Wyrms Page 5

  "How sad, if he believes that everyone who says they love and serve him willingly is a liar."

  "Kings have found they live longer when they assume the worst about their subjects. They don't live more happily, but they tend to die of old age rather than the abrupt disease called treachery."

  "But Angel, Father will not live forever. Who will he think is my hostage, then?"

  Angel said nothing.

  For the first time, Patience realized that there was a good chance she would not outlive her father by many years. Patience was the daughter of his second wife, whom he had married late; he was near seventy now, and not in the best of health. "But Angel, all the reasons the Heptarch has now for not killing me will still be in force then. If all the religious fanatics think I'm to be the Mother of Kristos-"

  "Not just the fanatics, Lady Patience."

  "What will it do to the legitimacy of his rule if he kills me?"

  "What will it do to the legitimacy of his children's rule if he does not? He can keep you under control, but when he dies, you'll be young, at the peak of your powers. And now he knows that you are a dangerous assassin, a clever diplomat, with a powerful will to survive.

  It will be dangerous to Korfu, perhaps to the whole world, if he kills you; it will be dangerous to his family if he does not. Look for an assassin in the days following your father's death. If all goes well, your father will know he is dying soon enough to send me away. You are expected to know how to deal with any assassins and get out of King's Hill. At sunset on the day of your father's death, meet me here, at the School. I will have a way to get you out of the city."

  They walked among clusters of students. The nonsense being spouted by the sophists on every side seemed a bitter contrast to the thought of her future after her father died. "And where will I go?" asked Patience. "I'm trained for the King's service. If he's trying to kill me, I can hardly do that."

  "Don't be such a fool. Lady Patience. Never for an instant were you trained for the King's service."

  In that moment, Patience's understanding of her whole life up to now turned completely around. All her memories, all her sense of who she was, what she was meant to become, changed. I am not meant to advise and serve a King. I am meant to be the King. They do not mean me to be Lady Patience. They mean me to be Agaranthemem Heptek.

  She stopped. People walking behind them pushed past.

  "All my life," she said, "I have learned to be loyal to the King."

  "And so you should be, and so you shall be," said Angel. "Walk, or the spies who frequent this place will overhear us, and we're speaking treason. You are loyal to King Oruc for the very good reason that for the good of Korfu and all human nations at this time, he should remain as Heptarch. But the time will come when his weakness will be fatal, and then for the good of Korfu and all human nations, you will need to assume the throne and bear the scepter of the Heptarchy. And at that day. Lady Patience, you will be ready."

  "So when Father dies, I go to Tassali and raise an army? Invade my own land and people?"

  "You'll do what is necessary for the good of the whole people at that time. And by that time you will know what that good must be. It has nothing to do with what is good for you or your kin. You know that your duty comes before any private emotion or loyalty. That is why King Oruc does not really hold you or your father hostage. If the good of the King's House required either of you to take an action that would certainly result in the death of the other, you would not hesitate. That is true magnanimity, to love the whole, and therefore to love no part greater than the whole. A daughter no more than a stranger, where the good of the King's House is concerned."

  It was true. Father would let her die, if the good of the King's House demanded it. Angel had first said it to her when she was only eight years old. On the day of her formal baptism, he took her out King's Creek to the Binding House on Lost Souls' Island-the King's private and loyal monastery, not that nest of sedition at Heads House in Crossriver Delving, where the priests prayed openly for Oruc's death. As Angel rowed the boat, he told her that Father would certainly let her die and make no effort to save her, if it was for the good of the King's House. It was a cruel thing, and she felt it like a knife through her heart. By the time her baptism was over, however, and they were again on the water returning to King's Hill, she made her decision. She, too, would have greatness of heart. She, too, would learn to love the King's House more than her own father. For that was the way of it. If she was to become like her father, she would have to reject her love for the old man. Or, perhaps, merely keep it in abeyance, to be discarded easily if it were ever necessary for the good of the King's House.

