Wyrms Read online

  But her tone was so flawlessly modest that they could not possibly take offense, and if the Consort continued in trying to provoke her, she would only make herself look increasingly boorish, even in the eyes of her husband.

  Oruc apparently reached the same conclusion. "Your hair is sufficiently beautiful for the needs of the day," he said. "Perhaps, my love, you could go and see if Lyra is ready."

  Patience noted, with satisfaction, that she had guessed correctly which daughter was meant to be the price of the Tassal treaty. She also enjoyed watching the Consort's attempt at seeming regal as she stalked out of the room.

  Pathetic. King Oruc had obviously married beneath the dignity of his office. Still, she could understand the Consort's hostility. By her very existence Patience was a threat to the Consort's children.

  Of course she showed none of these thoughts to King

  Oruc. He saw nothing but a shy girl, waiting to hear why the King had called her. Especially he did not see how tense she was, watching his face so carefully that every second that passed seemed like a full minute, and every tiny motion of his eyebrow or lip seemed a great flamboyant gesture.

  He quickly told her all that she had already figured out, and ended with the command that she had expected.

  "I hope you'll be willing to help these children communicate.

  You're so fluent in Tassalik, and poor Lyra doesn't know more than ten words of it."

  "You do me more honor than I can bear," said Patience. "I'm only a child, and I'm afraid to put my voice into such weighty affairs."

  She was doing what her father said a loyal slave must do: warn the King when the course he had chosen seemed particularly dangerous.

  "You can bear the honor," he said dryly. "You and Lyra played together as children. She'll be much more comfortable, and no doubt so will the prince, if their interpreter is a child. They'll be, perhaps, more candid."

  "I'll do my best," Patience said. "And I'll remember every word, so that I can learn from my mistakes as you point them out to me afterward."

  She did not know him well enough to read his calm expression. Had he really been asking her to spy on Lyra and the Tassal prince? And if so, did he understand her promise to report afterward all that they say? Have I pleased him or offended him, read too much into his commands, or not enough?

  He waved a hand to dismiss her, immediately she realized that she could not yet be dismissed. "My lord," she said.

  He raised an eyebrow. It was presumptuous to extend one's first meeting with the King, but if her reason was good enough, it would not harm her in his eyes.

  "I saw that you had the head of Lady Letheko. May I ask her some questions?"

  King Oruc looked annoyed. "Your father told me that you were fully trained as a diplomat."

  "Part of the training of a diplomat," she said softly, "is to get more answers than you think you will need, so you'll never wish, when it's too late, that you had asked just one more question."

  "Let her speak with Letheko's head," said Oruc.

  "But not in here. I've heard enough of her babbling for a morning."

  They didn't even give her a table, so that Lady Letheko's canister sat directly on the floor in the hallway. Out of courtesy, Patience stepped out of her skirt and sat cross- legged on the floor, so Letheko would not have to look up to see her.

  "Do I know you?" asked Letheko's head.

  "I'm only a child," said Patience. "Perhaps you didn't notice me."

  "I noticed you. Your father is Peace."

  Patience nodded.

  "So, King Oruc thinks so little of me that he lets children pump my sheep-bladder lung and make my voice ring out harshly in this shabby hallway. He might as well send me out to Common Hall on the edge of the marsh, and let beggars ask me for the protocols of the gutter."

  Patience smiled shyly. She had heard Letheko in this mood before, many times, and knew that her father always responded as if the old lady had been teasing. It worked as well for her as it had for Father.

  "You are a devil of a girl," said Letheko.

  "My father says so. But I have questions that only you can answer."

  "Which means your father must be out of King's Hill, or you'd ask him."

  "I'm to be interpreter between Lyra and Prekeptor at their first meeting."

  "You speak Tassalik? Oh, of course, Peace's daughter would know everything." She sighed, long and theatrically, and Patience humored her by giving her plenty of air to sigh with. "I was always in love with your father, you know. Widowed twice, he was, and still never offered to take a tumble with me behind the statue of the Starship Captain in Bones Road. I wasn't always like this, you know." She giggled. "Used to have such a body."

