“Why not?”
“Because Father doesn’t have a path. He’s the only person—he’s the only living thing—that I’ve ever known that didn’t have a path of any kind.”
“Are you sure?”
“After ten years of seeing and watching and studying paths, you think I might be wrong when I say that the one person I was close to all the time had no path?”
“Why didn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” said Rigg. “But I think you and I can both agree that Father was a really unusual man.”
“Why do we have these abilities if we can’t go back and save Kyokay?” demanded Umbo.
“Are you asking an invisible saint or a god or something? Because I don’t know. Maybe we can save him—that time. But how do we know he doesn’t just get himself killed the next day doing some other stupid thing?”
“Because I’d watch him,” said Umbo.
“You already watched him,” said Rigg. “He couldn’t be controlled. And meanwhile, we might change a thousand other things that we don’t want to change.”
“So our gifts are completely useless,” said Umbo.
“We have this knife,” said Rigg.
“You have a knife,” said Umbo.
“At least you’re not suddenly remembering a whole bunch of stories about men who appear out of nowhere and steal fancy knives and then disappear,” said Rigg.
“If Kyokay stays dead, then all of this is useless.”
“All of this,” said Rigg, “us being together, talking, finding out what we can do together—all of this happened because Kyokay went up on the falls and I tried to save him, and failed. So if we save Kyokay, does that make it so none of this happens? Then how would we go back to save Kyokay?”
“You already proved that you can change the past!” said Umbo.
“But I never did anything that mattered,” said Rigg. “Or at least I wasn’t able to accomplish anything I wanted to.”
Umbo reached out his hand for the knife. Rigg handed it to him at once. Umbo pulled it out of the sheath and pressed the point of it against a spot on the heel of his hand. It punched in almost at once, and blood welled up around the blade.
Rigg snatched the knife back. Umbo stared at his palm, making no effort to stanch the bleeding. Rigg wiped the blood off the blade with a handful of dewy grass, but he didn’t say anything to Umbo. Whatever crazy thing Umbo was doing, he’d explain it when he felt like it.
“Now the past is real,” said Umbo softly. “I’ve been wounded by it.” Then he, too, tore up a wad of damp grass and pressed it to the wound in his palm. “That stings like a hornet,” he said.
“I guess now you know why your mother taught you never to poke yourself with a knife.”
“She’s a smart one, my mom,” said Umbo. “Even if she did marry some angry idiot of a cobbler.”
“I hate the way you make a joke out of everything,” said Rigg.
“At least mine wasn’t funny,” said Umbo.
They picked up their things. Rigg dried off the clean blade on his shirt, and slid it into the sheath. Then he tucked the knife he had stolen about two thousand years ago into his belt, and they set off down the Great North Road toward Aressa Sessamo.
CHAPTER 5
Riverside Tavern
“Has anything happened yet because I made the decision to go ahead with the fold?” asked Ram.
“Yes,” said the expendable. “You remained in command of the ship.”
Ram was a little irritated to learn that the decision had been a test of him rather than a real decision. “So you were going ahead no matter what I decided?”
“Yes,” said the expendable. “It’s in our mission program. You never had a choice about that.”
“Then what am I here for?” asked Ram.
“To make all the decisions after the fold. Nothing is known about what happens after we jump. If you had proven yourself timid before the jump, you would be regarded as unfit to make decisions afterward.”
“So if I was too timid, I would have been replaced. By you?”
“By the next crew member we awakened and tested. Or the one after that.”
“So when does the real jump happen?”
“In a week or so. If we don’t blow up before then. Spacetime is being very naughty right now.”
“And nothing I might do can stop it?”
“That’s right, Ram.”
“And what if none of the crew turned out to be capable of making a decision that would satisfy your criteria?”
“Then we would command ourselves until we got to the target planet.”
“‘We’ . . . meaning the expendables?”
“We the ship. All the computers together.”
“But the ship’s computers don’t agree on anything.”
“That’s one of the many reasons we were all hoping you’d do the right thing.”
Ram hadn’t missed the one bit of information the expendable had given him. There was zero chance that it had been an inadvertent slip. “What do you mean, spacetime is being naughty?”
“We keep generating fields and forces, and things change. They just don’t change the way anyone predicted.”
“And when was I going to be told that?”
“When you asked.”
“What else should I ask in order to find out what’s going on?”
“Whatever you’re curious about.”
“I want to know what spacetime is doing.”
“It’s stuttering, Ram.”
“What does that mean?” asked Ram.
“There seems to be a quantum system of timeflow that has never been seen or suspected before.”
“Meaning that instead of a continuous slide into the fold, we’re finding that spacetime reforms itself in a series of discrete steps?”
“It’s going to be a bumpy ride, Ram.”
* * *
After three weeks on the road, Rigg and Umbo had long since exhausted the food they brought with them, and hunting for small game was taking more and more of their days. Just because Rigg could see the paths of the animals didn’t mean that setting traps would catch them. In this part of the world, the animals were far more wary of humans than they had been up in the wild highlands of the south.
So they were hungry as Rigg led the way to the public house that filled the five or six rods of land between the river and the road.
