"Shedemei is not your enemy," said Edhadeya.

"I have been her enemy, then, until now. I realized that all my loathing for angels had been taught to me from childhood, and I only continued to feel that way because it was the tradition of my people. I actually knew and liked several angels, including one rude old scholar in the king's house."

"Bego," said Edhadeya.

He looked at her in surprise. "But of course he would be better known here in the capital." Then he studied her face and knitted his brow. "Have we met before?"

"Once, long ago. You didn't want to listen to me."

He thought for a moment longer, then looked aghast. "I have been pouring out my heart to the king's daughter," he said.

"Except for Akmaro himself, you couldn't have spoken to anyone gladder to hear these words from you. My father honors you, in spite of his disagreement with you. When you see fit to tell him that those disagreements exist no longer, he will embrace you as a long lost brother. So will Ilihi, and so will Akmaro."

"I didn't want to listen to women," said Khideo. "I didn't want to live with angels. I didn't want diggers to be citizens. Now I have come to a school run by women to learn how to live with angels and diggers. I want to change my heart and I don't know how."

"Wanting to is the whole lesson; all the rest is practice. I will say nothing to my father or anyone else about who you are."

"Why didn't you name yourself to me?"

"Would you have spoken to me then?"

He laughed bitterly. "Of course not."

"And please remember that you also refrained from naming yourself to me."

"You guessed soon enough."

"And so did you."

"But not soon enough."

"And I say that no harm has been done." She rose from her chair. "You may attend any class, but you must do it in silence. Listen. You will learn as many lessons from the students as from the teachers. Even if you think they are hopelessly wrong, be patient, watch, learn. What matters right now is not correctness of opinion, but learning what opinions they might have. Do you understand?"

He nodded. "I'm not used to being deferent."

"Don't be deferent," she said testily-a tone of voice that Shedemei had taught her inadvertently. "Just be silent."

During the days that followed, Edhadeya watched-from a distance, but carefully. Some of the teachers clearly resented the presence of this man, but Khideo was not insensitive, and soon stayed away from their classes. The girls got used to him quickly, ignoring him in class, and gradually, shyly, including him at meals and in the courtyard. He would be asked to reach something on a high shelf. Some of the little girls even started climbing on him whenever he sat leaning against a tree, using him to get to branches that were otherwise out of reach. Lissinits, they called him-"ladder." He seemed to like the name.

Edhadeya came to value him for his own sake. Two things about him, though, weighed heavily on her mind. She kept thinking about how even a man like him, a confirmed bigot, could actually harbor a fundamental decency deep within. The outward pattern of his life didn't necessarily reflect what was inside him. It took terrible events to waken him, to get him to shuck off the man he seemed to be and reveal that inward self. But the decent self was there to be found.

The other thing that preyed upon her mind was what he had said about her brothers. The Unkept had held their meetings for thirteen years and they led to nothing. Then Akma succeeded in persuading all her brothers, all the king's sons, to reject belief in the Keeper and, more specifically, obedience to the religion of Akmaro. And from that time forward, the most evil men felt free to do their dark business.

That can't be what Akma intended. If he understood it the way Khideo does, wouldn't he stop?

I should talk to Mon, not Akma, she told herself-not noticing that she must already have decided to talk to Akma. If I could get him to break ranks with the others... but no, she knew that was impossible. None of the brothers would betray the others; that was how they'd see it. No, it had to be Akma. If he changed his mind, they would change theirs. He would persuade them.

She kept hearing Luet's despairing voice: "There's nothing left in him, Edhadeya. Nothing there but hate." If that was true, then talking to Akma would be a waste of time. But Luet couldn't see into his heart. If Khideo had a spark of decency in him, couldn't Akma also? He was young, still; he had been damaged in childhood far more than Khideo had. The world had been misshapen for him ever since; if once he saw the truth, couldn't he choose to be a different man in a very different world?

These were the thoughts that drove her as one night she locked the school, leaving Khideo-no, Lissinits-as caretaker of it. Then, torch in hand, she walked in the brisk autumn air to her father's house. On the way she thought: What if there were no safety? If I were an earth woman-or man, or child-I wouldn't dare to make this walk in darkness, for fear of being set upon by cruel men who hate me, not because of anything I've done, but because of the shape of my body. For those people these streets are filled with terror, where all my life I've walked without fear, day and night. Can they truly be citizens, when they haven't the freedom to walk the city?

As she expected, Akma was in the king's house, in the library wing, where he slept most nights now. Not that he was asleep. He was up, reading, studying, jotting down notes to himself in the wax on a bark; one of dozens of barks covered with scribbling. "Writing a book?" she asked.

"I'm not a holy man," he said. "I don't write books. I write speeches." He swept the barks to one side. She liked the way he looked at her, as if he had been hoping she would come. She had his full attention, and his eyes didn't wander over her body the way most men's did. He looked into her eyes. She felt as though she ought to say something very clever or very wise, to justify his interest in her.

No, she told herself sternly. That's just one of his tricks. One of the things he does to win people over. And I'm not here to be won over. I came to teach, not to be taught.

No wonder I once loved him, if he always looked at me like that.

To her surprise, what she blurted out now was nothing like what she had come to say. "I used to love you," she said.

A sad smile came over his face. "Used to," he whispered. "Before there was any issue of belief."

"Is it an issue of belief, Akma?" she asked.

"For two people to love each other, they have to meet, don't they? And two people who live in utterly different worlds have no chance of meeting."

She knew what he meant; they had had this conversation before, and he had insisted that while she lived in an imaginary world in which the Keeper of Earth watched over everyone, giving purpose to their lives, he lived in a real world of stone and air and water, where people had to find their own purposes.

"Yet we're meeting here," she said.

"That remains to be seen." His words were cold and distant, but his eyes searched her face. For what? What does he want to see? Some remnant of my love for him? But that is the one thing that I dare not show him because I dare not find it in myself. I can't love him, because only a monstrous, callous woman could love the man who caused so much pointless suffering.

"Have you been hearing the reports from the provinces?"

"There are many reports," said Akma. "Which did you have in mind?"

She refused to play along with his pretense of innocence. She waited.

"Yes, I've heard the reports," he said. "A terrible business. I wonder your father hasn't called in the military."

"To attack what army?" she asked scornfully. "You're smarter than that, Akma. An army is useless against thugs who melt away into the city and hide by wearing the clothing of respectable men of business, trade, or labor during the day."