Wyrms

Chapter 10. CRANWATER

THEY WERE NOT THE HAPPIEST PARTY EVER TO SET OUT FOR Cranning. Angel was too weak from hunger and loss of blood to do more than endure the jolting of the road.

Though he could, painfully, drink milk from the farmhouses they passed, it would take time for him to come back up to strength, and even when he was conscious, he listened to the conversations of the others and almost never tried to speak. When they stopped at inns along the way. Patience fed him gruel in his room while the others ate at the common table. And the geblings slept in his room through the night, taking turns watching over him when, asleep, he clawed at the pain in his throat.

If Angel was silent, then Sken seemed never to stop speaking. She gRuinbled about everything that went wrong, and though she never said a word to or about the geblings if she could help it, she made it plain that she loathed them. She had a way of sniffing the air when Ruin was near. And whenever Patience and the geblings spoke "that jabbering noise," she grew sullen and threw nutshells at the horses' backs with particular vehemence.

Not Sken's surliness, not even Angel's misery ever engaged Patience's attention for long, however. She was caught up in other concerns. The Cranning call grew stronger in her every day, often distracting her from whatever she was doing or thinking. And the call was changing form as well. It was no longer just an urgency in her mind. Now it was a hunger in her body.

Night, in an inn not far from the river Cranwater. She dreamed a deep and powerful and terrifying and beautiful dream.

"Patience," whispered Sken.

Sken was shaking her. It was still dark. Was there some danger? Patience reached for the loop in her hair.

"No!" Sken tried to push her back down onto her mat.

Sken's push, the physical restraint, gave Patience a new fear, that Sken herself meant her harm. Patience was trained to protect herself against just such an attempt at murder in the night. For a moment, because she was not yet fully awake, her reflexes controlled her, and she lashed out; then she came to herself and stopped, her fingers already hooking behind Sken's ears, her thumbs poised to gouge out the riverwoman's eyes.

"Sweet lass," said Sken. "Just what your mother hoped you'd grow up to be, I bet."

The condemnation in Sken's words, the residue of momentary terror in her voice, the loathing revealed by the scant light that crossed the woman's face-this is how they see me, thought Patience. The common people, the people who play with their children, dance at the festival until they're drenched with sweat, scream and whine and accuse each other in the market. To them, a child my age should be a virgin at heart. If I were wise in the ways of love, that would sadden them, yes, as it does all adults when a child's body comes awake. But to see a child so young already ripe in violence and murder-I am a monstrous thing to Sken, like the deformed babies who are strangled and burned by the midwives.

Almost she said this: I was trained to be what I am, and I'm the best at what I do.

Then Sken would accuse her: This is the second time you tried to kill me. Or perhaps ask a bitter question: Do you murder even in your sleep?

Then Patience would say: How do you think a king keeps the peace, if not with tools like me?

But she would not defend herself. She might sometimes wish that she were not her father's daughter, but wishing wouldn't change the past. She had no more need to defend what she was than a mountain had to defend itself for being tall and craggy, or worn down and knobby, or whatever other shape it might have. What I am is what was done to me, not what I chose.

So instead of answering Sken's ironic words. Patience lived up to her name, and quietly asked, "Why did you wake me?"

"You were crying out in your sleep."

"I don't do that," said Patience. Hadn't Angel schooled her to be utterly silent in her sleep? She remembered all too well the cold water dashed in her face to wake her each time she made a sound, until she learned habits of sleep that kept her still.

"Then it's a miracle, a voice coming out of the air above your bed, and sounding just like you."

"What did I say?"

"From your cries, girl, I could think only one thing.

That a lover was prying at you as vigorous as a fanner rooting out a stump in a field."

Only then did the memory of her dream come back to her, and with it the Cranning call. "He does it to me," she whispered. "He sends me dreams. Waking, sleeping-"

Sken nodded knowingly. "You dream until your whole body's ready for him, but he never comes to you."

"I have to go to him."

"The curse of women," said Sken. "We know how they mean to use our love for them, we know the whole price of it is ours to pay, but still we go, and still we stay."

"This one's no ordinary lover," said Patience. Sken patted her head. "Oh, true. True, the one you love is never ordinary."

"What, did she really think Patience was lovesick like some village maiden, pining for the handsome farmboy? Because Patience had never had such a girlish feeling, she wondered for a moment if Sken might not be right.

