Wyrms

Chapter 3. ASSASSIN

PATIENCE WAS ALREADY WEARY OF LYING IN BED AFTER THE first day. Visits from people with nothing intelligent to say made her even wearier.

"I don't think there'll be a scar," said Lyra.

"I wouldn't mind if there were," said Patience.

"It was the bravest thing I ever saw."

"Not really," said Patience. "I knew I wouldn't die.

It was the only way to silence him."

"But what was he saying?"

Patience shook her head. "He wasn't the ideal husband for you, believe me."

Lyra looked profoundly worried. Well she should be, thought Patience. Maybe Lyra is realizing for the first time that her dynastic rights might be in danger from me, however loyal I try to be.

"Was he trying to-to arrange to-you know. With you."

Oh. Of course Lyra wouldn't have dynastic worries.

She had never been taught responsibility. "I can't talk about it," said Patience. She turned her face away, though, so Lyra would convince herself that the answer was yes.

"Right in front of me, wanting to-but why you? I know you're pretty, everyone says so, but I'm the Heptarch's daughter-and I'm not ugly, either. I'm really not. I'm very objective about that."

"The only men who wouldn't be glad to have you as their wife are the victims of terrible pelvic accidents," said Patience, smiling.

After a moment, Lyra understood and blushed. "You mustn't talk that way." But she was flattered. And now that Patience had succeeded in convincing her that she didn't owe some debt of guilt for Patience's wound, Lyra left.

At least I didn't come here yesterday as ignorant of the truth as Lyra still is. Someday, though, someone will tell her who I am, and why my father's ancient claim is seen by some as a bit more valid than Oruc's. Then she'll understand what was really going on today, and perhaps realize that it was my survival I was working for, not my death.

What worried her was not Lyra's reaction. It was King Oruc's. He was the only audience that Patience's performance was designed to please. If he saw her gesture as a desperate effort to prove her loyalty, then she would survive. But if he actually believed she was trying to kill herself, he would believe her insane and never trust her with anything. Her career would be over before it began.

The doctor had her wound clamped shut with the jaws of hundreds of tiny earwigs. "Not like regular earwigs, though," the doctor said. "These were bred to provide a powerful and continuous pincer movement until I squeeze their abdomens in a certain way. They respond to the flexing of your skin and promote the healing process. Without excessive scar tissue."

"Very clever," murmured Patience. Everyone assumed she didn't want a scar. But she wasn't sure. It wouldn't hurt to have a visible reminder, every time people saw her, of how loyal she was to King Oruc. She was tempted to squeeze off the earwigs herself, or readjust their position so the scar would dimple and twist. But no, it would be too obvious if she deliberately left a scar herself. It would diminish some of the power of her act.

For it was a powerful act. Oruc gave her a room of honor in Heptagon House during her convalescence, and many adults stopped to wish her well. Few of them were skilled at the diplomatic arts, and so she could easily see that most of them were at once drawn to and repelled by who she was. She was a young girl, after all, with only the first bloom of womanhood on her, of an age that often caused wistfulness in adults who ache for their youth and beauty, even though they know perfectly well that they were never really as young and beautiful as she.

She was also the true Heptarch's daughter, the legendary seventh seventh seventh daughter of the Starship Captain.

Until now, they could never openly seek her out, for fear of arousing King Oruc's suspicions. But who could criticize them for paying their respects to a young girl who had performed heroic service for the King's daughter?

So she received them as they visited in ones and twos, to say a few words, touch her hand. Many of them tried to touch her with gestures of respect that properly belonged only to the Heptarch's family; she rejected those gestures by subtly replacing them with her own. Always she explicitly honored her visitor as being someone far superior to her in rank. Some saw this as a clever disguise; others as true humility; to Patience, it was survival.

For she noticed that Angel did not come to visit her, and that Father did not seem to be hurrying home. It was unthinkable that they would not come to her if they could. Therefore someone must be forbidding them to come. And the only one who could do that was King Oruc. Something in her performance had bothered him.

