“You would have let him go anyway,” said Hushidh. “Even if Gaballufix’s man hadn’t been with him.”

  Smelost looked at her for a moment, then gave a little half-smile. “I was a follower of Roptat. It’s a joke to think Wetchik’s son might have killed him.”

  “Nafai’s only fourteen,” said Luet. “It’s a joke to think he’d kill anybody.”

  “Not so,” said Smelost. “Because word came to us that Gaballufix’s body had been found. Beheaded. And his clothing missing. What should I think, except that Nafai got Gaballufix’s clothing from his corpse? That Nafai and Zdorab almost certainly killed him? Nafai’s big for fourteen, if that’s his age. A man in size. He could have done it. Zdorab—not likely.” Smelost chuckled wryly. “It hardly matters now that I’ll lose my post for this. What I fear is that I’ll be hanged as an accomplice to a murder, for letting him go. So I came here.”

  “To the widow of the murdered man?” asked Luet.

  “To the mother of the supposed murderer,” said Hushidh, correcting her. “This man loves Basilica.”

  “I do,” said the soldier, “and I’m glad that you know it. I didn’t do my duty, but I did what I thought was right.”

  “I need advice,” said Rasa, looking from Luet to Hushidh and back again. “This man, Smelost, has come to me for protection, because he saved my son. And in the meantime, my son is named a murderer and I believe now that he might be guilty indeed. I’m no waterseer. I’m no raveler. What is right and just? What does the Oversoul want? You must tell me. You must counsel with me!”

  “The Oversoul has told me nothing,” said Luet. “I know only what you told me here, tonight.”

  “And as for raveling,” said Hushidh, “I see only that this man loves Basilica, and that you yourself are tangled in a web of love that puts you at cross-purposes with yourself. Your daughters’ father is dead, and you love them—and him, too, you love even him. Yet you believe Nafai killed him, and you love your son even more. You also honor this soldier, and are bound to him by a debt of honor. Most of all you love Basilica. Yet you don’t know what you must do for the good of your city.”

  “I knew my dilemma, Shuya. It was the path out of it that I didn’t know.”

  “I must flee the city,” said Smelost. “I thought you might protect me. I knew of you as Nafai’s mother, but I’d forgotten that you were Gaballufix’s widow.”

  “Not his widow,” said Rasa. “I let our contract lapse years ago. He has married a dozen times since then, I imagine. My husband now is Wetchik. Or rather the man who used to be Wetchik, and now is a landless fugitive whose son may be a murderer.” She smiled bitterly. “I can do nothing about that, but I can protect you, and so I will.”

  “No you can’t,” said Hushidh. “You’re too close to the center of all these mysteries, Aunt Rasa. The council of Basilica will always listen to you, but they won’t protect a soldier who has violated his duty, solely on your word. It will simply make you both look all the guiltier.”

  “This is the raveler speaking?” asked Rasa.

  “It’s your student speaking,” said Hushidh, “telling you what you would know yourself, if you weren’t so confused.”

  A tear spilled out of Rasa’s eye and slipped down her cheek. “What will happen?” said Rasa. “What will happen to my city now?”

  Luet had never heard her so afraid, so uncertain. Rasa was a great teacher, a woman of wisdom and honor; to be one of her nieces, one of the students specially chosen to dwell within her household—it was the proudest thing that could happen to a young woman of Basilica, or so Luet had always believed. Yet here she saw Rasa afraid and uncertain. She had not thought such a thing was possible.

  “Wetchik—my Volemak—he said the Oversoul was guiding him,” said Rasa, spitting out the words with bitterness. “What sort of guide is this? Did the Oversoul tell him to send my boys back to the city, where they were almost killed? Did the Oversoul turn my son into a murderer and a fugitive? What is the Oversoul doing? Most likely it isn’t the Oversoul at all. Gaballufix was right—my beloved Volemak has lost his mind, and our sons are being swallowed up in his madness.”

  Luet had heard enough of this. “Shame on you,” she said.

  “Hush, Lutya!” cried Hushidh.

