Pathfinder

CHAPTER 6 Leaky and Loaf

It was still two days before the jump into the fold when Ram suddenly found himself strapped into his chair. The expendable was kneeling in front of him, looking up into his eyes.

“Was I asleep?” asked Ram.

“We jumped the fold, Ram,” said the expendable.

“On schedule and I simply don’t remember the past two days? Or early?”

“We generated the seventh cross-grain field,” said the expendable, “and the fold came into existence four steps earlier than predicted.”

“Was it the fold or merely a fold?” asked Ram.

“It was the fold we wanted. We’re exactly where we were supposed to be.”

“What a convenient error,” said Ram. “We inadvertently trigger fold creation four steps early, and yet it still takes us to our destination.”

“All the folds, all the cross-graining of fields, everything we did was polarized, so to speak: It always pointed us exactly where we wanted to go.”

“So spacetime, naughty as it was, suddenly got the idea and leapt ahead of us?”

“We got ourselves caught in the midst of a stutter,” said the expendable. “We were trying to avoid that because we didn’t know what would happen to us in a stutter—most of the computers predicted the ship would be sectioned or obliterated.”

Ram had been scanning all the reports from every part of the ship. “But neither happened. We’re still intact.”

“More than intact,” said the expendable.

“How can you be more than intact?” asked Ram.

The floor was hard and the room was cold, but Rigg awoke feeling more comfortable than he had in many days, and he burrowed down into the blankets to see if he could sleep a little longer.

“They took our clothes,” said Umbo.

Rigg opened one eye. Umbo, wrapped in a blanket, was sitting on a chair looking glum in the dim light eking its way down through the shutterblind.

“Probably having somebody wash them,” said Rigg.

Then he realized that if their clothes were gone, it meant someone had come into the room without waking them. They could have taken anything. Rigg bounded up from his blankets and searched for his pack. It was right where he had left it, and the money was where he had tucked it when he undressed.

“Not thieves,” he said.

“Well, we knew that,” said Umbo.

The key sounded noisily in the lock. Was it that loud last night? Not with the noise from the common room to drown it out. But when someone came and took their clothes?

Leaky came in, not bringing breakfast, not carrying clean clothes. She merely stood there looking coldly at them. “Wrap yourselves in something and come with me. Right now.”

Rigg didn’t know what to make of her attitude. She seemed furious, and yet also much more respectful than she had been last night. She averted her gaze as they rearranged their blankets to cover themselves a bit more securely, then stood aside for them to pass through the door.

The common room was empty except for Loaf, who stood behind the counter, propping himself on it with straight arms. In front of him a white cloth was spread. At the end of the counter was a pile of rags that Rigg immediately identified as his own and Umbo’s unwashed clothing.

As he came nearer, Rigg saw something on the cloth sparkle in the light from the half-shuttered windows. Large gemstones, of different colors. Eighteen of them.

“Where’s the light blue one shaped like a teardrop?” asked Rigg.

Leaky walked beyond him to the pile of clothes and slid it toward the middle of the bar. “Find it yourself, saints know we didn’t take it.” Rigg began at once examining the waistband of the trousers—which had been neatly sewn closed again in each spot where a stone had been.

Loaf’s voice was a low growl when he spoke. “What do you mean, having such wealth on you, and talking poor as you did?” Like his wife, Loaf was angry—and yet he was also deferential.

“Asking for our charity,” added Leaky, “when all the time you had that.”

“We didn’t ask for your charity,” said Rigg, “we offered you money—too much money, if I recall.”

“And acted like you were afraid of running out of it,” said Leaky sullenly, “which you couldn’t do if you live to a hundred.”

Rigg worked his fingers along the waistband of the trousers on the counter. He found where the light blue gem had been sewn, and there it was indeed, though harder to feel because it was also involved with a vertical side seam, which thickened the cloth over it. He pulled it out and laid it on the cloth. There was no reason to hide it now. If Loaf and Leaky were thieves, they wouldn’t be laying out the stones, they’d be pretending they knew nothing about them. If they had even allowed Rigg to wake up alive.

“It’s my inheritance from my father,” said Rigg. “He said I should take it to Aressa Sessamo and show the stones to a banker there.”

“Inheritance?” asked Loaf, looking wary. “If your father had wealth like this, why do you dress so poor?”

Rigg understood the question. Loaf was asking if the jewels were stolen; but even if they weren’t, the man wanted to make sense of the contradiction.

