Wyrms

"Didn't you understand me? I don't need Panx."

Now she spoke in common speech. "The last thing I said was in Geblic. So much for your sign."

"I've never known a gebling merchant who couldn't speak Agarant, so no one needs it anyway. How did you learn Panx and Geblic?"

"I'm a gebling," she said.

"Your barber is very good." He smiled. "Listen, boy, as long as you're here, I could use a scribe. How's your hand?"

"Good enough, as long as I can sit there in the shade, with something to keep sun off my neck."

"And the common gaze off your face, is that it?"

"I'm not afraid of the common gaze, sir."

"Ah. It's the uncommon gaze you dread. Come, sit, what do I care whom you're hiding from, as long as you don't steal from me? Though by the grandmother of Kristos, there's not much to steal. My name is Pla

At least that's what my merchant's license says."

So she sat through the day, writing out in her trained and beautiful hand what Pla

"Still an hour till full dark. What do you plan to do now?"

"Help you pitch your canopy."

"And then?"

"Ask you for six coppers for my day's work."

"Let's start with the canopy." They took down the awning and the four posts. It all collapsed into sticks and cloth that fit inside his table; two of the sticks became axles, and the table was now a cart. "Now, boy, it occurs to me that three times today I had to step over there to the pisspit, and you not once."

"Some have larger bladders than others," she said.

But she knew he would not give her the money, and he was perilously close to guessing who she was, if he hadn't already. So she reached into her hair and took out her loop. She flipped it down across his wrist, caught the ends to form a circle around it, and smiled. "Twenty- five coppers with the other hand," she said, "or you lose this one."

He saw the wire more than felt it. With only slight pressure it had cut into the skin and blood was forming droplets. His other hand took a purse from his belt. "So you're a thief after all," he said.

"I did an honest day's work," she said. "But I charge extra when people try to cheat me. Spill the purse."

He poured out the coins on the tabletop.

"A silver and five coppers, count them out and put them back in the purse."

He did it, being careful not to move the caught hand any more than necessary. When he had pulled taut the string of the purse, she snatched it with one hand, letting the loop dangle from the other. He did not try to catch her, just held his bleeding wrist and panted in relief.

"And remember that pleiok can be future tense as well as past. It gets you into more trouble." She dodged away into the gathering dusk.

Another day was ending, another day of putting herself at terrible risk in a public place, and Angel hadn't found her. No doubt the Ruinor of the boy who could speak four languages and had almost cut off Pla

Her purse bought her passage on an upriver boat. All the outbound boats were being watched closely, but the ferries that carried gamblers and gamers to the Cuts needed no supervision, apparently. The porter who took her three coppers looked at her with squinting eyes.

"You know they put cutpurses in the river in three pieces," he said.

Patience looked at the planks to avoid his gaze. So she looked like a thief in this company. Shouldn't be a surprise. Only the well off could play the Cuts, and she didn't exactly reek of money. But as Angel left, he had jokingly said that he figured to spend his time getting rich in the Cuts, because he was mathematician enough to control the odds. It was the only hint she had of where he'd be, and so she acted on it.

She paid the extra copper to use the privy house on the boat. It was a long pole upstream when the tide was out, and there was a queue. A very fat, foul-breathed woman got in line behind her. Her belly and breasts kept bumping into Patience, as if to urge her forward. She didn't want to make a scene, though, and so bore it patiently.

But when the man before her got out, to her horror the woman pushed her way into the privy behind her.

Patience had never pictured herself having to kill someone quite so grossly fat. How deep would a weapon have to pierce in order to touch something vital? It didn't matter-a throat was a throat. By the time the fat woman had the door closed. Patience had her loop out and easily cast it about the woman's neck.

"Make a sound and you're dead," said Patience.

The woman made no sound.

"I don't want to kill you," Patience said. "I don't know if you meant to rob me or what, but if you keep silent and say nothing, I'll let you finish this voyage alive."

"Please," the fat woman whispered.

Patience tightened the loop. A sudden slackening of resistance told her that it had bitten flesh. "I said silence," Patience said.

"Angel," the fat woman squeaked.

She hadn't expected that. She was keyed up against enemies, and hadn't thought the woman might be a friend. "What about Angel?"

"He's coming on the next boat. In the name of Cleanliness and Holiness and all the Sweet Smells, take that thing from around my neck. He said you were dangerous but he didn't say you were insane."

"Who are you?"

"Sken. I own a boat. I think I wet myself."

"Good. Then you don't need the privy house. I do.

Get out."

"You're all heart. And what will they think, when I come out with my throat bleeding?"

"That you made an indecent offer to a young man in the privy, and he turned you down with vigor. I'll meet you at the railing-now go."

"You're a little turd," said Sken. She left, holding her neck.

Patience barred the door and finally relieved herself. It had been a long day. Now she understood why the heads gave in so easily when the worms tortured them with these body urges. Angel had found her after all, apparently, had been watching her until he had a chance to send word to her. Whoever this woman was, Angel trusted her. No doubt the fact that she owned a boat played some part in his plans.

But will it play a part in mine? Patience wondered what Angel was to her now. Father's slave, and so now hers, technically. But she knew he didn't really belong to her. It wasn't just because she couldn't take him into court to enforce her claim. He had served her father, not from fear, but from love and loyalty. One of the lessons of statecraft, Father often told her, was that loyalty could not be transferred or inherited; it had to be earned by each new lord in turn. Angel might now feel no loyalty at all, or believe that he was still bound to carry out whatever Father's last instructions to him might have been.

Patience, though, didn't feel bound to obey Father.

She obeyed him for the last time when she tore his head from the rack and cast it into the sea. His desires were not to be added into the balance anymore. She was not a child, now. She could decide for herself what to do with the burden of prophecy and doom that had attended from her birth that had unthroned her grandfather and killed her half-brothers.

And killed her mother, too; dear Mother, who had died so cruelly at Father's hands, and for my sake, all for my sake, Mother, if I could have, I would have died for you but now your death has bought for me all that it could buy-the years to become dangerous, too, in my own right. Haven't I killed in the name of the King? Didn't I leave my own assassin with a dagger in his eye? Didn't I steal Father's head out of Slaves' Hall though all the soldiers in King's Hill looked for me? I am not a little child or a helpless Heptarch whose servants have made her soft. I will not refuse the path that prophecy has declared for me, but I will not be half so meek as prophecy thinks I'll be. I will be more than a match for Unwyrm, whoever or whatever Unwyrm is.