Pathfinder

  Rigg had never heard of any such nonsense, but he did not doubt the truth of Shouter’s story. “Death?”

  “A slow and gruesome public death,” said Shouter. “With his body parts fed to the royal hunting dogs in front of the merchants’ guild. His family was stripped of all wealth, including the clothing of a merchant, and wearing only the loincloths and mantles of beggars they were turned loose in the street to be the prey of any.”

  “That’s not fair,” said Rigg.

  “After my great-grandfather was executed, his eldest son, my grandfather, was killed almost at once by the servants of a rival merchant—the one who had denounced his father, no doubt. Without protectors, without money or property, all the women and young boys of the family would have been forced into prostitution, the men into bonded service in the mines. Instead they were taken under the protection of the Revolutionary Council. My father was only nine. He grew up to show the Council the loyalty they deserved. I was raised on that loyalty and I feel it still. I would die to keep the royal deathworms from infesting Stashiland again.”

  He had called it Stashiland—the name of the valley and delta of the Stashik River, before the Sessamoto came from the northeast to conquer it and establish the empire. For the first time, Rigg began to understand just how deep memory could go, and how much pain could still be felt because of things that happened decades before.

  “I have never—”

  “I know you have never harmed me or anyone that way. But if your game is played at all, no matter what kind of player you are, those who would treat commoners that way will use you to seize power again. The Council is the worst sort of government—corrupt, arbitrary, self-righteous, fanatical. But they’re better than any of the alternatives. And my family owes them our survival.”

  “Well, this all makes perfect sense,” said Rigg. “If I have to die, it’s just as well to be murdered by someone whose family lost everything at the hands of people I’ve never met and never claimed to be related to, and whom I would fight against myself if they behaved that way.”

  “You’re wasting your breath,” said Shouter.

  “For my own satisfaction,” said Rigg, “may I know the real name of the man who’s going to kill me?”

  “My great-grandfather was Talisco Waybright. My grandfather was also Talisco, and my father, and I as well, though the Waybright name was stripped from us, and replaced with ‘Urine.’”

  “Not really,” said Rigg.

  “It’s a common-enough name in Aressa Sessamo,” said Shouter. “It was given to convicts, along with other colorful and degrading names. After the revolution, most of us kept those names as a badge of pride. I will not call myself Waybright again until the royal family all are dead. Though I may decide that your death is enough for me to earn the old name back again.”

  “So how do you plan to separate us so you can kill me?”

  “I’ll share no plans with you.”

  You already have, Rigg thought. Since you plan to kill me in such a way as to avoid a trial for murder, you’re going to make it look like an accident, and as proof of it, you intend to die with me. It’s a dutiful death. But I’ll pretend not to know.

  As they finished eating, soaking up the last of the soup with fresh city-made bread, Rigg looked, without seeming to, at the way the manacles were fastened. Heavy iron bands that were closed at their wrists and also attached to each other by a single lock. An easy one to pick open, as Father had taught him the mechanisms of the most common locks. Rigg assumed the leg irons were attached the same way, but the problem would be getting to them with some kind of tool while Shouter—no, Talisco Waybright—was fighting him.

  “You’re small,” Father had taught him, “and if you show no aggression, your enemies will not expect you to be bold. Most adult men will be stronger than you, but you’ll be stronger than they expect a child to be. Whatever action you take must be the final action, for you’ll get no second chance to surprise the same man.”

  The handle of the spoon was narrow enough for lock-picking, if he could figure out a way to keep it. Was there anything else? There were pens and other writing tools on shelves, but none of these would be strong enough, except the trimming knife, and there was no chance anyone would let him come near it.

  He was mentally inventorying his clothing to see if anything would do the job when suddenly Talisco shouted, “We’re done with the food!” His voice was like a sledgehammer in that small room—Rigg could certainly understand how he got his nickname. “Come get the plates before this boy steals the spoon to pick the lock!”

