Earthborn Page 0,90

did all their own cooking and washing, Khideo had done the same. Khideo would match Akmaro virtue for virtue, pretension for pretension, sacrifice for sacrifice. No one would ever be able to say that Khideo may have been right, but Akmaro was still the better man. No, they would have to say, Khideo was every bit as good a man, and he was right.

As good a man, and right, but it was Akmaro who had won the free obedience of Ilihi. Akmaro had stolen even that prize, after all these years.

Darakemba might be the capital of a great empire, but in some ways it was still a small town. Gossip on some subjects spread quickly to the greatest households. Thus it took only a few weeks for Chebeya to get word of the opening of a new school. "She calls the place 'Rasaro's House,' if you can believe the effrontery." "I asked who the schoolmaster was, and she actually said it was herself!" "She claims to be teaching exactly as the wife of the Hero Volemak taught, as if anyone could know that." "None of the children are of what you could call good families, but the appalling thing is that she mixes even those children right in with... the children of... former... ."

"Slaves," said Chebeya. It was only by the most heroic effort that she refrained from reminding these friends of hers that her husband and she had spent the last decade teaching that, in the eyes of the Keeper, the children of the earth are no less valued than middle children or children of the sky.

"And they say that she would gladly teach boys right among the girls, if any parents had such a lapse of judgment and decency as to allow it."

After some consideration, Chebeya wrote a note and had one of the teachers who lived near the new school drop it off for her. It was an invitation for the new teacher to come and call on her.

The next day, she got her note back again. Scrawled in a hurried hand on the bottom was the notation, "Thanks, but school takes up all my days. Come visit me, if you'd like."

At first Chebeya was startled and, she had to admit, just the tiniest bit offended. She was the wife of the high priest, wasn't she? And this woman refused her invitation and casually invited her to come calling-and at a school, no less, not even at home.

Chebeya was immediately ashamed of her own offended dignity. Besides, this new teacher was all the more interesting now. She told Luet what she had heard and what had happened to her invitation, and Luet immediately insisted on coming along. By the time they left home to make the visit, Edhadeya had somehow been included. "I want to see what the ancient Rasa was like, as a teacher," she explained.

"You don't actually expect her school to be like that legendary one, do you?" asked Chebeya.

"Why shouldn't it be?" said Edhadeya. "Just having a woman at the head of it-that makes it more like Rasa's school than any other I've heard of."

"They say that the diggers have always had women's schools taught by women," Luet said.

"But this woman is human," Edhadeya reminded her. "She is, isn't she?"

"She calls herself Shedemei," said Chebeya. "The whole ancient name, not Sedma the way we say it now."

The younger women tried out saying the name.

"They must have held their whole mouths differently in the old days," said Luet. "Has our language changed that much?"

"It must have, for the angels and diggers to be able to pronounce it," said Edhadeya. "They say there used to be sounds that the sky people and earth people couldn't even make, and now there aren't."

"Who says the language changed?" said Luet. "Maybe they learned to make new sounds!"

"There's no way to learn how language sounded in the past," said Chebeya, "so there's no point in arguing about it."

"We weren't arguing," said Luet. "We always talk like this."

"Ah," said Chebeya. "Mildly contentious, with just a hint of back-talk to your mother." But then she smiled and the two girls laughed, and after walking a good way into an old neighborhood that had never been fashionable they reached the right avenue. An old angel was out on a perch in the shade of his porch, watching the goings-on in the street. "Old sir," said Luet, because she was youngest, "can you tell us the way to the new school?"

"School for girls?" asked