“This doesn’t look like much of a place,” said Umbo doubtfully.
“It’s all we can afford,” said Rigg. “If we can afford it.”
“It isn’t much of a town, either,” Umbo added.
Rigg looked around him. The buildings were all fairly new, and had the look of shabby construction. A thrown-together kind of town. But from the paths weaving through the area, Rigg could tell that it already had a lot of people. “You could drop Fall Ford into the middle of it and nobody could tell.”
“Well, my standard of a good-sized town has changed a little over the past three weeks.”
“And my standard of a good-sized meal has changed, too,” said Rigg. “If I set traps we might have some squirrel or rabbit by morning, or we might not. They’ve got food in there right now.”
By now they stood outside the door of the tavern. A couple of burly rivermen brushed them aside as they went in. “Out of the way, privicks.” Rigg had heard that term more than once, as they passed through towns they couldn’t avoid. At first the word had been whispered, but lately it was openly used to insult or diminish them. It might have been more effective if Rigg had had the slightest idea what it meant.
“So let’s go in and see if we can afford the food at this public house,” said Umbo. “Or stomach it.”
A riverman came lurching out of the tavern, cursing over his shoulder at someone inside. He took a swipe at Rigg, who was inadvertently blocking his way. Rigg dodged aside, but fell, and several men standing not far off laughed at him.
“Privick’s got himself covered in mu
d!”
“Trying to plant himself to see if he’ll grow.”
“Hey, privick, better go wash yourself!”
“Privicks don’t know about washing.”
“Then let’s duck him in the river and show him how it’s done!”
Umbo helped Rigg rebound to his feet, and they dodged inside the door. Rigg had no idea whether the rivermen really meant to do anything to him, but he didn’t want to stay and see. They were all big men. Even the shortest of them had massive arms and barrel chests from poling and rowing up the river. Rigg knew how to defend himself, even without weapons—Father had seen to that—but only one at a time, and he knew that if they took it into their minds to hurt him, he couldn’t stop them. That knowledge put a cold knot of fear in his belly, and it didn’t go away just because a door closed between them.
The tavern was dark inside—the shutters were nearly closed against the cold outside, but no lanterns had yet been lighted. A dozen men looked up at them, while two dozen more kept their eyes on their mugs, their bowls, or their cards and dice.
Rigg walked to the bar, where the taverner—who looked to be at least as large as the largest of his customers—was setting out a half dozen bowls of a thick stew that made Rigg almost faint with hunger, though it had only been two days since he last ate. But the hunger didn’t drown out the fear that had begun outside and got worse in here.
“We serve men here, not boys,” said the taverner, sounding more bored than hostile.
“We’ve been walking three weeks down the road from the south,” Rigg began.
The taverner chortled. “You have ‘upriver’ writ all over you, no need to tell a soul.”
“We need a meal,” said Rigg. “If you won’t serve us here, then maybe you could tell us where we could buy bread and cheese for the road.”
“Boys nor beggars,” said the taverner. “I don’t get up in the morning wishing to see much of either.”
“We’re not beggars. We’ve got enough coin, if your price is fair.”
“I’m surprised privicks even know what money is,” said the taverner, “let alone what ‘enough’ might be.”
Umbo usually kept still when they had to talk to people, since Rigg could put on a higher dialect than the one they spoke here, and nobody had to ask Rigg to repeat himself. But Umbo spoke up now, sounding a little annoyed. “What’s this ‘privick’ they call us?”
“It’s just an old word,” said the taverner. “It means ‘upriver folk.’”
Umbo sniffed. “That’s all? Because it sounds like an insult.”
“Well,” said the taverner, “privicks aren’t too famous for being smart or talking well or dressing like decent folks, so there might be a bit of contempt in it sometimes.”
“We’re decent enough not to pee in the river for downstream folk to drink,” said Umbo, “and we don’t have no insult for travelers from the north.”
“Why would you?” said the taverner. “Now, are you going to show me your money or am I going to throw you out?”
Again, the knowledge that this man could force Rigg to do whatever he wanted filled him with dread. Instead of feeling in his purse for a single jackface, Rigg filled his hand with all the coins from the moneypurse tucked into the waistband of his trousers, meaning to look through them quickly to find the one he wanted. The taverner reached out at the moment Rigg was opening his fist to show the money, and their hands collided. All the coins were jostled out of Rigg’s hand and hit the counter. They sounded so loud in the quiet room. There were too many of them.
The taverner’s eyes grew narrow and he looked out into the room. Rigg didn’t turn around. He already knew that all eyes were on him, that everyone in the room had mentally counted the money. If only he had not let fear make him hurry; if only he had taken the time to feel for the single coin with the money still in his purse. Now he felt panic surge through him, knowing he had already done something stupid, and chance had made it worse.
Rigg could hear his father’s voice saying, “Don’t let the other man control what you do.” And, “Show little, say less.” Well, he hoped he was keeping his fear well-hidden. But he couldn’t think of anything to do, not before the taverner flung out his hand, scooped the coins to the edge of the bar, and dropped them into his other hand. Then he walked to the end of the bar, where he opened a door.
