But it weighs on me now. It chafes me, like a bad-fitting uniform. I'm a terrible emperor, aren't I?
You're good enough, answered Esste, so long as you don't interfere with those who are willing to bear the burdens.
Riktors looked out the window to where the clouds were coming in over the forest.
Already my shoes are full?
They aren't your shoes, Riktors, Esste said. They're Mikal's, You filled them, and walked awhile in them. But now they don't fit-as you said. You can still serve. By staying alive and putting in an appearance now and then, you can keep the empire unified. While the others make the decisions you don't care to make anymore. Isn't that fair enough?
Is it?
What use do you have for power now? You used it once, and nearly killed everything you loved.
He looked at her in horror. I thought we didn't discuss that.
We don't. Except when you need a reminder.
And so Riktors lived in his rooms in the palace, and amused himself as he pleased, and put in public appearances so the citizens would know he was alive. But all the business was carried on by underlings. And gradually, as the year went on, Esste withdrew herself from the business, failed to attend the meetings, and the Mayor and Kyaren ruled together, neither of them strong enough yet to rule alone, both of them glad that ruling alone wasn't necessary.
Healing Riktors as much as he could be healed was only part of Esste's work. There was Efrim, in a way the easiest; in a way the hardest.
He was only a year old when his father was taken from him and lulled, but that was young enough to feel the loss. He cried for his father, who had been tender and playful with him, and Kyaren could not comfort him. So it was Esste who took him, and sang to him until she found the songs that filled the boy's need. But I won't be here forever, said Esste, and he must have someone to replace his father.
The Mayor was not slow to catch on, and he turned to Kyaren. He's around the palace, and so am I. I'm convenient, don't you think? So that before Esste had been there six months, Efrim was calling the Mayor Daddy, and before Esste left the palace, Kyaren and the Mayor had signed a contract.
I always call you Mayor, Esste said one day. Don't you have a name?
The Mayor laughed. When I took on this duty, Riktors told me that I had no name. 'You've lost your name,' he said. 'Your name is Mayor, and you are mine.' Well, I'm not really his now, I suppose. But I've got used to having no other name.
So Efrim was healed, and Kyaren with him, almost by accident. Oh, there was none of the passion she had known with Josif. But she had had enough of passion. There was something just as strong and just as comforting in shared work. There was not a part of her life that she didn't share with the Mayor, and there was not a part of His life that he did not share with her. They periodically got quite irritated with each other, but they were never alone.
But all these healings, of Riktors, of Efrim, of Kyaren, of the empire-they were not Esste's most important work.
Ansset refused to sing.
As soon as the hysteria had ended, and he was rational again, she had tried to hear his voice. Songs can be lost, she said, but songs can be regained.
I have no doubt of it, he said. But I have sung my last song.
She did not try to persuade him. Just hoped that, before she left, she could see a change in his view.
There were changes, certainly. He had always been kinder than Riktors, and so the suffering that purged him of all his hatred did not strip him of his personality. He laughed quite soon, and played happily with Efrim as if he were a younger brother, imitating Efrim's baby speech perfectly. I feel like I have two children, Kyaren said one day, laughing.
The one will grow up sooner than the other, Esste predicted, and Ansset did. In only a few months he was interested in the matters of government. He was one of the few people in the palace who had been there under both Riktors and Mikal. He knew many people that the Mayor and Kyaren did not. More important, he was much better than Esste in understanding what people had to say, what they really meant, what they really wanted, and he was able to answer them the way they needed in order to leave satisfied. It was the remnant of his songs that had made him a good manager of Earth. Now, in the absence of the emperor and as Esste withdrew herself more and more from government, Ansset began to take the public role, meeting the people Riktors could not be trusted to meet, the dangerous ones that Kyaren and the Mayor were not sure they could handle.
And it worked well. While Kyaren and the Mayor remained virtually unknown to the rest of the empire, Ansset was already as famous as Riktors and Mikal themselves had been. And though no one ever again heard him sing in the palace as he had before, he was still called the Songbird, and the people loved him.
Yet he was not really happy, despite his cheerfulness and hard work. The day that Esste left, she took him aside, and they spoke.
Mother Esste, let me go with you, he said.
"No, she answered.
Mother Esste, he repeated, haven't I stayed on Earth long enough? I'm nineteen. I should have gone home four years ago.
Four years ago you could have gone home, Ansset, but today you can't.
He pressed his face into her hand. Mother, I found you only days before I left the Songhouse; this is the first year I've spent with you. Don't leave me again.
She sighed, and the sigh was a song of regret and love that Ansset heard and understood but did not forgive. I don't want regret. I want to go home.
And what would you do there, Ansset?
It was a question he had not thought of, probably because he knew in secret that the answer would hurt, and he tried to avoid pain these days.
What would he do there? He could not sing, and so he could not teach. He had governed a world and helped to rule an empire-would he be content as a Blind, running the small business affairs of the Songhouse? He would be useless there, and the Songhouse would be a constant reminder to him of all that he had lost. For in the Songhouse there was no escaping the songs: the children sang in all the corridors, and the songs came from the windows into the courtyard, and whispered in the walls, and vibrated gently in the stone underfoot. Ansset would be worse off than even Kyaren had been, for she at least had never sung and did not know what it was she lacked. Better for the mute to live among other mutes, where no one would notice his silence and he would not miss his lost voice.
I would do nothing there, Ansset said. Except love you.
I'll remember that, she said. With all my heart.
And she held him close and cried again because she was leaving-in front of Ansset she had no need of Control.
Before I go, there's something I want you to do for me.
Anything.
I want you, she said, to come with me to see Riktors.
His face set hard, and he shook his head.
Ansset, he isn't the same man.
All the more reason not to go.
Ansset, she said sternly, and he listened. Ansset, there are places in you that I can't heal, and there are places in Riktors that I can't heal. His wounds were torn by your song; your injuries were made by his interference in your life. Don't you think that what I can't heal, you might be able to heal?