He still wasn't sure of her.

At last the stream of visitors stopped. The doctor came with two orderlies. Gently they lifted her into a litter.

They did not have to tell her where she was going. When Oruc summons, there is no need for discussion in Heptagon House. One simply goes.

They set down the litter in Oruc's chamber. His Consort wasn't there, but three unfamiliar heads were. She did not recognize them. And she had spent enough time in Slaves' Hall to know all the faces there. So either these were not former ministers of state, or they were so important to King Oruc that he kept them out of Slaves'

Hall, so no one else could talk to them. Each head's canister rested on its own table, with a dwelf seated behind it to pump the air bladder.

"So that's the girl," one of them murmured when she came in. Because the dwelfs weren't pumping right then, he did not make a sound, but she saw his lips move. And though she wasn't sure, another might have mouthed her true name, "Agaranthemem Heptek."

The doctor fussed and preened, showing off his excellent skill at healing her wound. Without, of course, a scar.

"Very good, Doctor," said Oruc. "But then, I expect my technicians to perform their tasks well."

The doctor was miffed at being called a mere technician, but of course he tried to conceal his annoyance.

"Thank you, Lord Heptarch."

"No scar," said Oruc. He peered at her neck critically.

"None at all."

"But a string of bugs around her neck. I think it would be a hard choice, between a scar and a necklace of earwigs."

"Oh, no," said the doctor. "The earwigs will come off very soon. Now, if they displease you, sir."

Oruc looked weary. "What you heard. Doctor, was not my stupidity, but my sense of humor."

"Oh, of course, I'm such a fool, forgive me, I'm a bit tense, I-" and then, realizing his talking was making things worse, the doctor burst into artificial laughter.

"Enough. Fine work. I commend you. Go away."

The doctor scurried out the door.

Oruc exhaled wearily. "Surely there has been a decline in the quality of court life since the Flight of the Wise."

"I wouldn't know, sir," said Patience. "I wasn't born then. I've never known any of the Wise."

Oruc raised an eyebrow. "By heaven, neither have I."

Then he shook his head. "No, it's not true to say that.

I've known some Wise among the dead." He did not need to glance back at the three heads behind him. "And one wise man among the living, one man among all my ministers who gives me counsel worth hearing, who cares as much for Korfu as I do."

"My father," she whispered.

"A most unlucky situation, isn't it?" said Oruc. "Even the wisest King needs good advice, and there's little of that left in the world. I would give half my kingdom to know what became of the Wise when they left here, and how to bring them back."

One of the heads behind him spoke up. Apparently the dwelfs were pumping again. "Oruc, you're likely to lose half your kingdom because you don't know."

Another head gave a crazed old man's giggle. "So it's a bargain for him, to give it up and get back the Wise in the bargain."

"You know where the Wise went," said the third, a grim face with no teeth. "Cranning. And there's no bringing them back from there."

"It's the dilemma of our times," said Oruc to Patience.

"We're long overdue for another gebling invasion.

Twelve times in seven thousand years they have poured out of their vast city Cranning, out of the caverns of Skyfoot, and each time all of human civilization has been broken under their onslaught. Then they go back to their caverns or back to being somewhat pitiful merchants and voyagers and wanderers through the world, while human beings struggle back, rediscover what science they can. Only one human institution has outlasted it all, a single bloodline of power from the first moment mankind set foot on Imakulata until it was time for the thirteenth gebling invasion." He did not say it, but of course she knew he was referring to the Heptarchy. To her family.

"And then," said Oruc, "instead of an invasion, all the Wise, all the men and women of learning-no, not of mere learning, but of true understanding-all of them, one by one, felt the Cranning call. An unbearable, undeniable, irresistible urge to go somewhere. They were never sure where, they said. But they were followed, and they all went to Cranning. All of them. Statesmen, generals, scientists, teachers, builders-all the men and women that a King must rely on to carry out his rule, they all left. Who could stand then, when the Wise were gone?"