  “Shame on you, Aunt Rasa,” Luet insisted. “Just because it looks frightening and confusing to you doesn’t mean that the Oversoul doesn’t understand it. I know that the Oversoul is guiding Wetchik, and Nafai too. All this will somehow turn to the good of Basilica.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” said Rasa. “The Oversoul has no special love for Basilica. She watches over the whole world. What if the whole world will somehow benefit if Basilica is ruined? If my boys are killed? To the Oversoul, little cities and little people are nothing—she weaves a grand design.”

  “Then we must bow to her,” said Luet.

  “Bow to whomever you want,” said Rasa. “I’m not bowing to the Oversoul if she’s going to turn my boys into killers and my city into dust. If that’s what the Oversoul is planning, then the Oversoul and I are enemies, do you understand me?”

  “Lower your voice, Aunt Rasa,” said Hushidh. “You’ll waken the little ones.”

  Rasa fell silent for a moment, then muttered: “I’ve said what I have to say.”

  “You are not the Oversoul’s enemy,” said Luet. “Please, wait awhile. Let me try to find the Oversoul’s will in this. That’s what you brought me here to do, isn’t it? To tell you what the Oversoul is planning?”

  “Yes,” said Rasa.

  “I don’t command the Oversoul,” said Luet. “But I’ll ask her. Wait here, and I’ll—”

  “No,” said Rasa. “There’s no time for you to go down to the waters.”

  “Not to the waters,” said Luet. “To my room. To sleep. To dream. To listen for the voice, to watch for vision. If it comes.”

  “Then hurry,” said Rasa. “We have only an hour or so before I have to do something—more and more people will come here, and I’ll have to act.”

  “I don’t command the Oversoul,” Luet said again. “And the Oversoul sets her own schedule. She does not follow yours.”

  Kokor went to Sevet’s favorite hideaway, where she took her lovers to keep them from Vas’s knowledge, and Sevet wasn’t there. “She doesn’t come here anymore,” said Iliva, Sevet’s friend. “Nor any of the other places in Dauberville. Maybe she’s being faithful!” Then Iliva laughed and bade her good night.

  So Kokor wouldn’t be able to pounce after all. It was so disappointing.

  Why had Sevet found a new hiding place? Had her husband Vas gone in search of her? He was far too dignified for that! Yet the fact remained that Sevet had abandoned her old places, even though Iliva and Sevet’s other friends would gladly have continued to shelter her.

  It could only mean one thing. Sevet had found a new lover, a real liaison, not just a quick encounter, and he was someone so important in the city that they had to find new hiding places for their love, for if it became known the scandal would surely reach Vas’s ears.

  How delicious, thought Kokor. She tried to imagine who it could be, which of the most famous men of the city might have won Sevet’s heart. Of course it would be a married man; unless he was married to a woman of Basilica, no man had a right to spend even a single night in the city. So when Kokor finally discovered Sevet’s secret, the scandal would be marvelous indeed, for there’d be an injured weeping wife to make Sevet seem all the more sluttish.

  And I will tell it, thought Kokor. Because she hid this liaison from me and didn’t tell me, I have no obligation to keep her secret for her. She didn’t trust me, and so why should I be trustworthy?

  Kokor wouldn’t tell it herself, of course. But she knew many a satirist in the Open Theatre who would love to know of this, so he could be the first to dart sweet Sevet and her lover in a play. And the price she charged him for the story wouldn’t be high—only the chance to play Sevet when he darted her. That would put a quick end to Tumannu’s threat to blackball her.

  I’ll get to imitate Sevet’s voice, thought Kokor, and make fun of her singing as I do. No one can sound as much like her as I can. No one knows all the flaws in her voice as I do. She will regret having hidden her secret from me! And yet I’ll be masked when I dart her, and I’ll deny it all, deny everything, even if Mother herself asks me to swear by the Oversoul, I’ll deny it. Sevet isn’t the only one who knows how to keep a secret.

