"I don't know who tried to kill the Queen," said Hull. "Whoever it was had that weak-kneed coward's family in their power and any man who has children, he's no longer free, they can control him, and that's the truth. And no, I won't tell you who the weak-kneed coward was, either!"

"Are you afraid I'll kill him?"

"I'm afraid that someone will find out that you know, and kill you for it."

"And I'm afraid that someone will kill you you for it, because by now they certainly know that for it, because by now they certainly know that you you know." know."

Hull pushed him away a little. "They wouldn't dare," she said.

"If they dare to try to kill the Queen..."

"Who would put blood in the King's bread!" said Hull.

"Tell me," said Wad. For in truth it surprised Wad that there could be any conspiracy that he didn't already know about.

"I don't know," said Hull, "but I do know this: Whoever it is wants the Queen dead so that her baby will never be born, so that Anonoei's little halfway b.a.s.t.a.r.d boys can take the place of the rightful heir who died unborn."

"And why would they do that?"

"Because the Queen is from Gray," said Hull. "Don't pretend you don't know the politics of this house, I know you go a-spying whenever I don't have you at a job, and sometimes even when I do."

"Then why don't you want to see Anonoei's Icewegian sons inherit?"

"I'm old enough to know how things work in this world," said Hull. "If both those boys are heirs, then they'll fight between each other and we'll have a civil war. Or one of them will kill the other, and then we'll have a fratricide on the throne-always a proud day for a kingdom. Old Oviak made war on Gray and lost it, and he swore to the bargain that brought peace. Queen Bexoi and that baby in her belly are the price of it, and no Icewegian with honor can go back on the word of the old King, even if he is is dead." dead."

"So it's not because you love the Queen," said Wad.

"I don't even know her. When I bring her breakfast-with my own hands, mind you, because Her Fancyship demanded it-she hardly looks at me and never says a word, not even thanks."

"Why do you think she demanded that you you bring her breakfast?" bring her breakfast?"

Hull thought for a moment. "Well, I'm glad to know that I'm trusted even by those I don't much like."

"You saved her life today."

"I can't throw myself on her protection, though, can I?"

"Try the King's protection," said Wad.

"How do I know he isn't part of the conspiracy?"

Wad did not believe the King would do such a thing, but he couldn't be sure of it.

"So now you've calmed me down and I won't kill any of the idiots who work in the kitchen. I won't tell on the conspirators and that should satisfy them, too."

"Should it?"

"I'm busy." She turned for the door, then stopped. "Was there any fungus?" there any fungus?"

Wad shook his head.

"The King doesn't want this baby," said Hull, "because everyone knows the Queen is a drekka, or nearly so. She can call finches! How useful! Her children will have no greatness in them. But that's the promise old King Oviak made to Bexoi's brother, and King Prayard is bound by it, and by his own marriage oath! I hate it that I don't trust him, but how can I trust anyone? Except you, Wad. You're the only faithful man or boy in Na.s.sa.s.sa." And with that she went back to the house.

Faithful man or boy? Wad laughed bitterly inside himself. Faithful to my Queen, and to the boy or girl, half mine, growing inside her womb. Faithful to you, Hull. But to none else, especially if they threaten any of my beloveds.

Behind this fierce loyalty, though, there was another Wad, an older one, who knew secrets he wouldn't tell this tree-born reborn squirrel. And that Wad was laughing-at the word beloved. beloved. There is no love, said that ancient Wad. There is only hunger and possession. You huddle like a starving man over his food, you fool, saying, "Touch not what is mine, I'll kill you if you touch it." There is no love, said that ancient Wad. There is only hunger and possession. You huddle like a starving man over his food, you fool, saying, "Touch not what is mine, I'll kill you if you touch it."

Well, I will, Wad told that ancient self. See if I don't.