"No one," whispered Patience. She was truly afraid now, for he was speaking so frankly of the fall of her family's ancient dynasty that she could not help but assume he intended to kill her after this conversation was over.

"No one. The Cranning call took them, and the Heptarch fell. He wasn't much of a Heptarch, your great-grand- father."

"I never knew him," said Patience.

"A beastly fellow. Even discounting the propaganda my father put out, he was unspeakable. He used to preserve the heads of his former lovers and put their canisters around his bed, to watch him make love to his latest creature."

"I should think," said Patience, "that was more of a torture to the current lover than to the former ones."

Oruc laughed. "Yes. Though you're only a child, so you shouldn't know about such things. There are so many things you shouldn't know about. My personal physician-who is not Wise, I suspect-examined you before the earwig man sewed you up. He tells me you could not possibly have done a more perfect job of cutting yourself to draw the most possible blood without causing any permanent or even dangerous damage."

"I was fortunate," said Patience.

"Your father didn't tell me he was training you in the arts of murder."

"He has trained me to be a diplomat. He has often told me of your maxim, that one well-placed assassination can save untold numbers of lives."

Oruc smiled and spoke to the heads. "She flatters me by quoting my own words back to me, and telling me that the great Lord Peace repeats them often."

"Actually," said the dourest head, "I said those words to you first."

"You're dead, Konstans. I don't have to give you credit."

Konstans. Eight hundred years ago there had been a Konstans who restored Korfu to hegemony over the entire length of the Glad River, only ten years after a gebling invasion, and without a drop of blood being shed. If it was the same man, it would explain the decrepit condition of the head. Few heads ever lasted as long as a thousand years-this one was nearing the end of its function.

"I still have my vanity," said Konstans's head.

"I don't like it that he has taught her how to kill. And so deftly that she can create death's illusion on herself."

"She is her father's daughter," said another head.

"That's what I'm afraid of," said Oruc. "How old are you? Thirteen. How can you kill besides the loop?"

"Many ways," said Patience. "Father says I'm not strong enough to pull the bow properly, and casting a javelin isn't much use in our trade. But poisons, darts, daggers-I grew up with them."

"And bombs? Incendiaries?"

"The duty of a diplomat is to kill as quietly and discreetly as possible."

"Your father says."

"Yes."

"Could you kill me now? Here, in this room, could you kill me?"

Patience did not answer.

"I command you to answer me."

She knew too much of protocol to be drawn into the trap. "Sir, please don't toy with me this way. The King commands me to speak about whether I could kill the King. Whether I obey or not, I commit terrible treason."

"I want honest answers. Why do you think I keep these heads around me? They can't lie-that's what the headworms do to them, they make sure that they can never answer dishonestly, or even withhold part of the truth."

"The heads, sir, are already dead. If you wish me to behave as they do, it is within your power."

"I want truth from you, and never mind protocol."

"As long as I am alive, I will never speak treason."

Oruc leaned close to her, his face angry and dangerous.

"I am not interested in your determination to survive at all costs, girl. I want you to speak honestly to me."

Konstans chuckled. "Child, he can't kill you. You're safe to speak to him, for now, at least."

Oruc glared at Konstans, but the head was undeterred.

"You see, he depends on your father, and he believes your father will never serve him faithfully unless you're held hostage here. Alive. So what he's trying to determine now is whether you can also be useful to him, or whether you will remain nothing more than a constant temptation to his enemies."

Konstans's analysis made sense, and Oruc didn't argue with him. It seemed absurd to her, to have the most powerful human being in the world treating her like a potentially dangerous adult. But her respect for Oruc was rising in the process. Many a lesser ruler would have destroyed her and Father, fearing the danger of them more than any possible value they might have.

So she made the decision to trust him. It frightened her, because that was the one thing Father and Angel had never taught her: when to trust. "My Lord Heptarch," said Patience, "if the thought of killing you could live for a moment in my heart, then yes, I could do it."