“We lived our lives in the forest,” said Rigg. “We trapped furs for a living. I’m dressed in the clothing that was useful to me—we never needed any better. There is no better for the work we did. And as for being wealthy, the first I knew of these jewels was after my father died, and the woman who had them in safekeeping gave them to me.”

“That was a very trustworthy woman,” said Leaky.

“And you are no less trustworthy,” said Rigg, “or I would not be seeing these laid out on the bar.”

Loaf snorted. “For coins such as you had,” he said, “someone might kill you and toss you in the river. But a boy who owned such jewels as these, someone would come looking for him. A man might hang. And if I turned up with such as these, who would believe that I got them honestly?”

“Who would believe me?” asked Rigg. “Part of Father’s inheritance was the letter to the banker.”

“Then would you mind if we saw the letter?” asked Loaf. His words were polite, but his tone was firm, as if to say, it’s time now to dispel all doubt.

For a moment Rigg hesitated. Do they think that with the letter they might steal the jewels and prove a right to them? But he set aside his suspicion at once. If they meant him harm, he could not stop them. So why not suppose they meant well? Or at least well enough?

“I’ll get it,” said Rigg. “It’s in my pack.”

“No, send the other boy,” said Loaf. “I don’t want you to let these jewels out of your sight.”

Umbo glared at Loaf and then at Rigg. “You might have told me,” he said.

“I shared all my coin with you,” said Rigg, “and my food and all. But these couldn’t be spent anywhere we’ve been or anywhere we’re going. What was to tell?”

Umbo turned his back and went for the pack. He was back in only a few steps and thrust the pack into Rigg’s arms.

Rigg set the pack on a stool and pulled out the letter. He laid it on the bar.

Loaf squinted over it. Leaky reached out and snatched it away. “For saints’ sake, Loaf, we all know you read as fast as a toadstool turns into a tree.” She scanned the document, moving her lips a little and humming a note now and then. “It’s an obvious fake,” she said.

Loaf stood up straight and looked down his nose at Rigg.

But Rigg knew the letter was genuine, and if it wasn’t, Leaky would have no way of knowing. “If it’s a fake, I didn’t fake it,” Rigg said. “The woman I got it from said my father wrote it. He never showed it to me while he was alive, but it looks like his handwriting.” Rigg looked at Leaky. “Have you ever seen his handwriting?”

“I don’t have to,” said Leaky. “It’s signed by the Wandering Saint. That’s like having it signed, ‘The Ring.’”

“That would be a really stupid thing to do, but he didn’t do it,” said Rigg. “Read that signature again.”

She scowled and read it again, moving her lips even more pronouncedly. “Ah,” she said. “‘Wandering Man’ instead of ‘Wandering Saint.’ But it’s still not even a name.”

“It’s one of the names his father went by,” said Umbo.

“What’s his real name, then?”

“All his names were real,” said Umbo. “He answered to them.”

They looked at Rigg, who said, “I never called him anything but ‘Father.’”

“Why do you think you can judge this paper?” asked Umbo. “It isn’t written to you. It’s written to a banker in Aressa Sessamo. So we’ll take it to him. Give it back.”

It was bold of Umbo to demand “back” something that he had never held. But Leaky put it in his hand all the same. Umbo scanned it, reading quickly—for the village schoolteacher in Fall Ford did his job—and then passed it on to Rigg.

“So your father made up names for himself and signed them on legal documents,” said Leaky. “You already know what I think of people who use false names.”

“Doesn’t matter what you think of this boy’s dead father,” said Loaf curtly, earning a glare from his wife. “I believe the boy and the letter, and whether the father came by the money honestly or not, the son surely did.”

“What are you going to do, then?” Leaky demanded. “Adopt him? He certainly lied to us.”

“I never said a word to you that wasn’t true,” said Rigg.

“You said those coins were all your money!”

“Do those jewels look like money to you?” said Umbo.

“Why did you take my clothes in the first place?” asked Rigg. “I’m the one whose belongings were taken by stealth in the night.”

Flustered, Leaky said, “I was going to wash them.”

“They don’t look any cleaner to me,” said Rigg.

“Because I picked up your trousers and I could feel something in the waistband.”

“And you had to rip open the seam and take it out?”

“My wife’s no thief,” said Loaf, glowering.

