"Very well, then," said Luet. "He was. But he changed."
"He sensed the way the wind was blowing, you mean. But let's not argue."
"No, let's do argue," said Luet. "Which way was the wind blowing back in Chelem? Who had the soldiers there?"
"As I recall, our young judge had the command of a gang of digger thugs that were always ready to whip and claw women and children."
"Pabul and the others risked their lives to stop the cruelty. And gave up their future in positions of power under their father in order to escape into the wilderness."
"And come to Darakemba where, to everyone's surprise, they once again have positions of power."
"Which they earned."
"Yes, but by doing what?" Akma grinned. "Don't try to argue with me, Luet. I was your teacher for too long. I know what you're going to say before you say it."
Luet wanted to jab him with something very hard. When they were younger and quarreled, she would pinch together her thumb and first two fingers to form a weapon hard and sharp enough for Akma to notice it when she jabbed him. But there had been playfulness in it, even when she was most furious; today she didn't touch him, because she was no longer sure she loved him enough to strike at him without wanting to cause real injury.
A sad look came across Akma's face.
"Why aren't you happy?" she said tauntingly. "Didn't I say what you expected me to say?"
"I expected you to jab me the way you used to when you were a brat."
"So I've passed out of brathood."
"Now you judge me," said Akma. "Not because I'm wrong, but because I'm not loyal to Father."
"Aren't you loyal to him?"
"Was he ever loyal to me?" asked Akma.
"And will you ever grow out of the hurts of your childhood?"
Akma got a distant look on his face. "I've grown out of all the hurts that ended."
"No one's hurting you now," said Luet. "You're the one who hurts Mother and Father."
"I'm sorry to hurt Mother," said Akma. "But she made her choice."
"Didul and Pabul and Udad and Muwu all begged for our forgiveness. I forgave them then, and I still forgive them now. They've become decent men, all of them."
"Yes, you all forgave them."
"Yes," said Luet. "You say that as if there were something wrong with it."
"You had the right to forgive them for what they did to you, Luet. But you didn't have the right to forgive them for what they did to me."
Luet remembered seeing Akma alone on a hillside, watching as Father taught the people, with the Pabulogi seated in the front row. "Is that what this is all about? That Father forgave them without waiting for your consent?"
"Father forgave them before they asked him to," whispered Akma. She could barely hear him above the roaring of the crowd, and then she could only make out his words by watching his lips. "Father loved the ones who tormented me. He loved them more than me. There has never been such a vile, perverted, filthy, unnatural injustice as that."
"It wasn't about justice," said Luet. "It was about teaching. The Pabulogi only knew the moral world their father had created for them. Before they could understand what they were doing, they had to be taught to see things as the Keeper sees them. When they did understand, then they begged forgiveness and changed their ways."
"But Father already loved them," whispered Akma. "When they were still beating you, when they were still torturing me, mocking us both, smearing us with digger feces, tripping me and kicking me, stripping me naked and holding me upside down in front of all the people while they ridiculed me-while they were still doing those things, Father already loved them."
"He saw what they could become."
"He had no right to love them more than me."
"His love for them saved all our lives," said Luet. "Yes, Luet, and look what his love has done for them. They prosper. They're happy. In his eyes, they are his sons. Better sons than I am." This was uncomfortably close to Luet's own judgment of things. "There's nothing they've achieved, nothing in their relationship with Father that wasn't available to you."
"As long as I admitted first that there was no difference in value between the tortured and the torturer."
"That's stupid, Akma," said Luet. "They had to change before Father accepted them. They had to become someone else."
"Well, I haven't changed," said Akma. "I haven't changed." It was the most personal conversation Luet had had with Akma in years, and she longed for it to continue, but at that moment a roar went up from the crowd because they were bringing in the accused, protected by eight guards. This was another old tradition, introduced after several cases in which the accused was murdered in court before the trial was even completed, or snatched away to have another sort of trial in another place. These guards still served that practical purpose-an in-court murder of an accused person had happened not ten years before, admittedly in the rather wild provincial capital of Trubi, at the high end of the valley of the Tsidorek. Not that anyone expected Shedemei to be in danger. This was a test case, a struggle for power; she herself was not regarded with particular passion by those accusing her.
"Look at the pride in her," said Akma, shouting right in her ear so he could be heard.
Pride? Yes, but not the cocky sort of defiance that some affected to when haled before the court. She carried herself with simple dignity, looking around her calmly with mild interest, without fear, without shame. Luet had thought that no one could be charged and brought to trial without feeling at least a degree of embarrassment at being made a public spectacle, but Shedemei seemed to be no more emotionally involved than a mildly interested spectator.
And yet this trial did matter to her; hadn't she deliberately provoked it? She wanted this to happen. Did she know what the outcome would be, the way she knew in advance the charges against her?
"Has Father told you what the puppet is supposed to decide?" Akma shouted in her ear.
She ignored him. The guards were moving slowly through the crowded gallery, forcing people to sit down. It would take a while for them to silence the crowd-these people wanted to make noise.
She wanted to personally slap each one of them, because their noise had stopped Akma from baring his soul to her. That was what he was doing. For some reason, he had chosen this moment to ... to what? To make a last plea for her understanding. That's what it was. He was on the verge of some action, some public action. He wanted to justify himself to her. To remind her that Father was the one who had first been guilty of monstrous disloyalty. And why? Because Akma himself was preparing his own monstrous disloyalty. A public betrayal.
Akma was going to testify. He was going to be called as a scholar, an expert on religious teachings among the Nafari. He was certainly qualified, as Bego's star pupil. And even though within the family and the royal house it was well known that Akma no longer believed in the existence of the Keeper, it wouldn't stop him from testifying about what the ancient beliefs and customs had always been.
She laid her hand on Akma's arm, dug into his wrist with her fingers.
"Ow!" he cried, pulling away from her.
She leaned in close to him and shouted in his ear. "Don't do it!"
"Don't do what?" She could make out his words only by reading his lips.
"You can't hurt the Keeper!" she shouted. "You'll only hurt the people who love you!"
He shook his head. He couldn't hear her. He couldn't understand her words.
The crowd at last was quieter. Quieter. Till the last murmur finally died. Luet might have spoken to Akma again, but his attention was entirely on the trial. The moment had passed.