Just another killer, no different from any other, said the cynical worm that dwelt in his ancient heart. You You love, and so your greed is n.o.ble and your hate is righteous. love, and so your greed is n.o.ble and your hate is righteous. You You desire, and so you plan to kill whoever wants to take away from you the things you have no right to have because they belong to someone else. You are the lover-by-stealth, the thief of the King's throne, for you want to put your cuckoo's egg upon it, denying the King's own sons. Do you speak of n.o.bility? Those who would kill the Queen would only avenge desire, and so you plan to kill whoever wants to take away from you the things you have no right to have because they belong to someone else. You are the lover-by-stealth, the thief of the King's throne, for you want to put your cuckoo's egg upon it, denying the King's own sons. Do you speak of n.o.bility? Those who would kill the Queen would only avenge your your crime-your treason and betrayal of a man, Prayard, who has done you only kindness. crime-your treason and betrayal of a man, Prayard, who has done you only kindness.

Wad sank down upon the ground in the shade garden. Why did I come to this place? he asked himself. I needed no one till I came here, and now I love three, and they will make a killer out of me in the effort to protect them.

While Wad was bitterly condemning himself, Hull went into the kitchen, where no one dared to look up from their work, and stalked off to her own room, to meditate upon the kind of foolish old woman who takes out her anger on the innocent. That was what was on her mind when she stepped into the darkness of her room, holding no candle because she knew the place by heart. She only heard one breath, one step, and then the dagger was in the top of her spine, just under the neck. Whick whack, Whick whack, back and forth, and she felt no pain as she dropped to the floor until her head struck stone. Even then, she was only dazed. She felt her brain fading because of lack of air. Breathe, she told herself. Breathe. But her body obeyed nothing. The door closed behind her. Alone in the dark, her brain starved from lack of air, and without pain or even fear, Hull died. back and forth, and she felt no pain as she dropped to the floor until her head struck stone. Even then, she was only dazed. She felt her brain fading because of lack of air. Breathe, she told herself. Breathe. But her body obeyed nothing. The door closed behind her. Alone in the dark, her brain starved from lack of air, and without pain or even fear, Hull died.

It was Wad who found her, an hour later, when the kitchen servants came to him and begged him to make sure she was all right. "She hasn't told us that we're done. We dare not leave the kitchen till we have her leave." Everyone knew that Wad could approach her no matter how angry she was.

He found her door locked, but that was no barrier to Wad. He gated inside, found her body, and wept. Where was I when they did this? I knew they would try to kill her, but did I watch over her? No, I pitied and condemned myself as a killer, as being no better than any other. But who did I kill today? No one. If I had killed the right man, Hull would be alive.

Yet he could not unthink all that he had thought. The very fact that he longed to add to the blood already on his hands from handling and weeping over that good woman only sickened him and grieved him more. Kill kill kill, that's all we do, despite our powers. For magery didn't change the fact that ultimately the only way to stop a man was to threaten to kill him, if he was weak or fearful, or to kill him outright, if he was strong and brave and dangerous. Murder is the only power that we know. Am I better than they are? Hull was better than any of us, because she never killed, because she kept on trusting even when she had the proof that she was dealing with a.s.sa.s.sins. And she is dead. Does that mean that only the murderers can live? What world is that to live in?

Hull, why did you take me in, if not to be your protector? And since you have no son, who but me is your avenger?

But would you, even now, want vengeance for your death? Or simply peace?

Wad laid her back down on the floor, his tears still on her face. He gave no alarm. Let someone else discover her and raise the cry of murder. Wad had work to do.

He gated to a place he knew by a brook in a narrow canyon many miles from Na.s.sa.s.sa. There he washed himself in the cold snowmelt mountain water of early summer. Hull's blood was sent back into the world through that stream, to be part of the sea again one day. As for his clothing, he burned it, lest the blood be seen and anyone accuse him him of the murder of the well-loved night cook. of the murder of the well-loved night cook.

Naked as the hour he came out of the tree two summers ago, he gated back into the castle and closed the gates that he had made to Hull's room and to the brook where he washed. Then he made a viewport into Anonoei's room.

