Earthfall Page 0,120

angels had kept herbivores from their protected plants and predators from their houses by building traps along every path and track at the perimeter of their territory, they now had a fence around their fields, and their turkeys and goats were corralled at night. Already the angels could grow food enough to feed twice their present population, and most of the surplus could be stored.

But the agricultural revolution was not the only one. The angels seemed to want to emulate the humans in every way. Many of them now had built houses on the ground, the way the humans did, even though they hadn't the strength to build as sturdily and the first strong wind would tear the houses away. They knew this, too, and during bad weather continued to sleep hanging from branches in the trees. But it was important to them that they have a house in the human style, and Nafai had long since given up trying to persuade them of the uselessness of it.

Oykib found Nyef and Hushidh working with the angel toolmakers.

"What's wrong?" Hushidh said instantly. "Who is dead?"

"How did you know?" asked Oykib.

"Your face," she said. "Your fear to speak to us."

"Is it Father?" asked Nafai, And that was the most pertinent question-when Volemak died, everything would change.

"Not Father," said Oykib. "Vas killed Obring- vengeance for what happened between him and Sevet back in Basilica, apparently. And when he went to kill Elemak for more current betrayals, Meb was able to slip up behind him and kill him."

"Elemak didn't do any killing?"

"He might have, but he didn't get the chance," said Oykib. "Another thing. Fusum was watching when Mebbekew killed Vas. It happened right in front of him. With the mallet Meb had been using to stake out hides."

"And how did Vas kill Obring?"

"An axe to the chest and then through the throat," said Oykib. "Does it matter how?"

"It matters what the diggers have learned about how to kill us," said Nafai.

Oykib smiled grimly. "My own thoughts exactly."

"That's not all you came to tell us, though, is it," said Hushidh.

"No," said Oykib. And then he told them what Eiadh had said to Elemak, taunting him that she had been in love with Nafai all through her marriage to Elemak, that she wanted her sons to grow up to be like Nafai.

"Why didn't she save time and just slit my throat?" said Nafai.

"And then her own," said Hushidh. "As far as Elemak is concerned, the two of you might as well have committed adultery. And no one hates other people's adultery like an adulterer."

"Funny, isn't it," said Nafai, "how few years it took for us to change from the way it was at Basilica. Back there, Eiadh would simply not have renewed Elemak, and Sevet and Kokor would be on their sixth or tenth husbands since then, and nobody would have died for it,"

"Do you think that it was more civilized?" asked Hushidh. "The same rages were just beneath the surface, the same hunger for loyalty from a husband or wife. Obring didn't die for something he did in the wild. He died for what he did back there in the city."

"But it wasn't in the city that he died," said Nafai. "Never mind. If the diggers know that humans can be killed, we'd better make sure we tell the story to the angels as well. Fortunately I've never had to play god up here, so it'll come to them as less of a shock. We'll come down the mountain for the fimeral, of course. And we'll bring some angels with us. They need to see a human body going into the flames."

"Maybe that's the wrong lesson to teach them," said Hushidh.

"Why?" asked Nafai. "Do you think some angels are secretly wishing to slaughter all the humans?"

"Not at all," said Hushidh. "But I think some angels are counting on us to keep the diggers from coming up against them and stealing their infants to eat them and make pedestals out of their bones. It won't encourage them to see that we can be broken and killed."

"Especially not the way Vas died," said Oykib. Whereupon they insisted that he describe how it happened, and then clearly wished that he had not.

"Just as well to have the angels know our weakness," said Nafai. "It's their own strength they have to trust in, that and the care and wisdom of the Keeper of Earth."

"The Keeper?" asked Oykib. "They know about him?"

"Not by that name, not till we taught