But that was absurd. Patience had seen young girls in many noble houses, had heard them gossip about their real and would-be lovers. Unwyrm's relentless calling was far stronger. Even now it stirred within her; it took effort not to get up from her mat, leave the shabby inn, and walk, run, ride, or swim to Cranning. Still, Sken's ignorant assumptions were harmless enough. In other times, Patience would have seemed to accept Sken's attempt at consolation. But she was too weary, too edgy from the Cranning call to care to play the diplomat. So she answered with the nastiness she felt.

"And if I wait long enough, will I get over it?"

Sken, of course, had no diplomatic instincts. "You are a little bitch. A body tries to be nice-"

Patience answered, as if to explain everything about herself, "I've faced death more times this month than you have in your life."

Sken was still a moment, then smiled. "But you don't know boats like I do."

"We're not on the water now," said Patience.

"Nor are we assassinating anybody," Sken answered, Patience lay back on the mat and smiled icily. Sken had made her point. "Death and the river, we each know our trade," said Patience.

"This lover who makes you sweat and cry out in your sleep-"

"Not my lover," said Patience.

"He wants you, doesn't he? And you want him?"

"He wants me like a jackal hungers for a lamb. And I want him like-"

"Like a fish wants water."

Patience shuddered. That's how it felt, even now, like needing to take a breath, a deep long draught of air. But if she took that breath, it would be her last.

"Sken," said Patience, "I'm made of paper."

Sken touched her gently, stroked the cold damp flesh of her arm with a single dry finger. "Flesh and bone."

"Paper. Folded this way and that, taking whatever shape they give me. Heir to the Heptagon House, daughter of Peace, assassin, diplomat, give me a shape, I'll wear it, I'll act the part, fold me again, again, I'll be his lover, the one who calls me, and if he ever gets me, he'll fold me down so small I'll disappear."

Sken nodded wisely, her whole body jiggling just a little with the movement.

"What if someone unfolded me all the way? What would I be then?"

"A stranger," said Sken.

"Yes, even to me," said Patience.

"Just like everybody else."

"Oh, do you think so! Do you think something like a normal woman lives inside this lovely delicate murderer's body?"

"Don't take on such airs," said Sken. "We're all folded up, and nobody knows what we really are. But I know. We're all identical, blank, empty pieces of paper.

It's the folding that makes us different. We are the folds."

Patience shook her head. "No, not me. Probably no one starts out blank and smooth, but certainly not me.

I'm more than what they've done to me. I'm more than I the roles I have to play."

"What are you, then?"

"I don't know." She rolled over, faced the wall to end the conversation. "Maybe I won't find out until just before I die."

"Or maybe just after, when they take your head."

Patience rolled back, caught the folds of Sken's robe in her tight-clutching fingers. "No," she whispered harshly. "If they ever do that to me, promise you'll split my head in two, you'll pour out the gools, something-"

"I won't promise, that," said Sken.

"Why not?"

"Because if you're in such a state that they could take your head, Heptarch, it means I'm already dead."

Patience relaxed her grip on Sken's clothing, lay back down. The knowledge of Sken's loyalty was a comfort. But it was also a burden. Patience was so tired. "Go to sleep," said Sken, "and don't dream of love."

"What should I dream of, then, since you're the master of sleep."

"Dream of murder," said Sken. "Knowing you, you'll sleep like a baby."

"I don't love death," whispered Patience.

Sken patted her hand. "No, I didn't think so."

"I didn't want my father to die. Nor Angel to be injured, I didn't wish for it."

Sken looked puzzled. Then she understood. "I know you didn't wish for it, girl," she whispered. "But it means you're on your own now, doesn't it? For a time at least. So of course that feels good."

"Exciting, sometimes. Scary."

"And knowing you face the strongest enemy in the world, alone-"

"Doesn't make me feel good."

"Don't lie," said Sken. "You love it, sometimes."

"I hate him for what he's making me want-"

"But to stand alone against him, you want that, you want to face him alone and win."

"Maybe."

"It's perfectly natural to feel that way. It's also perfectly natural to be an idiot."

"I can kill anybody."

"Anybody you want to."

The words sank in. "You're right," said Patience.

"How can I kill him, if he makes me love him?"

"You see? You can't do this alone," said Sken. "You need Angel. You need the goblins, disgusting as they are. Their pet giant, too. You may even need me."

"Even you," whispered Patience.

