“Sure, right. Protection from what?”

  “From the Gorayni, Nafai. We’re between them. It’s called geography.”

  “I know geography,” said Nafai. “I just don’t see why there should ever be a war between the Gorayni and the Potoku, and if there was, how they’d go about fighting it. I mean, Potokgavan has a fleet—all their houses are boats, for heaven’s sake—but since Goraynivat has no seacoast—”

  “Had no seacoast. They’ve conquered Usluvat.”

  “I guess I knew that.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you did,” said Elemak. They have horsewagons. Have you heard of those?”

  “Wheels,” said Nafai. “Horses pulling men in boxes into battle.”

  “And carrying supplies to feed an army on a long march. A very long march. Horsewagons are changing everything.” Suddenly Elemak sounded enthusiastic. It had been a lot of years since Nafai had seen Elya excited about anything. “I can envision a day when we’ll widen the Ridge Road and the Plains Road and Market Street so that the farmers can haul their produce up here in horsewagons. The same number of horses can haul ten times as much. One man, two horses, and a wagon can bring what it takes a dozen men and twenty horses to haul up here now. The price of food drops. The cost of transporting our products downhill drops even lower—there’s money there. I can envision roads going hundreds of kilometers, right across the desert—fewer animals in our caravans, less feed to haul and no need to find as much water on the journey. The world is getting smaller, and Father’s trying to block it.”

  “All this has something to do with his vision?”

  “The old laws of the Oversoul. Wheels for anything other than gears or toys are forbidden. Sacrilege. Abomination. Do you realize that horsewagons have been known about for thousands and thousands of years and nobody has ever built any?”

  “Till now,” said Issib.

  “Maybe there was a good reason,” said Nafai.

  “The reason was superstition, that was the reason,” said Elemak, “but now we have a chance to build two hundred horsewagons with Potokgavan paying for it and providing us with the designs, and the price Gaballufix has negotiated is high enough that we can build two hundred more for ourselves.”

  “Why don’t the Potoku build their own wagons?”

  “They’re coming here on boats,” said Elemak. “Instead of building the wagons in Potokgavan and then floating them all the way, they’ll simply send their soldiers and have the wagons waiting for them here.”

  “Why here?”

  “Because here is where they’re going to draw the line. The Gorayni go no farther, or they face the wrath of the Potoku. Don’t try to understand it, Nafai, it’s men’s business.”

  “It sounds to me like Father would be right to try to block this just on general principles,” said Nafai. “I mean, if they find out we’re building horsewagons for the Potoku, won’t that just make the Gorayni send an army here to stop us?”

  “They won’t know until it’s too late.”

  “Why won’t they know? Is Basilica so good at keeping secrets?”

  “Even if they know, Nyef, the Potoku will be here to stop them from trying to punish us.”

  “But if the Potoku weren’t coming, and therefore we weren’t making wagons for them, there’d be nothing for the Gorayni to punish us for.”

  Elemak lowered his head to the table, making a show of his despair at trying to explain anything to Nafai.

  “The world is changing,” said Issib. “We’re used to wars being local quarrels. But the Gorayni have changed it. They’re conquering other countries that never did them any harm.”

  Elemak picked up the explanation. “Someday they’d reach us, with or without the Potoku here to protect us. Personally, I prefer letting the Potoku do the fighting.”

  “I can’t believe all this has been going on and nobody’s even talking about it in the city,” said Nafai. “I really don’t have my ears plugged with mud, and I haven’t heard anything about us building wagons for Potokgavan.”

  Elemak shook his head. “It’s a secret. Or it was, till Father brought it up before the entire clan council.”

  “You mean somebody was doing this and the clan council didn’t even know?”

  “It was a secret” said Elemak. “How many times do I have to say it?”

  “So somebody was going to do this thing in the name of Basilica and the Palwashantu clan, and nobody in the clan council or the city council was going to be consulted about it?”

  Issib laughed ruefully. “When you put it that way, it sounds pretty strange, doesn’t it.”

  “It doesn’t sound strange at all,” said Elemak. “I can see that you’re already with Roptat’s party.”

  “Who’s Roptat?”

  Issib answered, “He’s a Palwashantu, Elya’s age is all, who’s been using this war talk to build up his reputation as a prophet. Not like Father, he doesn’t have visions from the Oversoul, he just writes prophecies that read like a shark tearing your leg off. And he keeps saying the same things that you just said.”

  “You mean this secret plan is so well known that there’s already a party led by this Roptat trying to block it?”

  “It wasn’t that secret,” said Elemak. “There’s no plot. There’s no conspiracy. There’s just some good people trying to do something that’s in Basilica’s vital interest, and some traitors doing everything they can to stop it.”

  Clearly Elemak had a one-sided view of things. Nafai had to offer another point of view. “Or maybe it’s some greedy profiteers putting our city in a terribly dangerous situation so they can get rich, and some good people are trying to save the city by stopping them. I’m just suggesting this as a possibility.”

  Elemak was furious. “The people working on this project are already so rich that they hardly need any more money,” he said. “And what. I don’t get is how a fourteen-year-old scholar who’s never had to do a man’s work in his life suddenly has opinions about political issues that he didn’t even know existed until ten minutes ago.”