  So I’m not as subtle as I thought I was, Rigg said silently. Or perhaps it’s a common trick.

  The door opened and two soldiers came in. They stood at the door, watching, as a crewman gathered up the bowls and spoons.

  “I need to pee,” said Rigg.

  “We’ll bring you a jar,” said one of the soldiers.

  “Oh, that’s good, I’ll splash all over my hand,” said Rigg. He raised his manacled hand as far as Talisco would let him. “Do you think I’m going to jump into the water fastened to him? Just let me pee over the side.”

  The soldiers looked at him, then followed the crewman through the door and locked it again behind them.

  “So you’ve decided just how I’m going to kill you, is that it?” asked Talisco.

  “If you want to kill me and yourself by falling into the river with irons on, go ahead. But if you’re going to kill me later in some other way, I’d rather die with an empty bladder.”

  The clasp of his belt was the only possibility—the tongue of it was hard enough iron. But was it long enough? Could he unfasten it one-handed?—for he assumed that Talisco, under water, would prevent him from being able to use both hands. Could he then use it to pick the lock without dropping the belt? Because there was no chance he’d find it again, in the murk of the river.

  After a few minutes, the soldiers came back in and left the door standing open. Then they stepped outside.

  “You’re a royal all right,” muttered Talisco as they stood up. “Think you’re going to control everything, even your own assassination.”

  As they passed through the door, one soldier took Rigg firmly by the free arm and the other held Talisco. Other soldiers stood by to watch. They were determined that there’d be no escape attempt this time.

  As if I wanted to escape from the boat, thought Rigg. Didn’t Father tell me to find my sister? You’re taking me where I want to go. The only escape I want is from this assassin. “He’s planning to kill me, you know,” said Rigg softly to the soldier holding him. “If we have an accident, you can be sure it was murder.”

  The soldier said nothing, and Talisco’s body shuddered in silent laughter. “Do you think I’m the only one wants you dead?” he murmured.

  “Um,” said Rigg aloud to the soldier holding him. “How do you propose that I open my pants? If I’m just going to pee all over myself I could have stayed inside.”

  In answer, the soldier—never relaxing his grip—forced Rigg’s left hand down toward his crotch. There Rigg reached under his overshirt and one-handedly unfastened the belt of his trousers. They were loose enough that they dropped from his waist—but by spreading his legs widely apart, Rigg kept them from dropping right to the deck.

  “He doesn’t even have a butt,” one of the rivermen jested.

  “Silence,” said a voice that Rigg knew. General Citizen—so he, too, had come to watch Rigg pee.

  The soldier on Talisco’s side asked him, “Aren’t you going to pee, too?”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “Come on, this is your chance, we’re not going to do this again for hours.”

  “I don’t need to,” said Talisco again, a little more softly and grimly, and the soldier took the hint.

  Rigg tugged on his right hand, trying to reach it toward his crotch. Talisco yanked it back. “Use your left!”

  “I’m right-handed!” Rigg shouted back. “
I can’t aim with my left!”

  “It’s the river!” shouted Talisco. “You can’t miss it!”

  “I don’t want to get it all over my clothes!” Rigg shouted, letting his voice rise a little higher in pitch, so he sounded more like a little boy.

  “Royal bastard,” muttered Talisco, letting Rigg drag their manacled hands down toward his crotch.

  “Probably right,” Rigg murmured back. Then he deliberately aimed a stream of urine onto the back of Talisco’s hand.

  Talisco’s reflex was quick and unthinking. With a roar he snatched his hand back.

  Rigg used the momentum of his grab to propel Talisco’s own wrist, with all his own strength added, into a smashing blow of the fetter against Talisco’s forehead. That was the surprise Father had warned him needed to be enough.

  Assuming that it had been enough to stun Talisco, Rigg instantly made a great show of losing his balance, flinging his left arm free of the soldier holding him and getting behind the now-unconscious Talisco so no one else could grab the man. With another shove—disguising it as best he could by crying “help” and flailing his arms—he got Talisco’s limp body over the rail, which dragged Rigg over as part of the same movement.

