Sandoz shook his head. "Nico, you must go to one of the priests to confess. I cannot hear confessions anymore."

"No," Nico said, "not a priest. You yourself must absolve me. Don Emilio, I am sorry that I beat you up."

Relieved, Emilio said, "You were only doing your job."

"It was a bad job," Nico insisted. "I'm sorry I did it."

No excuses about following Carlo's orders. No hedges. No self-serving justifications. "Nico," Emilio said with the quiet formality the occasion required, "I accept your apology. I forgive you for beating me up."

Cautious, Nico pressed, "Both times?"

"Both times," Emilio confirmed.

Nico looked solemnly glad to hear this. "I took your guinea pig to the sisters. The children promised to take good care of her."

"That's good, Nico," Emilio said after a time, astonished by how much it helped to know this. "Thank you for doing that, and for telling me."

Heartened, Nico asked, "Don Emilio, do you think we are going to do a bad job on that planet?"

"I'm not certain, Nico," Emilio admitted. "The first time I was there, we wanted very much to be good people and to do the right things, but it all went wrong. This time, our motives for going to Rakhat are not... pure. But who knows? Maybe things will turn out well in spite of us."

"That would be irony," Nico observed.

Emilio's face softened and he gazed at the big man with real affection. "Yes, indeed. That would be irony." He was glad Nico had stopped by, he realized. "And you, Nico. What do you think? Will it be a bad job down there?"

"I'm not certain, Don Emilio," Nico said seriously, mimicking Sandoz's own tone and words as he often did now. "I think we should wait until we get there and see what's going on. That's my advice."

Emilio nodded. "You're very sensible, Nico."

But Nico went on, "I think that the man who did bad things to you- that Kitheri? He might be sorry, like I am. I think his music is wonderful- better than Verdi, even. Someone who makes such good music can't be all bad. That's what I think."

Which was a great deal harder to accept, but might have some germ of truth.... Emilio stood then, to signal the end of the visit, and Nico rose as well, but did not move to the door. Instead he reached down and gently lifted Sandoz's right hand and bent low over it, to kiss it. Embarrassed, Emilio tried to draw back, to refuse this homage, but Nico's gentle grip seemed unbreakable.

"Don Emilio," Nico said, "I would kill or die for you."

Emilio, who understood this code, looked away and tried to imagine how he could respond to such a display of undeserved devotion. There seemed only one reply possible and, eyes closed, he examined himself to see if he could say this with the honesty such a man deserved. "Thank you, Nico," he said finally. "I love you, too."

He hardly noticed when Nico left.

31.

City of Gayjur

2080, Earth-Relative

MANY YEARS LATER, JOSEBA URIZARBARRENA WOULD REMEMBER THE children's chorale-and the K'San word for emancipation-during a conversation with the daughter of Kanchay VaKashan. Puska VaTrucha-Sai was a respected parliamentary elder in Gayjur when Joseba first met her, and he often found her viewpoint illuminating as he and the other priests pieced together the history of the Runa revolution.

"There had been sporadic fighting for years," Puska told him, "but in the beginning, Fia advocated 'passive resistance.' There were general strikes in several cities. Many of the urban Runa just walked away, refusing to give themselves up to the cullers."

"How did the government respond?" Joseba Urizarbarrena asked.

"By wiping out villages that gave shelter to the city Runa. Before long, they were burning out natural rakar fields in the midlands-to starve us into submission." She stopped, remembering, reassessing. "What tipped the balance was when Fia believed they had begun to use biologicals against us. When she was a child, Fia had seen diseases used against a people called the Kurds. When the plagues began, we thought that Runa behind djanada lines were made ill and then smuggled south and left to infect all who came in contact with them."

"But that sickness might also be explained by the sudden mixing of Runa populations during the rebellion," Joseba suggested. "The sharing of disease reservoirs, the exposure to unfamiliar environments? Swamp harvesters working with city specialists-people exposed to local illnesses they had no immunity to, and spreading them?"

"Yes," Puska said after a time. "Some of our scientists said so. It was not a consensus view at the time..." She sat as straight as possible, her ears high. "The djanada appeared to leave us no alternative but to strike back with overwhelming force. The people were dying. Thousands and thousands died of plague. We were fighting for our lives." She looked to the north, and forced herself to be just. "So were they, I suppose."