  Despite that decision, though, she still longed, just once, to have the opportunity to speak freely and fearlessly with Peace. Even now, walking through the School with Angel, speaking to him about her greatest fears for the future, she was keenly aware that he was not her father.

  She did not want to discuss anymore what would happen when Father died. So she rattled on for an hour about everything that had happened in the garden of Heptagon House, and later, in the King's chambers. She explained how she had unraveled the puzzles. She even repeated almost verbatim the strange doctrines that Prekeptor had set forth about her destiny.

  "Well, as far as it goes," said Angel, "he tells a reasonably true story. The Wise were playing with genetics in a way never before possible. They had developed living gels that read the genetic code of foreign tissues and mirrored the genetic molecule in slowly shifting crystals on the surface. It enabled the scientists to study the genetic code in great detail, without any magnification at all. And by altering the crystals in the gel, the tissue samples could also be altered. Then they could be implanted in the host's reproductive cells. It was a similar technique that kept your father from having a daughter for so many years. And a similar technique that changed him back, so you could be born."

  Patience answered scornfully. "So God didn't like them meddling with the mirror of the will, and took them away?"

  "The mirror of the will, the triune soul-you shouldn't scoff at it, even if you have decided to be a Skeptic. This religion has lasted pretty well over the years, and partly because some of the ideas work. You can live with the triune soul as a model for the way the mind works. The will, contained in the genetic molecules-why not? It's the most primitive part of ourselves, the thing that we can't understand, why we finally choose what we choose- why not put it in the genes? And then the passions-the desire for greatness on the one side, and all the destructive desires on the other. Why not put them in the limbic node, the animal part of the brain? And the identity, the sense of self, that is our memories, the cerebRuin, all that we remember doing and seeing, and what we conceive it to mean. There's a certain power in conceiving your own self in that way, Patience. It allows you to separate yourself from your memories and your passions, to impose discipline on your life. We are never deceived into believing that either our environment or our desires cause our behavior."

  "More to the point. Angel. What happened to Prekeptor, with or without his religion?"

  "He was sent home. Though I must tell you that you put the fear of God in him."

  "He was already trembling with it."

  "No, that was the love of God. Fear was your contribution.

  They had to wash his clothes after he saw you slit your own throat. All his sphincter muscles released."

  She let herself laugh, though it wasn't kind to be amused. Still, he had been so fervent that she couldn't help laughing to think of the crisis of faith he must have had, to see the Mother of God apparently dying before Kristos could make an appearance.

  They stayed in the city for hours, talking and playing until the sun set behind Fort Senester in Gladmouth Bay.

  Then Angel took her home, to see her father.

  Never before had he looked so old and frail to her. A strange hollow look to his eyes, a sunken look to his skin- He was wasting. She was only thirteen years ol
d, and her father was already beginning to die, before she ever had a chance to know him.

  He was stiff and formal with her, of course; deliberately, so she would be sure to know that this was for an audience, and not particularly for her. He commended her, commented on her behavior, criticizing freely some of the things she had done that she knew perfectly well he approved of completely.

  And when it was over, he handed her a slip of paper.

  On it was the name of Lord Jeeke of Riismouth, a marcher lord, one of the Fourteen Families. She was to visit him with her tutor as part of an educational tour of the kingdom. Lord Jeeke was to die no sooner than a week after she left, so that no one could connect her with his death.

  It was surprisingly simple. The journey took three days. On her first night there, she shared a wine glass with Lord Jeeke, which was filled with a nonhuman hormone that was, by itself, harmless. Then she infected Jeeke's mistress with spores of a parasitic worm. The spores were passed to Jeeke through intimate contact; the hormone caused the worms to grow and reproduce rapidly.

  They infested Jeeke's brain, and three weeks later he was dead.

  She was already back in King's Hill when the news reached them. She wrote letters of condolence to Jeeke's family. Father read them and patted her shoulder. "Well done, Patience."