She was supposed to be preparing to leave Na.s.sa.s.sa. At the Queen's request-and the demand of the agents of Gray who surrounded her-King Prayard had commanded that Anonoei and her two sons be sent away. A ship was going to take her to a place of exile, where she would be guarded so that neither she nor her sons could endanger Queen Bexoi's child when it was born. The ship was supposed to leave the next day, but Wad saw no sign of preparation for a move. Oh, there were three open trunks in her antechamber, but there was nothing in them, not even a pile of clothes waiting to be sorted.

She knows, thought Wad. Whether she is part of the plot or not, someone told her that she need not pack, because she would not leave. She knows they mean to kill my Bexoi and my baby, and she is content.

But angry as he was, and grieving, and wracked with guilt for not having protected Hull, he still did not reach through a gate into her heart and squeeze it into stillness, or pull it out and throw it in the King's face. Instead, he made sure that her two sons, six-year-old Eluik and four-year-old Enopp, were in her chambers, too.

Wad knew a place that dated from the ancient days, two thousand years before, when the first portion of Na.s.sa.s.sa Castle was built. As the stonemages hollowed out the crag to make the chambers, halls, and corridors of the inmost keep of Na.s.sa.s.sa, they created three tunnels down which they poured the rock they fluidized. These tunnels opened out three hundred feet above the deep volcanic lake that formed a part of the perimeter of the castle. From there the slag had fallen and been lost in the lake. Then the tunnels were filled with seamless stone. But at the mouth of each tunnel, a shallow cave remained, where the last hot slag had poured away when all the stone behind it had begun to harden. They all sloped sharply upward, the floor more steeply than the roof, so there was scarcely any level ground inside.

Wad could do no work with stone, but still he could make each cave into a prison cell. He simply made a gate across the mouth of each cave, a gate so wide that you could not get around it. If you fell from the cave, you were caught in the gate, which took you to the narrow back of the cave. If you were careless, you could then roll right down again to the gate at the cave's mouth, and fall again, and be caught again and returned to the back of the cave-over and over, until you finally caught yourself and held on to the stone and clung there.

It was a terrible prison, a cruel torment, but Wad kept telling himself, It is not death. No one can call me murderer.

Then Wad formed a gate just behind Anonoei and pa.s.sed the mouth of it over her, carrying her into the steepest of the caves. He heard her scream as she tumbled down to the cave's mouth, and back to the top, and down and out of the mouth again. It was a delicious sound to Wad, in his rage and hate.

He took Eluik and Enopp the same way, each in turn. They, too, screamed-and Wad wondered if their mother could hear them. Let them all do their screaming, thought Wad. Hull was not allowed to scream; they scream for her.

Then he went back to Anonoei's room, pa.s.sed gates around the open trunks, and bore them each to a cave. There he fastened them in place, using a technique he had not known that he knew, though it came with the ease of old habit the moment he desired it. Each lay longwise along the side of one of the prison caves, with a gate at the bottom end that led only the tiniest fraction of a fingerwidth higher up the slope. So the trunks were constantly falling, yet never perceptibly moved at all.

The prisoners caught themselves on their trunks, then climbed in and lay down or sat inside them, weeping and crying out, but safe from the terror of the yawning cave mouth. That torture was over-but the memory of it would never end.

They would know that some powerful mage had done this to them-but what kind of mage, and who? Perhaps the children had no idea of their mother's plotting, but they would learn of it eventually, and recognize that whatever mage had done this could not be resisted. When eventually he released them from the cave-after Bexoi's and Wad's firstborn child was openly proclaimed the heir of Prayard-they would think twice before they plotted again, for they would know what could be done to them, and how powerless they were to resist.

Each day, Wad would gather up the sc.r.a.ps from the King's table-a duty he had often performed-and instead of carrying them to the pigs or to the compost bin, he would divide them into three bags and push them through a tiny gate into the trunk in each cave, along with a pitcherful of water, which would pour down into the bottom end of the trunk, where they must drink it from their scooping hands, or lap it up like dogs, before it leaked away. His prisoners would quickly learn to be glad of the water and the sc.r.a.ps, would press the sack into the bottom of the trunk to soak, and then wring out the last drops of water from it.