“Follow me,” said the taverner.
Rigg wasn’t sure whether he meant for them to clamber over the bar and go through the same door, or find another way. Before he could decide, a door on their side of the bar opened and the taverner beckoned. He led them to a tiny room with nothing but a table and two chairs in it, and some books and papers on the table.
The taverner poured their coins out of his hand onto the table. “You bring whole new worlds of meaning to the word ‘stupid,’” he said wearily.
“It was you knocking into my hand that spilled the coins,” said Rigg.
The taverner dismissed his words with a wave of his hand. “Who did you rob and why do you think I won’t turn you in?”
Don’t let the other fellow control what you do—it might be too late, but he could obey it now. So instead of defending himself against the charge of thievery, Rigg moved the conversation back to his real business here. “So it’s enough money to buy a meal and lodgings.”
“Of course it is, are you mad?”
“Seven rivers have joined the Stashik since we left Fall Ford,” said Rigg. “It’s so wide now we can hardly see the other side sometimes, and it seems like the price of everything gets bigger right along with the river. Last town where we ate, a baker charged us a jackface for a small loaf of stale bread, and he wanted two kingfaces for a night’s lodging.”
The taverner shook his head. “You were cheated, that’s all. And who wants to stay in some tiny fleabitten room in a baker’s house? You pay me one fen and you can stay two nights, or stay one night and I give you five shebs in change.”
Rigg touched the coins in turn. “You call this a ‘fen’? And this is a ‘sheb’?” Rigg knew the names of all the coins—including denominations so large that Father said they never actually minted the coins—but it had never occurred to him that the same money might be called by different names just because he had walked a few weeks on the Great North Highway.
“Why, what do you call them?” asked the taverner.
“‘Kingface’ and ‘queenface,’ but we stopped calling them anything when people laughed at us.”
“I’m surprised you’re still alive to tell the tale,” said the taverner, “the way you spread that money out for all to see.”
“You knocked it out of my hand,” said Rigg. “I thought you did it on purpose.”
The taverner covered his eyes. “It never occurred to me you’d bring up more than one coin out of your purse.” He put his hand atop Rigg’s head and turned his face so they were eye to eye. “Listen, boy, maybe nobody killed you back south, but you’re right aside the river here, and this is a river tavern, and these are rough men who wouldn’t think nothing of tipping you into the river to take a pair of shebs out of your pocket, never mind a fen. And they’d do it for a ping if you riled them somehow. Now every man in that room knows you have a lot of money and very little brain.”
“None of them could see,” said Umbo stubbornly.
“You think they’re deaf? Every man of them could name all the coins you dropped by the sound alone.”
Rigg understood now, well enough. Rules were different here. In Fall Ford a man’s money was safe in his pocket or in his palm, because no one would think to take it. But that was because everybody already knew how much money everybody else was likely to have, and if somebody popped up with more of it after somebody else got robbed, it wouldn’t take much of a guess to solve the crime. Here, though, in towns like this, the citizens couldn’t know but a tiny number of their fellows, and the rivermen came and went so that nobody knew anybody. Not known means not caught, if they weren’t taken in t
he moment of the crime, because the rivermen could be many leagues away by morning—or merely asleep on their boat, and their fellows reluctant to admit it or let a stranger go on board to search.
Father had warned Rigg how the rules changed when you traveled far, and he always warned that the bigger the city, the lower the level of civilization, which had seemed to make no sense to Rigg until now. Because the rules of civilization might be obeyed by however so many people you choose, it only took a few who despised those rules and you’d be in danger. “The worst of predators is man,” Father had said, “because he kills what he does not need.”
“Like us,” Rigg had said. “We leave the meat behind, most of the time.”
“The meat feeds the forest scavengers,” Father had answered, “and we need the pelts.”
“I’m just agreeing with you. We kill like men,” Rigg had said, and Father had replied in a surly voice, “Speak for yourself, boy.”
Now Rigg was seeing it for himself. “Seems to me,” said Rigg, “the baker who cheated us harmed us more than anyone here.”
“That’s because you haven’t left my tavern yet. They wouldn’t dare attack you in here, but I can promise you’ll have many companions joining up with you the moment you leave the place, and you’ll be lucky if they only turn you upside down to shake out the coins and leave you with your skin and bones unbroken.”
“How does anyone get through here alive?” murmured Umbo.
The taverner turned sharply, his hand flashed out, and this time his hand was not so gentle resting on a boy’s head. “To get through here safe, two boys wouldn’t be traveling alone—they’d have adults with them. They wouldn’t be barefoot, and dressed in oafish privick homespun. They wouldn’t come any nearer the river than the road out there, and that in daylight only. They’d never enter a riverside tavern. They’d never spread coins across the bar or take out more than was needful. And if they break all these rules, they still survive if they happen to run into me on a day when I feel particularly magnanimous. Now, the supper rush is about to begin, and then it’s a night of drinking and whoring for rough men whose money I mean to have, with a minimum of breakage. You’re going to stay in this room.”
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