"Sipaj, Puska, someone wonders if the Jana'ata themselves changed or if the Runa idea of the Jana'ata changed."

Puska considered this for a while, and then began to use English pronouns, as many Runa did now, to signify a strictly personal comment. "My idea of the djanada changed when I left Trucha Sai." She paused for a time, eyes on the middle distance. "When we first went to Mo'arl-. Sipaj, Hozei: the things we saw! I keened every night for a season. There were roads paved with our bones, crushed and mixed with limestone, levees along the rivers-three times the height of a woman-all bone. Boots from the skins of our dead-even Runa wore them in the cities! There were shops-" She looked now directly at Joseba. "Platters of tongues, platters of hearts. Legs, shoulders, feet, fillets and chops! Rump and tail and elbows and knees-all beautifully displayed. Runa domestics would come and pick out the cut of meat to serve to their masters. How could they stand it?" she demanded. "How could the djanada have asked it of them?"

"Someone is unsure," Joseba said honestly. "Sometimes, there's no choice. Sometimes the choices aren't thought of. People can get used to anything." Puska lifted her chin, and then let her tail drop, unable to imagine how that vanished world had functioned. "Yet," Joseba pointed out, "there were some Runa who remained with the Jana'ata-"

"Sipaj, Hozei: those people were traitors," Puska told him with flat conviction. "You must understand that. They became very wealthy, selling the corpses of dead soldiers to the djanada, who would pay anything for even small scraps of meat. But those Runa paid in kind for their treachery: eventually the djanada ate them, too."

"Sipaj, Puska, someone is sorry to keep asking-"

"There is no need for apology. Someone is content to answer."

"There were Runa who stayed with the djanada, even after the war. Even now." He watched her carefully as he asked this, but Puska did not sway. "They have said to us that they loved the Jana'ata."

"That is sometimes so. The Runa are a noble people," she said. "We repay kindness with kindness."

"Do you believe those Runa wrong to live with the Jana'ata? Are they traitors, like the black marketeers?"

"Not traitors. Dupes. In the end, they'll be eaten. The djanada can't help it. It's the way they are. The djanada are guilty in their genes, in their whole way of life," she told him calmly.

It was then that he recalled the chorale. "Sipaj, Puska, someone wishes to understand this clearly. You are patient and someone is grateful. It is said in the north that Hlavin Kitheri had begun to emancipate the Runa-"

For the first time, Puska became upset, rising and beginning to pace. "Emancipation! Emancipation meant, We'll eat you when you're older! The djanada told us we were stupid! Here is stupidity: Hlavin Kitheri walking out alone to do battle with an army of two hundred thousand. Refusing to negotiate with us was stupid! We offered them terms, Hozei! Just free the captives and we'll leave the north to you. Hlavin Kitheri chose combat. He was crazy-and so were all the others who believed in him."

She was looking directly into his eyes now. "Sipaj, Hozei, the Runa did everything for the djanada. They kept us enslaved and fed us only enough to make us good slaves. Until your people came and showed us that we could feed ourselves as much as we needed, our minds were kept small and slow so that we'd accept our slavery. Hear me, Hozei! Never again. Those times are gone forever. We will never be slaves again. Never."

He stood his ground, but it was not easy: a Runao risen up in righteous anger was a formidable menace. "Sipaj, Puska," he said when she had brought herself to quietness, "you grew up with Ha'anala. Did you ever wonder about her? Was she crazy, too?"

There was a silence before Puska said, "Someone thought of Ha'anala. She was not crazy. But she left the people to go with the crazy ones! So someone's heart was confused. Supaari was one of the people, but Ha'anala never came home."

"Did you know where she went, after she left Trucha Sai?"

"She went north." There was an uncomfortable silence before Puska admitted, "Someone thought she might be in Inbrokar."

"During the siege?" he asked. Puska raised her chin in affirmation. "Puska, what did you hope for Ha'anala?"

"That she would come home," Puska said firmly.

"And when she didn't?"

The swaying began at last, and when Puska spoke, it was not to answer his question but her own conscience. "The djanada changed first. They gave us no choice! The djanada made us fierce." Not looking at him, she added, "To be hungry is a terrible thing. Someone hoped that Ha'anala would die quickly."

"And when Inbrokar fell, how many died quickly?"

