'll starve us out, but not let us be hit?" the woman scoffed. "Stand up, you," she said to her children. "This is the king, here. This is majesty."
Motiak's angel captain made a motion as if to punish her for impudence, but Motiak waved him back with a tiny gesture. The irony in her voice could not overmatch the bitterness in his heart. She was right, to jeer at majesty. A king has no more power than the willing obedience of the great mass of the people gives him. A king who is worse than his people is a poisonous snake; a king who is better is last year's snakeskin, discarded in the grass.
Pabul was at the Ancient Ways booth. He had asked if he might come along, if only because he felt somewhat responsible for the troubles with his decision in Shedemei's trial the year before. "These so-called Ancients, they're a loathsome bunch," he said, "but they're not breaking any law. They don't foul the water or poison the food. It's fresh enough, and the rations they give the earth people are adequate for a day's journey." He hesitated, considering whether to say the next thing, then decided and spoke. "You could forbid the diggers to leave."
Motiak nodded. "Yes-I could require the most helpless and obedient of my citizens to stay and suffer further humiliation and abuse, from which I'm powerless to protect them, I could do that."
Pabul made no more argument along that line.
They walked all day, briskly because they were all healthy: They made a point of staying fit; Motiak and Pabul because their offices were fundamentally military ones and they might find themselves in the field at any time; Akmaro and Chebeya, Edhadeya and Shedemei because they were of the Kept and labored with their own hands, permitting themselves no excess of food or unproductive leisure. So they overtook group after group of diggers, and to each of them Motiak said the same thing. "Please stay. I wish you would stay. Trust in the Keeper to heal the wound in this land." And their answer was always the same: For you we would stay, Motiak, we know you wish us well; but there's no future here for me, for my children.
"It's misleading," Akmaro said that afternoon. "We see here the ones that are on the road. Most are staying."
"So far," said Motiak.
"Our resources are stretched to the limit, but all the diggers that the Kept can hire are earning wages; their children are still in school; there are even towns and villages where Akma and your sons have no influence and the people treat each other civilly, without boycotts or any sign of hate."
"How many such towns, Akmaro?" asked Motiak. "One in a hundred?"
"One in fifty," said Akmaro. "Or one in forty." Motiak had no need to answer that.
He thought back to the morning's conversation with his wife. The callousness with which she said to let the diggers go and then the problem would be solved. Is that any more monstrous than my cruel thought that I might wish to see my sons in graves before I die? Yet I would not have shrunk from letting them all take weapons in their hands and go out into battle, if an enemy attacked us. They might have died then, in the violence of war, and when they saw me mourning no man or woman in the kingdom would have said, If he really loved them he wouldn't have put them in the way of death.
He framed the idea in words and said them aloud, so Akmaro, still walking beside him, could hear. "There are things that parents must value even above their children's lives."
Akmaro needed no explanation to understand where Motiak's thoughts had turned. "That's hard," he said. "All of nature has written into our minds the idea that children matter more than anything."
"But civilization means rising above even that," said Motiak. "We feel our self to be the town, the tribe, the city, the nation-"
"The children of the Keeper-"
"Yes, we see that as the self that must be preserved at all costs, so that nearer things are less valuable. Does it mean we're monsters, that we hate our grown children if we send them off to war to kill and die so they can protect our neighbors' little ones?"
" ‘The survival of the family is best enhanced when the family is subsumed in a larger society,' " Akmaro recited. " ‘One family breaks and bleeds, but the larger organism heals. The wound is not fatal.'
Edhadeya has been teaching me the things that are taught in Rasaro's House."
"She spends more time in your house than mine," said Motiak.
"She finds more comfort from Chebeya than from her stepmother," said Akmaro. "I don't think that's surprising. Besides, she spends most of her time with Shedemei."
"Strange woman," said Motiak.
"When you know her better," said Akmaro, "you'll begin to realize that she's even stranger than you thought at first." Then, suddenly, Akmaro's demeanor changed; in a softer voice he said, "I didn't realize that your captain of soldiers was so close behind us."
"Is he?" asked Motiak.
"Were you overheard, do you think? When you said, ‘There are things that parents must value even above their children's lives'?"
Motiak glanced at Akmaro in alarm. They both understood that inadvertently, Motiak had placed their sons in great danger. "It's time that we stopped for our noon meal."
While the soldiers broke out the food that they were carrying, and all but two of the spies settled to the ground to eat, Motiak took Edhadeya aside. "I'm sorry to separate you from the group, but I have an urgent errand for you."
"And you can't send a spy?" she said.
"I most certainly cannot," he said. "I chanced to say something unfortunate just now, and I was overheard; but even if I hadn't been, the idea is bound to occur to one of my men, seeing how unhappy I am. You must go and find your brothers and warn them that it's possible, even likely, that some soldier, thinking to do me a great service, will attempt to relieve me of some of my family burdens."
"Oh, Father, you don't think they would raise a hand against the royal blood?"
"Kings' sons have died before," said Motiak. "My soldiers know that what my boys are doing now is killing me. I fear the loyalty of my most loyal men as much as I fear the disloyalty of my sons. Go to them, tell them my warning."
"Do you know what they'll say, Father? That you're threatening them, that you're trying to scare them into stopping their public speaking."
"I'm trying to save their lives. Tell them at least to keep their travel secret. Tell no one where they're going next, tell no one when they plan to leave. Go suddenly, arrive unexpectedly. They must, or somewhere on the road someone will be lying in wait for them. And not diggers-I'm talking about humans and angels. Will you do this?"
She nodded.
"I'll send two angels with you for safety, but when you get near, you must order them to stay behind so you can talk to your brothers alone."
She nodded; she got up to go.
"Edhadeya," said Motiak. "I know that I'm asking you to do a hard thing, to go and see them. But whom else can I send? Akmaro? Pabul? Akma will allow you to come close and speak to your brothers in privacy."
"I can bear it," said Edhadeya. "I can bear it better than watching these weary people leave their homeland."
As she walked away, Motiak saw that she was heading straight for Shedemei. He called out to her. She came back.