"I try to fulfill expectations." He reached for Spider.

"Not yet," she said. "I take it that your child is the payment for mine. Perhaps your son's life will be payment for my life."

Hart stopped in the act of taking Spider's hand and looked at her without expression.

"My mother bled to death. Presumably this is also in store for me. Or perhaps a fever will set in, from which I won't recover. These things are easily arranged, given opportunity. I don't intend to die."

Hart shrugged. "This is a common worry, madam, with women about to have their first child. Your fears are groundless, and..."

"Don't be a fool, Menet. I'm not. You must have suspected this from the beginning, but I've only just had my fears confirmed. And my child is due within the week." She pushed herself from the chair and stood before him. "You come under my uncle's protection, yet I am told that I can trust you. You can't trust him. You and your son can be killed as easily as I, and are as much a liability alive. Help me and I'll guarantee that you both leave the planet safely."

"Save and preserve me from the hands of women," Hart said.

"The hands of women may all there is to save and preserve you," she replied. "Help me. If you don't, I won't harm you. I won't need to."

"If I help you, and am caught, I guarantee our deaths."

"When I am delivered safely, you will be on your way off planet."

"How?"

"Trust me."

"I'd sooner trust the startides."

She shook her head. "You are an out-worlder, Menet. You can't begin to understand the complexities of the succession, the seats of power, the factions and alliances here. In many things you would be wise not to trust me.

In this, you must."

Spider tugged at Hart's arm. Hart lifted his son to his hip.

"You will see me tomorrow evening for my examination," the consort said. "Tell me your decision then." She turned and moved up the slope of lawn, walking with a flat-footed sway. Hart looked at the windows of the palace. Jem Stonesh stood framed in glass, looking down at the broad sweep of lawn. Hart could not see his expression.

"Have you ever been outside, in the city?" he said. Spider shook his head. "Do you want to go?"

"Yes!"

Hart glanced once more at the archbishop, then carried his son toward the gate. No one stopped them.

Mummers and fancifers performed along the shaded boulevards, shaking their rattles at the passersby. Piles of chilled fruits and ices lined the curbs, and Spider was soon covered with the residue of sticky sweets. In the early evening they went to the dock to see the lightships string their gaudy lanterns and sail into the ocean decked in manmade stars. The wind smelled of salt and fish. Spider put his head on his father's shoulder and mumbled. The crowds at the dock drifted away, amid the noise of flutes and conversation.

The cathedral bell rang vespers.

"He looks much like you."

Hart turned. The cloaked figure beside him pushed its cowl back, and Tara smiled.

"He also looks heavy. You'll appreciate a carriage."

He followed her, his mind blank and dull. Her carriage waited, doors open. She took Spider on her lap as Hart entered the carriage and closed the door. The engine started smoothly and the docks faded into the night.

"Did you ever look this innocent?" she said, brushing the dark hair from Spider's forehead. He shifted in her arms and pressed his face against her breast.

"I suppose so. Once. Give him to me."

She opened her arms. Hart lifted Spider onto his lap and held him. The night air was mild, and the city's streets teemed with people. Lights glowed from windows and opened doors, and the magicians along the main boulevard stood in puddles of light, surrounded by the curious. Music drifted into the carriage amid the scent of flowering trees.

When the carriage halted at the palace gate, Tara turned to him and smiled.

"You'll have to give him to me now. I'll take him inside."

Hart tightened his arms around his son.

"It's all right, he won't be harmed. Come now, you lose all your charm where this child is involved. Let's not sit here until dawn. He'll be fine, I promise."

"On what authority?"

Tara's smile widened. "I have important friends."

Hart opened his arms. Spider mumbled sleepy protests as Tara lifted him from the carriage and handed him to a figure just within the gates. The doll slid from Spider's arms. Tara bent to it, then tucked it under the child's belt and waited while the figure disappeared into the palace. She spoke a few quiet words to the coachman, then leaned in the window and placed her finger on Hart's lips.

"Things are 'never' what they seem," she said, and walked through the palace gate. The carriage started. Hart leaned his head against the cushioned rest, too tired even to speculate.

"Yes," Hart said. The consort's arm waited for the jab of his needle.

When he didn't move, she turned her face toward him.

"Good. Finish the test."

"There is no test. I take your blood home and flush it down the sink."

He snapped the hypogun into his case. "It convinced people that I was necessary alive."

She smiled and stood from the bed. "You're not as much a fool as I thought," she said as she crossed to the doors and opened them. Tara entered and closed the doors. The consort nodded.

"Good," Tara said. "We'll deliver here, tonight. You can induce labor.

Can you shorten it? What equipment will you need? Can you bring it here now?"

Hart sat on the bed and crossed his arms. "How do I get off the planet?

When? I want Spider here. I want to know all the details first."

The consort put her hands on the small of her back. "There will be a carriage at the garden gate and a skip-sloop at the port. You'll be taken to Anselm and you'll stay with some friends. There's no extradition treaty between Anselm and Gregory, so you should be safe. After that, it will be up to you."

"I want Spider here. Now."

"We'll bring him while you're bringing your equipment."

"I have it." Hart tapped his case.

By the time Tara returned with Spider in her arms, the consort was stripped to her shift and lying in the large bed. Tara set Spider on a couch in the corner. Hart kissed his son's forehead and pressed the hypogun against the child's buttocks. Spider's eyes blinked, then his arms relaxed around his father's neck. He turned on his side and slept. Hart covered him with a blanket and returned to the bed.

He didn't like inducing labor. He didn't like rushing it. He didn't like Tara as his assistant. He didn't like the bolted, unguarded doors. The rhythms of labor beat through the consort's body and she strained in the bed, her lips taut and white. Tara stripped to her own shift and worked to Hart's orders. Over the consort's paced breathing, Hart heard the occasional animal sounds of the Regent. Spider thrashed in his sleep.