"Now?" There was an expression of veiled triumph in his eyes. Had he won a victory, then, by convincing her to trust him?

I have begun; I will not retreat. "Even now, even if I told you I was going to do it, I could kill you before you raised a hand to defend yourself. My father knows his trade, and I have studied with the master."

Oruc turned to one of the dwelfs. "Go fetch my guards and tell them to come arrest this girl for treason."

He turned to Patience and calmly said, "Thank you. I needed a legal basis for your execution. These heads will be witnesses that you claimed in my presence to be able to kill me."

It shook her, how calmly he betrayed her. And yet she could not wholly believe the betrayal. No, this was just another test, another move in the game. He really did need Peace-he proved it by the fact that he took no major action without consulting Peace first-and so he really did fear to kill Patience. Nothing had changed that.

And if it was a test, she would win. She nodded gravely. "If I can best serve my Heptarch by dying through legal process, I'll confess to that or any other crime."

Oruc walked to her, touched her hair, stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. "Beautiful. The Mother of God."

She endured it placidly. He wasn't going to kill her.

That was victory enough for the moment.

"I wonder if someone is breeding humans, as the Tassaliki claim. Not God-I doubt he bothers much with the mating of humans on Imakulata-but someone. Someone with the power to call the Wise." He took her chin, not gently, and tipped her face upward. "If someone wanted to breed magnificence, I could believe you as the result of his work. Not right now, you're still a child.

But there's a translucence to you, a lightness in your eyes."

Until this moment, it had never occurred to Patience that she might be beautiful. Her mirror did not reveal the soft and rounded features that were the fashion of beauty these days. But there was no hint of flattery or deception in Oruc's words.

"As long as you're alive," he whispered, "anyone who sees you will want me dead, so you can take my place. Do you understand that? Me and all my family, dead. Whether or not someone bred you to be what you are, you are. And I will not have my children destroyed for your sake. Do you understand me?"

"Your children have been my playmates all my life," said Patience.

"I should kill you. Your father even advised me to kill you. But I won't do it."

But Patience knew that there was an unspoken word: yet. I will not kill you yet.

"What maddens me is not that I choose to leave you alive, for in truth I rejoice in you as surely as any Vigilant. What maddens me is that I don't remember deciding to leave you alive. I don't remember choosing.

The decision was simply-made. Is it you? Is it some trick of manipulation your father taught you?"

Patience didn't answer. He didn't seem to expect her to.

"Or am I being twisted as the Wise were twisted? The decision made for me because whoever it is wants you, wants you alive." He turned to the heads. "You-you have no will anymore, only memory and passion. Do you remember what it is to choose?"

"A dim memory," said Konstans. "I think I did it once or twice."

Oruc turned his back on them. "I have done it all my life. Chosen. Consciously, deliberately chosen, and then acted upon my choice, regardless of passion. My will has always been in control of my triune soul-the priests know it, that's why they fear me, why there is no revolution in your name. They believe that whenever I choose to, I can and certainly will kill you. They don't know.

That on this matter I have no will."

Patience believed that he believed what he was saying.

But it was still not true. There would come a time when he feared her more than now, and he would kill her. She could feel that certainty lying beneath everything he said.' For that was the foundation of his power, that he could kill anyone when he chose to. "Father told me once,"' she said. "There are two ways to rule human beings.

One is to convince the people that if they do not obey they and those they love will be destroyed. The other is to earn the love of the people. And he told me where these two ways lead. Eventually, the course of terror leads to revolution and anarchy. Eventually, the course of flattery leads to contempt and anarchy."

"So he believes no power can last?"

"No. Because there is a third way. It looks like the course of love sometimes, and sometimes it looks like the course of terror."

"Back and forth between the two? The people wouldn't know you then, and none would follow you."

"No. It isn't back and forth between anything. It's a straight and steady course. The course of magnanimity Greatness of heart."