  She was proud to have him say so. But she was also curious. "Why did King Oruc want him dead?"

  "For the good of the King's House."

  "His personal pique, then?"

  "The King's House isn't Heptagon House, Patience.

  The King's House is all the world."

  "For the good of the world? Jeeke was a gentle and harmless man."

  "And a weak one. He was a marcher lord, and he had neglected his military duties. The world was more pleasant because he was a good man. But if his weakness had led, as was likely, to rebellion and border war, many would have died or been left crippled or homeless by the war. For the sake of the King's House."

  "His life against the possibility of war."

  "Some wars must be fought for the good of the King's House. And some must be avoided. You and I are instRuinents in the hands of the King."

  Then he kissed her, and as his mouth rested by her ear he whispered, "I'm dying. I won't live three years.

  When I die, cut into my left shoulder, midway along and above the clavicle. You'll find a tiny crystal. As you live, cut it out and keep it, whatever the cost." Then he pulled away and smiled at her, as if nothing strange had been spoken.

  You cannot die, Father, she cried out silently. In all my life we've never spoken. You cannot die.

  She performed four more assassinations for King Oruc, and a dozen other missions. She turned fourteen, and then fifteen. And all the while Father waited back in King's Hill, growing weaker and older. On her fifteenth birthday he told her she didn't need a tutor anymore, and sent Angel away to be overseer of some lands he held outside the city. Patience knew what it meant.

  Not long after, Father woke up too weak to get out of bed. He sent the nearest servant to fetch a physician, and for a moment they were alone. Instantly he handed her a knife. "Now," he whispered. She cut. He did not even wince from the pain. She took from the wound a small crystal globe, beautiful and perfect.

  "The scepter of the Heptarchs of Imakulata," he whispered.

  "The Usurper and his son never knew what or where it was." He smiled, but in his pain his smile was ghastly. "Never let a gebling know you have it," he said.

  A servant came in, realizing they had been left alone too long; but she came too late and saw nothing, for towels covered the slightly bleeding wound, and the tiny amber-colored globe was in Patience's pocket.

  Patience fingered it, pressed on it as if to squeeze some nectar from it. My father is dying. Father is dying, and the only thing I have from him is a hard little crystal I cut from his flesh, covered with his blood.

  Chapter 4. FATHER'S HEAD

  THE HEADSMAN STOOD OUTSIDE THE DOOR AS patience waited for her father to die. He lay on the high bed, his face grey, his hands no longer trembling. Yesterday, the day before, as word of his final disease spread through King's Hill and down into King's Gift and High Town, a steady stream of visitors had come to say good-bye, to receive a final benediction. They all murmured some excuse to Patience as they left: We were friends in Balakaim. He taught me Dwelf. But she knew why they came. To touch, to see, to speak to the man who should have been Heptarch. There was blessing in the breath of the dying King.

  Now Patience, who had heard nothing but wisdom and brilliance from him all her life, watched the old man's lips move in the forms of two dozen languages, babbling the empty phrases of courtesy that had been his stock in trade. It was as if Peace had to purge himself of all the words of grace before he died.

  "Father," she whispered.

  The door opened suddenly. The headsman peered inside.

  "Not yet," she said. "Go away."

  But the headsman first waited until he saw Peace's hand move a little. Then he closed the door again.

  Father lifted his hand to touch his collarbone, where a small wound was still unhealed.

  "Yes," she said. His memory was going.

  He murmured.

  "I can't hear you," she said.

  "Patience," he whispered. She was not sure if he was saying her name or giving her a command.

  "Father, what should I do now? How should I use my life, if I can keep it?"

  He murmured.

  "I can't hear you, Father."

  "Serve and save," he said in Dwelf. And then, in Gauntish, "The King's House."

  "Oruc will never let me serve him as you did," she said in Geblic.