  It was late, only a few hours before dawn, but the last comedies wouldn’t be over for another hour. If she hurried back to the theatre, she could probably even go back onstage and be there for the finale, at least. But she couldn’t bring herself to play the scene she’d have to play with Tumannu—begging forgiveness, vowing never to walk away from a play again, weeping. It would be too demeaning. No daughter of Gaballufix should have to grovel before a mere stage manager!

  Only now that he’s dead, what will it matter if I’m his daughter or not? The thought filled her with dismay. She wondered if that man Rash had been right, if Father would leave her enough money to be very rich and buy her own theatre. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? That would solve everything. Of course, Sevet would have just as much money and would probably buy her own theatre, too, just because she would have to overshadow Kokor as usual and steal any chance of glory, but Kokor would simply show herself to be the better promoter and drive Sevet’s miserable imitative theatre into the dust, and, when it failed, all Sevet’s inheritance would be lost, while Kokor would be the leading figure in Basilican theatre, and the day would come when Sevet would come to Kokor and beg her to put her in the starring role in one of her plays, and Kokor would embrace her sister and weep and say, “Oh, my darling sister, I’d love nothing better than to put on your little play, but I have a responsibility to my backers, my sweet, and I can’t very well risk their money on a show starring a singer who is clearly past her prime.”

  Oh, it was a delicious dream! Never mind that Sevet was only a single year older—to Kokor that made all the difference. Sevet might be ahead now, but someday soon youth would be more valuable than age to them, and then it would be Kokor who had the advantage. Youth and beauty—Kokor would always have more of both than Sevet. And she was every bit as talented as Sevet, too.

  Now she was home, the little place that she and Obring rented in Hill Town. It was modest, but decorated in exquisite taste. That much, at least, she had learned from her Aunt Dhelembuvex—Obring’s mother—that it’s better to have a small setting perfectly finished than a large setting badly done. “A woman must present herself as the blossom of perfection,” Auntie Dhel always said. Kokor herself had written it much better, in an aphorism she had published back when she was only fifteen, before she married Obring and left Mother’s house:

  A perfect bud

  of subtle color

  and delicate scent

  is more welcome than a showy

  bloom,

  which shouts for attention but has

  nothing to show

  that can’t be seen in the first glance,

  or smelled in the first whiff.

  Kokor had been proudest of the way the lines about the perfect bud were short and simple phrases, while the lines about the showy bloom were long and awkward. But to her disappointment no noted melodist had made an aria of her aphorism, and the young ones who came to her with their tunes were all talentless pretenders who had no idea how to make a song that would suit a voice like Kokor’s. She didn’t even sleep with any of them, except the one whose face was so shy and sweet. Ah, he was a tiger in the darkness, wasn’t he! She had kept him for three days, but he would insist on singing his tunes to her, and so she sent him on his way.

  What was his name?

  She was on the verge of remembering who he was as she entered the house and heard a strange hooting sound from the back room. Like the baboons who lived across Little Lake, their pant-hoots as they babbled to each other in their nothing language. “Oh. Hoo. Oo-oo. Hoooo.”

  Only it wasn’t baboons, was it? And the sound came from the bedroom, up the winding stair, moonlight from the roof window lighting the way as Kokor rushed upward, running the stairs on tiptoe, silently, for she knew that she would find her husband Obring with some whore of his in Kokor’s bed, and that was unspeakable, a breach of all decency, hadn’t he any consideration for her at all? She never brought her lovers home, did she? She never let them sweat on his sheets, did she? Fair was fair, and it would be a glorious scene of injured pride when she thrust the little tartlet out of the house without her clothes! so she’d have to go home naked and then Kokor would see how Obring apologized to her and how he’d make it up to her, all his vows and apologies and whimpering but there was no doubt about it now, she would not renew him when their contract came up and then he’d find out what happens to a man who throws his faithlessness in Kokor’s face.

  In her moonlit bedroom, Kokor found Obring engaged in exactly the activity she had expected. She couldn’t see his face, or the face of the woman for whom he was providing vigorous companionship, but she didn’t need daylight or a magnifying glass to know what it all meant.

