Mon started to explain again about how his childish truthsense was pure illusion designed to win attention for the second son of the king, but before he was well launched into it, she slapped his face.

"Not to me," she said. "You can tell that to anyone else and they can believe it if they want, but never say it to me. The insult is unbearable."

This time when she walked away, melting into the dispersing crowd, he didn't call her back. The stinging of his cheek had brought tears to his eyes, but he wasn't sure if it was just the pain that had done it. He thought back to those wonderful days when he was young and Edhadeya was his dearest friend. He remembered how she trusted him to take her true dream to Father, and because of Arnnha's absolute trust in his truthsense, he had won a hearing and an expedition was launched and the Zenifi were rescued. He had believed in those days that this would be his place in the kingdom, to be Aronha's most trusted counselor because Aronha would know that Mon could not lie. And the time when Bego used him to help translate the Rasulum leaves... .

Funny, now that he thought of it with the sting of Edhadeya's slap still in his face, how Bego didn't believe in the Keeper, but he still used Mon to help him with the translation. Wasn't it Bego, really, who taught them all to disbelieve in the Keeper? But Bego believed. Or at least believed in Mon's gift.

No, no, Akma already explained that. Bego didn't think of it as a gift from the Keeper, he thought of it as an innate talent in Mon himself. That's right, the ability to sense when people really believed what they were saying. It had nothing to do with absolute truth, and everything to do with absolute belief.

But if that's the case, thought Mon, why don't I ever get a sense that a single thing that Akma says is true? I haven't really got the logic of that straight. If my truthsense came from the Keeper, then the Keeper might be trying to turn me against Akma by refusing to confirm anything he says. But then, that would mean there really was a Keeper, so that can't be the reason. At the same time, if Akma is right and my truthsense is merely my own ability to tell when people are certain that they're telling the truth, what does that say about my complete lack of confirmation concerning Akma's words? It means that no matter how convincing he sounds-and don't I get caught up in his speeches the way the crowd does, swept along and utterly persuaded?-my truthsense still says that he's lying. He doesn't believe a word he's saying. Or if he believes it, it's like an opinion, not like a certainty. At the core of him, in his heart, in the deepest places in his mind, he isn't saying these things because he is sure of them.

So what does Akma believe? And why am I denying my truthsense in favor of Akma's uncertainties?

No, no, I already went through this with Akma, and he explained that a truly educated man never believes anything with certainty because he knows that further learning might challenge any or all of his beliefs; therefore I will only get a strong response from my truthsense about people who are ignorant or fanatical.

Ignorant or fanatical... like Edhadeya? Bego?

"Well, what did she want?" asked Aronha.

Mon's reverie had carried him back to where his brothers and Akma were speaking with the leaders of the local Assembly of the Ancient Ways. This was the part of founding a religion that bothered Mon the most. While they got plenty of donations from rich and educated people, the ones who actually were willing to take the time to govern the assembly weren't people that Mon much cared for. A lot of them were former priests who had lost their jobs back at the time of the reforms-an arrogant bunch that thought themselves a sort of wronged aristocracy, full of grievance and conceit. Others, though, were the kind of digger-hating bigots that, in Mon's opinion, were almost certainly the very men who either carried out or ordered the cruel mistreatment of the Kept during the persecutions. It made his skin crawl to have to associate with them. Aronha had privately confessed to Mon that he hated dealing with these people, too. "Whatever else we might say about Akmaro," Aronha commented then, "he certainly attracts a better grade of priest." They could never say this in front of Akma, however, since he still became very upset at any reminder of Luet's marriage to the priest Didul, and to praise the priests of the Kept as a class would surely cause an eruption of Akma's temper.

"She had a warning from Father," said Mon.

"Oh, is he starting to threaten us now?" asked Akma. He had his arm across the shoulder of a young thug who might well have been one of those who broke the bones or tore the wings of children.

"Let's talk about it when we're alone," said Mon.

"Why, do we have something to hide from our priests?" asked Akma.

"Yes," said Mon coldly.

Akma laughed. "He's joking, of course." But a few minutes later, Akma had managed to get rid of the young man and he and the Motiaki withdrew to a place near the riverbank. "Don't ever do that to me again, please," said Akma. "The day will come when we can use the machinery of state to support our assembly, but for right now we need the help of these people and it doesn't help when you make them feel excluded."

"Sorry," said Mon. "But I didn't trust him."

Akma smiled. "Of course you didn't. He's a contemptible sneak.

But he's a vain contemptible sneak and I had to work pretty hard to keep him from going away angry."

Mon patted Akma's arm. "As long as you bathe after touching him, I'm sure everything will be fine." Then he told them what Edhadeya had said.

"He's obviously trying to hamper us," said Ominer angrily. "Why should we believe anything he says?"

"Because he's the king," said Aronha, "and he wouldn't lie about something like this."

"Why not?" demanded Ominer.

"Because it shames him to admit he may not be able to control his soldiers," said Aronha. "I wish we didn't have to hurt Father so badly. If only he'd understand that we're doing this for the sake of the kingdom."

"We can't change our whole schedule around," said Ominer. "People are expecting us."

"Oh, don't worry about that," said Mon. "We'll draw a crowd whenever and wherever we show up. It might add a bit of mystery, for that matter, no one ever knowing where we'll be speaking next. Add to the excitement."

"It makes us look like cowards," said Ominer.

Khimin piped up. "Not if we announce that we have to do this because we've got good information that some of the king's men are out to kill us!"

"No!" Aronha said firmly. "We will never do that. People would take that as an accusation against the king, and it would be dishonorable for us to accuse him when he was the very one who sent us warning to try to protect us."

Akma clapped Khimin on the back. "There you go, Khimin. When Aronha decides that something is dishonorable, we can't do it even if it would have been a pretty effective ploy."

"Don't make fun of my sense of honor, Akma," said Aronha.

"I wasn't," said Akma. "I admire you for it."

Mon suddenly had an irresistible impulse to make trouble. "That's the way that Aronha most resembles Father. The only reason we've had any success at all is that Father is so honorable."

"Then that makes honor a weakness, doesn't it?" asked Ominer.

Aronha answered him with withering contempt. "In the short run, dishonor gives an advantage; in the long run, a dishonorable king loses the love of his people and ends up the way Nuab did. Dead."

"They tortured him to death with fire, didn't they?" asked Khimin.

"Try not to sound so delighted at the thought of it," said Akma. "It makes other people uneasy."

But what Mon noticed, what disturbed him in all this, was the fact that Akma seemed to draw closer to Ominer the more he said things that should have made a decent person recoil from him. Ominer said that honor was a weakness; now, though he said not a word about it, Akma had his arm around Ominer's shoulders and Ominer was all smiles. This is wrong. There's something seriously wrong. Akma wasn't like this, not even as recently as last year, before all this began. I remember when he would have been adamant about honor and decency as Aronha was. What is it, are the vile people we associate with now beginning to influence him? Or is it simply a natural consequence of having the adulation of so many thousands of people?