  He could feel that he still had his pants, though they were around his ankles now. Before they hit the water, Rigg was doubling over to lay hands on the belt, and as they splashed into the brown stream, he was already working the tongue of the clasp into the keyhole of the lock.

  The weight of the leg irons dragged them straight down. By the time they hit the bottom of the river, Rigg’s right hand was free. He doubled over and freed his ankle.

  But that was not enough. He was not making an escape the way Loaf and Umbo had done. Nor did he want Talisco to die—if he could bring it off, he had a use for him. So he continued to hold his breath as he opened Talisco’s leg and wrist fetters, letting the iron drop. Now both of them were weighed down only by their clothes. Rigg stepped on one of his trouser-legs and pried his legs free. Then, being a strong swimmer, he dragged the limp man up to the surface.

  When his head bobbed up into the air, Rigg gasped a quick breath and then worked to get Talisco’s head above water. “Help!” Rigg cried. “Talisco’s drowning!”

  The boat had already stopped and the rivermen were poling it upstream. In moments Rigg had Talisco at the side. General Citizen sharply commanded them to forget Talisco and get the boy.

  “I’m the only thing holding him up!” Rigg shouted savagely, using his authority voice, and sure enough, the soldiers and rivermen obeyed him instinctively and took the weight of Talisco. At that point, Rigg scrambled back up onto the deck almost without assistance, so he was able to watch as they dragged Talisco over the rail and laid him on the deck.

  Talisco obviously wasn’t breathing.

  “Take that boy inside again!” ordered General Citizen.

  “Not till I get that man breathing again!” Rigg counter-ordered, and again his voice of command worked well enough that the soldiers who had been reaching for him hesitated. In that moment, Rigg flung himself onto Talisco’s unconscious body and started working on him as Father had taught all the children in Fall Ford to do.

  The rivermen had their own method, which involved turning a drowned man upside down and hitting his back with oars or poles. Apparently the victims of that process recovered often enough that the men up and down the river kept on doing it. What Rigg was doing—pressing on Talisco’s chest to eject the water and then clamping his mouth over Talisco’s and forcing air down his throat—was not something they had seen before. Some of the rivermen were shouting for him to get out of the way so they could paddle the man back to life.

  A bloody wound on Talisco’s forehead attested to the strength of the blow Rigg had managed to land on him. He wondered if the blow had already killed Talisco—but for Rigg’s purposes it didn’t really matter. As long as everyone saw him save, or try to save, the man’s life, that was the story that would be told; the blow to the head would be seen as an accident, and probably not even ascribed to Rigg, since nobody would think a stripling boy would have the strength to inflict a fatal blow.

  And they would be right—Talisco was not dead. It took only a few moments before he was coughing and sputtering and breathing on his own, in short quick gasps.

  “I’ve heard of that sort of thing,” said one of the rivermen.

  “I never have,” said another.

  “Can you teach us that, boy?” asked a third.

  But by then General Citizen was back in control, furious and anxious—and showing it, for once. “Get that boy back into the cabin!” he ordered, and this time Rigg meekly let himself be half-led, half-dragged back to his prison.

  In moments Citizen was in the room with him and they were alone together. Citizen kept his voice low as he asked, “What, by the Wall, did you think you were doing?”

  “Not escaping,” said Rigg.

  “Why not?” asked Citizen. “What’s your game?”

  “My father’s last words were for me to find my sister. If I’m really Rigg Sessamekesh, then my sister is Param Sissaminka, and I need to get to Aressa Sessamo to meet her. Since that’s where you’re going, I thought I’d stay aboard.”

  Citizen grabbed him by his drenched shirtfront and put his mouth against Rigg’s ear. “What makes you think you’ll ever be allowed anywhere near the royal family?”

  “Well, obviously I won’t be if I’m dead,” said Rigg. “But it’ll be harder to get people to believe it was an accident after this failed attempt.”

