"What kind of diversion can you creater, Father asked doubtfully.
In answer I opened my shirt and showed them my chest. "Do you remember what grew here when you sent me away, Father?"
He remembered.
"It will never grow back. The Schwartzes cured me, as I told you. If they could manage that, don't you think they could teach me other things as well?"
Saranna's hand brushed down my chest, like the dream I had lived through a hundred nights on the Singer ship.
"Let's go," I said.
They led me up the stairs and ramps and corridors that would take us to the postern gate. They left me in the window well over the palace door, where, if I could have seen, I would have scanned the courtyard before the postern gate in the palace walls. As it was I could see shapes, dimly; though torches were only bright sparks of light, I could see the flames dance.
There was so much dead rock around that I was hampered, but I soon found the voice of the rock. Much was new; the soil, unlike the sand, had too much life in it. It was a barrier, not a channel. But at last I found the voice of the living rock. I explained my purpose, I asked for help, and the rock complied.
I couldn't really see it happen. I could only hear the grinding of dead stones as the earth heaved under them and cast them from their piles onto the ground. There were shouts as the men from the postern gate ran to the breach in the wall. The earth kept heaving, and some were thrown to the ground. Others foolishly ran too close to where the walls were dancing, where great blocks of stone toppled from their place and crashed into the earth.
I lowered myself from the window and walked the other way, toward the water gate. Saranna and Father and four soldiers leading seven horses waited in the shelter of a wall.
"What did you do?" Father asked, in awe. "It was like an earthquake."
"It was an earthquake," I said. "Just a little one. Big ones take a committee." Then I strode toward the gate. In the gathering light of predawn I could see again, though things were blurry, and with relief I noticed that the gate was unguarded-- the soldiers had run off to the breach in the wall.
Unguarded, and so we passed through, Father and Saranna first, and then the soldiers. Which is why I was last and still unarmed when Dinte emerged from the shadows.
I saw the glint of torchlight reflected in steel. "How unequal we are," I said. "A mark of your courage."
"I wanted to have no doubt of the outcome," he said.
"Then you should have picked a different target," I answered. It was a simple thing to make sweat and oil seep out of his hands, so the hilt became slippery.
He trembled; he couldn't hold the sword; it slipped out of his hand, and he looked at it there on the ground, horror in his eyes. He tried to pick it up. It slid again from his fingers. He rubbed his palms frantically on his tunic, leaving dark stains. Did he think he could dry his hands that easily? He tried again to pick up the sword, this time with both hands. He cradled it, then tried to lunge at me; I easily slapped it out of his hands. And this time it was I who picked it up.
It would have been pure justice if I killed him, but he was screaming for help and he was my father's son, so I merely slit his throat from ear to ear and left him silent and bleeding on the ground. He'd regenerate and recover, as I had from the same wound more than a year ago. But at least he'd know that next time when he came for me, held have to bring some friends.
I passed through the gate, still holding the sword, and mounted the horse they held for me. I said nothing of my reason for delay. If Father had heard Dinte's voice, if he guessed what had happened inside the gate, he said nothing about it.
We rode north all day, and at night came to a military outpost that had once guarded Mueller's northern frontier in the old days, when Epson had been powerful and Mueller a peaceful farming Family with some strange breeding practices. The outpost was run down, but a quick count made me estimate three hundred or more horses, which meant there'd be as many men at least.
"Are you sure they're friends?" I asked.
"If not, we haven't much hope anyway," Father answered.
"Either way, it would be better if you had this sword, and not I."
I handed it to him. He looked at it and nodded. "Dinte's."
"He'll recover," I said.
"Too bad," Saranna said gruffly.
"Maybe he'll do us a favor and die on his own," I said. But I was sure the wound was one he could recover from.
Then we were at the outpost gates and the soldiers let us in and cheered Father, and he explained (very roughly) that it was an imposter and not I leading the Nkumai. I don't know how many believed him. But they were courageous men and loyal to Father; most cheered and none protested.
"You're brave," he told them, "brave and worthy, but three hundred men are not enough." He ordered them to go back to their homes and bring as many loyal men as they could find. Wisely, he urged them not to mention that I was with him. Let them rally to the king, not to someone most would surely think of as a traitor.
As the three hundred soldiers rode out to bring an army to us, we changed horses for the fifth time that day and rode on north into the darkness.
"You must have been planning this for months," I said.
"We weren't planning on you," Father said, "but we knew that sometime soon I'd have a crisis with my dear younger son and would have to be free to call on the loyal troops. We planned for contingencies."
Dissent had already set for the second time that night when we finally stopped at a farmhouse well off the road. The house was right at the bank of the Sweet River. The wind was cool out of the eastern hills that led to Ku Kuei. The fire in the hearth was hot and fierce, and the host forced us to eat soup before held let us go to bed.
The bodyguards slept on the ground floor. And when the host showed me to my room, Saranna was already on my bed, waiting for me.
"I know youre tired," she said. "But it's been a year."
As she undressed me I looked out the window onto the rolling wheat-covered hills to the east, where the sun rose out of Ku Kuei, and I felt the breeze playing across my body while Saranna tickled me (nothing forgotten, not even now), and I smelled the reek of horseflesh in my own clothes and the fresh whitewash the host had used a week ago, and it was good to be home.
After three weeks it was clear that ours would be an unnoteworthy rebellion. We had eight thousand soldiers, loyal to the core and some of the finest fighters in the kingdom. But Father's treasury fed them and armed them to no avaiclass="underline" Rumors came, which soon were verified, and we knew our cause was lost. Dinte had signed a treaty with the Nkumai. Now there were 120,000 men against our tiny army. Father and I might have been better generals, but there are limits to what a general can do.
What hurt us worst, however, was the fact that the Nkumai, apparently from the day I was captured, had put their duplicate Lanik into cold storage and started publicly declaring that I had indeed been with them, but had been captured by Mueller forces and was now a defector with my father's army. And as soon as they started that story going, they ended the policy of wasting the land, claiming that the destruction had been entirely my idea and they were grateful to be able to quit.
It did nothing to make me popular or my story of twin believable, and troops weren't exactly flocking to my banner. We tried to conceal the fact that I was with Father, but some stories can't be kept secret.
So there we were with eight thousand men, a full treasury, and not one choice except to run away. Of course the Nkumai and dear Dinte chose that moment to join forces on the north side of the Mueller River and head straight for us.