"Sleep now. We're all with you, you're at the center of everything, and we're all with you. Plenty of time to unfold yourself when this is over, and your lover's plow is hung on a wall somewhere."

Patience slept. She never spoke of the night's conversation again, but things were changed between her and Sken. They bickered as always, because Sken hardly knew another way to deal with people, but things were changed. There were ties between them, ties between sisters, strange sisters indeed, but good enough.

In the morning they traveled again, a queer caravan.

But Sken's words had made a difference in the way Patience saw the others, too. She looked at them with new eyes, thinking, how can I use him? Why do I need her? What is the strength he has that makes up for the weakness in me? They were all dangerous-to her, but' also to Unwyrm. The geblings especially, they were a mystery. The more Patience watched them, the more she realized that they did most of their communicating without speech, each seeming to sense when the other was in need. She was jealous of their closeness; she even tried to imitate them, going to Angel now and then, whenever she felt he might need her. Sometimes he did more often he didn't. Whatever the geblings had, she lacked it.

No special sensitivity. Geblings are too different from us.

This power of theirs is something of this world, not from ours. They're like Unwyrm. Both part of this place, and I'm a stranger here.

Then the days of land travel were over. The river stretched before them again, this time with a busy town along its bank. It was no trouble finding a merchant to buy the carriage and horses. This close to Cranning, all the buyers were geblings, of course. So Patience dressed herself as a wealthy young man, took Will with her so no one would try to rob her, and did all the bargaining herself, without Ruin or Reck present to foul the deal.

Geblings had a way of giving gifts to each other instead of making a profit, and though Patience knew that Angel's small treasury had money enough to buy as many boats as she liked, she didn't want to waste their resources.

When what he had was gone, it could not easily be renewed.

The carriage gone, the money in hand. Patience-still looking for all the world like a cocky young man-took Sken with her to buy a boat. Sken was a riverwoman, after all; who else could judge a boat's fitness for their upstream voyage? ;

"Not that one," said Sken, time after time. Too small, too deep a draft, in bad condition, doomed to sink, not enough sail for upriver travel, too hard to steer-reason after reason to reject boat after boat.

"You're too picky," said Patience. "I'm not planning to live the rest of my life on it."

"If you buy the wrong boat," said Sken, "that's exactly what you'll do."

As they walked the bustling wharf, Patience noticed that the boats were all being sold or hired out by humans.

"It was a gebling who bought our carriage," she said.

"Don't they travel by water?"

"Don't ask me about goblins," said Sken. "I hope those two don't travel by boat."

"They saved a life that's dear to me," said Patience.

"And if they do sail with us, I hope they remember who's captain of the ship."

"I'm captain of the ship," said Patience.

"Not any ship Til sail on, nor any sane person neither," said Sken. "You've got the money, that makes you owner. I've got the know-how, and that makes me captain."

"Supreme authority?"

"Not quite."

"Oh? Who's higher than the captain?"

It wasn't Sken who answered. The voice came from Patience's other side, and it belonged to a man. "Pilot!" he said.

Patience turned-and saw no one, just a monkey jumping up and down as it pumped at a bellows. The bellows was connected to a tube that ran down into a thick glass jar, then up into the windpipe of a head whose eyes just peered over the top.

"Pilot?" asked Patience.

Sken had not yet turned. "Yes, a pilot. Someone who knows the river. Every river is different, and different from year to year, as well." Then she saw the one who had spoken, the head perched in a thick glass jar. Sken wrinkled up her face. "A dead one," she said. "Lot of good he'll do."

"Been up and down Cranwater every one of the last two hundred years," said the head.

"Heads don't learn," said Patience. "Heads don't pay attention, and they forget too quickly."

The monkey kept jumping up and down. It was distracting.

"I pay attention," said the pilot's head. "I know this river. Some pilots, the river's like an enemy, they wrestle it up and down. Some, it's like a god, they worship, they pray, they curse. Some, it's a whore for them, they think they're in charge but she plays them for fools.

Some, it's a lover, a wife, a family, they live and die for it. But me-"

"Come along, young sir," said Sken. But Patience stayed to listen.

"For me, the Cranwater's not like anything else. This river is myself. That's my name, River, as God gave it to me that's my name, the stream is my body, my arms, my legs."

The monkey stopped to pick a louse. The head grinned, but because the mouth was lower than the lip of the jar, the thick glass transformed the smile into a hideous leer.