  Patience laughed with her.

  "So, what do you want to know?"

  "The Tassaliki. They're believers, I know, but what does that mean in practical terms? What might offend Prekeptor?"

  "Well, don't make jokes about taking a tumble behind the statue of the Starship Captain."

  "They don't think he was the Kristos, do they?"

  "They're Watchers, not Rememberers. They don't think

  Kristos has ever come to Imakulata, but they watch every day for him to come."

  "Vigilants?"

  "God protect us from Vigilants. But yes, almost. more organized, of course. They do believe in warfare, for one thing. As a sacrament. I do protocols, you know, not theology."

  "Warn me of whatever I need to be warned of."

  "Then stop pumping."

  Patience stopped pumping air, and lay supine before the severed head in order to read its lips and catch the scraps of sound that an unbreathing mouth can produce.

  "You are in grave danger. They believe the seventh seventh seventh daughter will bring Kristos."

  Patience wasn't sure whether she had heard correctly.

  The phrase meant nothing to her. She let her face show her puzzlement.

  "No one told you?" asked Letheko. "God help you, child. An ancient prophecy-some say as old as the Starship Captain-says that the seventh seventh seventh daughter will save the world. Or destroy it. The prophecy is vague."

  Seventh seventh seventh daughter. What in the world did that mean?

  "Seven times seven times seven generations since the Starship Captain. Irena was first. You are the 343rd Heptarch."

  Patience covered Letheko's lips with her fingers, to keep her even from mouthing such treason.

  Letheko smiled in vast amusement. "What do you think they can do to me, cut off my head?"

  But Patience was no fool. She knew that heads could be tortured more cruelly and with less effort than would ever be possible with a living human being. If she were wise, she would stop this dangerous conversation with Letheko at once. And yet she had never heard of this prophecy before. It was one thing to know she was in the dangerous position of being a possible pretender to the throne. But now to know that every true believer in every human nation of the world thought of her as the fulfiller of a prophecy-how could Father have let her go on for so many years without telling her all of what others thought she was?

  Letheko wasn't through. "When you were born, a hundred thousand Tassaliki volunteered to form an army to invade Korfu and put you on the throne. They haven't forgotten. If you gave the Tassaliki so much as a hope that you would join them, they would declare a holy war and sweep into Korfu in such numbers and with such fury as we haven't seen since the last gebling invasion.

  King Oruc is insane to put you in the same room with a young Tassal prince who wants to prove his manhood."

  Again Patience covered Letheko's mouth to stop her speech. Then she lifted herself on her hands, leaned forward, and kissed the wizened head on the lips. The stench of the fluids in the canister was foul, but Letheko had risked great suffering to tell her something far more important than how one behaves properly with a devout Tassal prince. A gool sloshed lazily in the canister. A tear came to the corner of the old woman's eye.

&
nbsp; "How many times," mouthed Letheko, "I wanted to take you in my arms and cry out, My Heptarch, Agaranthemem Heptek."

  "And if you had," whispered Patience, "I would be dead, and so would you."

  Letheko grinned maniacally. "But I am." Patience laughed, and gave Letheko air to laugh aloud. Then she called the headsman to take the old lady back to Slaves' Hall.

  Patience walked through the great chambers of the court, seeing the people on their errands there in a different light. Most of them wore crosses, of course, but that was the style. How many of them were believers? How many were Watchers, or even secret Vigilants, harboring mad thoughts of her saving-or destroying-the human race, ushering in the coming of Kristos to Imakulata? More to the point, how many of them would die in order to bring down King Oruc and restore Peace to Heptagon House as its master, and Patience as his daughter and heir?

  And as thoughts of bloody revolution swam through her head, her Father's cool voice came to the surface and said, through a hundred memories, "Your first responsibility is the greatest good for all the world. Only when that is secure can you care for private loves and comforts and power. The King's House is all the world."

