“Holy one,” said Wang-mu.

  It was as though Qing-jao’s joy were made of glass, and Wang-mu had deliberately shattered it. Didn’t she know that when a ritual was interrupted, it had to begin again? Qing-jao rose up on her knees and turned to face the girl.

  Wang-mu must have seen the fury on Qing-jao’s face, but didn’t understand it. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said at once, falling to her knees and bowing her head to the floor. “I forgot that I’m not to call you ‘holy one.’ I only meant to ask what you were looking for, so I could help you search.”

  It almost made Qing-jao laugh, that Wang-mu was so mistaken. Of course Wang-mu had no notion that Qing-jao was being spoken to by the gods. And now, her anger interrupted, Qing-jao was ashamed to see how Wang-mu feared her anger, it felt wrong for the girl to be touching her head to the floor. Qing-jao didn’t like seeing another person so humiliated.

  How did I frighten her so much? I was filled with joy, because the gods were speaking so clearly to me; but my joy was so selfish that when she innocently interrupted me, I turned a face of hate to her. Is this how I answer the gods? They show me a face of love, and I translate it into hatred toward the people, especially one who is in my power? Once again the gods have found a way to show me my unworthiness.

  “Wang-mu, you mustn’t interrupt me when you find me bowed down on the floor like that.” And she explained to Wang-mu about the ritual of purification that the gods required of her.

  “Must I do this also?” said Wang-mu.

  “Not unless the gods tell you to.”

  “How will I know?”

  “If it hasn’t happened to you at your age, Wang-mu, it probably never will. But if it did happen, you’d know, because you wouldn’t have the power to resist the voice of the gods in your mind.”

  Wang-mu nodded gravely. “How can I help you . . . Qing-jao?” She tried out her mistress’ name carefully, reverently. For the first time Qing-jao realized that her name, which sounded sweetly affectionate when her father said it, could sound exalted when it was spoken with such awe. To be called Gloriously Bright at a moment when Qing-jao was keenly aware of her lack of luster was almost painful. But she would not forbid Wang-mu to use her name—the girl had to have something to call her, and Wang-mu’s reverent tone would serve Qing-jao as a constant ironic reminder of how little she deserved it.

  “You can help me by not interrupting,” said Qing-jao.

  “Should I leave, then?”

  Qing-jao almost said yes, but then realized that for some reason the gods wanted Wang-mu to be part of this penance. How did she know? Because the thought of Wang-mu leaving felt almost as unbearable as the knowledge of her unfinished tracing. “Please stay,” said Qing-jao. “Can you wait in silence? Watching me?”

  “Yes . . . Qing-jao.”

  “If it goes on so long that you can’t bear it, you may leave,” said Qing-jao. “But only when you see me moving from the west to the east. That means I’m between tracings, and it won’t distract me for you to leave, though you mustn’t speak to me.”

  Wang-mu’s eyes widened. “You’re going to do this with every grain of wood in every board of the floor?”

  “No,” said Qing-jao. The gods would never be so cruel as that! But even as she thought this, Qing-jao knew that someday there might come a time when the gods would require exactly that penance. It made her sick with dread. “Only one line in each board in the room. Watch with me, will you?”

  She saw Wang-mu glance at the time message that glowed in the air over her terminal. It was already time for sleep. and both of them had missed their afternoon nap. It wasn’t natural for human beings to go so long without sleep. The days on Path were half again as long as those on Earth, so that the days never worked out quite evenly with the internal cycles of the human body. To miss the daynap and then delay the nightsleep was a very hard thing.

  But Qing-jao had no choice. And if Wang-mu couldn’t stay awake, she’d have to leave now, however the gods resisted that idea. “You must stay awake,” said Qing-jao. “If you fall asleep, I’ll have to speak to you so you’ll move and uncover some of the lines I have to trace. And if I speak to you, I’ll have to begin again. Can you stay awake, silent and unmoving?”

  Wang-mu nodded. Qing-jao believed that she meant it; she did not really believe the girl could do it. Yet the gods insisted that she let her new secret maid remain—who was Qing-jao to refuse what the gods required of her?