“I know she’s not,” said Rigg. “But she’s been spitting out accusations and suspicions, and I wanted her to see that those can go both ways. I have more cause of complaint here than she does—but I’m not complaining, and it’s time she stopped being suspicious of me for giving far less grounds.”

“The boy’s a lawyer,” said Loaf to his wife.

“Honest men don’t need lawyers,” she said huffily.

“Honest men are the ones who need them most,” murmured her husband, and when she made as if to argue with him, without even looking at her he raised his hand as if to smack her backhand across the face. He didn’t hit her and obviously never meant to, but she rolled her eyes and fell silent. So it seemed that a hand raised for a smack was the downriver equivalent of putting a finger to your lips.

“If you give me back my clothes,” said Rigg, “I can sew these jewels back into the waistband and we can leave.”

“No,” said Loaf. “In Aressa Sessamo, that letter will do you good. Here it does none, and you need to turn one of those jewels into money.”

“I thought we had a lot of money,” said Rigg. “Too much of it.”

“I said you had enough money that rivermen would kill you for it,” said Loaf. “But prices get a lot higher the farther down the river you go. You’ll be out of money long before you get to Aressa Sessamo, no matter how carefully you eke it out.”

“Is there a bank in this town?”

“Not yet,” said Loaf. “But I can accompany you downriver to the first city that has one. It’s a place where I’m known well enough, and I can vouch for you. I can also keep you safe along the way.”

“Why would you do that for us?” asked Rigg.

“For money, you dunderheaded boy. I’m an honest man but not a rich one. We’ll get to the bank—the banker’s name is Cooper—and when he gives you the money, he’ll give a fee to me. And don’t fear I’ll cheat you—we’ll let the banker set the price. Fair value for my protecting you and leading you there.”

“The banker is your friend, not ours,” said Umbo.

“But you’re the one with the jewels,” said Loaf. “So that’ll make him your friend, not mine.” Then he pointed at Rigg. “Or rather, his friend, not either of ourn.”

“What kind of banker is named ‘Cooper’?” asked Umbo. “Are the coopers around there all named ‘Banks’?”

“The city where he lives has a law that family names are passed along father to son, husband to wife, regardless of whether the name itself still fits. He once had a distant ancestor who was a cooper, that’s all it means.”

“It’s a very dull way of naming people,” said Leaky.

Loaf turned to Rigg again. “I’ll make money from taking you, but it’s money fairly earned, since without me you’re so likely to be dead before you get out of Leaky’s Landing.”

“Is that the name of this tavern?” asked Rigg, wondering why it wasn’t named for Loaf, since at least his name suggested something edible, while Leaky’s name seemed a recommendation against staying there on a rainy night.

“It’s the name of the whole town,” said Leaky.

“They named it for you?” asked Umbo.

“Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t,” said Leaky.

“This termite-supper town?” said Loaf. “They called it sixteen different things till we got here and told them that they had to settle on a name or we wouldn’t build the tavern here. I suggested they name it for me, and so they named it for her just to prove that they don’t have to do what they’re told, even though it was the best advice they’ve ever had. Population’s tripled in the fifteen years since they named it.”

“What does having a name matter?” asked Umbo.

Loaf rolled his eyes. “I can hear the land speculator saying, ‘Come and buy land here and build a house in a town so saint-forsaken that we don’t even know its name!’ or a traveler saying, ‘Let’s stop for the night at that inn in that town, you know the one, the town with no name?’”

“They get the point,” said Leaky.

Rigg wanted to know what the plan was. “So are we leaving for . . . the town with the banker named Cooper—”

“Does that town have a name?” asked Umbo. “Or are they waiting for you to move there and name it for them?”

“Leaky’s Landing is new,” said Loaf. “That city has had people there for twice five thousand years. It’s as old as the world. Nobody even knows the language it was first named in.”

“It’s called ‘O,’” said Leaky.

“And it has the Tower of O in it,” said Loaf, as if they should know all about it.

“There must not have been many cities in the world when they named it,” said Rigg. “Are there other old cities named for vowels?”

Loaf looked at his wife, rolled his eyes, and said, “It’s going to be a long trip.” Then he turned back to Rigg. “To answer the question you should have asked, I’ll say that before we set out for O, we’re going to buy you some clothes that won’t attract notice. Not too rich, not too poor, definitely not of woodsy leather, and equally not the latest fashions from upriver. You,” he said, pointing to Umbo, “will pass for my son, dressed like me.”

“I’m excited,” murmured Umbo.

