Earthborn (Homecoming) (25 page)

Angrily, Akma pounded his fist down into the sod. “My father
must
be stopped from spreading his lies!”

“His mistakes,” said Bego. “Remember? You would never be so disloyal a son as to accuse your father of lying. Who would believe you then?”

“Just because he believes them doesn’t mean they’re not lies,” said Akma.

“Ah, but they’re not
his
lies, are they?” said Bego.
“So you must call them mistakes, when you say they are your father’s.”

Mon chuckled. “Do you hear him, Akma? He’s with us. This is what he wanted us to realize all along.”

“Why do you think so?” asked Bego.

“Because you’re advising us on strategy,” said Mon.

Akma sat up, grinning. “Yes, you are, aren’t you, Bego!”

Bego shrugged again. “You can’t possibly have any strategy right now. Akmaro is too closely linked to the king’s policy, and vice versa. But perhaps there’ll come a time when the Houses of the Kept are much more clearly separated from the house of the king.”

“What do you mean?” asked Akma.

“I mean only this. There are those who want to tear the king from his throne, they’re so angry about these policies.”

“That’s not what we want!” cried Mon.

“Of course not. No one in their right mind wants that. The only reason we don’t have invasions from the Elemaki every year is because the entire empire of Darakemba is united, with armies and spies constantly patrolling and protecting our borders. It’s only a tiny minority of bigots and madmen who want to throw down the throne. However, that tiny treasonous minority will gain more and more support, the farther your father pushes these reforms of Akmaro’s. It will mean civil war, sooner or later, and no matter who wins, we’ll be weakened. There are people who don’t want that. Who want us to go back to the way we were before.”

“The old priests, you mean,” said Mon scornfully.

“Some of them, yes,” said Bego.

“And you,” said Akma. “You want things to go back the way they were.”

“I don’t have opinions on public policy,” said Bego. “I’m a scholar, and I’m reporting to you in a scholarly way the current condition of the kingdom. There are those who want to fend off civil war, protect the
throne, and stop Akmaro from pushing these insane, offensive, impossible laws breaking down all distinctions between men and women, humans and diggers and angels. All this talk of forgiveness and understanding.”

Akma interrupted, full of bitterness. “It’s only a mask for those who want to turn this into a land where diggers strut around with weapons in their hands, tormenting their betters and—”

“You almost make me fear that you are one of those who wants to destroy this kingdom,” said Bego. “If that is the case, Akma, then you’ll be of no use to those who are trying to preserve the throne.”

Akma fell silent, pulling at the grass. A clump came free, spraying his face with dirt. Angrily he brushed it away.

“But what if those who are trying to preserve the throne could assure the people, Just wait. The children of Motiak don’t believe in this nonsense of all the species being equal children of the Keeper. The children of Akma have no intention of pursuing their father’s mad policies. Be patient. When the time comes, things will go back to the old way.”

“I’m not the heir,” said Mon.

“Then perhaps you should work to persuade Aronha,” said Bego.

“Even if I did, Father would only pass the kingdom on to Ominer, skipping us both.”

“Then perhaps you should also persuade Ominer and even Khimin.” At Mon’s sound of disgust Bego laughed. “He’s bright enough. He may be his mother’s son, but he’s your father’s son, too. What can your father do if
all
his children reject this policy?”

“My father wouldn’t care,” said Akma. “He’d just pick one of his favorites to be high priest after him. I don’t imagine he even considers me for the position.”

“Dee-dool!” cried Mon derisively.

Akma’s face went hot with anger at the sound of Didul’s name.

“It doesn’t matter who your father’s successor would really be,” said Bego. “Don’t you see that if his own son publicly preaches against his policies, he would be hopelessly undermined? Even among his own priests and teachers there’s dissension, a lack of confidence. Some of them will listen to you. Some of them won’t. But the Kept will be weakened.”

“Ho, Akma, I can imagine you preaching,” said Mon scornfully.

“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.”

“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.”

“Who?” asked Luet.

“You know, the councilor who looked at me. And I said, You can’t blame people for thinking about my dream of the Zenifi when they see me. Not everybody has true dreams. And then he said—listen, Luet—he said, Nobody does.”

“Nobody?” Luet laughed, then realized that Edhadeya didn’t think it was funny. “Dedaya, I’ve had true dreams, you’ve had true dreams. Mother’s a raveler.
Mon has his truthsense. Father dreams true, and—this is absurd.”

“
I
know that. So I asked him why he said it, and he wouldn’t tell. I pinched him, I tickled him—Luet, Ominer can’t keep a secret from me. I’ve always been able to torture it out of him in five minutes. But this time he pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about.”

“And you think it has something to do with Akma and Mon?”

“I know it does. Luet, the only way Ominer could possibly keep a secret from me is if he was more frightened of someone else. And the only two people he fears more than me in the whole world are—”

“Your father?”

“Don’t be silly, Father’s as sweet as they come when he notices Ominer at all—which isn’t often, he blends in with the walls. No, it’s Mon and Aronha. I think it’s both of them. I watched this morning, and all four of my brothers ended up with
your
brother and whatever they’re talking about or planning or doing—”

“It has to do with the idea that there are no true dreams.”

Edhadeya nodded. “I can’t go to Father with this, they’d just deny it.”

“Lie to your father?”

“Something’s different. It made me feel dark and unpleasant and I think they’re plotting something.”

“Don’t say that,” said Luet. “It’s our families we’re talking about.”

“They’re not just boys anymore. Because we’re still studying, we sometimes forget that we’re not really in school, none of us but Khimin, when you come down to it. We’re men and women. If Akma weren’t your father’s son, he’d be earning his own living. Aronha plays at soldier, but he has too much leisure, and so do my other brothers—they make priests work, but not the sons of the king.”