He took pleasure in all the cruelty of the way that he would provide for them, make animals of them, even though he knew that the children, at least, could not be blamed for anything. They must learn fear! he told himself. Only fear will keep them from threatening my child when they grow older.

Meanwhile, another part of him, that ancient soul, roiled within him, as if it were a thousand souls, and all of them angry and afraid of him, all of them crying out that he had no right to such power as he had, if this was how he used it; and crying out, Is this all you can do? Make prisoners of the innocent, because you have someone else you would protect? Are we not all your prisoners here, and have you no compa.s.sion for our imprisonment, either?

And Wad wondered how his ancient soul had become so shredded, that it thought itself to be a mult.i.tude.

His work done, his prisoners' first meal and drink provided for, Wad came naked to the Queen in her nightbed. He wrapped his arms around her as, only that morning, he had wrapped his arms around beloved Hull, and whispered to her that she was safe. No one would kill her or the baby, not when they did not know where Anonoei was, or the sons King Prayard had begotten on her. Who would be the heir then? Not knowing, they would not dare to harm the Queen.

"What have you done?" said Bexoi.

Wad told her of how Hull had saved her life, and then been murdered for it. And then he told her every detail of how he had abducted Anonoei and her sons and how he would provide for them.

"Good," said Bexoi. "But wouldn't it be simpler to remove the gate at the mouth of each cave and let them fall to their deaths?"

"What if they slid into the water and came out alive?" asked Wad.

"Then gate them down to the bottom of the lake," said Bexoi.

Wad did not know whether to be happy or horrified that his beloved was as cruel as he. He laughed.

But he did not kill Anonoei or her sons, and he did not tell Bexoi that he would not kill them. He owed her no obedience.

We are G.o.ds, thought Wad. All the great mages are. And G.o.ds make no apologies or explanations.

Be silent, he said to the many voices deep inside himself, as they cried out against his arrogance. If you had any power, he said to them, then you would stop me. But you are weak and I am strong. Be still.

16.

WARDEN.

How long can you behave monstrously before you become a monster? The first rage that Wad had felt toward Anonoei and her sons had long since pa.s.sed. Hull was still dead, Eluik and Enopp still posed a threat to Wad's and Bexoi's baby, but the grief and fear had faded with time, as they always do. Humans, even great mages, get used to anything.

Yet the tedious work of pushing food into their h.e.l.lish cells continued, day after day. Ashamed of what he was doing to children, Wad soon changed their fare from slops to bread and cheese, which he gated out of the locked pantry every day. It was driving the new Hull-a man this time, who had once been her apprentice Hatch before he got the night cook job and the night cook name-mad with frustration that his count was always off by three loaves and a fair-sized cheese.

Wad also sent his prisoners clean jars filled with water, which they returned to him empty, and open bowls for their bodily wastes, which they returned to him foul. He cleaned them himself, with his own hands, as penance for the terrible thing that he had done and continued to do.

Meanwhile, Bexoi's belly grew, and when King Prayard's frenzy over the loss of his lover and their sons faded-as all such feelings fade-he began to notice that the woman who was his lawful wife was with child.

But was it his his child? Wad watched, of course, as Bexoi explained to him how she had pushed his seed into herself again and again. child? Wad watched, of course, as Bexoi explained to him how she had pushed his seed into herself again and again.

"That doesn't work," Prayard repeated.

"It only had to work once," said Bexoi. "And think of it-this baby is of the hardiest seed of his father, the most determined, the most ambitious. The luckiest."

"You say 'he,'" said Prayard. "Will this baby be a son?"

"It might be," said Bexoi. "But if it's a girl, we can try again. Now that you know I'm not barren after all."

"I never thought you were barren," said Prayard.

"But you made sure everyone else thought so."

"And you never told anyone that I was preventing it," he said.

"Because I didn't want to start a war," she said. "I wanted to start a baby."