  If she was the sort of woman who would plunge Korfu and Tassali into a bloody religious war, she was too selfish and mad for power to serve as Heptarch. As many as a million could die. Perhaps more. How could anything ever surface from such an ocean of blood?

  No wonder Father never told her. It was a terrible temptation, one she could never have faced when she was younger.

  I am still young, she thought. And King Oruc is putting me alone in a room with Prekeptor and Lyra. We could talk in Tassalik and never be understood. We could plot. I could commit treason.

  He is testing me. He is deciding whether or not I will be loyal to him. No doubt he even arranged for Letheko to be available, so I could learn from her what he no doubt knew she would tell me. My life, and possibly Father's life, is in my own hands right now.

  But Father would say, What is your life? What is my life? We keep ourselves alive only so we can serve the King's House. And he would not say, but I would remember, The King's House is all the world.

  Patience tried to figure out whether the world most needed her alive or not. But she knew that this was not a decision she was capable of making, not yet, not now.

  She would try to stay alive because it was unthinkable to do anything else. And to stay alive required perfect, absolute loyalty to King Oruc. She could not even appear to consider a plot to take the throne.

  One thing was certain. After this was over, if she pulled it off, Father's and Angel's simple little tests would never frighten her again.

  Chapter 2. MOTHER OF GOD

  LYRA WAITED IN THE GARDEN OF heptagon house of Viously, her mother had dressed her. Her gown was a bizarre mixture of chastity and seduction, modest from neck to floor, with just a touch of lace at her throat and wrists. But the fabric was translucent, so that whenever she was backlit her voluptuous shape was perfectly silhouetted.

  "Oh, Patience, I was so glad when Father said I could have you interpret for me. I begged him for days, and he finally relented."

  Could it be that her presence here was only the result of Lyra's pleading? Impossible-Oruc was too strong a man to let his daughters endanger his throne on a whim.

  "I'm glad he did," said Patience. "I'll be sorry if you have to leave Heptam, but at least I can tell you whether I approve."

  This was obviously a joke, spoken by a thirteen-year- old slave to the daughter of the Heptareh, but Lyra was so tense she didn't notice the impropriety of the remark.

  "I hope you do. And oh, if you see something in him that I don't see, please let me know. I want so very much to please Father by marrying this prince, but if he's really awful, I can't possibly go through with it."

  Patience showed nothing of the contempt she felt.

  Imagine-a daughter of the Starship Captain's blood even thinking of refusing a marriage, not for reasons of state, but because she found the suitor unattractive. To put one's personal pleasure ahead of the good of the King's House was proof of unfitness. You should be out in a country house, said Patience silently, the daughter of a country lord, going to country dances and giggling with your girlfriends about which of the country boys had the fewest pimples and the least repulsive breath.

  Neither her words nor her face betrayed her true feelings.

  Instead she made herself a perfect mirror, reflecting back to Lyra exactly what Lyra wanted to see and hear.

  "He won't be awful, Lyra. The negotiators would never have come this far if he had a second head growing out of his shoulder."

  "Nobody gets second heads anymore," said Lyra.

  "They have a vaccine for it."

  Poor child, thought Patience. She was usually bright enough to understand such an obvious irony as that.

  It did not seem incongruous to Patience that she was thinking of Lyra, three years her senior, as a child. Lyra had been pampered and spoiled, and despite the evidence of her body she was not a woman yet. A thousand times in their years as children together in King's Hill, Patience had wished for just one night a year in the soft bed of one of the Heptarch's daughters. But now, seeing the poor result of a gentle upbringing, she silently thanked her father for the cold room, the hard bed, the plain food, the endless study and exercise.

  "You're right, of course," said Patience. "May I kiss you for luck?"

  Lyra distractedly held out her hand. Patience knelt before her and reverently kissed Lyra's fingertips. She had learned years ago what a soothing effect such obeisance had on Oruc's daughters. As Angel always said, Your own humility is the best flattery.