  “Disgusting,” she said.

  It worked just as she had hoped. They obviously had not heard her coming up the stair, and the sound of her voice froze Obring. For a moment he held his post. Then he turned his head, looking quite foolish as he gazed mournfully over his shoulder at her. “Kyoka,” he said. “You’re home early.”

  “I should have known,” said the woman on the bed. Her face was still hidden behind Obring’s naked back, but Kokor knew the voice at once. “Your show is so bad they closed it in mid-performance.”

  Kokor hardly noticed the insult, hardly noticed the fact that there wasn’t a trace of embarrassment in Sevet’s tone. All she could think of was, That’s why she had to find a new hiding place, not because her lover was somebody famous, but to keep the truth from me.

  “Hundreds of your followers every night would be glad for a yibattsa with you,” Kokor whispered. “But you had to have my husband.”

  “Oh, don’t take this personally,” said Sevet, sitting up on her elbows. Sevet’s breasts sagged off to the sides. Kokor loved seeing that, how her breasts sagged, how at nineteen Sevet was definitely older and thicker than Kokor. Yet Obring had wanted that body, had used that body on the very bed where he had slept beside Kokor’s perfect body so many nights. How could he even be aroused by a body like that, after seeing Kokor after her bath so many mornings.

  “You weren’t using him, and he’s very sweet,” said Sevet. “If you’d ever bothered to satisfy him he wouldn’t have looked at me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Obring murmured. “I didn’t mean to.”

  That was so outrageous, like a little child, that Kokor could not contain her rage. And yet she did contain it. She held it in, like a tornado in a bottle. “This was an accident?” whispered Kokor. “You stumbled, you tripped and fell, your clothes tore off and you just happened to bounce on top of my sister?”

  “I mean—I kept wanting to break this off, all these months . . .”

  “Months,” whispered Kokor.

  “Don’t say any more, puppy,” said Sevet. “You’re just making it worse.”

  “You call him ’puppy’?” asked Kokor. It was the word they had used when they first reached womanhood, to describe the teenage boys who panted after them.

  “He was so eager,” said Sevet, sliding out from under Obring. “I couldn’t help calling him that, and he likes the name.”

  Obring turned and sat miserably on the bed. He made no attempt to cover himself; it was obvious he had lost all interest in love for the evening.

  “Don’t worry about it, Obring,” Sevet said. She stood beside the bed, bending over to pick up her clothing from the floor. “She’ll still renew you. This is one story she won’t be eager to have people tell about her, and so she’ll renew you as long as you want, just to keep you from telling.”

  Kokor saw how Sevet’s belly pooched out, how her breasts swung when she bent over. And yet she had taken Kokor’s husband. After everything else, she had to have even that. It could not be borne.

  “Sing for me,” whispered Kokor.

  “What?” asked Sevet, turning to face her, holding her gown in front of her.

  “Sing me a song, you davalka, with that pretty voice of yours.”

  Sevet stared into Kokor’s eyes and the look of bored amusement left her face. “I’m not going to sing right now, you little fool,” she said.

  “Not for me,” said Kokor. “For Father.”

  “What about Father?” Sevet’s face twisted into an expression of mock sympathy. “Oh, is little Kyoka going to tell on me?” Then she sneered. “He’ll laugh. Then he’ll take Obring drinking with him!”

  “A dirge for Father,” said Kokor.

  “A dirge?” Sevet looked confused now. Worried.

  “While you were here, boffing your sister’s husband, somebody was busy killing Father. If you were human, you’d care. Even baboons grieve for their dead.”

  “I didn’t know,” said Sevet. “How could I know?”

  “I looked for you,” said Kokor. “To tell you. But you weren’t in any of the places I knew. I left my play, I lost my job to search for you and tell you, and this is where you were and what you were doing.”

  “You’re such a liar,” said Sevet. “Why should I believe this?”

  “I never did it with Vas,” said Kokor. “Even when he begged me.”

  “He never asked you,” said Sevet. “I don’t believe your lies.”