  “I was just asking a question,” said Nafai. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”

  “Well of course you weren’t accusing me” said Elemak. “I’m not part of the project anyway.”

  “Of course not,” said Nafai. “It’s a secret project.”

  “I should have beaten the teeth out of your mouth this morning,” said Elemak.

  Why did it always come down to threats? “Do you beat the teeth out of the mouth of everybody who asks you questions you don’t have any good answers for?”

  “Never before,” said Elemak, getting up. “But now I’m going to make up for all those missed opportunities.”

  “Stop it!” shouted Issib. “Don’t we have enough problems?”

  Elemak hesitated, then sat back down. “I shouldn’t let him get to me.”

  Nafai breathed again. He hadn’t noticed that he wasn’t breathing.

  “He’s a child, what does he know?” said Elemak. “Father’s the one who should know better. He’s making a lot of people very angry. Some very dangerous people.”

  “You mean they’re threatening him?” asked Nafai.

  “Nobody threatens,” said Elemak. “That would be crude. They’re just . . . concerned about Father.”

  “But if everybody’s laughing at Father, why should they care what he says? It sounds like it’s this Roptat they ought to be worried about.”

  “It’s the vision thing,” said Elemak. “The Oversoul. Most men don’t take it all that seriously, but the women . . . the city council . . . your mother isn’t helping things.”

  “Or she is helping things, depending on which side you’re on.”

  “Right,” said Elemak. He got up from the table, but this time he wasn’t threatening. “I can see which side you’re on, Nyef, and I can only warn you that if Father has his way, we’ll end up in Gorayni chains.”

  “Why are you so sure?” asked Nafai. “The Oversoul give you a vision or something?”

  “I’m sure, my little half-friend, because I understand things. When you grow up, you might actually come to know what that means. But I doubt it.” Elemak walked out of the kitchen.

  Issib sighed. “Does anybody actually like anybody else in this family?”

  Nafai’s food was overcooked, but he didn’t care. He was trembling so violently that he could hardly carry his tray to the table.

  “Why are you shaking?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nafai. “Maybe I’m afraid.”

  “Of Elemak?”

  “Why should I be afraid of him?” said Nafai. “Just because he could break my neck with his elbow.”

  “Then why do you keep provoking him?”

  “Maybe I’m also afraid for him.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you think it’s funny, Issib? Elya can sit here and talk about Father being in danger from powerful people—and yet his solution for it isn’t to denounce those dangerous people, it’s to try to get Father to stop talking.”

  “Nobody’s being rational.”

  “I actually do understand politics,” said Nafai. “I study history all the time. I left my class behind years ago. I know something about how wars start and who wins them. And this is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard. Potokgavan has no chance of holding this area and no compelling reason to try. All that will happen is they’ll send an army, provoke the Gorayni into attacking, and then they’ll realize they can’t win and go home to their floodplain where the Wetheads can’t touch them, leaving us to bear the brunt of the Gorayni wrath. Building war wagons for them is so obviously going to lead to disaster that only a person completely blinded by greed could possibly support it. And if the Oversoul is telling Father to oppose the building of wagons, then the Oversoul is right.”

  “I’m sure the Oversoul is relieved to have your approval.”

  “Anything I can do to help.”

  “Nafai, you’re fourteen.”

  “So?”

  “Elemak doesn’t want to hear that kind of thing from you.”

  “Neither do you, right?”

  “I’m really tired. It’s been a long day.” Issib floated out of the kitchen.

  Nafai finally started to eat. To his disgust he had no appetite, even though he knew he was still hungry. Must eat, can’t eat. Forget it. He flushed the food down the drain and put the plate in the cleaning rack.

  He walked out into the courtyard, heading for his room. The night air was chilly already—they were close enough to the desert to get sharp falls in temperature when the sun was down. He was still trembling. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t because of Father’s vision of the destruction of the world, and it wasn’t because of the war that would probably come to Basilica if they went ahead with the idiotic alliance with Potokgavan. Those were dangers, yes, but distant ones. And it wasn’t because of Elemak’s threats of violence, he’d lived with those all his life.

  It wasn’t until he was lying on his mat, still shaking even though his room was not cold, that he finally realized what was bothering him. Elemak had mentioned that Gaballufix was involved in negotiating the price with the Potoku. Obviously this whole plan had Gaballufix’s support—who else but the clan chief would think he could commit the Palwashantu to such a dangerous course of action without even consulting the council? And so it was reasonable to suppose that when Elya warned about the dangerous enemies Father was making, it was Gaballufix he was referring to.

  Gaballufix, whose house Elemak secretly visited today.

  Where was Elemak’s loyalty? With Father? Or with his half-brother Gaballufix? Clearly Elya was involved with this war wagon plan. What else was he involved with? The dangerous people weren’t making threats, he had said. So what were they making—plans? Was Elya in on a plan to do something ugly to Father, and his hints were an attempt to warn Father away?

  Just today, Mebbekew had spoken of metaphorical patricide.

