The next day, she got her note back again. Scrawled in a hurried hand on the bottom was the notation, "Thanks, but school takes up all my days. Come visit me, if you'd like."

At first Chebeya was startled and, she had to admit, just the tiniest bit offended. She was the wife of the high priest, wasn't she? And this woman refused her invitation and casually invited her to come calling-and at a school, no less, not even at home.

Chebeya was immediately ashamed of her own offended dignity. Besides, this new teacher was all the more interesting now. She told Luet what she had heard and what had happened to her invitation, and Luet immediately insisted on coming along. By the time they left home to make the visit, Edhadeya had somehow been included. "I want to see what the ancient Rasa was like, as a teacher," she explained.

"You don't actually expect her school to be like that legendary one, do you?" asked Chebeya.

"Why shouldn't it be?" said Edhadeya. "Just having a woman at the head of it-that makes it more like Rasa's school than any other I've heard of."

"They say that the diggers have always had women's schools taught by women," Luet said.

"But this woman is human," Edhadeya reminded her. "She is, isn't she?"

"She calls herself Shedemei," said Chebeya. "The whole ancient name, not Sedma the way we say it now."

The younger women tried out saying the name.

"They must have held their whole mouths differently in the old days," said Luet. "Has our language changed that much?"

"It must have, for the angels and diggers to be able to pronounce it," said Edhadeya. "They say there used to be sounds that the sky people and earth people couldn't even make, and now there aren't."

"Who says the language changed?" said Luet. "Maybe they learned to make new sounds!"

"There's no way to learn how language sounded in the past," said Chebeya, "so there's no point in arguing about it."

"We weren't arguing," said Luet. "We always talk like this."

"Ah," said Chebeya. "Mildly contentious, with just a hint of back-talk to your mother." But then she smiled and the two girls laughed, and after walking a good way into an old neighborhood that had never been fashionable they reached the right avenue. An old angel was out on a perch in the shade of his porch, watching the goings-on in the street. "Old sir," said Luet, because she was youngest, "can you tell us the way to the new school?"

"School for girls?" asked the old man.

"Are there so many on this street?" asked Luet in her most innocent I'm-not-being-sarcastic voice.

"The whole corner up there, three houses butted up against each other on this side." He turned his back on them, which for an old man wasn't quite as rude as it would have been for a young one. Even with his back turned, they heard him mutter, "School for mud rats."

"Definitely one of the Kept," said Edhadeya quietly.

"Oh yes," Luet whispered. "I thought so at once." ‘ They were all too well-bred to laugh aloud at the old man-or at least too conscious of the image they had to present, given that someone on the street was bound to recognize them as the king's daughter and the wife and daughter of the high priest.

Only when they were in front of the three houses that held the school did they realize why it was an especially apt location for a school that would mix the three peoples. Just up the cross street was a space of rough country where a stand of shaggy old trees by an old creek bed had never been cut down. There were a few huts where poor humans might live, and there were thatched roofs in the trees where angels with no money made their home. That alone would have identified it as a slum; but they also knew that both banks of the creek were pocked and tunneled to make houses for freed slaves who had quickly squandered their freedom bonus and now lived in desperate poverty, hiring out for day labor if they were in good health, the others begging or starving if they weren't skilled enough to get piecework. Akmaro had often taught that the existence of such places was proof that the people of Darakemba were unworthy of the great wealth and prosperity that the Keeper had given them. Many of the poor survived only because the Kept contributed food at the House of the Keeper and the priests and teachers brought it to the warrens. Some people actually had the gall to complain that they'd contribute more, but they knew that lazy diggers would probably get most of it. As if these people had not already wasted half their lives or more as unpaid slaves in the houses of the rich!

So this Shedemei had chosen to open her school close to the place where diggers lived; she was serious about including their children in her school. But it was also a place where any breeze from the western mountains would bring her the notorious smell of the creek. Rat Creek, some called it. Akmaro always referred to it as Keeper's Creek. Polite people never spoke of it at all.

Since the doors of all three houses stood open, and all three porches held young girls quietly reciting or memorizing or simply reading, it was hard to guess which was the main entrance to the school. And as it turned out, it hardly mattered, for Shedemei herself came out to greet them.

Chebeya knew at once that it had to be Shedemei-she exuded an air of being very much in control of things, and invited them in with such a hurried greeting that it seemed barely civil. "The younger children are just getting down for their afternoon naps," she said. "So please talk quietly in the corridor."

Inside the school, they found that Shedemei must have rented the houses around the corner and through the block as well, for the young girls were napping in the shade of some old trees in a central courtyard-those that weren't dangling from the lower branches, of course. Chebeya noticed several adult women moving from girl to girl, helping them settle down, bringing drinks of water to some. Were these women teachers or servants? Or was there such a distinction in this place?

"I can't believe it," murmured Edhadeya.

"Just little children, sleeping," said Chebeya, not understanding Edhadeya's surprise.

"No, I mean-could that really be old Uss-Uss? I thought she was ancient when she was a servant in my bedchamber, and I haven't seen her in ... oh, so long, I thought she must be dead by now, but there, walking toward that door... ."

"I never met your legendary Uss-Uss," said Luet, "so I can't very well help you recognize her now."

Chebeya finally saw which woman Edhadeya meant, a bent old digger with a slow and shuffling gait.

Shedemei was just returning from the courtyard. Edhadeya asked her at once. "That earth woman, just going into the house across the courtyard-that's not Uss-Uss, is it?"

"I appreciate your not calling out to her," said Shedemei. "A shout would have disturbed the children, and it wouldn't do any good because your old servant is almost completely deaf now. By the way, we call her Voozhum here."

"Voozhum, of course. So did I, the last few months before she left," said Edhadeya. "I've thought about her so often since then."

"It's true," Luet affirmed.

Edhadeya launched into a reminiscence, her voice soft and sweet with memory. "She left our house as soon as Father freed all the slaves of long service. I wasn't surprised she went. She told me that she dreamed of having a house of her own. Though I had hoped she'd stay with us as a free employee. She was good to me. She was my friend, really, more than a servant. I wish she hadn't left me."

Shedemei's voice sounded like the cawing of a crow when she answered. "She didn't leave, Edhadeya. The queen discharged her. Too old. Useless. And a cheapening influence on you."

"Never!"

"Oh, Voozhum remembered the words. Memorized them on the spot."