At last the day came for the baby to be born. Wad, of course, was not officially present, though he watched closely. There was a while when the baby's head seemed to be stuck, unable to press forward to emerge. So Wad made a little gate, and the baby seemed to shoot forward into the midwives' hands. "It was like magic," said one of them to the other. "Did you see?"

"Born to be a great mage, then, do you think?" asked the other.

What Wad cared about was Bexoi. Once the baby had pa.s.sed through the narrow gap in her bones, she was bleeding profusely and the healer attending her was unable to do anything. "At times like this," the healer said, "we can be consoled that at least she left her child behind her when she died."

Wad just shook his head at such a thought. He made a gate that swallowed Bexoi whole and then returned her to a spot a tiny fraction of a fingerwidth away. n.o.body noticed the movement, or thought it only a momentary twitch; at least no one remarked on it. And suddenly she was not bleeding. Suddenly she was happy and tired and perfectly healthy in every way.

"Thank you," she whispered.

The healer a.s.sumed that Bexoi was speaking to her, and said, "But I did nothing, your majesty."

"I know," she murmured kindly. "You did your best, and I am well, and that's enough. Give me my son."

"His name will be Oviak, of course," said the healer, "after his father's father."

"Naming is not your business," said Bexoi softly. "And I will not give my son the name of a man who lost a war. His name will be Oath, for by his birth a covenant was kept alive."

But hearing this, Wad thought: By his conception the sham of marriage between Prayard and Bexoi was utterly broken by me. So that will never be his name in my heart. I will call him Trick, for that is how he came into this world, and what his life will always be-a trick that Bexoi and I played on everyone.

After Oath had lived for seven days, he was presented to King Prayard, who declared him to be his son and heir. That very night he came to Bexoi, saying that he only meant to talk to her, for she was still recovering from childbirth. But she laughed and said, "I am well and whole and hungry for my husband," and for the first time he acted as a husband should, and left his seed inside her.

Within the week, Prayard moved the Queen into his own chamber, to be protected by his most trusted men. The message was clear to all: Bexoi, not the lost Anonoei, was the woman who was sacred now to Iceway. She was the mother of the heir, and whoever raised a hand against her was the enemy of all.

Bexoi herself responded by cutting off the amba.s.sadors and representatives and agents of Gray. They still lived in Na.s.sa.s.sa and saw her every day-but only in a public room, with King Prayard's own ministers in attendance. There was never a word in private with the Queen, and they soon realized that this was not because she was being held prisoner, but because she wanted nothing to do with them. "I will not be used against my husband and my lord," she said to them in one such public meeting. "When I was childless, and had no friends, my brother the Jarl and my nephew the Jarling and all of you conspired to use me as a pretext for war or as a means of humiliating Iceway. Now I am truly Queen, and my only care is that Gray and Iceway stay at peace, as equal allies against the enemies of both. I will not be used for any other purpose."

Word of the Queen's change of loyalty was taken back to Gray, and while the Jarling Frostinch raged and railed about his aunt's "treason," her brother the Jarl wept with joy. "She has set the example for us all. A girl without magery or beauty, with no weapon but her heart, has tamed the savage seamage. In their son will peace come to us all."

Frostinch quickly saw that he must hold his tongue and pretend in every way to submit to his father's will. But he saw his father's acceptance of Bexoi's treason as a fatal weakness in the old man. As once he had plotted for his aunt's death, to provoke the war he wanted, so now he began to look for ways to help his father's reign reach a peaceful, happy, and swift conclusion. Then they would see how much peace the birth of Oath had brought between the kingdoms of Gray and Iceway.

In Iceway, the reclusive Bexoi began to venture out, not with nurses bringing the baby along behind her, but carrying Oath herself, and showing quite openly that she herself was giving suck to the baby. This astonished the people, but it reminded the old ones that this was once the way that all Icewegian heirs were nurtured in their youth. "What milk but royal milk should the royal baby drink?" they said. And she herself said, "I am not ashamed to show the breast from which Oath suckles, for this breast is Iceway's breast, and it is now and always will be from the people that he draws his food and drink."