"It means nothing to me. One of the cardinal virtues but the priests don't even know what it means."

"To love your people so much that you would sacrifice anything for the good of the whole. Your own life, your own family, your own happiness. And then you expect the same from them."

Oruc looked at her coldly. "You're repeating what you learned by rote."

"Yes," she said. "I will observe you, though, my Heptarch, and see if it is true."

"Magnanimity. Sacrifice anything. What do you think I am-Kristos?"

"I think you are my Heptarch, and you will always have my loyalty."

"But will my children?" asked Oruc. "Can you tell me that?"

She bowed her head. "My lord, for your sake I would die for your children."

"I know. We've had theatrical proof of that. But I know better than you do. You are loyal to me because your father taught you to be, and he is loyal to me because he loves Korfu as much as I do. He's a wise man, your father. The last of the Wise, I believe. I think it's only because of his bloodline that he hasn't heard the Cranning call. When he is dead-that old man, can see death in him now already-when he is dead, how can I trust you then?"

The guards he had sent for were waiting in the doorways.

He beckoned them in. "Take her back to the physician and have those bugs removed. Then give her back into the custody of her father's slave. Angel. He's waiting in the garden." He turned to Patience. "He's waited there for days, never stirring. A most devoted servant. By the way, I've ordered a medal struck in your honor. Every member of the Fourteen Families will wear it for this week, as will the Mayor and Council of Heptam. You handled the situation with the Tassali brilliantly.

Perfectly. I will have occasion to use your talents again." He smiled gruesomely. "ALL your talents."

This had been her final examination, then, and she had passed. He intended to use her as a diplomat, young as she was. And as an assassin. She would wait now, as her father had always waited, for the knock on the door in the night, and the shadowy messenger with a note from King Oruc. She would read the note, as Father did, to learn who it was who should die. Then she would burn it and comb the ashes into fine powder. Then she would kill.

She almost danced down the corridors of Heptagon House. She needed no litter now. She had faced the King, and he had chosen her as her father had been chosen.

Angel took up her education where it had left off only a few days before, as if nothing had happened. She knew enough not to speak of these matters inside King's Hill, where everything was overheard and reported.

Two days later, Angel received a message late in the afternoon and immediately closed his book. "Patience," he said. "We will go down into the city this afternoon."

"Father is home!" she cried in delight.

Angel smiled at her as he put her cloak around her shoulders. "Perhaps we could go to the School. We might learn something."

It wasn't likely. The School was a large open place in the middle of Heptam. Years ago, the Wise of the world had come here to teach to all corners. Because of Crossriver Delving and Lost Souls' Island, Heptam was known as the religious capital of the world; the School made it the intellectual center as well. But now, a generation after the Flight of the Wise, the School was no more than a gaggle of scholars who endlessly recited dead and memorized words that they did not understand. Angel took great delight in teaching Patience to go to the heart of an argument and find its weak place. Then she would confront the would-be philosopher and skewer him publicly.

She didn't do it often, but enjoyed knowing that she could, whenever she liked. Learn something? Not at the School.

It wasn't learning she was after anyway. It was freedom.

Whenever Father was away, she was forced to remain within the high walls of King's Hill, among the same nobles and courtiers and servants. She had long since explored every corner of King's Hill, and it held no surprises for her. But whenever Father came home, she was free. As long as he was behind the walls of King's Hill, Angel could take her wherever he wanted in the city.

They used these times to practice techniques they could never use in King's Hill. Disguises, for instance. They would often dress and talk as servants, as criminals, as merchants, pretending to be father and daughter. Or, sometimes, mother and son, for as Angel said, "The most perfect disguise is to change from one sex to another, for when they are searching for a girl, all boys are invisible to them."

Even better than the disguises, though, was the talk.

Switching from language to language, they could freely converse as they walked along the bustling streets. No one could stay near them long enough to overhear an entire conversation. It was the only time when she could ask her most difficult and dangerous questions and voice her most rebellious opinions.

