Xenocide (Ender Wiggins Saga)

everything that I am, too," said Jiang-qing.
    "If I had any part of you in me," said Han Fei-tzu, "I would not have needed to marry you to become a complete person." Now he teased her by using philosophy to turn the conversation away from pain. "That is the desire of the soul. Because the soul is made of light and dwells in air, it is that part which conceives and keeps ideas, especially the idea of the self. The husband longs for his whole self, which was made of the husband and wife together. Thus he never believes any of his own thoughts, because there is always a question in his mind to which his wife's thoughts were the only possible answer. Thus the whole world seems dead to him because he cannot trust anything to keep its meaning before the onslaught of this unanswerable question."
    "Very deep," said Jiang-qing.
    "If I were Japanese I would commit seppuku, spilling my bowel into the jar of your ashes."
    "Very wet and messy," she said.
    He smiled. "Then I should be an ancient Hindu, and burn myself on your pyre."
    But she was through with joking. "Qing-jao," she whispered. She was reminding him he could do nothing so flamboyant as to die with her. There was little Qing-jao to care for.
    So Han Fei-tzu answered her seriously. "How can I teach her to be what you are?"
    "All that is good in me," said Jiang-qing, "comes from the Path. If you teach her to obey the gods, honor the ancestors, love the people, and serve the rulers, I will be in her as much as you are."
    "I would teach her the Path as part of myself," said Han Fei-tzu.
    "Not so," said Jiang-qing. "The Path is not a natural part of you, my husband. Even with the gods speaking to you every day, you insist on believing in a world where everything can be explained by natural causes."
    "I obey the gods." He thought, bitterly, that he had no choice; that even to delay obedience was torture.
    "But you don't know them. You don't love their works."
    "The Path is to love the people. The gods we only obey." How can I love gods who humiliate me and torment me at every opportunity?
    "We love the people because they are creatures of the gods."
    "Don't preach to me."
    She sighed.
    Her sadness stung him like a spider. "I wish you would preach to me forever," said Han Fei-tzu.
    "You married me because you knew I loved the gods, and that love for them was completely missing from yourself. That was how I completed you."
    How could he argue with her, when he knew that even now he hated the gods for everything they had ever done to him, everything they had ever made him do, everything they had stolen from him in his life.
    "Promise me," said Jiang-qing.
    He knew what these words meant. She felt death upon her; she was laying the burden of her life upon him. A burden he would gladly bear. It was losing her company on the Path that he had dreaded for so long.
    "Promise that you will teach Qing-jao to love the gods and walk always on the Path. Promise that you will make her as much my daughter as yours."
    "Even if she never hears the voice of the gods?"
    "The Path is for everyone, not just the godspoken."
    Perhaps, thought Han Fei-tzu, but it was much easier for the godspoken to follow the Path, because to them the price for straying from it was so terrible. The common people were free; they could leave the Path and not feel the pain of it for years. The godspoken couldn't leave the Path for an hour.
    "Promise me."
    I will. I promise.
    But he couldn't say the words out loud. He did not know why, but his reluctance was deep.
    In the silence, as she waited for his vow, they heard the sound of running feet on the gravel outside the front door of the house. It could only be Qing-jao, home from the garden of Sun Cao-pi. Only Qing-jao was allowed to run and make noise during this time of hush, They waited, knowing that she would come straight to her mother's room.
    The door slid open almost noiselessly. Even Qing-jao had caught enough of the hush to walk softly when she was actually in the presence of her mother. Though she walked on tiptoe, she could hardly keep from dancing, almost galloping across the floor. But she did not fling her arms around her mother's neck; she remembered that lesson even though the terrible bruise had faded from Jiang-qing's face, where Qing-jao's eager embrace had broken her jaw three months ago.
    "I counted twenty-three white carp in the garden stream," said Qing-jao.
    "So many," said Jiang-qing.
    "I think they were showing themselves to me," said