“You know perfectly well that the People’s Revolution was bloodless. The royal family is still alive.”
“I believe you said I was dead,” said Rigg. “And those that aren’t dead are no longer royal.”
“No longer in power, if that’s what you mean,” said the general. “As for me, you may either call me by my military rank, which is ‘general,’ or by my station in life, which is ‘citizen.’”
“If the royal family is no longer royal,” said Rigg, “what would I gain by pretending to be one of them?”
“That is what I am trying to figure out,” said the general. “On the one hand, maybe you really are the ignorant bumpkin you pretend to be. On the other hand, you have handled yourself quite deftly, both before I met you and since, which means you have been very well taught.”
“My education was very selective,” said Rigg. “I had no idea how selective, since so much of it seemed useless to me and yet turned out not to be—but my father insisted that I learn what he chose, when he chose.”
“He taught you finance, but not history?”
“He taught me a great deal of history, but I realize now that he left out most of the recent history of the World Within the Walls. I’m sure he had a reason for that, but I find it quite inconvenient at the moment.”
“You speak a very elevated language, befitting a royal.”
“Father taught me to speak this way, but I never used this language with anyone but him. I use it now because you use it, and because it intimidated Mr. Cooper.”
“It didn’t intimidate him enough, apparently,” said the general.
Rigg didn’t want to discuss Mr. Cooper any further. “Someone will tell me your name eventually, if I live. And if I don’t live, then I would take this great and terrible secret with me to the grave.”
“I was not really being elusive,” said the general. “At the time of the revolution, my family dropped their rather-too-prominent gens and took the name ‘Citizen.’ So I truly am General Citizen. My prenomen, however, seems to be what you wish to know, though it would be quite impolite of you to use it, unless you are royal. I am Haddamander Citizen.”
“I am pleased to meet you, sir,” said Rigg. “And unless my father is a liar, I am Rigg Sessamekesh.”
“But we already agreed that your father is a liar, because if Rigg Sessamekesh is in fact your name, then the man who attested to it is not your father. And if he is your father, then that is not your name.”
Apparently Citizen was asking the same questions as during their walk in order to see if Rigg’s answers changed. But since he told the simple truth—except about the number of jewels—it was easy to stick to the same story. “I don’t know which is true.”
“I almost believe you,” said Citizen. “But you see the quandary you put me in. If you are Rigg Sessamekesh, then you are royal, the only son of the woman who, if we still had royalty, would be queen, and her late consort, Knosso Sissamik, who died at the Wall.”
“Either way, then, my father is dead,” observed Rigg. “Though if I’m royal, then it’s illegal for me to own anything valuable.”
“No, it’s illegal for the royal family to own anything, regardless of value, not even the clothing they wear, not even their own hair. If you doubt it, I assure you that from time to time citizens are admitted to whatever house the royals are guesting in, to shave the royal heads and carry away the hair.”
“And their clothing?”
“Whenever they wish,” said Citizen. “In theory. However, in recent years, because of public outrage at the first time Param Sissaminka was denuded after entering on puberty, the courts have deemed that since the clothing the so-called royals wear is borrowed, only the lender of the clothing has the right to take it back. Any other who takes it is a thief and will be punished accordingly. This reversed the earlier court decisions that whatever the royals wear is theirs, no matter who bought it, and therefore could be taken. Times change. The People’s Revolutionary Council does in fact respond, however slowly, to the will of the people.”
Rigg thought about what he had said. “The clothing I wear most certainly is my own, and yet you haven’t taken it.”
“Like your money and other possessions, your clothing is being held in trust for you in case you aren’t a royal, and I’m allowing you to continue to wear it. But if you are not a royal, then your ownership of the jewel you sold is highly questionable, and in all likelihood you’ll be charged with possession and sale of stolen property, fraud, and attempting to impersonate a royal, for which the combined penalty could be death, but since you are so young and almost certainly were put up to this, that sentence would probably be commuted to a few years in prison—provided you told us who induced you to commit these crimes.”
Rigg sighed at the repetition of the question. “I’ve already told you. I found out the name at the same time I got the jewel—when my father’s letter was opened and read by the friend he left it with. She had no knowledge of the contents, though she obviously knew about the jewel. She had no idea of its value and historical importance, though. No one did, until Mr. Cooper. So if there’s a deception, isn’t he part of it?”
“He insists he is among the deceived.”
“He would, wouldn’t he.”
“Yes—but the jewel most certainly was genuine, so he did not defraud anybody.”
“General Citizen,” said Rigg, “I’ve been thinking back to your summary of my situation, and I can see that either way, I will lose every penny that I have. On the one hand, I’ll lose it because I’m a genuine royal and subject to the laws that apply to that family. On the other hand, I’ll lose it because I’m not royal and therefore am guilty of a crime and, since I can’t name any co-conspirators, will probably be put to death.”
“If it’s any consolation,” said Citizen, “your companions will probably be tortured to death first, in the effort to find out the truth. If neither of them tells who your co-conspirators were or might be, or offers proof that you are not Rigg Sessamekesh, then in all likelihood their deaths without confession will save your life.”