“And like a son, you’ll get cuffed in the head when your mouth gets smart like that,” said Loaf.

“No he won’t,” said Rigg, moving closer to Umbo.

“If I wanted to get hit,” said Umbo, “I could have stayed at home. My father did it plenty. For free.”

Leaky laughed. “He was joking, you fools. This is a rough town with a lot of hitting, but Loaf never lays a hand on any, except when he throws troublemakers out.”

“I had my fill of hurting people when I was in the army,” said Loaf. “I won’t lay a hand on you.”

Umbo relaxed, and so did Rigg.

“Umbo is my son,” Loaf went on, “and Rigg will be my wife’s brother’s boy, your cousin, and his family have a bit more money than us. He was visiting us and we’re taking him to meet his father’s men in O.”

“Why all the lying?” asked Rigg.

“To explain why your clothes will be nicer than ours. When we meet Cooper, he has to believe you are what you say. The letter means something but not as much as you’d like, since it wasn’t addressed to him. He doesn’t know Wandering Man any more than I do. So he has to look at you and see a boy who might come from a family with money.”

“If the banker catches us lying about anything,” said Rigg, “then he won’t believe the jewels are mine.”

“We’ll tell him as much of the truth as he needs to hear. The lies are for nosy people along the way, to explain why you’re dressed different from us. And why you talk so much better than your friend.”

“He does not!” said Umbo, outraged.

“Are you deaf, boy?” asked Leaky. “This Rigg here sounds like he’s been to school. The way he pronounces his words so clear.”

“I’ve been to school!” said Umbo.

“I mean a downriver school,” said Leaky. “We get travelers like that now and then. You really can’t hear the difference in the way he talks?”

“He talks like his father,” said Umbo. “What do you expect?”

“That’s my point,” said Loaf. “You talk like a privick, and he talks like a snooty boy from the schools. He talks like money.”

“Well, I only know how to sound like who I really am,” said Umbo.

“And that’s why I’m calling you my son,” said Loaf, “and him my rich nephew, so why are we having this argument? Besides, I’m going to do the talking anyway. Don’t answer if anybody asks you a question, just look at me. Got it?”

“Yes,” said Rigg.

“This is so stupid,” said Umbo.

“You say that because it’s not your money,” said Leaky.

“Not yours either,” Umbo insisted.

“This boy never backs down,” Loaf growled.

“That’s what makes him a good friend,” said Rigg.

“Some of the money’s ours,” Leaky said to Umbo. “In exchange for the clothes we’re going to buy you two and the passages we’re going to pay for and the days Loaf spends away from here and the bouncers I’ll have to hire when he’s not here to keep the peace. If we don’t make a fair profit on this great and noble service we’re providing you, then he’s a stingy lad and you’re no better.”

“I’ll pay fairly,” said Rigg. “And just so you know, Umbo speaks like an educated boy from Fall Ford, but Father taught me to talk in several different accents and a few completely different languages, too. At home I talk just like Umbo, but for the last week I’ve been talking the way Father said they talk in Aressa Sessamo, cause people understood me better and laughed less.”

“Of course they did,” said Loaf. “That’s the imperial city. And your father sounds like a man who meant you to travel.”

Rigg remembered telling Father that he already knew everything he’d ever need to know—but Father knew all along that Rigg would not be spending his whole life trapping animals in the mountains. Father might not have told Rigg anything about his plans for Rigg’s future, but he’d certainly prepared him to speak wherever he went. Maybe someday Rigg would even have a use for all the astronomy and physics Father taught him. Maybe it would matter that Rigg knew that the Ring was made of dust and tiny stones circling the world, shining in the night because of reflected sunlight. Now that would be a journey!

They went to buy clothes right away that morning; the tailor measured and by evening the clothes were delivered—two of everything for each of them, in different fabrics. “Why do I need two?” asked Umbo.

“So you can wear one while you clean the other,” said Leaky. “Though it’s no surprise you don’t know about washing.”

Rigg interrupted before they could bandy words yet again. “So should I open up a seam and put the jewels back in my clothes? And if I do, which pair of trousers? I tell you I don’t ever want to be caught wearing the wrong pair if a thief steals the other, or if I have to run from somebody.”

“The jewels aren’t very big,” said Umbo. “Can’t you just keep them in a little bag in your pocket?”

Loaf wouldn’t have that. “Pickpockets take whatever they find. Never put in your pocket anything you mean to own for long.”