It would have been completely joyful, this trip down the hill to Heptam, except for one constant sadness:

Father never came with her on these trips. Oruc never let them leave King's Hill together. So all her life, all her conversations with her father had been guarded, careful.

All her life, she had had to guess what Father really meant, discern his true purpose, for as often as not he could never say in words what he wanted her to know.

Their secrets could only be passed back and forth by Angel. He would take her out into the city, and she would talk with him; then he would leave her in King's Hill and walk in the city with Peace. Angel was a good friend, and both of them could trust him implicitly. But in spite of Angel's best efforts, it was like conversing through an interpreter all the time. Never in her life had Patience known a single moment of true intimacy with her father.

As they walked through King's Gift and High Town, descending long sloping roads toward the School, Patience asked Angel why the King forced them to be separate this way. "Doesn't he know yet that we are his most loyal subjects?"

"He knows you are, Lady Patience, but he misunderstands why. In treating you and your father this way, he says nothing about you, but much about himself. He believes that by keeping one of you hostage at all times, he can guarantee the loyalty of the other. There are many people who can be controlled that way. They're the people who love their families above anything else. They call it a virtue, but it is nothing more than protecting one's own genes. Reproductive self-interest. That is the thing that Oruc lives by. He is a great King, but his family comes first, so that in the final crisis, he could be held hostage, too." It was treason to say such a thing, of course, but he had split the sentence into Gauntish, Geblic, and the argot of the Islanders, so there was little chance of a passerby understanding any of it.

"Am I Father's hostage, then?" Patience asked.

Angel looked grim. "Oruc thinks you are. Lady Patience, and any assurance Lord Peace gives him that he would be loyal even if you were free seems further proof to the Heptarch that your father is desperate to win your freedom. And mark me well, little girl. Oruc thinks you are obedient in order to protect your father's life, as well."

"How sad, if he believes that everyone who says they love and serve him willingly is a liar."

"Kings have found they live longer when they assume the worst about their subjects. They don't live more happily, but they tend to die of old age rather than the abrupt disease called treachery."

"But Angel, Father will not live forever. Who will he think is my hostage, then?"

Angel said nothing.

For the first time, Patience realized that there was a good chance she would not outlive her father by many years. Patience was the daughter of his second wife, whom he had married late; he was near seventy now, and not in the best of health. "But Angel, all the reasons the Heptarch has now for not killing me will still be in force then. If all the religious fanatics think I'm to be the Mother of Kristos-"

"Not just the fanatics, Lady Patience."

"What will it do to the legitimacy of his rule if he kills me?"

"What will it do to the legitimacy of his children's rule if he does not? He can keep you under control, but when he dies, you'll be young, at the peak of your powers. And now he knows that you are a dangerous assassin, a clever diplomat, with a powerful will to survive.

It will be dangerous to Korfu, perhaps to the whole world, if he kills you; it will be dangerous to his family if he does not. Look for an assassin in the days following your father's death. If all goes well, your father will know he is dying soon enough to send me away. You are expected to know how to deal with any assassins and get out of King's Hill. At sunset on the day of your father's death, meet me here, at the School. I will have a way to get you out of the city."

They walked among clusters of students. The nonsense being spouted by the sophists on every side seemed a bitter contrast to the thought of her future after her father died. "And where will I go?" asked Patience. "I'm trained for the King's service. If he's trying to kill me, I can hardly do that."

"Don't be such a fool. Lady Patience. Never for an instant were you trained for the King's service."

In that moment, Patience's understanding of her whole life up to now turned completely around. All her memories, all her sense of who she was, what she was meant to become, changed. I am not meant to advise and serve a King. I am meant to be the King. They do not mean me to be Lady Patience. They mean me to be Agaranthemem Heptek.

She stopped. People walking behind them pushed past.

"All my life," she said, "I have learned to be loyal to the King."

