Earthborn Page 0,151

Mon, so I wouldn't waste my time. Father sent me with a message."

Mon felt the tiniest thrill of fear and dread. He often found it hard to believe that Father was letting them get away with all the things they were doing. Oh, he had stopped them from organizing the boycott of digger trade and labor, but of course they got around that by pretending to speak against the boycott-everyone understood the real message. Was Father now taking action against them? And if so, why was there something inside Mon that welcomed it? Was it that victory had come to them too easily, and he wanted some kind of contest?

"Are you listening?" asked Edhadeya.

"Yes," said Mon.

"Father is worried that some of his soldiers might decide that their duty to the king requires them to remove the source of his recent unhappiness. Some chance remarks of his, overheard by others out of context, have given some soldiers the impression that he would welcome this."

"Sounds to me as though he gave an order and changed his mind a little too late." Mon laughed nastily.

"You know that isn't true."

He did, of course. His truthsense rebelled against the idea-but he was getting better and better at suppressing it.

"What does he think we're going to do?" asked Mon. "Go into hiding? Stop speaking publicly? He can forget it. Killing us would only make martyrs of us and make our victory complete. Besides, he didn't raise cowards."

"Fools, yes, liars, yes, but not cowards." Edhadeya smiled grimly. "He knows you won't back down. All he suggested was that you keep your travel plans secret. Don't tell people where you're going next. Don't tell them when you're going to leave."

Mon thought about it for a moment. "All right. I'll tell the others."

"Then I've done my duty." She turned to leave.

"Wait," said Mon. "Is that all? No other messages? Nothing personal from you?"

"Nothing but my loathing, which I freely give to all five of you, but with a special extra dose for you, Mon, since I know that you know that Akma is wrong with every word he says. Akma may be doing most of the talking, but you are the most dishonest one, because you know the truth."

Mon started to explain again about how his childish truthsense was pure illusion designed to win attention for the second son of the king, but before he was well launched into it, she slapped his face.

"Not to me," she said. "You can tell that to anyone else and they can believe it if they want, but never say it to me. The insult is unbearable."

This time when she walked away, melting into the dispersing crowd, he didn't call her back. The stinging of his cheek had brought tears to his eyes, but he wasn't sure if it was just the pain that had done it. He thought back to those wonderful days when he was young and Edhadeya was his dearest friend. He remembered how she trusted him to take her true dream to Father, and because of Arnnha's absolute trust in his truthsense, he had won a hearing and an expedition was launched and the Zenifi were rescued. He had believed in those days that this would be his place in the kingdom, to be Aronha's most trusted counselor because Aronha would know that Mon could not lie. And the time when Bego used him to help translate the Rasulum leaves... .

Funny, now that he thought of it with the sting of Edhadeya's slap still in his face, how Bego didn't believe in the Keeper, but he still used Mon to help him with the translation. Wasn't it Bego, really, who taught them all to disbelieve in the Keeper? But Bego believed. Or at least believed in Mon's gift.

No, no, Akma already explained that. Bego didn't think of it as a gift from the Keeper, he thought of it as an innate talent in Mon himself. That's right, the ability to sense when people really believed what they were saying. It had nothing to do with absolute truth, and everything to do with absolute belief.

But if that's the case, thought Mon, why don't I ever get a sense that a single thing that Akma says is true? I haven't really got the logic of that straight. If my truthsense came from the Keeper, then the Keeper might be trying to turn me against Akma by refusing to confirm anything he says. But then, that would mean there really was a