  Qing-jao returned to the first board and started her tracing over again. To her relief, the gods were still with her. On board after board she was given the boldest, easiest grain to follow; and when, now and then, she was given a harder one, it invariably happened that the easy grain faded or disappeared off the edge of the board partway along. The gods were caring for her.

  As for Wang-mu, the girl struggled mightily. Twice, on the passage back from the west to begin again in the east, Qing-jao glanced at Wang-mu and saw her sleeping. But when Qing-jao began passing near to the place where Wang-mu had lain, she found that her secret maid had wakened and moved so quietly to a place where Qing-jao had already traced that Qing-jao hadn’t even heard her movements. A good girl. A worthy choice for a secret maid.

  At last, at long last Qing-jao reached the beginning of the last board, a short one in the very comer. She almost spoke aloud in joy. but caught herself in time. The sound of her own voice and Wang-mu’s inevitable answer would surely send her back to start again—it would be an unbelievable folly. Qing-jao bent over the beginning of the board, already less than a meter from the northwest comer of the room, and began tracing the boldest line. It led her, clear and true, right to the wall. It was done.

  Qing-jao slumped against the wall and began laughing in relief. But she was so weak and tired that her laughter must have sounded like weeping to Wang-mu. In moments the girl was with her, touching her shoulder. “Qing-jao,” she said. “Are you in pain?”

  Qing-jao took the girl’s hand and held it. “Not in pain. Or at least no pain that sleeping won’t cure. I’m finished. I’m clean.”

  Clean enough, in fact, that she felt no reluctance in letting her hand clasp Wang-mu’s hand, skin to skin, without filthiness of any kind. It was a gift from the gods, that she had someone’s hand to hold when her ritual was done. “You did very well,” said Qing-jao. “It was easier for me to concentrate on the tracing, with you in the room.”

  “I think I fell asleep once, Qing-jao.”

  “Perhaps twice. But you woke when it mattered, and no harm was done.”

  Wang-mu began to weep. She closed her eyes but didn’t take her hand away from Qing-jao to cover her face. She simply let the tears flow down her cheeks.

  “Why are you weeping, Wang-mu?”

  “I didn’t know,” she said. “It really is a hard thing to be godspoken. I didn’t know.”

  “And a hard thing to be a tree friend to the godspoken, as well,” said Qing-jao. “That’s why I didn’t want you to be my servant, calling me ‘holy one’ and fearing the sound of my voice. That kind of servant I’d have to send out of my room when the gods spoke to me.”

  If anything, Wang-mu’s tears flowed harder.

  “Si Wang-mu, is it too hard for you to be with me?” asked Qing-jao.

  Wang-mu shook her head.

  “If it’s ever too hard, I’ll understand. You can leave me then. I was alone before. I’m not afraid to be alone again.”

  Wang-mu shook her head, fiercely this time. “How could I leave you, now that I see how hard it is for you?”

  “Then it will be written one day, and told in a story, that Si Wang-mu never left the side of Han Qing-jao during her purifications.”

  Suddenly Wang-mu’s smile broke across her face, and her eyes opened into the squint of laughter, despite the tears still shining on her cheeks. “Don’t you hear the joke you told?” said Wang-mu. “My name—Si Wang-mu. When they tell that story, they won’t know it was your secret maid with you. They’ll think it was the Royal Mother of the West.”

  Qing-jao laughed then, too. But an idea also crossed her mind, that perhaps the Royal Mother was a true ancestor-of-the-heart to Wang-mu, and by having Wang-mu by her side, as her friend, Qing-jao also had a new closeness with this god who was almost the oldest of them all.

  Wang-mu laid out their sleeping mats, though Qing-jao had to show her how; it was Wang-mu’s proper duty, and Qing-jao would have let her do it every night, though she had never minded doing it herself. As they lay down, their mats touching edge-to-edge so that no wood-grain lines showed between them, Qing-jao noticed that there was grey light shining through the slats of the windows. They had stayed awake together all through the day and now all through the night. Wang-mu’s sacrifice was a noble one. She would be a true friend.

