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Elemak. "But if I ever thought that it was true, you'd end up praying for me to do for you what you did for Vas. A quick finish. It'd be too good for you, Meb."

"I was joking, you ass," said Meb, when he could speak again.

"Don't waste my time with your apologies," said Elemak, "Not when we have to explain Vas's death to the people I can hear coming up the ladderway right now."

"What's to explain?" said Meb. "I saved your life."

"Ah, but why was Vas trying to take it? And why did you so sweetly care?"

"He was trying to kill you because you were humping his wife," said Meb. "And I cared enough to stop him because you're my older brother and I love you."

"Is that your best performance, Meb?" asked Eiadh as she strode down the corridor toward them. "Lucky for you that we left Basilica before you could humiliate yourself by trying to act in public." Volemak, Oykib, and Padarok came to the door with her, all carrying tools that would have made pretty convincing weapons if they hadn't been in the hands of such gentle, peace-loving souls. "What's all this mess?" asked Eiadh. "Where's Vas?" Then she saw the body on the floor, the ruined head still crookedly connected to the shoulders. She recoiled. "What have you done?" she whispered to Elemak.

"Actually, I did it," said Meb. "Just as he was about to take Elemak's ankle off."

But Eiadh paid no attention to Meb. She looked Elemak coldly in the eye. "This man is dead because you couldn't live a month without getting same woman into bed."

Elemak smiled at her. "Not true. As long as I've been married to you, my love, my bed has never had a woman in it."

"You really are evil," said Eiadh. "You really do love destroying things. And not even great evil, not even that spectacular, world-wrecking kind of evil that epics are written about. No, what's in your heart is just a whiny little wormlike evil."

"Say your worst," said Elemak. "I know you're really just glad I'm still alive."

"The second most terrible thing I ever did in my life," said Eiadh, "was letting you be the father of my poor, innocent children."

"And the worst thing?" said Elemak. "Go ahead and say it-I'm brave, I'm tough. I've got Vas's blood and brains all over me, I can take anything."

Eiadh smiled at him, for she knew she was about to say the most terrible thing he could ever hear. "The worst thing I ever did was not to marry Nafai when I realized he was in love with me back in Rasa's house. I knew my mistake long before I actually married you, Elemak. I only went ahead and married you in order to stay close to Nafai. I prayed that all my sons would grow up to be Hke him, not you. And every time you made love to me, I always pretended it was him. It was all I could do to keep from crying out his name."

"Enough of this," said Volernak. "Terrible things have happened here today, and you're wasting our time with a domestic squabble."

Elemak obediently dropped the discussion and submitted to Volemak's questioning. But he heard what Eiadh had said to him. He heard, and he would remember.

It was Oykib who got the assignment of traveling up the canyon to tell about the killings. Shedemei could have used the ship's computers to tell Issib through the Index, but Volemak insisted that it had to be done in person. The first thought, then, was to send Chveya to tell her parents, but she was almost ready to be delivered of her firstborn child, and so her husband was chosen instead. He was not grateful. "I don't like leaving here right now," he said. "Not with violence in the air."

"I think the killing is over," said Volemak.

"And if you're wrong?"

"Be practical," said Zdorab. "If Elemak did nothing when he had Obring and Vas to call upon, will he do anything now, when he has only Meb as a grown man to stand beside him? The killing is over."

"The killing will never be over," interrupted Rasa, "if the adultery continues and goes unpunished."

"I would say," said Volemak, "that the penalty for adultery has been clearly demonstrated."

"I would say it hasn't," said Rasa. "I would say that your two oldest sons are adulterers by the words of their own mouths, and that my two daughters stand condemned by the same testimony."

"What would