“I’ll make you a ribbon to put around your waist and tie right tightly,” said Leaky. “And you hang a little bag from the ribbon, inside your trousers, right in front. No one will see it, or if they do, they’ll think it’s your boy parts.”

“Your family jewels,” said Umbo, chortling.

But at that moment, Rigg caught something in Umbo’s eyes, some emotion he couldn’t identify, something that made his eyes shine a little. And he thought: He hasn’t completely forgiven me for letting Kyokay die. It was one thing before, when he didn’t know about the jewels. He could forgive me then, and share blame. But now that he sees me as rich, and knows I hid it from him, it changes everything. He thinks he has reason not to trust me. Does that mean I have reason not to trust him?

It took four days to make the downriver passage to O. First thing the boat’s captain said when they booked passage was, “Pilgrims?” and later Loaf explained that thousands of people a year go to visit the Tower of O. To the captain, though, he told the story that they had agreed on, and Rigg realized that the most important part of the tale was the part about meeting his “father’s men.” It told the captain they were looked for, and by a man of power. They’d be safe enough aboard this boat.

At first it was a delight to travel by boat. The river did all the work—even the rivermen aboard the boat had little enough to do. They were there for the return voyage, when they’d have to pole and row to get upstream against the swift current. For now the rivermen lolled about the deck; and on the cabin roof, where passengers were required to stay, Loaf and Rigg and Umbo did the same.

Until Rigg’s legs began to feel twitchy for lack of use. Father had never let him spend a single whole day abed—not even when he was sick, which wasn’t often. Umbo seemed content enough, and Loaf was positively in heaven, dozing day and night, whenever he could.

It was one of those times when Loaf was sleeping and Rigg was walking around and around the corral—for so it seemed, this small platform edged with a fence—that Umbo came up to him. “Why can’t you hold still?”

“I never got much practice at it,” said Rigg. “It requires a talent for laziness.”

“So what do you see? Paths on the river, too? The people aren’t actually walking, except the insane ones, they just sit there. So do they leave a path even though they’re holding still?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “They’re moving through space so they leave a path.”

“All right, then that brings another question. I learned in school that the world is a planet moving through space, and the sun moves through space, too. So when the world moves, why don’t all our paths get left out in space? If the world’s like a boat, then even if we’re standing still, we should be leaving paths behind us in space because the world is moving us, the way this boat moves us even while we’re sitting here.”

Rigg closed his eyes, picturing it—all the paths leading out into space.

“It should do what you said,” Rigg finally answered. “But it doesn’t. That’s all I know. All the paths stay where people passed by, on the land or in boats. So I guess there’s something that holds the paths to the exact place on Garden that the people moved through, no matter how long ago. Maybe gravity holds the paths in place. I don’t know.”

Umbo held his silence for a while, and Rigg thought the conversation was over. But Umbo was just coming up with new questions. “Can we do something here on the boat?” asked Umbo. “I mean, you know, practicing that thing we do?”

“I don’t see how,” said Rigg. “The crew would see me walking around and wonder what I was doing. And like I said, there are no paths on this boat, the paths are all hovering above the water, where other boats dragged people through the air. Our own paths are behind us, floating exactly this high above the water. I can see yours right up the river.”

“But that’s all the better. You just wait till some path comes right across this platform, and then you do something.”

“What would I do? Give some poor guy a shove so he falls in the water, five hundred years ago? That would be murder, if he can’t swim.”

Umbo sighed. “I’m just so bored.”

“I have a better idea. Let’s try to teach each other how to do the other one’s thing.”

“Nobody taught us to do what we do already,” said Umbo.

“That’s not even true. Father worked with you, didn’t he? Helped you sharpen it and focus it.”

“Yes, well, that’s right, but I could already do it, he just trained me.”

“So maybe instead of having none of each other’s ability, we only have a very very little so we never noticed it,” said Rigg. “So you try to explain it to me while you’re doing it, and I’ll try to point out the paths as we pass through them.”

“There’s not a chance it will work,” said Umbo.

“Then let’s find that out. Come on, we’re both bored, this is something to do.”

“Sh,” said Umbo. “I think Loaf is waking up.”

“Unless he’s been awake the whole time, listening.”

Umbo grimaced. “It would be just like him.”

But Loaf seemed not to have heard anything. He was perfectly normal toward them when he woke up—surly and deferent and helpful all at once.