The monkey tasted the louse, swallowed, and went back to work. Again the breath came through the pilot's throat.

"My boat's good," said River.

"Your boat's a rotten old canoe," said Sken.

"So. You're the captain, you get a good boat, but you come back and buy me for pilot."

"We'll get a live pilot, thanks all the same," said Sken.

"That's right, walk away, you've got legs, you can just walk off, what's that to you?"

A hawk swooped low, circled, came back and landed on a small platform atop the pole where River hung. It held a squirming rat in one talon. It raked open the belly, spattering blood, snatched the guts into its beak, then dropped the rest of the carcass into River's jar. The jar lurched as the gools and headworms attached themselves and fed.

"Pardon my lunch," said River. "As you see, I'm a self-contained system. You don't have to feed me, though I'm glad if you can keep my jar full of Cranwater, and it's nice if you now and then wash my jar. Monkey's apt to smear it with a bit of his stuff."

"Where's your owner?" asked Patience.

Sken was irate. "You're not thinking of-"

"Go buy a boat, Sken. You have fifteen minutes.

Choose the best, and I'll come negotiate the price."

"I won't have this thing as pilot!"

"If Ruin and Reck have to put up with you as ship's captain, you'll learn to live with River as pilot. Weren't you the one said the pilot was most important?"

"You're enjoying this," said Sken. "You're making sport, and I thought we were friends."

"You're not making a mistake, young master," said River. "A pilot has to know the sandbars, the currents, the fast places, the slow places, the shallow channels, the spring rises, I know them all, I'll get you through, provided you do as I tell you, up to and including that Queen of Grease you have with you, what do you do, harvest her sweat and sell it as lamp oil downriver?"

Patience laughed. Sken did not.

"Buy the boat," said Patience. "I want this pilot, for reasons that are good enough."

River cheered her on. "For reasons of wisdom, for reasons of-"

"Shut up," said Sken to River. Then to Patience:

"Young sir, you don't know this man-"

"I know from how his face has aged and cracked that he's at least two centuries, in hard sunlight and bad weather much of the time,"

"Ah, it's the truth, the torture of my life written on my face," said River.

"So he's old," said Sken.

"He's been a head at least a century," said Patience.

"Plying the river all that time. And in those many voyages, he's never failed a customer. He's never broken up a boat on a sandbar or a rock."

"How do you know that?" Sken demanded.

"Because the young master's got the spirit of discernment of truth in him," said River.

"Because he's here," said Patience. "If he'd ever let an owner down, his jar would have been broken, and he would have been poured out into the river long ago."

Sken glared, but had no answer. So she went farther along the dock, examining all the boats with an even more skeptical eye.

"You've got wisdom," said River. "I hope that among the hundred sons I conceived when I could still do the mattress hornpipe, there's one as well-favored and intelligent and-"

"And rich."

"As your most gracious self. Though I could wish a son of mine might have more of a beard on him."

"As he would no doubt wish his father to have more limbs."

River giggled, an artificial-sounding laugh because it all came from his mouth. There could be no belly laugh, with the monkey pumping the bellows with the same steady rhythm. "Ay, there's something lacking on both of us, I can't deny it."

"When will your owner come back?" asked Patience.

"When I send the monkey to fetch him."

"Then send."

"And miss out on conversation with such a likely young man? I buggered a few as fair as you in my time, I'll have you know, and they thanked me afterward."

"As I'll thank you for mislaying your practical buggery tools before we met."

River winked. "Nothing shocks you, does it?"

"Nothing that lives in a jar, anyway," said Patience.

"Send the monkey. If you want to talk, I can read your lips."

River made three sharp kissing noises. Patience realized that it was a sound he could make without the bellows. The monkey immediately dropped the bellows and clambered around to perch on the lip of the jar, pressing his forehead against River's. A few more chirping sounds, tongue clicks, lip pops, and the monkey dropped to the wooden dock and ran off through the crowd.

River made a single clicking sound, and the hawk took off and flew away.

Patience stood, reading his lips as he made jokes, told stories, and studied her with his eyes. All the while, Patience felt Unwyrm calling her. Come faster, I need you, you love me, I'll have you. Not in words, it was never words, it was just the need. Fly to me now.

I'm coming, said Patience silently, trying hard not to think consciously of the murder in her mind.

The head named River babbled on and on, looking less and less like her father the longer she watched. Good.

She didn't need the distraction.

