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." ffi

"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."

Luet nodded. "Father tried to make Akma start earning his way when he was only fifteen. The age when laborers' children-"

"I know the age," said Edhadeya.

"Akma just said, ‘What, are you going to stand over me with a whip if I don't?' It was really vicious."

"Your father wasn't his taskmaster in those terrible days," said Edhadeya.

"But Father forgave the taskmasters. The Pabulogi. Akma hasn't, and he is still angry."

"Thirteen years!" cried Edhadeya.

"Akma feeds on it the way an unborn chick feeds on the yolk of its egg. Even when he's thinking about something else, even when he doesn't realize it, he's seething inside. He was my teacher for a while. We became very close. I loved him for a while more than I loved anybody. But if I came too close, if I touched his affection in just the wrong way, he lashed out. Sometimes it shocked me the way Elemak and Mebbekew must have felt when Nafai knocked them down with lightning from his finger."

"Melancholy. I thought he was just a moody sort of person," said Edhadeya.

"Oh, I'm sure that's it," said Luet, "it's just that when he gets into that mood, it's my father that he rages at."

"And the Pabulogi."

"They don't come around often. When the priests come in for their meetings with Father, Akma makes sure he's somewhere else. I don't think he's seen any of them for years."

"But you've seen them."

Luet smiled wanly. "As little as possible."

"Even from her deathbed, as she calls it, Mother gets all the gossip, and she says that Didul looks at you like... like. ..."

"Like my worst nightmare."

"You can't mean that," said Edhadeya.

"Not him personally. But what if he did decide he loved me? What if I loved him? It would be quicker and kinder if I just slit Akma's throat in his sleep."

"You mean this childish melancholy of Akma's would keep you from the man you love?"

"I don't love Didul. It was just a hypothetical situation."