Within two hours the waters broke. Tara stripped sheets from the bed and put new ones in their place. The consort sipped water from a crystal glass. The Regent bellowed.

Five hours after labor began, Tara braced the consort's feet as she supported herself on hands and knees, and Hart eased the baby from her body.

The infant gasped and lay in Hart's hands, then opened its eyes. They were clear, deep blue, set in an alabaster face.

"Is he all right?" the consort said.

"He's fine," Hart said. He knotted the umbilical cord and cut it. Tara took the child and cleaned it while Hart dealt with the placenta. The consort fell asleep.

"He has your eyes," Tara said. Hart stood beside her and looked at the infant.

"The eyes will change," Hart said. "He has my mind."

Tara glanced at him and shook her head, then put the baby on the bed.

The consort's arm circled it protectively, and she slept on. Hart and Tara cleaned the room.

"My carriage," Hart said.

"The garden gate. Right down the corridor, then outside along the maze and left at the pool. You'll see the gate. Tell the coachman 'Anselm.' I've arranged to have your things sent after you."

Hart nodded and lifted Spider from the couch while Tara slipped into her dress. He froze at the sound of commotion in the hallway. Someone battered at the locked doors.

"Madam! Awaken! Grievous news! Madam! Let me in!"

The archbishop. Tara shook the consort and flipped the blankets over the infant, then pulled a screen between Hart and the room. The archbishop pounded with increased vigor. Spider woke, and Hart put his hand over the child's mouth. Spider nodded and pushed Hart's hand aside. Tara opened the door.

"Hush," she said. "She's had an uneasy night."

Hart peered through a crack in the screen and saw Stonesh and the physicians shoulder into the room. The archbishop stood by the bed and took the consort's hand.

"What is it?" she said sleepily.

"Madam, terrible news. I am sorry, your condition, but it was necessary. Please do not grieve yourself too harshly." The archbishop paused.

"The Regent, your husband, is dead."

The consort clutched the bedclothes to her neck. "How?"

"Madam, he fell. You must not grieve yourself, madam. Consider the child."

She sat, still holding the covers to her neck. "Poor, bereft Saltena,"

she said slowly. "First the Regent dies, then his young wife follows, in childbed, of grief. Such a blow. Save that I am well, and my child is well, as you can see." She pulled aside the blankets and held the baby to her breast.

Archbishop and physicians crowded around the bed. Tara shooed them back and began explaining about the sudden labor, how lucky they were that Menet Kennerin, respected off-world physician, had been there to help, no time to summon the doctors. Stonesh turned toward her, and she stared at him as she spoke. His lips tightened. Hart watched in increasing bafflement from behind the screen, as though watching actors on a stage. When Tara finished speaking he stepped into the room, on cue, with Spider in his arms.

"I'm pleased to have been of service," he said, and wondered who had written the line.

Servants and courtiers crowded through the doorway to see the calm, smiling consort and her newborn son. Witnesses, Hart thought. They'll never touch her now.

Perhaps.

Stonesh ordered people from the room and in the confusion Tara touched Hart's arm.

"Go now," she said.

He turned, then turned back. The consort smiled serenely, the archbishop gestured in his robes, the physicians craned their necks and stretched inquisitive hands toward the mother and child. Servants watched goggle-eyed. Tableau. The play was over. Hart looked at Tara's upturned face.

Things, he thought, are never what they seem.

"How did the Regent die?" he said.

"He fell, Menet." She smiled. "With some assistance from his friends."

Hart stared at her. She touched his arm, and he left the room and walked down the corridor. Dawn paled the sky. The shrubbery of the maze seemed two-dimensional, and the cries of morning birds echoed with hollowness. As he reached the garden gate, the bells of the city began to ring.

*Hart*

SHE SENT THE CLOTHING, THE JEWELS, THE chips, everything save my medical instruments, all jumbled together in a shipping trunk marked HOUSEWARES and addressed to Hart Kennerin, care of Ortega, Great House, Benetan, Anselm. She even included clothing for Spider.

But no note, no message. I didn't expect one. Do characters in a play live apart from the stage? Is there life after the final curtain? Gregory 4 seemed as closed to me as a theater when the play is done -- to have pried behind the scene, tried to peek through the heavy curtain, would have been unmannerly. And I had no desire to view the empty stage.

The stage of Anselm, too, seemed deserted. Our hosts never appeared, and I suspected the entire house to be populated only with masterless servants. They tended to our needs, fed us, cleaned the rooms, and left us otherwise alone. It suited. The silence and solitude cushioned my mind, gave me the space in which to assess the past two years. Space in which to breathe.

Space in which to watch the small, growing alien who was my son.

Spider. Solitary child, yet without the coldness of solitude; warm child, without the suffocation of heat I could not remember myself at Spider's age, yet it seemed to me that I had been different. Old Gren had forced a self-sufficiency on my son which I had lacked; Spider lived in a world of constant change, which he accepted as part of the structure of the universe.

My son would not, did not, presume ownership of the world in which he lived.

As I had done. I do not think he looked like me, save insofar as he looked unmistakably like a Kennerin. But Spider was four, and I twenty-six, that year. Life had carved me, and barely set its blade to him as yet.

He did the things which, I presume, children of his age liked to do. He talked and ate, he broke things and made things. He gave and demanded attention; he praised the things he liked and howled at the things he didn't.

He showed an interest in my books, and when I began teaching him to read he learned quickly. I supposed him to be bright, but had no basis for comparison.

I supposed him to be beautiful, and I think he was.