Or has Rigg decided to claim the throne as firstborn child of Knosso Sissamik and Queen Hagia Sessamin?
Why not the Rebel Queen? Had something happened to Param? Or was this one of the places that preferred a King-in-the-Tent to a Queen?
But no, that wasn’t why it all seemed wrong to Umbo. This whole thing was not possible because as long as there was a timeshaper in the world, this would not be allowed to stand. All of them were friends of Loaf’s. Once they learned what Haddamander Citizen had done, one of them would have gone to Loaf and Leaky and warned them to take their son and flee.
Umbo’s first thought had been that Loaf, with his facemask, must have been the person who, serving the Rebel King, had given rise to the stories of Captain Toad. But the only way Loaf could have traveled back in time to lead raids against Haddamander Citizen would have been with the help of a timeshaper, and any timeshaper would already have prevented the deaths of Leaky and her firstborn son.
So Captain Toad could only have been Rigg. Descriptions of his facemask would match Loaf’s well enough to explain the soldiers’ certainty that they had found their man. It would not excuse what they did, but it would explain why Loaf was targeted for retribution.
Umbo understood it all now, or enough of it. Now it was time to set about undoing this disastrous outcome. If he could save his reckless younger brother, he could save his most beloved friends.
Someone came to the door of the carpenter’s shop. The carpenter nodded.
Fearing a trap, Umbo whirled around. But it was only a woman. By no means old enough to be the carpenter’s wife. She held a bundle under one arm.
Not a bundle. A baby. Wrapped so as to look more like a package than a child.
“You have to take him,” said the carpenter.
Umbo said nothing.
“The soldiers didn’t know about their second child,” said the carpenter softly. “Leaky couldn’t nurse, so the boy was at Dariah’s house during the roadhouse working hours. Only the older boy was home, because he was early weaned. We’ve kept this little one safe and not a soul has breathed a word, but he’s a danger to us all the same.”
“Why are you telling me?” asked Umbo. “How can you trust me?”
“Do you think I don’t know you?” asked the carpenter. “So many times you stayed with Loaf and Leaky.”
“In the old days I did,” said Umbo. “But as I said, not for—”
The carpenter grew fierce. “If I was going to betray you, it would have been King Haddamander’s men, and not Dariah at the door. We know who the Rebel King is, Queen Param’s husband, the true master of Stashiland. The bane of the Sissaminka. I’ve said it. If you have to kill me now, do what you must. But take this child, the last that’s left of Loaf and Leaky. And then go on until you bring down this evil king and serve him as he served Loaf and Leaky and their older boy.”
So I am the Rebel King. But how do they know it? What have I been doing during these years? How could my face be known to them? Or how could they guess that the boy who periodically stayed with Loaf and Leaky was now the Rebel King?
If they know, others know. General Citizen must have learned of the connection between me and Loaf—that was why they died, not because of mistaken identity.
But now, this baby. How could Umbo explain that he didn’t need to take the baby, that he would merely go back in time and prevent the murders in the first place?
Then again, how could he know that if he went back and warned them, it might not prevent the birth of this child after all. They might have some child, but once they left Leaky’s Landing, as they surely would, their second child would not be conceived at the same time, and the same sperm was unlikely to fertilize the egg. Umbo would save Loaf and Leaky, and might save their firstborn, if he had already been conceived, but this child would never come into existence.
Umbo reached out his hands and took the child. The baby was not a newborn, as he had expected—but of course he wasn’t, Leaky had been killed nearly half a year ago, and so the newborn had grown since then. “Not weaned?” asked Umbo.
“You’ll have to find somebody,” said the woman, Dariah. “He’s a good baby. Sleeps well. Eats hearty.”
“You’re willing to let him go?” asked Umbo.
“To save his life? How could I say I love him if I did otherwise?”
The baby regarded Umbo steadily. There was intelligence in his gaze, but no fear and yet also no particular eagerness to please.
“What’s his name?” asked Umbo.
“Do you dare to use it?” asked the old carpenter.
“I should know it, all the same,” said Umbo.
“They were strange folk,” said Dariah. “Their own names were proof of that. So I guess nobody was surprised when they named their first boy Round, the name of a shape. And then they named this one Square. But I’ve never called him that.”
“What do you call him?” asked Umbo. “What name has he heard?”
Dariah looked embarrassed. “Well, because his father was named Loaf, you see. I just started calling him Biscuit. Not a name, just a pet name, a silly play name.”
“It’s the name he knows. I’ll call him by neither one for now, but I’ll remember both, and one day he’ll know.”
“I think you’d better go,” said the carpenter. “There are spies in this village, as in all villages. You were no doubt seen coming here, and I know Dariah and the baby would have been seen. They might know all about this baby, and it might be bait for a trap.”
Umbo thought of going back out on the road with a baby in his arms, walking the mile or so back to the copse where he had made the jump in time. If there really was a trap, there was a chance of an arrow out of hiding. Even if he and the baby were uninjured, he might have to make a jump in time right in front of would-be captors. If he and the others had kept the secret of time-shifting all this time, it would be a shame to let it be discovered by their enemies.
“I know a way of escaping,” said Umbo, “that won’t require me to go back out on the road.”
The carpenter nodded. Dariah’s eyes grew a little wider. And brighter.
“We’ve heard that you can disappear, sir,” she said. “Go invisible, like smoke in a high wind.”
“I don’t want you to see what happens,” said Umbo. “You should have a look of honesty in your eyes when you say, ‘The boy who visited here only asked questions about Loaf and Leaky, and then he left, I don’t know how or where he went.’”
“They’ll ask about the baby,” said the carpenter.
“Dariah, everyone knows you were wet-nursing for someone,” said Umbo. “Can’t you say the family sent for the baby and you gave it back?”
“We’ll say something,” said the carpenter. “You pay no heed to that, it’s our affair. With luck nobody saw you or Dariah today, and there’ll be no questions.”
“I hope you don’t end up paying a price for this,” said Umbo.
“Put Queen Param in the Tent of Light in her mother’s place, and your own skinny buttocks on King Haddamander’s horse, and it will be worth whatever price we pay,” said the carpenter.
“St. Silbom care for the baby, and the Wandering Saint bless you on your road,” said Dariah. Then she bent and kissed the baby again.
“Stay here and chat together for a while,” said Umbo. “Perhaps share some bread, so there’s a reason for you to have lingered here. I’ll go out through the back room.”
“I keep that door locked against thieves,” said the carpenter.
“Then you must have locked it again after I left,” said Umbo. “If anyone asks.”
What Umbo wanted to ask was for a time, not long after the moment when Umbo took his walk away from Leaky’s roadhouse, when nobody would be present in this shop, so he’d have a safe moment to jump back to undiscovered. If he had Rigg’s and Noxon’s gift, he could look for paths and pick a time when the carpenter stepped out. Instead, he’d have no choice but to guess and hope he picked a good moment. If he guessed wrong, then he’d jump again so quickly that the observer wouldn’t know for sure what he had seen, if anything at all.