  He answered in Agarant, the common speech, which the headsman could surely understand. "The King's House is all the world." Even as he died, he had to make sure that the story of his loyalty reached Oruc's ears. Patience saw what it was for: so Oruc would begin to doubt that Peace ever was disloyal to him. Let him wonder if he misjudged the both of us all along.

  But Patience knew it also had another meaning for her.

  Even though in her life she might never bear the title, she nevertheless had the Heptarch's responsibility. She was to serve the world. She was to have universal magnanimity.

  "You taught me to survive," she whispered. "Not to be a savior of the world."

  "Or a sacrifice," said his breathless lips.

  Then his lips were still, and his body shuddered. The headsman heard the squeak of the bed and knew. He opened the door and came in, the headpot in his left hand, the long wire of the scalpel in his right.

  "Miss Patience," he said, not looking at her, "its best you not watch this."

  But she watched, and he could not stop her, since he had not a second to lose if he was to have the head alive.

  The scalpel was nothing but a coarser and stronger version of Patience's own loop. He passed it around her father's neck and locked the end of the wire in place.

  Then he whipped left and right, severing all the loose flesh and muscle instantly. It took a moment longer to work the wire through the cartilage and nerves between the vertebrae. Peace had been dead scarcely ten seconds before the headsman lifted the old man's head by the lower jaw and laid it gently in the headpot.

  The headpot rocked a few moments as the gools that lived inside jostled for position on the veins and arteries of the open throat. They would keep the head alive until it could be installed in Slaves' Hall.

  Of course they did not leave her the body, either. Lord Peace may have been the King's ambassador in life, but in death his body was the corpse of the Last Pretender, and if the priests of Crossriver Delving or Lost Souls'

  Island got their hands on it, there'd be no end of trouble.

  So the diggers took him away to the King's Boneyard, and she was alone in the house.

  She wasted no time-Father had told her long ago how dangerous would be the moment of his death. First protect secrets, he had always taught her.
He had never kept many written documents. She found them all in moments and without hesitation she quickly burned them and raked the ashes into dust.

  Then she took the tiny amber globe that had dwelt in her father's flesh and swallowed it. She wasn't sure whether the crystal it was made of could survive the process of digestion, but she didn't know what it was or how to implant it in her own body, and she didn't want it found if she were searched.

  She had already prepared her traveling bag. It was filled with the tools of survival. Masks and makeup and wigs, money and jewels, a small flash of water, pellets of sugar. Not much, so it wouldn't encumber her. But enough. Her weapons were concealed in the open, where she could reach them easily. The loop in her hair. The glass blowgun in the cross that hung fashionably between her breasts. The poison in a plastic pellet between her toes. She was ready to survive, had been ready throughout the deathwatch, knowing the Oruc would surely arrange for her to die at the same time as her father, if not of the same disease.

  She waited. The house was empty, the servants gone.

  They had been there, watching, spying all her life. If she had harbored any hopes that Oruc would let her live, the absence of the servants dispelled them. He wanted no witnesses, especially not witnesses whose tongues were professionally loose.

  There was a knock on the door. It was the bailiff. It would be the bailiff, then-he was one of the many King's slaves trained to kill at the King's command. He apologized and presented her with papers of eviction.

  "It's a house for a King's slave, Miss Patience," he said, "and the King's slave is dead, you see." He stood between her and the other rooms of the house; she would not be allowed to take any of her belongings, he explained.

  They had known it would be this way, of course.

  Angel had taken everything of consequence with him some time ago. She would get it when she left King's Hill and joined him.

  She smiled graciously and walked slowly toward the door. The bailiff made no sound that she consciously heard, nor was there a shadow. Perhaps it was the faintest trembling in the stone floor, or the slightest pressure of moving air on her hair. Without knowing how she knew, she knew that he was about to kill her. She lurched to the right, shifted her weight, and twisted and kicked all in a smooth motion. The bailiff had just begun to lunge with the dagger he held in his left hand, and now he had time only to show the surprise on his face as her foot caught him in the knee, bending it sideways.