"Near enough that he could have caused it? By, for instance, pushing your foot?"

Nafai instantly recalled that terrible moment on the face of the rock, when his right foot first slipped. It had slid inward, toward his left foot. If it had just been friction giving way, wouldn't the foot have slid straight down?

"Yes," said Nafai. "The Oversoul tried to warn me, but…"

"But you thought it was your own fear and ignored it."

Nafai nodded. She knew how the Oversoul's voice felt—like your own thoughts, like your own fears.

"You men," she said. "Always afraid of being afraid. Don't you know that fear is the most fundamental tool that evolution uses to keep a species alive? Yet you ignore it as if you hoped to die."

"Yes, well, I can't help what testosterone does to me. You'd enjoy being married to me a lot less if I didn't have any."

She smiled. But the smile didn't last long. "Something else the Oversoul told me," said Luet. "Vas is planning…"

But at that moment Obring and Kokor sauntered over. "Having second thoughts, little brother?" asked Kokor.

"My thoughts often come in threes and fours," said Nafai. "Not one at a time, like yours."

"I just wanted to wish you well," said Kokor. "I really hope you bring home some scruffy little hare for us to eat. Because if you don't then we'll have to go to a city and eat cooked food, and that would be just awful, don't you think?"

"Somehow I think your heart isn't in your kind words," said Nafai.

"If I thought you had a chance of succeeding," said Obring, "I'd break your arm."

"If a man like you could break my arm," said Nafai, "I really wouldn't have a chance."

"Please," said Luet. "Don't we have trouble enough?"

"Sweet little peacemaker," said Kokor. "Not much for looks, are you, but maybe you'll grow old gracefully."

Nafai couldn't help it. Kokor's insults were so childish, so much like what passed for cleverness among schoolchildren, that he had to laugh.

Kokor didn't like it. "Laugh all you want," said Kokor. "But I can sing my way back to wealth, and Mother still has a household in Basilica that I can inherit. What does your father have for you? And what kind of household will your little orphan wife establish for you in Basilica?"

Luet stepped forward and faced Kokor; Nafai noticed for the first time that they were almost the same height, which meant Luet had been growing this past year. She really is still a child, he thought.

"Koya," said Luet. "You forget whom you're speaking to. You may think that Nafai is just your younger brother. In the future, though, I hope you'll remember that he is the husband of the waterseer."

Kokor answered with defiance. "And what does that matter here?"

"It doesn't matter at all.. here. But if we were to return to Basilica, dear Koya, I wonder how far your career will go if you're known to be the enemy of the waterseer."

Kokor blanched. "You wouldn't."

"No," said Luet, "I wouldn't. I never used my influence that way. And besides—we're not going back to Basilica."

Nafai had never seen Luet act so imperious before. He was enough of a Basilican to feel somewhat overawed at the title of waterseer; it was easy to forget sometimes that the woman he took to bed every night was the same woman whose dreams, whose words, were whispered house to house in Basilica. Once she had come to him at great risk, leaving the city in the middle of the night to wake him and warn him of danger to his father—and on that night she did not show any sign that she was aware of her lofty role in the city. Once she had taken him, when he was being chased by Gaballufix's men, and led him down into the waters of the Lake of Women, where no man was allowed to go and return alive—and even then, as she faced down those who would have killed him, she had not taken this tone, but rather had spoken calmly, quietly.

And then it dawned on Nafai—Luet wasn't putting on this air of haughty majesty because it was any part of her. She was acting this way because this is how Kokor would have acted, if she had even the tiniest shred of power. Luet was speaking to Nafai's half-sister in language that she could understand. And the message was received. Kokor plucked at Obring's sleeve and the two of them left.

"You're very good at that," said Nafai. "I can't wait to hear you use that voice on Chveya, the first time she sasses you."

"I intend to raise Chveya to be the kind of woman with whom that voice would never need to be used."

"I didn't even know you had that voice."

Luet smiled. "Neither did I." She kissed him again.

"You were telling me something about Vas."

"Something Hushidh saw but didn't understand; the Over-soul explained it to me. Vas hasn't forgotten that Sevet betrayed him with Obring and brought public humiliation to him."

"No?"

"The Oversoul says he plans to murder them."

Nafai hooted once in derision. "Vas? He was the picture of calm. Mother said that she'd never seen anybody take a bad situation so well."

"He saves up his revenge for later, I guess," said Luet. "We have plenty of evidence now to suggest that Vas isn't quite as calm and cooperative as he seems."

"No," said Nafai, "he's not, is he? Meb and Dol, Obring and Kokor, they whine and moan about wanting to go back to the city. But not Vas. He takes it silently, seems to go along, and then sets out to destroy the pulses so we have to go back."

"You've got to admit, it was a clever plan."

"And if he happens to kill me in the process, well, that's the way it goes. It makes me think—if Gaballufix had been as subtle as Vas, he would be king of Basilica by now."

"No, Nafai. He'd be dead."

"Why?"

"Because the Oversoul would have told you to kill him in order to get the Index."

Nafai looked at her, uncomprehending. "You throw this up to me?"

She shook her head firmly. "I remind you of it so you don't forget how strong you are. You are more ruthless and more clever than Vas, when you know you're serving the Oversoul's plan. Now go, Nafai. You have a few hours of daylight left. You will succeed."

With the touch of her hand on his cheek still alive in the memory of his skin, with her voice still in his ear, with her trust and honor still hot inside his heart, he did indeed feel like one of the Heroes of Pyiretsiss. Most particularly like Velikodushnu, who ate the living heart of the god Zaveest, so that the people of Pyiretsiss could live in peace instead of constantly conspiring to get the advantage over each other and tear down those who succeeded. The illustration in the version of the tale that Nafai had read showed Velikodushnu with his head jammed into the gaping chest cavity of the god, even as Zaveest flayed the hero's back with his long fingernails. It was one of the most powerful images of his childhood, that picture of a man who ignored his own inextinguishable agony in order to consume the evil that was destroying his people.

That's what a hero was, to Nafai, what a good man was, and if he could only think of Gaballufix as Zaveest, then it was good and right to have killed him.

But that idea only helped him for a moment; then, once again, the horror of having murdered Gaballufix as he lay drunk and helpless on the street returned to him. And he realized that perhaps that memory, that guilt, that shame, that horror—perhaps that was his own version of having his back flayed open by Zaveest even as he consumed the heart of the most vicious of the gods.

Never mind. Put it back where it belongs, in memory, not in the forefront of thought. I am the man who killed Gaballufix, yes, but I'm also the man who must make a bow, kill an animal, and bring it home by nightfall tomorrow or the Oversoul will have to begin again.