  No, thought Nafai. No, I’m simply upset because all of this has happened so suddenly, in one day. Father has a vision, and suddenly he’s caught up in city politics in a way he never was before, almost as if the Oversoul sent him this vision specifically because of this stupid provocative project of Gaballufix’s, because action needed to be taken now.

  Why? What did the fate of Basilica matter to the Oversoul? Countless cities and nations had risen and fallen—dozens every century, thousands and thousands in all of human history. Maybe millions. The Oversoul hadn’t lifted a finger. It wasn’t war that the Oversoul cared about; it certainly wasn’t preventing human suffering. So why was the Oversoul getting involved now? What was the urgency? Was it worth tearing their family apart? And even if maybe it was, who decided anyway? Nobody had asked the Oversoul for this, so if they really were getting bounced around as part of some master plan, it might be nice if the Oversoul let them in on what it had in mind.

  Nafai lay on his mat, trembling.

  Then he remembered. I wasn’t going to sleep on a mat tonight. I was going to try to be a real man.

  He almost laughed aloud. Sleeping on the bare floor—that would make me a man? What an idiot I am. What an ass.

  Laughing at himself, now he could sleep.

  SIX

  ENEMIES

  “Where did you spend all day yesterday?”

  Nafai didn’t want this conversation, but there was no avoiding it. Mother was not one to let one of her students disappear for a day without an accounting.

  “I walked around.”

  As he had expected, this was not going to be enough for Mother. “I didn’t think that you flew,” she said. “Though I’m surprised you didn’t curl up somewhere and sleep. Where did you go?”

  “To some very educational places,” said Nafai. He had in mind Gaballufix’s house and the Open Theatre, but of course Mother would interpret his words as she wished.

  “Dolltown?” she asked.

  “There’s nothing much going on there in the daytime, Mother.”

  “And you shouldn’t be going there at all,” she said. “Or do you think you already know everything about everything, so that you have no further need of schooling?”

  “There are some subjects you just don’t teach here, Mother.” Again, the truth—but not the truth.

  “Ah,” she said. “Dhelembuvex was right about you.”

  Oh, yes, wonderful. Time to get an Auntie for your little boy.

  “I should have seen it coming. Your body is growing so fast—too fast, I fear, outstripping your maturity in every other area.”

  This was too much to bear. He had planned to listen calmly to everything she said, let her jump to her own conclusions, and then get back to class and have done with the whole thing. But to have her thinking that his gonads were running his life when, if anything, his mind was more mature than his body—

  “Is that as smart as you know how to be, Mother?”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  He knew he was already overstepping himself, but he had begun, and the words were there in his mind, and so he said them. “You see something inexplicable going on, and if it’s a boy doing it, you’re sure it has to do with his sexual desires.”

  She half-smiled. “I do have some knowledge of men, Nafai, and the idea that the behavior of a fourteen-year-old might have some link to sexual desire is based on much evidence.”

  “But I’m your son, and still you don’t know me from a pile of bricks.”

  “So you didn’t go to Dolltown?”

  “Not for any reason you’d imagine.”

  “Ah,” she said. “I can imagine many reasons. But not one of the possible reasons for you to go to Dolltown suggests that you have very good judgment.”

  “Oh, and you’re the expert on good judgment, I imagine.”

  His sarcasm was not playing well. “You forget, I think, that I am your mother and your schoolmistress.”

  “It was you, Mother, and not I who invited those two girls to that family meeting yesterday.”

  “And this showed poor judgment on my part?”

  “Extremely poor. By the time I got to the Open Theatre it was still several hours before dark, and already the word was out about Father’s vision.”

  “That’s not surprising,” said Mother. “Father went directly to the clan council. It would hardly be a secret after that.”

  “Not just his vision, Mother. There was already a satire in rehearsal—one of Drotik’s, too, no less—that included a fascinating little portico scene. Since the only people present who were not family were those two witchgirls—”

  “Hold your tongue!”

  He immediately fell silent, but with an undeniable sense of victory. Yes, Mother was furious—but he had also scored a point with her, to get her this angry.

  “Your referring to them by that demeaning manword is offensive in the extreme,” said Mother. Her voice was quiet now; she was really angry. “Luet is a seer and Hushidh is a raveler. Furthermore, both have been completely discreet, mentioning nothing to anyone.”

  “Oh, have you watched them every second since—”

  “I said to hold your tongue.” Her voice was like ice. “For your information, my bright, wise, mature little boy, the reason there was a portico scene in Drotik’s satire—which, by the way, I saw, and it was very badly done, so it hardly worries me—the reason there was a portico scene was because while your father was going to the clan council, I was at the city council, and when I told the story I included the events on this portico. Why, asks my brilliant son with a deliciously stupid look on his face? Because the only thing that made the council take your father’s vision seriously was the fact that Luet believed him and found his vision consonant with her own.”

  Mother had told. Mother had brought down ridicule and ruin upon the family. Unbelievable. “Ah,” said Nafai.

  “I thought you’d see things a little differently.”

  “I see that there was nothing wrong with having Luet and Hushidh at the family meeting,” said Nafai. “It was you who should have been excluded.”