  A few minutes later, though, when Wang-mu was asleep and Qing-jao was on the brink of dozing, it occurred to Qing-jao to wonder exactly how it was that Wang-mu, a girl with no money, had managed to bribe the foreman of the righteous labor crew to let her speak to Qing-jao today without interruption. Could some spy have paid the bribe for her, so she could infiltrate the house of Han Fei-tzu? No—Ju Kung-mei, the guardian of the House of Han. he would have found out about such a spy and Wang-mu would never have been hired. Wang-mu’s bribe wouldn’t have been paid in money. She was only fourteen, but Si Wang-mu was already a very pretty girl.

  Grimly Qing-jao decided that the matter must be discreetly investigated, and the foreman, dismissed in unnamed disgrace if it were found to be true; through the investigation, Wang-mu’s name would never be mentioned in public, so that she would be protected from all harm. Qing-jao had only to mention it to Ju Kung-mei and he’d see that it was done.

  Qing-jao looked at the sweet face of her sleeping servant, her worthy new friend, and felt overcome by sadness. What most saddened Qing-jao, however, was not the price Wang-mu had paid to the foreman, but rather that she had paid it for such a worthless, painful, terrible job as that of being secret maid to Han Qing-jao. If a woman must sell the doorway to her womb, as so many women had been forced to do through all of human history, surely the gods must let her receive something of value in return.

  That is why Qing-jao went to sleep that morning even firmer in her resolve to devote herself to the education of Si Wang-mu. She could not let Wang-mu’s education interfere with her struggle with the riddle of the Lusitania Fleet, but she would take all other possible time and give Wang-mu a fit blessing in honor of her sacrifice. Surely the gods must expect no less of her, in return for their having sent her such a perfect secret maid.

  Qing-jao sat before her terminal, her eyes closed, thinking. Wang-mu was brushing Qing-jao’s hair, the tugs, the strokes, the very breath of the girl was a comfort to her.

  This was a time when Wang-mu could speak freely, without fear of interrupting her. And, because Wang-mu was Wang-mu, she used hair-brushing time for questions. She had so many questions.

  The first few days her questions had all been about the speaking of the gods. Of course, Wang-mu had been greatly relieved to learn that almost always tracing a single wood-grain line was enough—she had been afraid after that first time that Qing-jao would have to trace the whole floor every day.

  But she still had questions about everything to do with purification. Why don’t you just get up and trace a line every morning and have done with it? Why don’t you just have the floor covered in carpet? It was so hard to explain that the gods can’t be fooled by silly strategems like that.

  What if there were no wood at all in the whole world? Would the gods bum you up like paper? Would a dragon come and carry you off?

  Qing-jao couldn’t answer Wang-mu’s questions except to say that this is what the gods required of her. If there were no wood grain, the gods wouldn’t require her to trace it. To which Wang-mu replied that they should make a law against wooden floors, then, so that Qing-jao could be shut of the whole business.

  Those who hadn’t heard the voice of the gods simply couldn’t understand.

  Today, though, Wang-mu’s question had nothing to do with the gods—or, at least, had nothing to do with them at first.

  “What is it that finally stopped the Lusitania Fleet?” asked Wang-mu.

  Almost, Qing-jao simply took the question in stride; almost she answered with a laugh: If I knew that, I could rest! But then she realized that Wang-mu probably shouldn’t even know that the Lusitania Fleet had disappeared.

  “How would you know anything about the Lusitania Fleet?”

  “I can read, can’t I?” said Wang-mu, perhaps a little too proudly.

  But why shouldn’t she be proud? Qing-jao had told her, truthfully, that Wang-mu learned very quickly indeed, and figured out many things for herself. She was very intelligent, and Qing-jao knew she shouldn’t be surprised if Wang-mu understood more than was told to her directly.

  “I can see what you have on your terminal,” said Wang-mu, “and it always has to do with the Lusitania Fleet. Also you discussed it with your father the first day I was here. I didn’t understand most of what you said, but I knew it had to do with the Lusitania Fleet.” Wang-mu’s voice was suddenly filled with loathing. “May the gods piss in the face of the man who launched that fleet.”

