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even if they were just peasants which they mostly were, even if they were turkey-herds. Everybody. He took solemn vows, you know. When he was made a priest. Your father took those vows, never to reveal the secrets of the priesthood to anybody. And then he taught everybody"

"Father says all the people should be priests."

"People? Is that what he says?" Didul laughed. "Not just people, Akma. It isn't just people that he was going to teach to read."

Akma imagined his father trying to teach the taskmaster to read. He tried to picture one of the diggers bowed over a book, trying to hold a stylus and make the marks in the wax of the tablets. It made him shudder.

"Hungry?" asked Didul. Akma nodded.

"Come eat with me and my brothers." Didul led him into the shade of a copse behind the hill of the commons.

Akma knew the place-until the diggers came and enslaved them, it was the place where Mother used to gather the children to teach them and play quiet games with them while Father taught the adults at the hill. It gave him a strange feeling to see a large basket of fruit and cakes and a cask of wine there, with diggers serving the food to three humans. Diggers didn't belong in that place where his mother had led the children in play.

But the humans did. Or rather, they would belong wherever they were. One was little, barely as old as Akma. The other two were both older and larger than Didul-men, really, not boys. One of the older ones looked much like Didul, only not as beautiful. The eyes were perhaps too close together, the chin just a bit too pronounced. Didul's image, but distorted, inferior, unfinished.

The other man-sized boy was as unlike Didul as could be imagined. Where Didul was graceful, this boy was strong; where Didul's face looked open and light, this one looked brooding and private and dark. His body was so powerful-looking that Akma marveled that he could pick up any of the fruit without crushing it.

Didul obviously saw which of his brothers it was that had drawn Akma's attention. "Oh, yes. Everybody looks at him like that. Pabul, my brother. He leads armies of diggers. He's killed with his bare hands."

Hearing his words, Pabul looked up and glowered at Didul.

"Pabul doesn't like it when I tell about that. But I saw him once take a full-grown digger soldier and break his neck, just like a rotten dry branch. Snap. The beast peed all over everything."

Pabul shook his head and went back to eating.

"Have some food," said Didul. "Sit down, join us. Brothers, this is Akma, the son of the traitor."

The older brother who looked like Didul spat.

"Don't be rude, Udad," said Didul. "Tell him not to be rude, Pabul."

"Tell him yourself," said Pabul quietly. But Udad reacted as if Pabul had threatened to kill him-he immediately fell silent and began concentrating on his eating.

The younger brother gazed steadily at Akma, as if evaluating him. "I could beat you up," he said finally.

"Shut up and eat, Monkey," said Didul. "This is the youngest, Muwu, and we're not sure he's human."

"Shut up, Didul," said the little one, suddenly furious, as if he knew what was coming.

"We think Father got drunk and mated with a she-digger to spawn him. See his little rat-nose?"

Muwu screamed in fury and launched himself at Didul, who easily fended him off. "Stop it, Muwu, you'll get mud in the food! Stop it!"

"Stop it," said Pabul quietly, and Muwu immediately left off his assault on Didul.

"Eat," said Didul. "You must be hungry."

Akma was hungry, and the food looked good. He was seating himself when Didul said, "Our enemies go hungry, but our friends eat."

That reminded Akma that his mother and father were also hungry, as was his sister Luet. "Let me take some back to my sister and my parents," he said. "Or let them all come and eat with us."

Udad hooted. "Stupid," murmured Pabul.

"You're the one I invited," said Didul quietly. "Don't embarrass me by trying to trick me into feeding my father's enemies."

Only then did Akma understand what was happening here. Didul might be beautiful and fascinating, full of stories and friendliness and wit-but he didn't actually care about Akma. He was only trying to get Akma to betray his family. That was why he kept saying those things about Father, about how he was a traitor and all. So that Akma would turn against his own family.

That would