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we'll be speaking next. Add to the excitement."

"It makes us look like cowards," said Ominer.

Khimin piped up. "Not if we announce that we have to do this because we've got good information that some of the king's men are out to kill us!"

"No!" Aronha said firmly. "We will never do that. People would take that as an accusation against the king, and it would be dishonorable for us to accuse him when he was the very one who sent us warning to try to protect us."

Akma clapped Khimin on the back. "There you go, Khimin. When Aronha decides that something is dishonorable, we can't do it even if it would have been a pretty effective ploy."

"Don't make fun of my sense of honor, Akma," said Aronha.

"I wasn't," said Akma. "I admire you for it."

Mon suddenly had an irresistible impulse to make trouble. "That's the way that Aronha most resembles Father. The only reason we've had any success at all is that Father is so honorable."

"Then that makes honor a weakness, doesn't it?" asked Ominer.

Aronha answered him with withering contempt. "In the short run, dishonor gives an advantage; in the long run, a dishonorable king loses the love of his people and ends up the way Nuab did. Dead."

"They tortured him to death with fire, didn't they?" asked Khimin.

"Try not to sound so delighted at the thought of it," said Akma. "It makes other people uneasy."

But what Mon noticed, what disturbed him in all this, was the fact that Akma seemed to draw closer to Ominer the more he said things that should have made a decent person recoil from him. Ominer said that honor was a weakness; now, though he said not a word about it, Akma had his arm around Ominer's shoulders and Ominer was all smiles. This is wrong. There's something seriously wrong. Akma wasn't like this, not even as recently as last year, before all this began. I remember when he would have been adamant about honor and decency as Aronha was. What is it, are the vile people we associate with now beginning to influence him? Or is it simply a natural consequence of having the adulation of so many thousands of people?

Whatever it was that was happening to Akma, Mon hated it. This couldn't be the real Akma emerging; it was more as if Akma were beginning to take on this cynical, amoral posture because he thought it was what he had to become in order to have his victory. Or perhaps it was a true part of Akma that never came out until he began to think that he was so important and powerful that he didn't have to be decent to other people anymore. How much of his bantering with Aronha is really joking these days, Mon wondered, and how much of it is real contempt for Aronha's kingly bearing?

I mustn't think these things, Mon reminded himself. It's the Keeper trying to win me away from my brothers.

No, it's not the Keeper because there is no Keeper... .

Mon excused himself from them because he needed to sleep. The others all took it as a signal. The conversation turned to empty playful chatter as they walked back to the house where they were staying. The place was far too small for five grown men to stay-half the family that lived there had been farmed out to neighbors' houses-but Akma insisted that they couldn't always stay in rich men's houses or the Kept would be able to accuse them of pride. Seeing what the Kept already accused them of, Mon thought the addition of one nib re minor charge would be worth it for a good night's sleep, but as usual Aronha saw things Akma's way and so he was crammed into a space where he couldn't stretch out or roll over without waking somebody up. The poor just don't build big enough houses, he told himself as a nasty little joke. He could never say it out loud, of course, because Akma would tell him that "people won't understand it's just humor."

The next morning, Aronha decided they'd take Father's advice and leave at once instead of staying another day, and instead of going to Fetek, they'd head for Papadur. Oh, excellent, thought Mon, twice the walk, and uphill the whole way instead of down. I'll have to write Father a note thanking him for his suggestion.

On the way, Akma critiqued Khimin's speech of the night before. Mon had to admire the deft way that