Rigg leapt to his feet. “No! That’s—that’s evil. That can’t be the law! They didn’t do anything wrong! Umbo is a friend from childhood and he came along with me because his father kicked him out of the house. And Loaf is merely a kind man, an ex-soldier and now an innkeeper, and he came with us to keep us safe on the rest of our journey! Why should they die because of that?”
“But my lad, don’t you see? The only evidence we have of their innocence is your insistence on it—and the very point at issue is whether you can be believed or not.”
Without another word, Rigg bolted for the door to the cabin, but when he tried to pull it open, he found Citizen’s hand, above his head, was keeping it closed.
“You don’t really think I’d let you warn them, do you?” asked Citizen.
Rigg sat back down and fell silent. At least he knew his legal dilemma. But what he did not know was how to keep his friends safe. He couldn’t warn them. And yet . . . he knew that Umbo must live, at least long enough to come back from the future and give him the warning by the carriage near the Tower of O. Didn’t that mean that he not only would live, but would also remain in O? And Loaf must live and still be with Umbo, or why would future-Umbo have told Loaf to hide the rest of the jewels?
It was not possible that Loaf and Umbo would be tortured to death. And if that was so, then in all likelihood they would make their escape right now, while the boat was still at the dock.
There was a lurch, and the boat began to move.
All right, then, Umbo and Loaf must leap from the boat and swim to shore.
“You seem curiously untroubled by the movement of the boat,” said Citizen. “What do you know that I don’t know?”
“The movement of the boat,” said Rigg, “is not a surprise. That’s what I assumed it would do from the moment I got on it. That’s what boats are for.”
“But you were cer
tainly calculating that your friends would try to escape while the boat was still at the dock.”
“Why are you so sure of what I was ‘calculating’?”
“Because the dock was the only place where they’d have a crowd to disappear into, where they could use their feet to run away. And, despite your skill at concealing your emotions, you still betrayed just a bit of it. Enough for a trained player of blackstone to detect it.”
“Then you aren’t very good at it,” said Rigg. “Because I definitely felt surprise when the boat moved. If you can read emotions at the gaming table, surely you can detect that.”
“Surprise, yes, but you were not troubled. Your worry dissipated instantly.”
“I don’t believe you’ll really kill them.”
“Oh, believe it, I won’t.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Rigg, allowing himself to feel a tiny trace of relief.
“Don’t try to fool me by letting yourself seem relieved. You can’t feel relief if you didn’t feel tension, and you didn’t. Besides, I won’t kill them or torture them because it’s not my job—the Revolutionary Council have specialists who handle all the judicial torture. I’m about fetching you; they’re about opening you up to examination.”
Rigg didn’t allow the implications of that—the hint that he, too, might be tortured—to enter his emotional consciousness. “I’ve been curious as to why a general would be sent to arrest me. Are you considered so worthless to the People’s Revolutionary Council that they would send you on a trivial errand like this?”
General Citizen laughed then. “You really are naive. I truly believe that. Because if you’re pretending, the things you pretend not to understand are so . . . stupidly chosen.”
“Again, I express my ingratitude to my father for the poor design of my education.”
“The reason I was sent to get you is because I maneuvered very carefully to win the assignment. And that’s because there are controversies centered on the Sessamoto Empire older and deeper than the mere matter of the royal family being deposed and the Revolutionary Council being in charge of the World Within the Walls.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Rigg.
“It was the decree of Aptica Sessamin, the grandmother of the current non-queen, that only women could rule in the Sessamoto Empire. She gave this decree force by having all her male relatives killed. This put an end to a great many plots centered around removing her—a woman—from the Tent of Light.”
“Tent?” asked Rigg.
“Officially, every royal residence is the Tent of Light when the ruling monarch is in it. Aptica Sessamin murdered all her own sons, as I said, and her reigning daughter, Mutash Sessamin, had only the one child, a daughter, Hagia Sessamin.”
“Hagia—the one who is either my mother or not?”
“So you do know the names of the royal family!”
“Of course I know it now,” said Rigg. “It’s been whispered by half the people we met. ‘He claims he’s the son of Hagia Sessamin.’”
“Cleverly done,” said Citizen. “I was very careful never to mention her name, in case you came up with it. But yes, I did hear the same comments, though I wouldn’t have thought you’d—never mind, I shouldn’t underestimate your cleverness or your powers of observation.”
Rigg showed absolutely no response to this—but by now he understood that to Citizen, not showing a response was, in fact, a response.
“So when Rigg Sessamekesh was born, the first male royal since the death of Aptica Sessamin, the very fact that he was given the suffix ‘ekesh’ was very controversial. That was the suffix given to the male child who was the heir presumptive, back in the days when males ruled. Hagia Sessamin claimed that the suffix only meant that he was the firstborn male child. Since by then the People’s Revolution had made sure there was nothing any royal child, still less a male one, could inherit, the name obviously had no implication of being heir. Others thought he was being named thus to stir up revolt and restore royal power. Still others thought that she was repudiating the law, started by her grandmother, that the Tent and the Stone must pass mother to daughter.”
“Tent and stone?” asked Rigg.
