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."
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