"If your father sent you to get me to retract my remarks about this morning's events, you can tell him that I know what he was planning from an undoubtable source, and if he doesn't stop telling people that Wetchik was plotting murder, I'll bring my evidence before the council and have him banned."
"I catft-I can't tell Father that!" said Sevet.
"Then don't," said Aunt Rasa. "Let him find out when I do it."
"Ban him? Ban Father^
"If you had studied more history-though come to think of it, I doubt that Dhelya taught you all that much anyway-you'd know that the more powerful and famous a man is, the more likely he is to be banned from Basilica. It's been done before, and it will be done again. After all, it's Gabya, not Wetchik or Roptat, whose soldiers roam the streets, pretending to protect us from thugs that Gabya probably hired in the first place. People will be glad to see him go-and that means they'll find it useful to believe every bit of evidence I bring,"
Sevet's face grew grave. "Father may be a bit prone to rage and a little sneaky in business, Mother, but he's no murderer."
"Of course he's not a murderer. Wetchik left Basilica and Gabya would never dare to kill Roptat without Wetchik there to blame it on. Though I think that if Gabya had known at the time that Wetchik had fled, he would certainly have killed Roptat the moment he showed up and then used Wetchik's hasty departure as proof that my dear mate was the murderer."
"You make Father sound like a monster. Why did you take him as a mate, then?"
"Because I wanted to have a daughter with an extraor- dinary singing voice and no moral judgment whatsoever. It worked so well that I renewed with him for a second year and had another. And then I was done."
Sevet laughed. "You're such a silly thing, Mother. I do have moral judgment, you know. And every other kind. It was Vasya I married, not some second-rate actor."
"Stop sniping at your sister's choice of mate," said Aunt Rasa. "Kokot's Obririg is a dear, even if he has no talent whatsoever and not the breath of a chance that Koya will actually bear him a child, let alone renew him."
"A dear," said Sevet. "I'll have to remember what that word really means, now that you've told me."
Sevet got up to leave. Luet opened the door for her. But Aunt Rasa stopped her daughter before she left.
"Sevya, dear," she said. "The time may come when you have to choose between your father and me."
"The two of you have made me do that at least once a month since I was very small. I've managed to sidestep you both so far, and I intend to continue."
Rasa clapped her hands together-loudly, a sharp report like one stone striking another. "Listen to me, child. I know the dance that you've done, and I've both admired you for the way you did it and pitied you for the fact that it was necessary. What I'm saying to you is that soon-very soon-it may no longer be possible to do that dance. So it's time for you to look at both your parents and decide which one deserves your loyalty. I do not say love, because I know you love us both. I say loyalty."
"You shouldn't speak to me this way, Mother," said Sevet. "I'm not your student. And even if you succeeded in banning Father, that still wouldn't mean I'd have to choose between you."
"What if your father sent soldiers to silence me? Or tolchocks-which is more likely. What if it was a knife he paid for that slit your mother's throat?"
Sevet regarded her mother in silence. "Then I'd have a pichalny song to sing indeed, wouldn't I?"
"I believe that your father is the enemy of the Oversold, and the enemy of Basilica as well. Think about this seriously, my sad-voiced Sevet, think deep and long, because when the day of choosing comes there'll be no time to think."
"I have always honored you, Mother, for the fact that you never tried to turn me against my father, despite all the vile things he said about you. I'm sorry you have changed." With great dignity, Sevet swept herself from the room. Luet, still a bit stunned by the brutal nature of the conversation under the veneer of elegant speech, was slow to follow her out the door.
"Luet," whispered Aunt Rasa.
Luet turned to face the great woman, and trembled inside to see the tears on her cheeks.
"Luet, you must tell me. What is the Oversoul doing to us? What does the Oversoul plan?"
"I don't know," said Luet. "I wish I did."
"If you did, would you tell me?"
"Of course."
"Even if the Oversoul told you not to?"
Luet hadn't thought of such a possibility.
Aunt Rasa took her hesitation for an answer "So," she said. "I wouldn't have expected otherwise-the Oversoul does not choose weak servants, or disloyal ones. But tell me this, if you can: Is it possible, is it passible, that there was no plot to kill Wetchik at all? That the Oversoul merely sent that warning to get him to leave Basilica? You must realize-I was thinking that-Lutya, what if the only thing the Oversoul was doing was getting rid of Issib and Nafai? It makes sense, doesn't it-they were interfering with the Oversoul, keeping her so busy that she couldn't speak to anyone but them. Might she not have sent your vision to make sure they left the city, because they were threatening to her ?"
Luet's first impulse was to shout her denial, to rebuke her for daring to speak so sacrilegiously of the Oversoul-as if it would act for its own private benefit.
But then, on sober reflection, she remembered with what wonderment Hushidh had told her of her realization that Issib and Nafai might well be the reason for the Oversoul's silence. And if the Oversoul thought that her ability to guide and protect her daughters was being hampered by these two boys, couldn't she act to remove them?
"No," said Luet. "I don't think so."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm never sure, except of the vision itself," said Luet. "But I've never known the Oversoul to deceive me. All my visions have been true."
"But this one would still be a true instrument of the Oversoul's will."
"No," said Luet again. "No, it couldn't be. Because Nafai and Issib had already stopped. Nafai even went and prayed-"
"So I heard, but then, so did Mebbekew, Wetchik's son by that miserable little whoreling Kilvishevex-"
"And the Oversold spoke to Nafai and woke him up, and brought him outside to meet me in the traveler's room. If the Oversoul wanted Nafai to be still, she would have told him, and he would have obeyed. No, Aunt Rasa, I'm sure the message was real."
Aunt Rasa nodded. "I know. I knew it was. It would just be ..."
"Simpler."
"Yes." She smiled ruefully. "Simpler if Gaballufix were as innocent as he pretends. But not true to character. You know why I lapsed him?"
"No," said Luet. Nor did she want to know-by long custom a woman never told her reasons for lapsing a man, and it was a hideous breach of etiquette to ask or even speculate on the subject.
"I shouldn't tell, but I will-because you're one whot must know the truth in order to understand all things."
I'm also a child, thought Luet. You'd never tell any of your other thirteen-year-olds about such things. You'd never even tell your daughter. But I, I am a seer, and so everything is opened up before me and I am forbidden to remain innocent of anything except joy.
"I lapsed him because I learned that he ..."
Luet braced herself for some sordid revelation, but it did not come.
"No, child, no. Just because the Oversold speaks to you doesn't mean that I should burden you with my secrets. Go, sleep. Forget my questions, if you can. I know my Wetchik. And I know Gaballufix, too. Both of them, down to the deepest shadow of their souls. It was for my daughters' sake that I wished to find some impossible thing, like Gabya's innocence." She chuckled. "I'm like a child, forever wishing for impossible things. Like your vision in the woods, before I drew you up to the portico. You saw all my most brilliant nieces, like a roll call of judgment."