“Yes,” said Citizen. “The Tent that kept alive the memory of the days when the Sessamids were nomads, and the Stone, lost for thousands of years but still revered—its place symbolically taken by a common river rock—which you so kindly offered for sale.”
Rigg said nothing, for his thought now was upon the eighteen other stones, wondering why, when he stood there in Mr. Cooper’s office, he had managed to pick the one that would get him in the most trouble.
Citizen was going on with the story. “So when word came that Rigg Sessamekesh had died as an infant, those who believed the story were relieved. Others, however, thought it was a ploy, that conspirators had stolen away the baby to use him for the purpose of not only restoring the monarchy, but also abolishing female rule.”
“Then I must be an absolute fool to pretend to be him,” said Rigg. “Not only the Revolutionary Council but also those who still approve of the laws of Queen Aptica must want me dead. Any friends that such an impostor might have would be in a hopeless minority.”
“Well, that’s where things get complicated,” said Citizen, chuckling. “Because much of the support for the People’s Revolution was actually opposition to the continuation of female-only monarchy. At the time of the revolution, there was no male royal, so the only way to abolish the rule of queens was to abolish the monarchy entirely. But if a male heir turned up, some of the support of the Revolutionary Council—some say most of that support—would evaporate and regather behind the male child, since there have always been many who considered Aptica to be an abomination and her anti-male law to be sacrilege.”
“I’m surprised the real Rigg Sessamekesh wasn’t murdered the moment they saw his little ding,” said Rigg. “Just to save a lot of bother.”
“You speak as if you were not he,” said Citizen.
“As far as I know, I’m not,” said Rigg. “But I’m also not a fraud. You keep omitting the possibility that everything I’ve said is true. That in my ignorance I’m innocent of any offense.”
“Be that as it may,” said Citizen, “I got this assignment because certain people believed I could be trusted to find out the truth about you.”
“So if I turn out to be the real Rigg Sessamekesh, you can kill me?”
General Citizen smiled at him. “I see I’m not the only one to lay traps.”
For it was indeed a trap that Rigg had laid for him. If the situation as Citizen outlined it was correct, a loyal servant of the People’s Revolutionary Council would not have hesitated to kill Rigg at the first opportunity, since no outcome that left him alive would be good for the Council. Of course he’d disguise it as an accident, but it would happen, because fraud or heir, he would have to die.
“General Citizen,” said Rigg, “it seems to me that you don’t care whether I’m really the Rigg Sessamekesh that Hagia Sessamin gave birth to thirteen years ago.”
“But I care very much,” said Citizen.
“What you care about is whether I can be made believable to the people of Aressa Sessamo—believable enough that the Council can be overthrown and replaced by a regent—you, perhaps?—who will rule in my name.”
“You have made only one mistake,” said Citizen.
“No I haven’t,” said Rigg. “You’re about to tell me that you were really trying to draw me out so you could see if I posed a danger, but in fact you’re perfectly loyal to the Council.”
Citizen said nothing, showed nothing.
“You may or may not be loyal, and you may or may not be ambitious,” said Rigg. “Whatever judgment you come up with, I can’t control. But there is absolutely nothing in what I’ve said or done to suggest that I would be willing to take part in a plan to overthrow the Council. And if I did not take part willingly, no conspiracy could use me.”
&
nbsp; “What if the survival of your friends were at stake? Wouldn’t you do as you were told?” asked Citizen.
Would Citizen really count on Rigg’s loyalty to his friends to make him a reliable tool? Father had once quoted an ancient philosopher, who said, “The good man counts on others to share his virtues, while the evil man counts on the virtues of better men. They are both mistaken.” Was Citizen foolish enough to make either mistake?
There was suddenly a great deal of shouting outside the cabin, and in a moment someone shoved open the door. It was a soldier.
“They’ve jumped overboard, sir! And threw Shouter overboard!”
“Guard this prisoner,” said Citizen as he ran from the room.
The soldier closed the door and stood in front of it. “Don’t even try to talk to me,” he said to Rigg.
“Not even to ask who in the world has the horrible name of ‘Shouter’?”
The soldier stood there for a long time, and Rigg had concluded he wasn’t going to answer. And then he did.
“It’s not his real name, sir. It’s what we all call him behind his back. I hope the general didn’t notice.”
“I think you have little chance of that,” said Rigg. “He notices everything.”
The soldier nodded and sighed. “Hope it’s short rations and not the lash for me.” Then he blushed, probably because he shouldn’t have said any such thing to the prisoner.
“Would it help if I told him you were immediately remorseful?”
“No, because that would mean I had talked to you.”
“Which you certainly have not done,” said Rigg, “despite my efforts to induce you to speak.”
Long silence from the soldier. Lots of noise outside. A slackening of the speed of the boat, and then a reversal of direction. Then a return to forward motion. There was a double rap on the door. The soldier opened it a little, stepped through it—never turning his back on Rigg—and in a moment stepped back inside.
“Your friends got away safe, sir,” said the soldier softly, mouthing the words rather than speaking them, which he did so naturally that Rigg imagined this must be the way soldiers communicated when maintaining silence on duty.
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