  The far door to the garden opened. A white hawk flew out the door into the open air. It immediately flew straight up and began to circle. A white songbird, already perched on a low branch, began to sing sweetly. Lyra cried out softly, hiding her mouth behind her hand, for it was obvious the hawk had seen. It plummeted downward directly toward the songbird-

  And was caught by the swift motion of a net. It struggled, but the young falconer who had caught the hawk reached deftly past the jabbing beak and brought the bird upside-down out of the net. The falconer was dressed all in white, a perfect, dazzling white that hurt the eyes when the sun was reflected in it. He whistled; the door opened behind him and two servants came out, bearing cages. In only a few seconds, the falconer had put the two birds into the cages.

  Through it all, the songbird had not missed a note.

  Obviously, thought Patience, this scene has been rehearsed so often the songbird has lost its fear of the hawk.

  Then she looked more closely and realized that, quite to the contrary, the songbird remained perfectly placid because it was blind. The eyes had been put out.

  The servants stepped back toward the door as the falconer sank to his knees in front of Lyra and began to speak in Tassilik.

  "Me kia psole o ekeiptu," he whispered.

  "So will I protect you always from the despoiler," said Patience. Her inflection was, as far as possible, a perfect mirror of Prekeptor's.

  "It was beautiful," said Lyra. "The song, and you to save the bird."

  "Iptura oeenue," said Patience, mimicking Lyra's breathless delight. "Oeris, marae i kio psolekte."

  "Oh, you sound just like me," whispered Lyra.

  Prekeptor spoke again, and Patience translated. "I have brought a gift for the Heptarch's daughter."

  He reached out his hand. A servant placed a book in it.

  "A copy of the Testament of Irena, the Starship Captain's Daughter," he said.

  He held the book out toward Patience. Patience was annoyed, since it was more proper for the suitor to ignore the interpreter and place the book directly in the hand of his intended. But perhaps in Tassali a servant was used to pass even intimate gifts between lovers. There were stranger customs.

  Lyra pretended to be thrilled when Patience gave her the book. Quietly Patience pointed out to her t
hat the pages of the book were unfinished paperleaf, which had grown in such perfectly uniform shape and size that no trimming was needed to make a perfect book. "It took great effort in breeding the paperleaf," said Patience.

  She did not point out that it was about as stupid a waste of time as she could imagine, since processed paperleaf was much better for writing and lasted longer, too.

  "Oh," said Lyra. And she managed to come up with a gracious little speech of thanks.

  "Don't think that I pride myself on my technique with plant husbandry," protested the Prince. "It has often been said that the plants and animals of Imakulata seem to understand what traits we are trying to develop, and they change themselves to cooperate. Even so I shall gladly be and do exactly what the Heptarch's daughter desires of me."

  Patience was growing uncomfortable with the way Prekeptor looked directly at her instead of at Lyra when he spoke. The interpreter is furniture; every diplomat was taught that. Except, obviously, Tassal princes.

  Prekeptor came up with another gift. It was a small glass rod, hollow and filled with flowing light. Even in broad daylight it glowed; when he shaded it under his hand, it was positively bright. Again he smiled modestly and made a little speech about his own poor skill at husbandry. "If there were any Wise left in the world, I might have done this far more quickly, by altering the genetic molecule, but as it is I turned the great shipeater weed into something quite useful." He smiled. "You can read the Testament in bed after your father has commanded you to blow out the candles."

  "I never read in bed," said Lyra, puzzled.

  "It was a joke," said Patience. "At least smile."

  Lyra laughed. Too loudly, but she was obviously trying to please the fellow. And for obvious reasons. His white clothing showed his body to be lithe and strong; his face could have been the model for a statue of Courage or Manhood or Virtue. When he smiled, he seemed to be making love with his eyes. And Lyra didn't miss any of it.

  Except that Prekeptor never took his eyes off Patience.

  And. now she realized what a dangerous game the Prince was playing.