"And so you should be, and so you shall be," said Angel. "Walk, or the spies who frequent this place will overhear us, and we're speaking treason. You are loyal to King Oruc for the very good reason that for the good of Korfu and all human nations at this time, he should remain as Heptarch. But the time will come when his weakness will be fatal, and then for the good of Korfu and all human nations, you will need to assume the throne and bear the scepter of the Heptarchy. And at that day. Lady Patience, you will be ready."

"So when Father dies, I go to Tassali and raise an army? Invade my own land and people?"

"You'll do what is necessary for the good of the whole people at that time. And by that time you will know what that good must be. It has nothing to do with what is good for you or your kin. You know that your duty comes before any private emotion or loyalty. That is why King Oruc does not really hold you or your father hostage. If the good of the King's House required either of you to take an action that would certainly result in the death of the other, you would not hesitate. That is true magnanimity, to love the whole, and therefore to love no part greater than the whole. A daughter no more than a stranger, where the good of the King's House is concerned."

It was true. Father would let her die, if the good of the King's House demanded it. Angel had first said it to her when she was only eight years old. On the day of her formal baptism, he took her out King's Creek to the Binding House on Lost Souls' Island-the King's private and loyal monastery, not that nest of sedition at Heads House in Crossriver Delving, where the priests prayed openly for Oruc's death. As Angel rowed the boat, he told her that Father would certainly let her die and make no effort to save her, if it was for the good of the King's House. It was a cruel thing, and she felt it like a knife through her heart. By the time her baptism was over, however, and they were again on the water returning to King's Hill, she made her decision. She, too, would have greatness of heart. She, too, would learn to love the King's House more than her own father. For that was the way of it. If she was to become like her father, she would have to reject her love for the old man. Or, perhaps, merely keep it in abeyance, to be discarded easily if it were ever necessary for the good of the King's House.

Despite that decision, though, she still longed, just once, to have the opportunity to speak freely and fearlessly with Peace. Even now, walking through the School with Angel, speaking to him about her greatest fears for the future, she was keenly aware that he was not her father.

She did not want to discuss anymore what would happen when Father died. So she rattled on for an hour about everything that had happened in the garden of Heptagon House, and later, in the King's chambers. She explained how she had unraveled the puzzles. She even repeated almost verbatim the strange doctrines that Prekeptor had set forth about her destiny.

"Well, as far as it goes," said Angel, "he tells a reasonably true story. The Wise were playing with genetics in a way never before possible. They had developed living gels that read the genetic code of foreign tissues and mirrored the genetic molecule in slowly shifting crystals on the surface. It enabled the scientists to study the genetic code in great detail, without any magnification at all. And by altering the crystals in the gel, the tissue samples could also be altered. Then they could be implanted in the host's reproductive cells. It was a similar technique that kept your father from having a daughter for so many years. And a similar technique that changed him back, so you could be born."

Patience answered scornfully. "So God didn't like them meddling with the mirror of the will, and took them away?"

"The mirror of the will, the triune soul-you shouldn't scoff at it, even if you have decided to be a Skeptic. This religion has lasted pretty well over the years, and partly because some of the ideas work. You can live with the triune soul as a model for the way the mind works. The will, contained in the genetic molecules-why not? It's the most primitive part of ourselves, the thing that we can't understand, why we finally choose what we choose- why not put it in the genes? And then the passions-the desire for greatness on the one side, and all the destructive desires on the other. Why not put them in the limbic node, the animal part of the brain? And the identity, the sense of self, that is our memories, the cerebRuin, all that we remember doing and seeing, and what we conceive it to mean. There's a certain power in conceiving your own self in that way, Patience. It allows you to separate yourself from your memories and your passions, to impose discipline on your life. We are never deceived into believing that either our environment or our desires cause our behavior."

"More to the point. Angel. What happened to Prekeptor, with or without his religion?"

"He was sent home. Though I must tell you that you put the fear of God in him."

"He was already trembling with it."