Once they were on the water, Sken was in her element, and lorded it over them all. Never mind River muttering commands from his jar, which dangled from a pole near the helm; Sken was glad enough to follow River's orders about where to steer, once he showed that he really did know the river. Steering was the pilot's business-everything else about the boat was Sken's to decide. Only Angel, lying in comfort at last, without the bouncing of the road, only he was exempt from her orders. All the others, Sken kept them hopping with the business of a boat making the tricky upriver passage under sail and oar.

She took particular pleasure in ordering Reck and Ruin to climb the mast and fiddle with the two sails-she watched with unbearable satisfaction on her face as they dangled over the water doing her bidding. The height didn't seem to bother them, nor the work, but the water itself seemed to make them uncomfortable. And credit Sken with this: she did not abuse her authority. Like any good captain, she knew that the geblings would obey her, but only as long as she ordered them to do what was clearly needful.

Patience did her part as well, a full share of work, like any of the others. At first Sken was uneasy ordering her about, but if she left Patience without labor. Patience would come and ask, until Sken barked out commands to her as easily as to anyone. Patience was grateful for anything that engaged her mind. The Cranning call was relentless, but it was easier to live with when she was busy. So she spent many an hour braiding lines, raising and lowering sail, or leaning on the helm as River ordered their way upstream, tacking across the current to keep the wind, easing into deep channels with oars or poles to get past the tricky places-it was a vigorous, hardworking life, and Patience came to love the river, partly because of the peace it brought to her, partly for the life itself. Sken's coarseness and crudity became vigor and strength, when seen within the river life.

For all that Sken was a good captain, though, she was not perfect. Patience noticed within a few days that Sken tyrannized Will without mercy, perhaps merely because he let her do it. No doubt they weighed about the same, but she was a good meter less in height. It was comical, watching him pull on a rope or haul something above or below deck, his massive muscles rippling along his body as he worked, while all the time the jiggling fat woman scolded and cursed him. Poor Will, thought Patience. All the pangs of marriage, and none of the conveniences. But he bore it well and didn't seem to mind. It became part of the equilibrium. Patience let it go.

It was early morning. Will was drawing up the anchor while Reck was raising the sail. Ruin sat in the bow, staring glumly ahead. Sken sent Patience to secure a line when Reck threw it down, and the task brought her near to Ruin, who was not working this shift.

She saw him shudder at her approach. "Is it that strong, when you feel him calling me?" she asked.

He nodded, not looking at her.

"Who is he, this Unwyrm?"

"Unwyrm. Himself."

"But what does he look like?"

"No one has ever seen him."

"Where did he come from?"

"He was born from the same belly as the geblings."

This was a religious language, of course, and Patience mentally deciphered it into her own version of reality.

"He's agebling, then?"

Ruin shrugged. "He might be. Only more powerful than any gebling. And he hates us. That's all we know about him." He raised a lazy hand to point at the river.

"This water-he fills it with hate and sends it down to freeze us."

"The call-does it work like the way that you and Reck call to each other?"

"We can't control each other, if that's what you mean," said Ruin. "We feel it, and that's all. We feel it best between siblings. The closer your blood. Reck and I are twins."

"But Unwyrm does it at will?"

"He even does it to humans. None of us can do that."

"So he's like a gebling, only more powerful."

Ruin seemed angry. "He's nothing like a gebling."

"Then why do you call him he? How do you know I he's a male?"

"You know he is, too. Because he's looking for the seventh seventh seventh daughter, and not the seventh seventh seventh son." Ruin turned slowly to face her. He was smiling, and it wasn't pleasant.

"What good would it do him to mate with a human?

The offspring would never be viable. Starborn and native life can't interbreed."

"You humans put such touching faith in your myths."

He was just trying to torment her. Patience had seen him do the same with Reck, and she refused to pay any attention to it. "Is he one of another species, then?"

"Perhaps. Or maybe he's the only one of his species that ever lived."

"That's impossible. Species don't come out of nowhere.

They have parents. There are generations. I know enough science for that."

"The best thing about science," said Reck, walking up behind Patience, "is that it keeps fools from ever discovering the truth, or even discovering that they don't have the truth already."

Ruin frowned at her. "Maybe human science," he said.

Reck grabbed the fur of the back of his hand, then slapped his hand away. "Ow," he muttered. He cradled the hurt hand in the other, as if it were a deep injury.

Reck smiled sweetly. "You're no better a scientist than the humans are."

