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Nom, as he had done. Her faith was too strong. So he said to her the only truth of which he was certain.
    "I love Blaze and I'll never believe anything bad of him."
    "I love him too, darling. Even if—even if—"
    Silence and tears. Seeker had no more consolation to offer. Her suffering was unendurable. He wanted to make everything right again and burned with frustration that he couldn't, and felt once more the rising up of a confused anger. Who was doing this to them? Why? He would track down these unknown enemies and claw them and throttle them until they confessed it was all a lie, and Blaze was good and honorable and the best of all the Nomana, and his mother would smile again, and his father would—
    "Father! Where is he?"
    "He's at the school. He sent me a note."
    She had it still in her hand. Seeker read it. Not his father's usual strong clearly formed writing at all: this was a half-blinded scrawl.
    Blaze to be cast out at Congregation. I know nothing more. Submission, submission. Trust in the All and Only.
    Submission! His proud father, before whom the teachers as well as the students trembled—how could he submit? Seeker knew all too well that this catastrophe would pierce his father with a double agony, because he would lose both his firstborn son and his pride.
    "I'll go to him."
    "Yes, my darling. Go to him. Comfort him."
    Seeker didn't know how to tell his mother that he too had failed his father, that very morning. Then he recalled the silent Noma who had been waiting outside the door as he had left. That must have been when the blow fell.
    "Go to him," said his mother again. "Bring him home."

    Gift met him as he entered the school's outer gates. The old meek was trembling with distress.
    "He's in the assembly hall," he told Seeker. "He won't speak to me, and he won't come out. What am I to do? I should have locked the school hours ago."
    "I'll talk to him," said Seeker. "He'll come home with me.
    He went to the hall door and knocked.
    "Father. It's me."
    There was no answer.
    He opened the door and went in. His father was there, standing by the honors boards, gazing up at the line of gilded letters, painted there twenty years ago, that spelled out his own name.
    He turned at the sound of approaching footsteps. Seeker saw with a shock how grief had aged his father. The smooth stern face had crumpled.
    "I remember it all so well," he said, his voice low. "The day the announcement was made, here in this same hall. How proud my mother was when they read out my name. I had hoped, of course. But you can never be sure. Not until you hear it. Your own name read out. And then you know you can be sure for all the rest of your life."
    He ran his fingers over the painted letters.
    "It is something, to be first in your year," he said. "It is something."
    All this was so unlike his father that Seeker forgot Blaze for a moment and looked on in dismay. As if divining his thoughts, his father shook his head and gave a small smile.
    "It's all right. I've not lost my wits. It's only that sometimes it helps me to—to remember."
    "Yes, Father."
    "So have you heard?"
    "Yes, Father."
    "Nothing could have hurt me more."
    His voice trembled as he spoke. Seeker ached to touch him, but his father was not one for caresses.
    "It must be a mistake," said Seeker.
    "The Nom makes no mistakes." At this his father bowed his head.
    Seeker thought of the words on the note:
Submission, submission.
He wanted to say, Don't submit! Resist! Fight!
    "Perhaps," his father said, "perhaps I was too proud of—of the boy."
    He couldn't even speak his name. This was how it would be from now on. It would be as if Blaze had never been born. And all this would happen in public, at the Congregation due to take place on midsummer day. That was just four days away.
    "Time to go home, Father."
    "Yes..."
    He touched the painted letters of his name on the honors board once more, and looked at Seeker with an attempt at a smile.
    "Your name here soon, eh?"
    It