"No, that was the love of God. Fear was your contribution.

They had to wash his clothes after he saw you slit your own throat. All his sphincter muscles released."

She let herself laugh, though it wasn't kind to be amused. Still, he had been so fervent that she couldn't help laughing to think of the crisis of faith he must have had, to see the Mother of God apparently dying before Kristos could make an appearance.

They stayed in the city for hours, talking and playing until the sun set behind Fort Senester in Gladmouth Bay.

Then Angel took her home, to see her father.

Never before had he looked so old and frail to her. A strange hollow look to his eyes, a sunken look to his skin- He was wasting. She was only thirteen years old, and her father was already beginning to die, before she ever had a chance to know him.

He was stiff and formal with her, of course; deliberately, so she would be sure to know that this was for an audience, and not particularly for her. He commended her, commented on her behavior, criticizing freely some of the things she had done that she knew perfectly well he approved of completely.

And when it was over, he handed her a slip of paper.

On it was the name of Lord Jeeke of Riismouth, a marcher lord, one of the Fourteen Families. She was to visit him with her tutor as part of an educational tour of the kingdom. Lord Jeeke was to die no sooner than a week after she left, so that no one could connect her with his death.

It was surprisingly simple. The journey took three days. On her first night there, she shared a wine glass with Lord Jeeke, which was filled with a nonhuman hormone that was, by itself, harmless. Then she infected Jeeke's mistress with spores of a parasitic worm. The spores were passed to Jeeke through intimate contact; the hormone caused the worms to grow and reproduce rapidly.

They infested Jeeke's brain, and three weeks later he was dead.

She was already back in King's Hill when the news reached them. She wrote letters of condolence to Jeeke's family. Father read them and patted her shoulder. "Well done, Patience."

She was proud to have him say so. But she was also curious. "Why did King Oruc want him dead?"

"For the good of the King's House."

"His personal pique, then?"

"The King's House isn't Heptagon House, Patience.

The King's House is all the world."

"For the good of the world? Jeeke was a gentle and harmless man."

"And a weak one. He was a marcher lord, and he had neglected his military duties. The world was more pleasant because he was a good man. But if his weakness had led, as was likely, to rebellion and border war, many would have died or been left crippled or homeless by the war. For the sake of the King's House."

"His life against the possibility of war."

"Some wars must be fought for the good of the King's House. And some must be avoided. You and I are instRuinents in the hands of the King."

Then he kissed her, and as his mouth rested by her ear he whispered, "I'm dying. I won't live three years.

When I die, cut into my left shoulder, midway along and above the clavicle. You'll find a tiny crystal. As you live, cut it out and keep it, whatever the cost." Then he pulled away and smiled at her, as if nothing strange had been spoken.

You cannot die, Father, she cried out silently. In all my life we've never spoken. You cannot die.

She performed four more assassinations for King Oruc, and a dozen other missions. She turned fourteen, and then fifteen. And all the while Father waited back in King's Hill, growing weaker and older. On her fifteenth birthday he told her she didn't need a tutor anymore, and sent Angel away to be overseer of some lands he held outside the city. Patience knew what it meant.

Not long after, Father woke up too weak to get out of bed. He sent the nearest servant to fetch a physician, and for a moment they were alone. Instantly he handed her a knife. "Now," he whispered. She cut. He did not even wince from the pain. She took from the wound a small crystal globe, beautiful and perfect.

"The scepter of the Heptarchs of Imakulata," he whispered.

"The Usurper and his son never knew what or where it was." He smiled, but in his pain his smile was ghastly. "Never let a gebling know you have it," he said.

A servant came in, realizing they had been left alone too long; but she came too late and saw nothing, for towels covered the slightly bleeding wound, and the tiny amber-colored globe was in Patience's pocket.

Patience fingered it, pressed on it as if to squeeze some nectar from it. My father is dying. Father is dying, and the only thing I have from him is a hard little crystal I cut from his flesh, covered with his blood.