"I've seen what I've seen, and not what I wanted to see or expected to see, which is more than you can say for any of them." His gesture toward Patience was fluid with contempt.

Reck tossed her head. "If you asked the Wise among the humans, they'd say the same to you. You never see anything that you aren't prepared to see, and when you do, you name it with the old names and pretend you understood it all along. And then everybody tells everybody else what everybody has already agreed to say, and everyone feels reassured about the world."

"You're so wise," said Ruin nastily. His anger, Patience saw, was not all pretended.

"That's what Mother commanded me to be, when she named me Reck, child, it means think, it means calculate, it means wonder about the causes of things."

"Your names are commands?" asked Patience. "Then your parents had sweet plans in mind for you, Ruin."

Ruin and Reck both looked at her as if they had forgotten she was there. They had shown her more of their private relationship than a human was supposed to see. Patience was ashamed of herself for making them feel embarrassed. She, too, had forgotten that she had to be diplomatic. A diplomat is always the wary stranger, never the intimate friend. To the surprise of all and the liking of none, they had forgotten, for a moment that they were not and never could be friends.

Patience smiled ruefully and walked away, feeling their eyes on her back like knives. But not as sharp as the yearning that almost immediately swelled in her. Cranning.

Was this great need the torture that Father's head endured, when the headworms sparked all his longings?

Did he break under this pressure, or was his much worse?

Will I come before this Unwyrm, who wants a woman, not a man, and break under this need like a disbodied head that has lost all will to resist? Will I be so hungry then that whatever he wants me to do, I'll mindlessly do, with no thought of resistance?

With that thought in mind, she spent the morning making something for herself from the things she found in Angel's strongbox. A pellet of poison, which she could take if things went wrong.

"What a clumsy solution."

It was Angel's voice. At once she closed his box, like a little girl caught by her father.

"It belongs to you," said Angel, "because I belong to you."

"I don't feel like it does," she said. "Or you. I've never really owned anything."

"It's a very subtle thing. Most people think they own many things, and don't. You think you never owned anything, and yet you do."

"What do I own?"

"Me. This box. All of mankind."

She shook her head. "I may have responsibility for all of mankind, but I never asked for it, and I don't own them."

"Ah. So you think duty and ownership are different things. The mother and father care for the baby and keep it alive-do they own it? And if they don't care for it, is it truly theirs? The child obeys the parents, serves them, and as they depend on its service, the child comes to own them, also. Yet he deceives himself that he is owned."

"You're very subtle, but if you're trying to say that I owned Father, you really have no hope of being one of the Wise."

"In my way of thinking, what I said is true. But I confess that most people think of ownership another way.

They think they own what they make part of themselves. Like Sken, with this boat. She feels its parts as if they were part of her; she feels the wind on the sail as if the sail were her body and the wind tilted her forward; she feels the rocking of the boat as if it were the rhythmic beating of her own heart. She owns this boat, because this boat is part of herself."

"The way River owns Cranwater."

"Yes," said Angel. "He doesn't feel the loss of his body, because currents and flows, banks and channels, they're his arms and legs, his gut and groin."

Patience tried to think of something she owned as Sken owned the boat. There was nothing she felt was part of herself. Nothing at all. Even her clothing, even her weapons were not her own, not in that sense. To herself, she was always naked and unarmed, and therefore no stronger than her own wit and no larger than the reach of her own arms and legs. "If that's ownership, then I own nothing," said Patience.

"Not so. You own no one thing, because you have let nothing become part of you, except a few weapons and languages and memories. But you also own everything, because the whole world, as a whole, it is part of you, you feel the face of the globe as if it were your own body, and all the pains of mankind as if they were your own pains."

Let him think what he wants, but I know it isn't so. I don't feel all mankind as mine, though Father taught me often that that was what the Heptarch ought to feel. I am solitary, cut off from everyone and everything. But believe what you like, Angel. She changed the subject.

"Are you sure you're well enough to be up? And walking?"

"I'm not walking right now, am I? I'm sitting. Actually, though, I've felt much better for days. I just enjoy being lazy."

"I've needed you so much, these weeks-"

"You haven't needed me at all, and you've rather enjoyed finding out that you could do things on your own. But I'm glad you didn't decide to jettison me. I can be useful to you, you know. For instance, you don't need that poison."

"I might."

"You have something better."

"What?"

"The globe you took from your father's shoulder after he died."

