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“But,” she says with a shrug, “there are all sorts of vague promises about how the Polloi are going to rise up and crush our enemies under our heels. However, you see,allour stories are about being under the yoke of oppression. So, I wouldn’t take it to mean anything, not really. We have these vague promises in order to keep us together, so that we won’t give up hope, andso that we’ll have the will to persevere. But our lot in life, as members of the Polloi, is to be under constant oppression.”

“What?” I say. “You think it’s inevitable?”

“I don’t know,” she says, shifting in her seat. “I suppose it’s not inevitable. You could, I suppose, leave, become secular, as you have. But if I wish to be Polloi, there is no way to be Polloi and to be anything other than oppressed. That’s part of the definition of what we are.”

I swallow.

“And,” she says, “if one leaves, one must stopbeingPolloi to achieve freedom from oppression. Perhaps it is inevitable.”

“Well…” I clear my throat. “Just because your people have always been treated really badly by every major country and all mainstream governments doesn’t mean… you know… that it’ll always be that way.”

She laughs.

“I mean, I know how that sounds, but—”

“You’re correct,” she says.

“I also don’t think you’re going to crush your enemies under your heels,” I say. “I mean, some kind of insurrection, it just wouldn’t work.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” she says. “That’s why our options are to exist under tyranny or to erase ourselves.”

I shift uncomfortably in my chair.

“Was this helpful, secular alpha? Why did you come? What story did you want to hear?”

“I wanted to know…” I think about it. “If we’re all right. If we’re going to hurt her. Our omega, I mean. If we have a way out, where we can be together and be happy. And, um, I guess I was hoping you wouldn’t tell us that we were something different. I was hoping you’d tell us that we were normal.”

“Ah,” she says, nodding. “Well, here’s what I have for you, then. Listen closely and look right here, secular alpha.” She gestures for me to look in her eyes.

I obey. It feels right to obey her, I have to admit.

“Once, there was an omega who lived many, many years ago in a country by the seaside. When she was a small girl, she visited an oracle, who told her that she would be killed by her alphas, if and when she ever bonded them. The omega vowed she would never bond any alphas at all, but time passed, and she went into heat, and she could not help but beg for the relief she could find in an alpha’s caress. She wished for an alpha’s knot, for an alpha’s bite. She could not stop herself, then. She submitted to not one but two alphas, and in the course of the heat, out of her mind, she begged for their bites.

“Now, she was bound to alphas,” continued Kyvelki, “though she had sworn she would never allow such a thing to happen. She was determined that she would not allow these alphas to kill her, however, so she locked them up in a dungeon, and she only let these alphas out when her heat came upon her. At first, the alphas begged those who tended them in the dungeon to intercede on their behalf with their omega, to ask her to be merciful and release them. But the guards came back with word that the omega would not be moved to let them free. It became clear that the only way these alphas would ever be free of the dungeon was to escape. And because they were bonded to the omega, the only way they could get free of her would be to break that bond. And because the bond was a life bond…” Kyvelki shrugs. “I suppose you can guess how that turned out.”

I can, but I don’t know what to say.

Is that supposed to mean something?

How does it answer any of the questions I asked?

“Off with you, secular alpha,” says Kyvelki. “I’m tired after so much talk.” She gets up from the table and walks out of the room.

The other alphas, the ones who I realize have finished washing the dishes quite some time ago, follow her out without even looking at me.

Theodorus shrugs at me. “You better go,” he says.

I get up from the table. “Right. I’ll go.”

Well, that was a big, fat waste of time.

9

calix

TODAY HAS BEENa bit of a trial.

First of all, I did not want to leave my omega. It seemedwrong. In the Polloi tradition, it wouldn’t be considered ideal, but it might have happened, I suppose. It would have depended.