Rigg asked him, “You worked the river yourself, didn’t you?”

“Never,” said Loaf.

“But you’re as muscular as these men.”

“No I’m not,” said Loaf. “I’m much more so.”

Rigg looked at him carefully. “I can see that you’re different from them, but not how.”

“Look at my right shoulder and then at my left. Then look at the rivermen.”

Rigg and Umbo both looked. Umbo saw it first, and chuckled. “They favor one side.”

Now Rigg could see it. They were each stronger on one side of their body than the other, from years of working the same side of the boat.

“On military boats they’re not allowed to do that,” said Loaf. “They make them change sides in regular shifts so they stay even.”

“So were you a military boatman?”

“Military, but not on a boat,” said Loaf. “Before I met Leaky and married her and built the tavern, I was in the army. Got to be a sergeant, a good squad of tough men.”

“Did you fight in any wars?” asked Umbo.

“We haven’t had a war in my lifetime,” said Loaf. “Even the People’s Revolution was back when I was a baby. But there’s always fighting and always killing, because there are always people who won’t do the will of the People’s Revolutionary Council, and always wild people at the edges of civilization who won’t respect the boundary or any other law. Barbarians.”

“So are you a bowman?” asked Umbo eagerly. “A swordsman? Or do you work the pike or the staff? Will you show us?”

“The boy is in love with the idea of soldiering,” said Loaf. “Because you’ve never seen a man holding all his guts in his lap, begging for water because he’s so thirsty, but has no stomach left for the water to go into.”

Umbo gulped. “I know people die,” he said. “They die at home, too, and sometimes in pretty terrible ways.”

Rigg thought of Father under the tree and Kyokay slipping from the rim of Stashi Falls. At least he hadn’t actually seen what the tree did to Father’s body, or what happened to Kyokay when he hit the turbulent, rock-filled water.

“Nothing is more terrible than the way men die in war,” said Loaf. “One slip and your enemy has the best of you. Or you’re walking along and suddenly, pfffft, there’s an arrow in your throat or your ear or your eye or your back and if you aren’t killed outright, you know it’s over for you, it saps the strength from you.”

“But you had an equal chance,” said Rigg. “Or maybe not equal, but you were trained for it. Killing and therefore dying. It can’t be a surprise to a soldier when he dies.”

“Take it from me, boy, death is always a surprise even if you stand there staring it in the face. When it comes, you think, ‘What, me?’”

“How do you know,” said Umbo. “You’ve never died.”

In answer, Loaf lifted up his overshirt and revealed his chest and belly. The man was so huge that Rigg had assumed he was fat, but no, his whole body followed the bulges and creases of his musculature, and veins stood at the surface everywhere instead of hiding in layers of fat.

And running right up his belly, just a little off center to the right, there was a savage scar, still partly red, and it hadn’t been stitched up right, so the skin puckered on one side or the other all the way up and down it. “I’m the man who held my guts in my hand,” he said. “I counted myself as dead. I refused to let my men waste any time trying to take me off the battlefield. I named another man as their new sergeant and ordered them to retreat with the rest of our men. Later they went ahead and won, but they never came back to the battlefield. They knew there’d be nothing left of anyone.”

“Why not?” asked Umbo.

“It doesn’t sound very loyal,” said Rigg.

“Scavengers, my boys,” said Loaf. “The battlefield was empty no more than a minute before these women and old men and boys were among the fallen, killing the wounded and taking their clothes and weapons and whatever else could be found. War brings ’em, like crows to carrion. So there I lie, expecting to die—hoping it doesn’t take long because it hurts in waves like the sea, each one pounding through me and I’m thinking, this is the one that carries me off into death, but it didn’t. I hear footsteps, I look up, and there’s this huge woman standing over me.”

“Leaky,” said Umbo.

“Of course it’s Leaky, you daft boy, but I’m telling the story and I decide when to say things out loud.”

“Sorry.”