Father had told her that no one else knew he had it.

"What globe is that?"

"For more than a week on the Glad River, every time we slept ashore you spent fifteen minutes sifting through your nightstools. There's only one thing you could have swallowed that was worth performing such a repugnant task."

"I thought you were asleep."

"Child, who could sleep through a stench like that?"

"Don't be foul. Angel."

"I assume you found it."

"Father told me to take it, but never what it did, or how to use it."

"Your father never used it. Or at least, not to its full capacity. To be fully useful, it must be placed somewhere else in your body. In the deepest place in your brain." Angel smiled. "And right now you have a very good surgeon."

"Father told me that I should never let a gebling know I have this."

"One must lake risks in this world."

"What is it?"

He switched into Gauntish. "Your scepter, my beloved Heptarch. But few of your recent predecessors have had the courage to wear it in their brain."

She answered in the same language. "You're saying Father wasn't brave enough for such an operation?"

"The operation is safe enough. But it's had such varying effects on different Heptarchs. Some have gone quite mad. One of them even murdered all his children, except one. Another started simultaneous wars with all his neighbors and ended up with the kingdom reduced to Heptam itself and a few islands to the west. Other Heptarchs have said it is like seeing the world for the first time, and they ruled brilliantly. But the odds are against you. Still, planted in your brain, it responds to your desires. Once it was there, if you ever truly wanted to die, you would die. So you might want to take the risk."

"What if it drove me mad?"

"Then you would probably become obsessed with going to Cranning to face the enemy of mankind, unprepared, uninformed, and unlikely to do anything but fail,"

"In other words, what I'm doing now?"

"How could you do anything more insane? Unless you decided to take along two geblings who no doubt mean to kill you as soon as you've got them safely to Unwyrm."

She remembered what he had said about geblings a moment ago. "Why am I forbidden to let a gebling see that I have this jewel?"

"Because it isn't a jewel."

"It isn't?"

"It's an organic crystal taken from the brain of the King of Cranning in the fifth generation of the world."

"The gebling king. What did he use it for?"

"The geblings were reluctant to discuss it with us. We know how it works on humans, but who knows what it did for him."

Patience nodded. "If it was stolen from the gebling king, I suppose by right it belongs to Reck and Ruin."

An expression passed suddenly across Angel's face, then vanished. Not a grimace that anyone else could see, for Angel was skilled at keeping his face blank. But Patience saw it, and knew that he was surprised, perhaps even frightened. What had surprised him? Didn't he know that, together, the brother and sister were king of the geblings? Of course he didn't know. Ruin had been sewing Angel's wound when Patience overheard the geblings' conversation that revealed to her who they were. Angel had been unconscious, and no one had spoken of it since.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Didn't you know they were king? It's something I overheard when you were not yet healed."

"No, I had no idea. I'll have to think about that," said Angel. "That might change things. It might indeed. It gives me pause." He smiled and patted her hand, looking mildly nonplussed.

But Patience was even more confused than before. For Angel was lying to her. She knew what he would look like if his words were sincere and he were hiding nothing.

But he was hiding something-all he showed right now was his mask. He had not been surprised at all, and he did not have to think about anything or change any plans. He had known all along who the geblings were.

And if that was so, then what he hadn't known was that she knew who they were.

There are two things to do with a lie: pretend you believe it, or confront the liar with your knowledge of the lie. The first is what you do with enemies; she could only think of Angel as a friend. "How long have you known?" she asked him.

He was preparing to lie to her again, then stopped himself. "No," he said. "You're the Heptarch now, and I can't hold back from you. Your father told me their names, many years ago, their names and where they lived. The Heptarchy has made it a point to keep track of the gebling kings."

"So you knew all along that they were in that village."

"Your father knew, and warned me. They add just one more uncertainty to the equation. It would have been better to pass them by. And I wouldn't have had an arrow in my throat, either." He chuckled. "But I don't mind."

She smiled at him, but he was still lying to her.

Something was wrong with what he said. Perhaps he hadn't known who they were. Perhaps Father hadn't warned him. It was impossible to guess, and she couldn't very well ask him now. With his first lie, he might still be a friend. With the second lie, she could only treat him as an enemy. Let him think his lie has succeeded. Father taught her, and your enemy won't be driven to more desperate measures.

What bothered her most was that never before in her life had she thought of Angel as her enemy. "What did Father fear they would do, when he warned you?"