  Her vehemence was shocking enough; the fact that Wang-mu was speaking against Starways Congress was unbelievable.

  “Do you know who it was that launched the fleet?” asked Qing-jao.

  “Of course. It was the selfish politicians in Starways Congress, trying to destroy any hope that a colony world could win its independence.”

  So Wang-mu knew she was speaking treasonously. Qing-jao remembered her own similar words, long ago, with loathing; to have them said again in her presence—and by her own secret maid—was outrageous. “What do you know of these things? These are matters for Congress, and here you are speaking of independence and colonies and—”

  Wang-mu was on her knees, head bowed to the floor. Qing-jao was at once ashamed for speaking so harshly.

  “Oh, get up, Wang-mu.”

  “You’re angry with me.”

  “I’m shocked to hear you talk like that, that’s all. Where did you hear such nonsense?”

  “Everybody says it,” said Wang-mu.

  “Not everybody,” said Qing-jao. “Father never says it. On the other hand, Demosthenes says that sort of thing all the time.” Qing-jao remembered how she had felt when she first read the words of Demosthenes—how logical and right and fair he had sounded. Only later, after Father had explained to her that Demosthenes was the enemy of the rulers and therefore the enemy of the gods, only then did she realize how oily and deceptive the traitor’s words had been, that had almost seduced her into believing that the Lusitania Fleet was evil. If Demosthenes had been able to come so close to fooling an educated godspoken girl like Qing-jao, no wonder that she was hearing his words repeated like truth in the mouth of a common girl.

  “Who is Demosthenes?” asked Wang-mu.

  “A traitor who is apparently succeeding better than anyone thought.” Did Starways Congress realize that Demosthenes’s ideas were being repeated by people who had never heard of him? Did anyone understand what this meant? Demosthenes’s ideas were now the common wisdom of the common people. Things had reached a more dangerous turn than Qing-jao had imagined. Father was wiser; he must know already. “Never mind,” said Qing-jao. “Tell me about the Lusitania Fleet.”

  “How can I, when it will make you angry?”

  Qing-jao waited patiently.

  “All right then,” said Wang-mu, but she still looked wary. “Father says—and so does Pan Ku-wei, his very wise friend who once took the examination for the civil service and came very very close to passing—”

  “What do they say?”

  “That it’s a very bad thing for Congress to send a huge fleet—and so huge—all to attack the tiniest colony simply because they refused to send away two of their citizens for trial on another world. They say that justice is completely on the side of Lusitania, because to send people from one planet to another against their will is to take them away from family and friends forever. That’s like sentencing them before the trial.”

  “What if they’re guilty?”

  “That’s for the courts to decide on their own world, where people know them and can measure their crime fairly, not for Congress to decide from far away where they know nothing and understand less.” Wang-mu ducked her head. “That’s what Pan Ku-wei says.”

  Qing-jao stilled her own revulsion at Wang-mu’s traitorous words; it was important to know what the common people thought, even if the very hearing of it made Qing-jao sure the gods would be angry with her for such disloyalty. “So you think that the Lusitania Fleet should never have been sent?”

  “If they can send a fleet against Lusitania for no good reason, what’s to stop them from sending a fleet against Path? We’re also a colony, not one of the Hundred Worlds, not a member of the Starways Congress. What’s to stop them from declaring that Han Fei-tzu is a traitor and making him travel to some faraway planet and never come back for sixty years?”

  The thought was a terrible one, and it was presumptuous of Wang-mu to bring her father into the discussion, not because she was a servant, but because it would be presumptuous of anyone to imagine the great Han Fei-tzu being convicted of a crime. Qing-jao’s composure failed her for a moment, and she spoke her outrage: “Starways Congress would never treat my father like a criminal!”

  “Forgive me, Qing-jao. You told me to repeat what my father said.”

  “You mean your father spoke of Han Fei-tzu?”

  “All the people of Jonlei know that Han Fei-tzu is the most honorable man of Path. It’s our greatest pride, that the house of Han is part of our city.”