  “What attempt?” asked Citizen. “I saw what happened—you did this from beginning to end.”

  “Who else saw it that way?” Rigg shook his head. “Talisco told me he planned to kill me, make it look like an accident, and convince people by dying himself in the process. All I did was rush the process and turn it to my own advantage.”

  Citizen seemed genuinely dumfounded. “He told you?”

  “He told me that it was his duty. He assumed that’s why you manacled the two of us together, so he could pay for having let Loaf and Umbo get away by dying as he murdered me.”

  “I gave no such order,” said Citizen.

  “Of course you didn’t,” said Rigg. “You ordered us into irons and he took it from there.”

  “I mean it was not what I wanted. Are you really that stupid?”

  “How stupid do you mean?” asked Rigg. “I think I just did rather well. I took down a man twice my weight and strength, got free of the irons, and saved him from drowning.”

  “Very theatrical. I’d applaud, but the men listening outside would think I was hitting you.”

  “Maybe you’re of the royal party—the royal male party—or maybe you were testing me. It’s beyond my knowing. But I believe Talisco meant to kill me, whether it was your plan or not. And I didn’t intend to die without meeting my sister.”

  “Your sister,” said Citizen. “Not your mother?”

  “It was my sister that my father spoke of. For all I know, Param Sessaminka is not my sister, and Hagia Sessamin is not my mother. But he said my sister was in Aressa Sessamo so that’s where I’m going. And if anything happens to me now, the story of Talisco and me going into the water will be told in a different way—as your first attempt to have me killed.”

  “I do not want you dead, you fool. I want you alive.”

  “Then don’t manacle me to fanatical anti-monarchists.”

  Citizen let go of him and crossed to the other side of the room as the boat lurched to one side, staggering them both. “You may be sure I won’t,” said Citizen.

  “When we get there,” said Rigg, “let me see the royal family. Let me stand beside them. If there’s no resemblance, then the whole idea of passing me off as the male heir is done with, whether you’re in favor of such a thing or not.”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?” asked Citizen.

  “I know you’re not.”

  “I saw your father, bo
y. You look just like him. And enough like your mother, too, that everyone will know at a glance you’re the real thing.”

  Rigg didn’t bother pretending that this opinion didn’t affect him. “Couldn’t my father—the man I called my father—couldn’t he have chosen a baby that he thought might grow up to resemble—”

  “You don’t resemble them,” said Citizen. “You’re not similar to them in some vague way. Anyone who knew your father will know that you’re his son. You’re not an imposter, though I’ll never say that to anyone else on this boat. Is that clear?”

  Rigg shivered. “I suppose you won’t be willing to let me wear some of the dry clothing that I no longer own in the trunk that isn’t mine.”

  Citizen sighed. “As I told you, no official verdict has been rendered. You have the use of the clothing you bought in O. I’ll have something dry sent in. But no more belts.”

  “I won’t need them, if you don’t put me back in irons.”

  Citizen stalked toward the door, then paused there. “You’ll be peeing in a little pot for the rest of the voyage.”

  Rigg smiled. “I told you, General Citizen. I want to go to Aressa Sessamo, and I want to go with you. The only way I’d leave this boat is dead.”

  “I believe you,” said the general. “But you’re staying in here so that some other volunteer assassin doesn’t try to get at you.”

  “What will you do to Talisco?” asked Rigg.

  “Hang him, probably,” said Citizen.

  “Please don’t,” said Rigg. “It would make me feel like all my work saving his life was wasted.”

  “He won’t thank you for it,” said Citizen.

  “He’s always free to kill himself,” said Rigg. “But I don’t want his blood on my hands—or on yours, for my sake. Remember what you saw, sir. He never lifted his hand to kill me, even if he planned to do it later. He committed no crime.”

  “He committed the crime of stupidity while under my command,” said Citizen.

  “Oh my,” said Rigg. “They’re handing out the death penalty for that these days?”