Wyrms

Angel smiled. "So you did have your loop on you?"

"I needed it twice. I wasn't very subtle, either."

"God knows," muttered Sken.

"Well, what did your father tell you?"

Patience looked at him coldly. "He told me what he said you were going to tell me."

"What is that?"

"Tell me what you're supposed to tell me, and I'll see if it agrees."

"Patience, I know more games than I ever taught you. If you tell me what secrets he told you, then I don't have to go on lying to you for the next thirty years."

"Did you know about how mother died?" asked Patience.

Angel grimaced."! see you didn't ask him easy questions."

"He broke in two hours. I thought he had more strength than that."

"He had more strength than anyone."

"He whined and whimpered-and when the worms punished him, he even wept."

Angel nodded gravely. "Of course."

"What do you mean, of course! He was the one who taught me endurance, who taught me that the emotion I showed should never be the emotion I felt, and there he was-"

She stopped, feeling stupid.

"Yes?" asked Angel.

"There he was, showing emotions and I fell for it."

"Ah. So perhaps he didn't break at all."

"He wasn't lying to me. I saw when he was lying, and I saw when he stopped. He can't hide everything. Can he?"

"No. I think he told you the truth. What else, besides your mother's death?"

"Wasn't that enough?" '

"The prophecy?"

"I knew a little about that anyway. He told me what the Starship Captain did with his left hand."

"Mm."

"Angel, I've decided where I want to go."

"Your father left me strict instructions."

"My father is dead now, and you belong to me."

Sken was surprised. "You mean you're a slave? I've been taking orders from a slave?"

"I am the slave of a Slave of the King. That puts me so far above you that you're unworthy to inhale one of my farts. Now will you shut up, woman?"

Actually, thought Patience, I'm the Heptarch now.

You're Slave to the King herself. Her only Slave. Much may it profit you.

"So," said Angel. "Where do you want to go?"

"Cra

Angel was angry, though he answered with humor.

"Stiff as steel, the girl has lost her mind."

Now Sken was livid. "Girl! Girl! You mean this snip of a boy is a female? It is an abomination for the woman to wear the clothing of the man, and the man to wear the clothing of a woman-"

"Shall I kill her to get us some silence?" Angel asked.

Sken fell silent, stuffing hardbread into sacks and spiced sausages into watertight pouches.

"Child," said Angel, "that is the one place you can never go."

"I'm sure of it," she said. "But it's the one place I: have to go. I was born for it, don't you see?"

"You were born for something better than to go off fulfilling mad prophecies."

"How will you stop me? Kill me? Because it's the only way you ever will."

"It's the Cra

"Don't you think I know?"

Angel chewed on that for a moment. "So you think that whatever it is, you're stronger."

"I think that if it can call the wisest men out of the world and force my mother to want to sacrifice her daughter, then someone needs to stop it. Why not me?

Don't the prophecies say that mankind will be reborn?"

"When Kristos comes," muttered Sken.

"The prophets were given their visions and prophecies by whatever it is that calls," said Angel. "They might be lies, to entice you."

"Then I'm enticed. If you're so wise. Angel, why haven't you felt the Cra

Angel went cold, his face a hard-set mask. She had always had the gift of goading him. "No one ever proved that every wise one heard the call."

There was no need to hurt him; she was using diplomatic tricks on a man whose honest words she would need again and again. So she smiled and touched his hand. "Angel, you spent your life making me as wise and dangerous as possible. When will I be readier? When you're too old to come with me? When I've fallen in love with some cod and had three babies that I have to protect?"

"Maybe you'll never be ready for whatever waits."

"Or maybe now. When I'm willing to die. When I've lost my father for the first time and my mother all over again. Now, when I'm willing to kill because of the rage that burns in me for what has been stolen from me and my father and my mother, now is the time for me to face whatever waits for me there. With you or without you, Angel. But better with you."

Angel smiled. "All right."

Patience glared at him. "That was too easy. You intended to be persuaded all along."

"Come now, Patience. Your father warned us both that the worst thing in the world was waiting in Cra

As well as we knew him, and as well as he knew us, don't you think he knew we'd come to this moment?"

Patience remembered her father's head. Was he scheming even then, letting her force from him the very truths that he most wanted to tell her? "I don't care if he was," she said. "Even if my father really wanted me to go, I'll go."

"Good. Tonight then. We don't want another day here." He took a purse from his belt and took out two large steel coins. "Sken, do you know what these are worth?"

"If they're real, then you're a damned fool for carrying them without a bodyguard."

"Are they enough to buy your boat?"

Sken squinted at him. "You know it's enough to buy ten of my boats. If they are steel."

He tossed them to her. She bit them and weighed them in her hand. "I'm not a fool," she said.

"You are if you think they aren't real," said Angel.

"I won't sell you the boat unless you buy me, too."

"Buy you! That's enough to buy your silence, and that's all we want of you."

"I said I'm not a fool. This isn't the price a man offers for a boat if he means to leave the money behind. You plan to kill me before you go."

"If I say I'm buying, I'm buying."

"You've let me hear enough tonight that you daren't let me live behind you. A girl traveling in disguise with a man who tosses steel about as if it were silver? Her father recently dead, and them both afraid of the law? Do you think we of the river haven't heard that Lord Peace died today? And that the King looks for his daughter Patience, the rightful Heptarch, the daughter of prophecy? You didn't care if I figured it out because you knew I'd be dead."

Patience knew Sken was right-she knew Angel well enough for that. "I thought you were talking so openly because this woman was to be trusted, not because she was to die."

"And what if you're right?" asked Angel. "What if I did mean to kill you? Why should I change my mind now, and take you along?"

"Because I know the river and I'm strong enough to row."

"We can hire a rower if we feel the need."

"Because you're both decent folk who don't kill people who don't deserve it."

"We're not that decent," said Angel. "We leave justice up to the priests."

"You'll take me along because she's my rightful Heptarch, and I'll serve her to the end of my life. I'd die before I let any harm come to her."

The fervency of Sken's speech was convincing. Schooled in guile, they knew naivet? when they saw it. Sken hadn't the art to lie to them even if she wanted to.

"Well?" asked Angel.

Patience was willing. Sken's loyalty appealed to her. It hadn't occurred to her until now that she might have more friends with her identity revealed than she could ever have in disguise. "I almost cut off her head before.

It's the least we can do now."

"Until we have no more need of you, then," said Angel. "And your parting wages will be a good deal better than death."