"I don't know. I thought at the time he feared another gebling invasion. But I don't think it's human blood these two are thirsting for. The other kings called the geblings to Skyfoot with a cry of war on their lips. These two are almost in disguise. No gebling king has ever traveled in the company of humans. Living humans, anyway."

The more she listened to him, the more obvious it became that it was all lies, and Angel was growing more and more confident that she believed him. Angel had a plan, no doubt something he and Father had worked out some time ago, and part of the plan required him not to tell her all he knew. She was still a child in Angel's eyes, still not to be trusted with the knowledge to make an intelligent decision on her own. Angel was determined to keep her blind and force her down the road he and Father had chosen for her. Well, Angel, you may find I'm not quite the helpless babe you think I am. I can't force you to confide in me, but when the time comes, you'll wish you had, because I'll do as I have decided for myself, whether you like it or not, and if you try to stop me, Angel, even you might find that I'm too much for you.

She didn't believe it, though. Her bravado was a sham.

Never before had she felt so childish and weak as now. I am not Heptarch yet, she realized. I have no kingdom and no power, just the destiny that you and Father and Unwyrm and the geblings and the priests all have in mind for me. You have so many plans for me that no matter what I do, it's what someone wanted me to do. A single puppet with a thousand strings, and I don't know who is holding any of them.

Her face showed none of this to Angel. Instead she smiled wickedly, the way she did when she teased him.

"So you think I'd be safe to let Ruin know I have the scepter that should be his, and then ask him to cut open my brain and put it in?"

Angel held out his open hands. "I didn't say it was without risks."

She poked him playfully. "Go back to spending the days asleep. You were more helpful then."

She could see his tension ease, as she pretended to be the lighthearted, trusting girl she had always been with him in private. He believed her. "I think Ruin will agree," he said, "that the scepter is more human than gebling now. The Heptarchs have had it for more than three hundred generations. Still, I'm not saying you should up and tell him right now."

"It's impossible to know what to do," she said. "All the prophecies hint at disaster, but they don't tell me what causes the disaster. Anything I choose might destroy the world or save it, and I don't know which is which. And you aren't even going to help me decide."

He smiled. "You knew you might be leading the world to disaster when you decided to go to Cranning.

I'm just going along for the ride. Been lots of fun, so far." He got up and walked weakly back to his pallet under the canopy.

Patience sat and watched the water for some time. Just when she had begun to feel confident, Angel turned out to be playing his own game. There was no one she could trust completely.

Yet she couldn't brood for long. For whenever her attention was not closely engaged with work or conversation, her mind turned back to that constant, nagging need to go north, to go upriver, to find relief from the urgent pressure of her body's desire.

River's hawk circled, swooped down to the boat. She turned to watch as it tore open a dove, ate its gut, and dropped the body, feathers and all, into the jar. The monkey was playing with itself; this was a calm, slow reach of the river, so the pilot didn't need a voice for a while.

The balance of River's ecology was a marvel and a mystery to her. River himself, he was fairly easy to understand; like all heads, he was somewhat insane, living for the journey up and down Cranwater. As long as the boat was sailing, he was well rewarded. But the monkey and the hawk-what did they get? The n key ate with the humans, and seemed content enough. Be sides, he had nowhere else to go. Monkeys were a species humans had brought with them to this world; they had no natural habitat here, and could survive only as pets. So maybe, at some primitive level, the monkey knew that his slavery at the bellows was the only way that he could live.

But the hawk-she could not understand the hawk. It could provide for itself. It needed no one. What did it gain from its service to River? Why did it stay? River had no hands to restrain it, no power to reward or punish it. The hawk seemed to live for pure generosity.

Perhaps the hawk conceived River to be part of itself, feeding the head out of the same instinct that made parents feed their children. Or perhaps the hawk had been trained, folded into a pattern in which it could not conceive of leaving River to die. Perhaps the hawk did not long for freedom. Or perhaps, being free, this was what the hawk freely chose to do.

When Will called them to dinner at noon, Patience did not want to come. It was Reek's hand on her shoulder that brought her. "Whatever Angel said to you," whispered the gebling woman, "you're still the heart of all our futures. Come, eat."

Yes, thought Patience. Come, puppet. Come, folded paper. Dance your dance, hold the shape we gave you.

Until your usefulness is over. Then someone-the geblings, Unwyrm, perhaps some mad Vigilant along the way-someone will burn you up.