Of course, all this conversation was very loud, partly because Voozh-um's deafness no doubt required it, and partly because the girls had the normal exuberance of youth. Chebeya, though, had never seen such exuberance used inside a classroom. And while she had seen teachers try to get their students to discuss issues, it had never worked until now. She tried to think why, and then realized-it's because the girls know that Voozhum does not expect them to guess the answer in her mind, but rather to defend and attack the ideas they themselves bring out. And because she treats their answers with respect. No, she treats them with respect, as if their ideas were worthy of consideration.

And they were worthy of consideration. More than once Chebeya wanted to speak up and join in, and she could feel Luet and Edhadeya grow restless on either side of her-no doubt for the same reason.

Finally Edhadeya did speak up. "Isn't that the very point that Spo-koyro rejected in his dialogue with the Khrugi?"

A deathly silence fell upon the room.

"I'm sorry," Edhadeya said. "I know I had no right to speak."

Chebeya looked for Shedemei to say something to ease the awful tension in the room, but the schoolmaster seemed completely content with the situation.

It was Voozhum who spoke up. "It's not you, child. It's what you said."

One of the girls-an earth person, it happened-explained more. "We were waiting for you to tell us the story of... of Spokoyro and the Khrugi. We've never heard it. They must have been humans. And not ancient ones. And men."

"Is that forbidden here?" asked Chebeya.

"Not forbidden," said the girl, looking confused. "It's just-the school was only started a little while ago, and this is a class in the moral philosophers of the earth people, so... ."

"I'm sorry," said Edhadeya. "I spoke in ignorance. My example was irrelevant."

Voozhum spoke up again, her old voice cracking often, but loud in the way deaf people's voices often are. "These girls haven't had a classical education," she said. "But you have. You are most fortunate, my child. These girls must make do with such poor offerings as I can give them."

Edhadeya laughed scornfully, then immediately thought better of it; but it was too late.

"I know that laugh," said Voozhum.

"I laughed because I knew you were making fun of me," said Edhadeya. "And besides, I also ‘made do' with your ‘poor offerings.' "

"I understand that my teaching cheapened you," said Voozhum.

"You never heard that from me. And I never heard it myself until today."

"I've never spoken to you as a free woman," said Voozhum.

"And I've never spoken to you except as an impertinent child."

Finally the girls in the classroom understood who it was who was visiting with them that day, for they all had heard that Voozhum once was the personal chamberservant to the daughter of the king. "Edhadeya," they whispered.

"My young mistress," said Voozhum, "now a lady. You were often rude, but never impertinent. Tell us now, please. What is the virtue that the Keeper most values?"

"I don't know what Oykib said, because this story isn't known among the humans," said Edhadeya.

"Good," said Voozhum. "Then you won't be remembering or guessing, you'll be thinking."

"I think the virtue that the Keeper most admires is to love as the Keeper loves."

"And how is this? How does the Keeper love?"

"The love of the Keeper," said Edhadeya, obviously searching, obviously thinking of ideas that she had never considered all that seriously before. "The love of the Keeper is the love of the mother who punishes her child for naughtiness, but then embraces the same child to comfort her tears."

Edhadeya waited for the onslaught of contrary opinions that had greeted earlier suggestions, but she was met only by silence. "Please," she said, "just because I'm the daughter of the king doesn't mean you can't disagree with me the way you disagreed with each other a moment ago."

Still, not a word, though there was no shuffling or embarrassed looking away, either.

"Perhaps they do not disagree," said Voozhum. "Perhaps they hope you will teach them more of this-idea."

Edhadeya immediately rose to the challenge. "I think the Keeper wants us to see the world as she sees it. To pretend that we are the Keeper, and then to try to create wherever we can a small island where all the other virtues can be shared among good people."

There was a murmur among the girls. "Words of a true dreamer," one of them whispered.

"And I think," said Edhadeya, "that if that really is the virtue most favored by the Keeper, then you have created a virtuous classroom here, Voozhum."

"Long ago," said Voozhum, "when I lived in chains, sometimes chains of iron, but always chains of stone on my heart, there was a room where I could go and someone knew my virtues and listened to my thoughts as if I were truly alive and a creature of light instead of a worm of mud and darkness."

Edhadeya burst into tears. "I was never that good to you, Uss-Uss."

"You always were. Does my little girl still remember how I held her when she cried?"

Edhadeya ran to her and embraced her. The girls watched in awe as both Edhadeya and Voozhum wept, each in her fashion.

Chebeya leaned across Edhadeya's empty stool to whisper to Shedemei, "This is what you hoped for, isn't it?"

Shedemei whispered back, "I think it's a good lesson, don't you?"

And indeed it was, to see the daughter of the king embracing an old digger woman, both of them crying for joy, crying for remembrance of lost times, of ancient love.

"And what did Oykib say?" whispered Chebeya to Shedemei.

"He didn't really answer," said Shedemei. "He said, ‘To answer that, I would have to be the Keeper.' "

Chebeya thought for a few moments. Then she said, "But that is an answer. The same answer Edhadeya gave."

Shedemei smiled. "Oykib always was a trickster. He had a way with words."

It was disturbing, this tendency of Shedemei's to speak of the Heroes as if she knew all their secrets.

They spent the rest of the day in the school and sat at Shedemei's table at supper. The food was plain-many a rich woman would have turned up her nose at it, and Luet could see that Edhadeya didn't even know what some of it was. But in Akmaro's house, Luet and her mother had eaten the simple fare of the common people all their lives, and they ate with relish. It was plain to Luet that everything that happened in Shedemei's school-no, ‘Rasaro's House'-was a lesson. The food, the mealtime conversation, the way the cooking and cleaning up were done, the way people walked quietly but briskly in the halls-everything had a point to it, everything expressed a way of life, a way of thought, a way of treating people.

At supper, Edhadeya seemed giddy, which Luet understood, though it worried her a little. It was as if Edhadeya had lost her sense of decorum, her gentle carefulness. She kept goading Shedemei into saying something, but Luet had no way of guessing what the older girl had in mind.

"We heard that you were dangerous, teaching the diggers to rebel," said Edhadeya.

"What an interesting thought," said Shedemei. "After years of slavery, the thought of rebelling doesn't occur to the diggers until a middle-aged human suggests it? Rebellion against what, now that they're free? I think your friends are consumed with guilt, to fear rebellion now that the reason for it has finally been removed."

"That's what I thought, too," said Edhadeya.

"Tell the truth now. No one actually said these things to you."

Edhadeya glanced at Chebeya. "To Luet's mother, of course."

"And why not to you? Is it because you're the king's daughter, and your father was the one who freed the slaves? Do you think they'll ever forgive your father for that blunder?"