They all held whatever bags and extra clothing they meant to take with them. It wasn’t much.
And this time, Umbo didn’t have to push. He and Rigg instead pulled together, shifting themselves and their friends all at once, leaving no anchor in the future they had just left.
The hill was teeming with mice, except in the spot where they arrived. Mice were so thick on the ground in every direction that it was easy to see the edge of the Wall, because mice were arrayed right up against the spot where the Wall’s despair was first clearly noticeable.
“I’m letting the Wall down now,” said Rigg.
The mice seemed to sense at once that it was gone, and they surged forward, down and across the little vale. It took hours for the mice all to go through the Wall. Umbo sat and watched the undulating sea of mice until they were gone. We are servants of the mice. We have opened a door for them. Does it even matter now whether we cross into Larfold?
It matters to Rigg and Param—their father died here. And to Olivenko, because Knosso was his mentor and his king. Maybe Loaf cares. But I’m just a tool of the mice, or the tool of the Sessamids, or Loaf’s surrogate son.
No, I can’t think that way anymore. These are my friends. It’s my choice to go with them, to help them do the things that matter to them.
“Please come with us,” said Rigg.
Umbo looked at him, startled. Did he know what Umbo was thinking?
“Of course I will,” said Umbo.
“You’re free to do whatever you want,” said Rigg. “I couldn’t have done this without you, so I’m glad you were with me. But now it’s done. You never asked to be in the business of saving the world.”
Umbo was moved. “You think it’s a monopoly of the royal family?” The words could have sounded harsh, but Umbo said them with a grin.
“The Sessamids?” Rigg chuckled. “From what I know of family history, we don’t save worlds, we take over what other people have built and slowly wreck it.”
“Pretty much describes my old dad,” said Umbo. “Except when he worked with shoes.”
“We Sessamids make no shoes,” said Rigg. “I want you with me, Umbo. I need your help. But if you choose not to come, I won’t resent it. How many times do people have to die because they came with me?”
“So far death hasn’t interfered with my life as much as you’d think,” said Umbo. “I’m in.”
“Let’s go, then,” said Rigg, and he held out a hand.
Umbo took it, bounded to his feet, and side by side they walked briskly toward the Wall, with Param, Loaf, and Olivenko following at a slower pace.
CHAPTER 19
Royal
“I’ve been trying to figure out why everyone was so angry with me,” said Param as they walked through the Wall. Umbo and Rigg were far out of earshot ahead of them.
Loaf grunted.
“Any progress?” asked Olivenko. “Have you thought that pushing Umbo out the door might have been part of it? Not to make any suggestions.”
“Don’t be sarcastic with me,” said Param.
“I think he was being delicate and respectful,” said Loaf. “If I had said that, it would have been sarcastic.”
“I shouldn’t have pushed him,” said Param.
“We’re making progress,” said Loaf.
“Someone else should have done it,” said Param. “I shouldn’t be reduced to protecting the name of the royal family myself.”
“The royal family that tried to kill us all back in Ramfold?” asked Loaf. “The royal family in which the queen tried to murder her own children while she bedded General Citizen?”
“Leadership comes naturally to some people. Look at Rigg and Umbo. Raised in the same village. But Rigg is a natural leader, and Umbo is . . .”
“A peasant boy,” said Loaf. “I think that’s what you called him, when you accused him of being a liar.”
“I never accused him of—”
“I have perfect recall now,” said Loaf. And when he quoted her own words back to her—“And we’re supposed to take the word of a peasant boy?”—his voice sounded astonishingly similar to her own. All the intonations were exactly right.
“I didn’t suggest that he was lying,” said Param. “I merely said that it was unreasonable to expect someone like me or Rigg to take the word of a peasant boy as if it were indistinguishable from fact.”
“So you studied the history of the wallfolds for nearly a year and you’re still as ignorant as ever,” said Loaf.
Instead of time-slicing to get away from Loaf, Param slowed down and let him move on ahead. But Olivenko stayed with her, walking at her slower pace.
Param could feel the hideous music of the Wall playing with the back of her mind, making her angry, sad, despairing, lonely, anguished; but not the way it was the first time she had experienced the Wall, not overwhelming, not terrifying. “Are you going to criticize me, too?”
“You were raised to rule,” said Olivenko.
“Or so my mother said,” Param replied. “I have no idea when her plan for me changed, but my education, such as it was, never changed. You don’t announce to the cattle that you’re going to slaughter them.”
“You were raised with courtly manners,” said Olivenko. “You heard people talking in elevated language, observing the courtesies.”
“As Rigg does,” said Param.
“But the expendable Ramex trained him to be able to do that.”
“Exactly.”
“So you and Rigg were taught to behave in a certain way. You were given skills. But how was Umbo raised?”
“As a peasant boy,” said Param. “I didn’t say it was his fault.”
“He was the son of a cobbler in a small village. He attended the village school. In that school, he was taught the history of Stashiland. He was taught that the royal family were rapacious monsters, who came to Aressa as uncivilized barbarians from the northeast. They killed most of the ruling class of Stashiland, and raped the few women of that class that they allowed to live, after killing their children, so they could ‘start fresh.’”
“I’ve read the history. I’m not proud of our origins. But that was many hundreds of years ago.”
“Not so very many,” said Olivenko. “And Umbo wasn’t taught that history as a distant memory, to be ignored or glossed over. He was taught it as if it was a fair description of the way the Sessamids have always ruled in Stashiland.”
“And that’s a lie,” said Param.
“So there was no murderousness when Aptica Sessamin decreed that no male could inherit the Tent of Light and had all her male relatives executed like criminals, for the crime of being male? Including the male babies?”
“That was ugly,” Param admitted. “But it was a long time ago.”
“Your mother’s grandmother,” said Olivenko. “I’m not arguing with you, I’m reminding you of what Umbo was taught. The People’s Schools taught children that everybody had the right to rule, when their turn came, and nobody was better by birth than anyone else.”
“Obviously false.”
“By birth,” Olivenko repeated. “By lineage. Umbo was taught that just because your mother was powerful didn’t mean you had any more right to that power than anyone else. He was taught that power had to be earned, and that if you showed merit, you could become anything.”
“But that’s not how the People’s Republic worked at all,” said Param with contempt. “I saw how those hypocrites pretended everything was so egalitarian as they promoted their relatives and friends and established a whole new class of nobles.”
“I’m reminding you of what Umbo was taught in Fall Ford at the base of the Stashi Falls,” said Olivenko. “So all of a sudden, his boyhood friend—a boy who was even lower in social standing than Umbo, remember, because he lived a wandering life as a trapper’s son—his boyhood friend has a bag of jewels and starts talking like a lord. That came as a shock, you can imagine.”
“Rigg was coming out of his disguise, coming into his heritage,” said Param.
“Coming to prison as fast as the People’s Republic could arrest him, is that what you mean?”