The song broke up the banquet as the grief they had all pretended to feel now burned within them. Many went home weeping; all felt the great loss of the man whose ashes dusted the bottom of the urn.
Only Riktors stayed at the table after Ansset's song was over.
Now, Ansset said, they'll never forget Father Mikal.
Or Mikal's Songbird, Riktors said. But I am Mikal now, as much of him as could survive. A name and an empire.
There's nothing of Father Mikal in you, Ansset said coldly.
Is there not? Riktors said softly. Were you fooled by Mikal's public cruelty? No, Songbird. And in his voice Ansset heard the hints of pain that lay behind the harsh and unmerciful emperor.
Stay and sing for me, Songbird, Riktors said. Pleading played around the edges of his voice.
I was placed with Mikal, not with you Ansset said. I must go home now.
No, Riktors said, and he reached into his clothing and pulled out a letter. Ansset read it. It was in Esste's handwriting, and it told him that if he was willing, the Songhouse would place him with Riktors. Ansset did not understand. But the message was clear, the language unmistakably Esste's own. He had trusted Esste when she told him to love Mikal. He would trust her now.
Ansset reached out his hand and touched the urn of ashes that rested on the table. I'll never love you, he said, meaning the words to hurt.
Nor I you, Riktors answered. But we may, nonetheless, feed each other something that we hunger for. Did Mikal sleep with you?
He never wanted to. I never offered.
Neither will I, Riktors said. I only want to hear your songs.
There was no voice in Ansset for the word he decided to say. He could only nod. Riktors had the grace not to smile. He just nodded in return and left the table. Before he reached the doors, Ansset spoke to him.
What will you do with this?
Riktors looked at the urn where Ansset rested his hand. The relics are yours. Do what you want. Then Riktors Mikal was gone.
Ansset took the urn of ashes into the chamber where he and Father Mikal had sung so many songs to each other. Ansset stood for a long time before the fire, humming the memories to himself. He gave all the songs back to Father Mikal, and with love he reached out and emptied the urn on the blazing fire.
The ashes put the fire out.
23
The transition is complete, Songmaster Onn said to Songmaster Esste as soon as the door to the High Room was closed.
I was afraid, Esste confided in a low melody that trembled. Riktors Ashen is not unwise. But Ansset's songs are stronger than wisdom.
They sat together in the cold sunlight that filtered through the shutters of the High Room. Ah, sang Song-master Onn, and the melody was of love for Songmaster Esste.
Don't praise me. The gift and the power were Ansset's.
But the teacher was Esste. In other hands Ansset might have been used as a tool for power, for wealth. Or worse, he might have been wasted. But in your hands--
No, Brother Onn. Ansset himself is too much made of love and loyalty. He makes others desire what he himself already is. He is a tool that cannot be used for evil.
Will he ever know?
Perhaps; I do not think he yet suspects the power of his gift. It would be better if he never found out how little like other Songbirds he is. And as for the last block in his mind-we laid that well. He will never find his way around it, and so he will never learn or even search for the truth about who controlled the transfer of the crown.
Songmaster Onn sang tremulously of the delicate plots woven in the mind of a child of five, of six, of nine; plots that could have unwoven at any time. But the weaver was wise, and the cloth has held.
Mikal the Conqueror, said Esste, learned to love peace more than he loved himself. So will Riktors Mikal. That is enough. We have done our duty for mankind. Now we must teach other little singers.
Only the old songs, sighed Songmaster Onn.
No, answered Songmaster Esste, with a smile. We will teach them to sing of Mikal's Songbird.
Ansset has already sung that song, better than we could hope to.
They walked slowly out of the High Room as Song-master Esste whispered, Then we will harmonize! Their laughter was music down the stairs.
JOSIF
1
Kya-Kya's arms were too thin. She noticed it again as she touched the keys on her computer terminal; if she ever had to use her arms to lift something quite heavy, they would break. I am not meant to bear burdens, Kya-Kya reminded herself. I don't look like a substantial person, which is why I am forced into such insubstantial work.
It was a rationalization she had tried before and never more than half believed. She had graduated from the Princeton Government Institute with the fourth highest score in the history of the school; and when she tried to find work, instead of being flooded with prestigious job offers, she found herself forced to choose between a computer-pumping job at the Information Center in Tegucigalpa and a city manager's position on some Godforsaken planet she couldn't even find on the starmaps. It's an apprenticeship, her adviser had told her. Do well, and you'll rise quickly. But Kya-Kya sensed that even her adviser didn't really believe it. What could she hope to do well in Tegucigalpa? Her job was in Welfare, the Department of Senior Services, the Office of Pension Payments. And it wasn't an imperial office-it was planetary. Earth, of all places, which might be the capital of the universe but was still a provincial backwater at heart.
If Kya-Kya could once convince herself that she had not been given a better position because of some wrong impression she gave, of weakness or incompetence or un-dependability, she could then believe that, by her proving that she was strong and competent and dependable, her situation might improve. But she knew better. At the Songhouse it had been the Deafs and, not quite so much, the Blinds who had had to take a second- or third-class role in the community. Here on Earth, it was the young, the female, the gifted.
And while youth would take care of itself, there was nothing she particularly wanted to do about being female- changers were even more heavily discriminated against. And her gifts, the very things that could make her the most valuable to government service, made her an object of envy, resentment, even fear.
It was her third week there, and it had finally come to a head today. Her job took, at best, a third of her time- when she slacked. So she began to try (on the assumption that she needed to prove her competence) to find out more about the system, to grasp the overall function of everything, the way all the data systems linked together.
Who programs the computers? she innocently asked Warvel, the head of Pensions.
Warvel looked annoyed-he did not like interruptions. We all do, he said, turning immediately back to his desk, where figures danced across the whole surface, showing him exactly what was going on at every desk in his office.
But who, persisted Kya-Kya, set up the way it works? The first programming?
Warvel looked more than annoyed. He stared at her intently, then said savagely, When I want a research project on the subject, you'll be the person I appoint. But right now your job is taking inflation tables and applying them to classes of pensions for the budget year starting in only six months, and when you're here at my desk, Kyaren, it means that neither you nor I is doing his job!