She looked away, but Puska VaTrucha-Sai was a woman of courage and, once again, she left the safety of the herd. "They were as grass to me," she said. "I did not count them."

32.

City of Inbrokar

2072, Earth-Relative

"THEY'RE OUTSIDE THE NEW WALLS NOW," TAKSAYU REPORTED, HER words echoing hollowly down the stone throat of the wind tower in the embassy courtyard.

"And my lord husband?" Suukmel Chirot u Vaadai called from below, looking up at Taksayu's gown and slippered feet. "And the Paramount? Can you see them?"

"There!" Taksayu said, after a time, arm extended southward, toward a flash of armor. "The Paramount wears a gold ventral plate and caudal guard. And-yes, silver arm and thigh plates. The ambassador is to his left, all in silver. They are at the head of the war party, with the nobles behind them."

"And the others?" Suukmel asked, looking up at her Runa-what? she wondered. Not maid, any longer. Companion, often. Ally, perhaps? There was no word in K'San for Taksayu now. "How many are there?"

So many, Taksayu was thinking, with an illicit thrill. We are so many! How could she describe this to a woman who'd never seen beyond the curtains of her conveyance or the walls of her compound? All her life, the lady Suukmel had held in her mind the subtle structure of power and relationship, the delicate web of Jana'ata politics, but this was not abstraction. It was physical might. "The rebels are as the hairs of a body," Taksayu ventured. "As the leaves of a marhlar, Mistress: too many to count."

"I'm coming up," Suukmel declared. The city was ruled by rumor now that the power grid for the radio system had failed, and Suukmel was starved for information. Ignoring Taksayu's protests, she forced herself to climb the internal spiral of the wind tower to see the gathered multitude herself, but when she arrived at Taksayu's side and lifted her veil, she was staggered.

"Are you ill?" Taksayu cried, gripping Suukmel's arms, afraid the reeling woman would fall.

"No! Yes! I'm not-" Suukmel dropped her veil, and closed her eyes behind it. Beyond the distance of a hallway or the length of a banquet room, all the colors seemed to blur. "Explain this," Suukmel said, steadying. She lifted her veil again. "Tell me what I am seeing. Everything is confused."

Taksayu did her best, pointing out landmarks Suukmel knew by reputation and familiar objects. Buildings looked like toys, and a'aja trees like those that shaded Suukmel's own courtyard seemed to be twigs or seedlings, or could not be picked out at all in the nonsense of shapes. The Runa were nothing but dots of color, like knots in a patternless carpet. Enraged and nauseated by the senseless jumble, Suukmel gave up and retreated down the ramp to her refuge at its base.

It was her last bastion of privacy, this small stone room; the embassy was packed with refugees. Following Hlavin Kitheri's example, Ma Gurah Vaadai had done his best to take in as many people as could be fed, but it was Suukmel who had to live with the consequences. Nonessential Runa had been slaughtered to stave off starvation; there were very few domestics left in the city, and those few were so overworked that one could understand why so many left to join the rebels. Not even the Paramount's reforms had prepared Jana'ata women for life in close quarters among strangers. No one knew who held rank anymore. Snarling squabbles were as constant as the rain, and all too often escalated to slashed faces and bleeding bellies- "That must be the foreigner Fia!" Taksayu cried, her arm flung out over the tower's stone edge.

"Truly?" Suukmel breathed, moving back to the tower ramp and looking up, throat stretched. "What does it look like?"

"Very small-like a child! How can it breathe? It has no nose! And no tail." Taksayu shuddered. "It must be deformed. Hair only on part of its head." Taksayu was briefly distracted by the idea of the Paramount mounting such a freak. "A monster," she confirmed, "as our lord the ambassador has always said."

"Can you see the other one?" Suukmel called. No one spoke the traitor's name any longer. Supaari VaGayjur's existence was being expunged from memory; his entire clan had been executed long ago. Today he will die at the hands of Hlavin Kitheri, Suukmel thought. The Runa say his daughter is already gone, which leaves only the foreigner, Fia, who cannot live forever. Then, Suukmel thought, we will let the rebels have the south and leave them to their fate. The Paramount will build new cities and get these strangers out of our compounds. We will be poor, perhaps, and hungry, surely, but the time will come again for beauty and civility, for learning and song...