“So I look up and she’s looking down and she says, ‘You’re a big one,’ and I didn’t say anything because it was a fool thing to say, what does it matter how big a dead man is? Then she says, ‘You’ve stopped bleeding,’ and I says, “I guess I’m empty.’ It comes out as a whisper but she heard me and she laughs and says, ‘If you can talk and you can joke you aren’t going to die.’ Then she pulls away my armor—which the other fellow’s sword had sliced through like butter, that’s what happens when your armor is built by somebody’s cousin and he makes the steel out of tin-plated dirt. Anyway, she stitches me up—and a right lousy job she did of it, I’d say, but the light was failing and I was going to die anyway, so who cares? She says to me, ‘The skin’s all cut but the stomach and bowel look to be unhurt, which is why you didn’t die. A knuckle deeper and you’d already be dead of it.’ So she hoists me up on her shoulder—me! heavy enough even without my blood—and takes me home and says that by scavenger law I’m her slave. Only when I got better, we were in love like a pair of heroes and we got married and I went home and tossed my old wife and sold the house and land and took my vast fortune and built the tavern in a scabby little mushroom village and turned it into a town and a regular stop for the river traffic. So her not killing me and taking my stuff, but taking me instead—that changed the world, my lads.”

“Hard on your first wife,” said Rigg.

“I was away eight solid years the last time, and when I got home she had three children under five that looked like three different men had done me the service of a substitute. You telling me I did wrong?”

“At least she waited a couple of years faithful,” said Umbo.

“And at least I didn’t kill her, which was my right. I only tossed her out instead of killing her, because Leaky says, ‘Let’s not start with blood,’ and also because I vaguely remembered we were in love once. And besides, I never fathered a child on her, no more than I have on Leaky, so I reckon a woman has a right to her babies, don’t she? Wherever she has to go to get them.”

“A tolerant philosophy. But she’d kept the farm for eight years and you took it right away from her.”

“The servants worked it,” said Loaf, “and it was my farm, just like she was my woman, and those weren’t my children. I didn’t lay a hand on her, but even a saint would sell the farm and take the money from it. She could go for shelter to the dad of one of her little ones, if he’d take her.”

“You’re soft, then,” said Rigg, but he smiled so that Loaf would know he was teasing.

“Yes, boy, jest all you like, mock me hollow, but I am soft. That’s what Leaky did to me. That and the one that gave me this scar. They took the war right out of me. But I still train for it. When I’m on land, that is. Train every day, an hour or two, using all the weapons. I can still put an arrow where I want to, within twenty rods. If I hadn’t slipped in horseflop on the battlefield he’d never have put his sword in me, that’s how good I was. And I still am, barring the changes that fifteen years of not having an opponent better than a drunken riverman makes in an old veteran.”

It was good to know that Leaky was the one who talked him out of killing his old wife. She could brag about how she would have thrown Rigg and Umbo in the river, or tossed them out on the mercy of the rivermen that first night—but Rigg understood now that Leaky and Loaf were kind people, and only had to look and talk tough because of their clientele.

“Does Leaky train with you?” asked Umbo.

Rigg expected him to get cuffed for his impertinence, but Loaf only laughed. “Who else?” he said. “No, she’s no fighter, not like me, but she puts on the pads and helps me through my steps and stings. Nobody else I know can match my reach, except her. I’m right big, you know. So we’re out at dawn, practicing an hour in full light. And it’s not a bad thing if rivermen see us at it, them as aren’t nursing hangovers. So they know that even when I’m not there, she holds her own.”

In the early afternoon of the fourth day, they saw it: the Tower of O, rising above the trees that lined the river. It was almost invisible against the lead-grey wintry sky, but they could all see it, a steel cylinder rising up and rounding off in a dome at the top.

“So we’re there,” said Umbo, and he and Rigg headed for the ladder down to the main deck.

“Wait,” said Loaf. “We won’t reach O till tomorrow noon, or later.”

“But it’s right there!” said Umbo.

“Look how hazy it is. This is clear air, and if it was as close as you think it is, it wouldn’t look that way.”

If the tower was still a day’s journey away, Rigg wondered, how could it rise so high above the trees? “How tall is it?” he asked.

“Taller than you imagine. Do you think people would make pilgrimages to see it, if it was just tall? Besides, the river takes a wide bend that way, and we’ll lose sight of it for hours, and then we come back at it from another direction before we get to see how big it really is. It’s a wonder of the world, to think any nation or city had the brains and the power to build such a thing. And yet it’s completely useless. They say it takes a day to climb to the top, but I don’t know how anybody would know that, the whole thing’s sealed off, and not because the Council of O made some law—no, it’s sealed off inside so you can’t get deep enough inside to figure out even what they built it for.”

Rigg watched the Tower of O until the light gave out so completely that it was invisible. He wondered what his father might have known about the Tower of O. He knew everything, or so it seemed. But he’d never thought to give Rigg a lesson about this place.