"There! The nameless one is coming forward now." There was a cautious pause. "He is without armor," Taksayu reported, voice pitched low so it would not carry this news beyond the tower to those who should not hear such things. It was a terrible insult to the Paramount, to appear on the field without armor: I have no need of defense, the challenger was saying.

The battle hymn began, a roaring chorus of men preparing for death or victory-ranked duelists, readying themselves to step forward one by one, taking on an opposing champion until one side or the other yielded. Today, this preparation was merely ceremonial. There was only one warrior who could champion the Runa, so this would be a battle of two men only-of the Paramount and the nameless one: single combat agreed to by all, witnessed by all, its outcome affirmed by all.

"And then this will be over," Suukmel whispered, leaning against the cool stone of her tower. And she tried not to hear the desperation in her words.

"SUPAARI, HE'S WEARING ARMOR," SAID SOFIA, ACROSS THE VALLEY, IN sight of Suukmel's tower.

"But I have none, so he will remove his," Supaari told her, eyes calm as gray-blue stones under a still lake. "It's cowardice to meet a challenger with more than the opponent brings to the field. Kitheri cannot be seen to be a coward."

"It will make no difference," Djalao said, standing next to Sofia, her contempt for this dumb show plain. "Armored or naked, the outcome will be the same."

"If they would just let their Runa go, we wouldn't have to do this!" cried Puska, at Djalao's side. "They can't win. Why don't they let their Runa go?"

Without another word or gesture, obeying some inner sense of time, Supaari left them then, walking alone down the hill toward the battlefield. Voice shaking with anger, Djalao shouted, "You throw yourself away!"

Puska keened at the sight of his back, but Sofia snapped, "Don't weaken him." And watched Supaari go, her halved vision blurred only by myopia.

THIS WOULD BE THE FIRST STATE-LEVEL COMBAT IN FOUR GENERATIONS and it had taken the combined memories of all the remaining protocol Runa in Inbrokar to stage it. They had outdone themselves this time, and felt it was a fitting way to conclude their lives.

From childhood, such women had taken pleasure in seeing their masters properly dressed, properly adorned, tiny pleats lying neatly on a broad shoulder, jewels sparkling in the proper settings. It was a protocol specialist's satisfaction to know that she had prepared her lord for each new encounter so that no offense would be given or taken, without intent. Before the war, each had been consulted, sometimes hourly, and her advice taken. The living repositories of Jana'ata genealogy, such women knew the historic deeds and present importance of each sept, and were clever in their suggestions for defusing useless conflict or for heightening disputes that could be turned to their masters' advantage. They often lived longer than the norm for Runa because it took so long to train their successors, but they willingly suffered the griefs and debilities of old age, even knowing that their toughened, stringy meat would be eaten by the lower ranks when the time came. Their work was the foundation upon which Rakhati civilization rested.

In the crowded streets and jammed compounds of the last few cities, their advice was now more crucial than ever-there were so many strangers, so many people thrown together! Starving and confused, Jana'ata would lash out in anger and fear, tearing without warning at the throat of any Runa porter who refused them entry. Protocol Runa took over at the gates, listening to stories of old alliances, deciding whom to admit. They chose only the best of the Jana'ata, the highest, those of the oldest septs to defend Inbrokar; sent the others on, farther north, to survive as they might.

Now, looking out across the valley at the gathered host of their own kind, they busied themselves with the floating ensigns and the flashing armor, with the ordering of the Jana'ata warriors in riverine ranks, and prepared themselves to witness, with their masters, the combat. But when it was time for the challengers' response, the rebels did not sing, their distant high cries of derision spoiling the lords' harmonies with a dissonant, droning sameness.

The protocol Runa ignored the screaming taunts flung at them by their conspecifics on the hill. They had devoted their lives to the stately ballet of rank and respect. Their profession was about to become extinct, but these women would leave the realm of light and movement knowing that they had done their duty to the last.

INSIDE THE WALLS, MORE PRAGMATIC PEOPLE HAD PREPARED DIFFERENTLY for this day, years in the making, and were preparing even now. Loyalty ran as deep in some Runa as their very veins, and when this loyalty had been repaid with kindness or even simple decency, such Runa saw no reason to abandon their families.

So they looked to the north, and wondered if the snow in the high mountains was melted by now, and packed hoarded food, and shared desperate rumors.