Ruins

and mean, but that’s what Umbo was taught to expect from royals, so that wouldn’t have bothered him. In fact, it didn’t bother him. You pushed him out of the flyer, but when he got up, he wasn’t going to do anything to you. He probably wasn’t even going to complain. It was Rigg who yelled at you. It was Rigg who, apparently, was going to push you out the door after him or some such thing, which Rigg and Umbo came back to prevent.”

“Yes, and I’m still angry at Rigg for being so disloyal.”

“Disloyal! No, Param. I’m the fool who still can’t get over being loyal to you because you’re a princess, next in line for the Tent of Light. But Rigg doesn’t give a mouse’s petoot about that, because he grew up like Umbo. Rigg wasn’t being disloyal. He was being loyal. Because in our company, Umbo is the royalty. Don’t you get that? Don’t you see? In this tiny world where the only classes are shifters and non-shifters, Umbo is the first of the shifters. He’s the one that everything depended on. He’s the king.”

“He is not the king,” said Param. “We follow Rigg.”

“That’s right. Umbo is the king, but he doesn’t rule, Rigg does, because Rigg has better training, and Rigg can see the paths, so Rigg can time-shift with more accuracy, and much farther, and Rigg has all that education that Umbo would have had if Ramex had chosen him instead of your brother. Umbo should be the highest among us, but he isn’t. Rigg’s in that place, partly because you treat him that way.”

“Because he’s a—he’s one of—”

“He’s royal,” said Olivenko. “But that’s not why any of the rest of us follow him. We follow him because he’s smart and creative, because Ramex educated him to be ready for situations the rest of us aren’t prepared for, and because he doesn’t want to be boss and so his hand rests gentle on the reins.”

“He doesn’t want to lead us?” asked Param.

“It’s something that he and I have in common. Whereas you and Umbo both think you should lead, but Umbo can’t because nobody would follow him, and you can’t because you’re completely incompetent.”

Param was so stung by those words that, by reflex, she began to time-slice, becoming invisible to him. Time-slicing made her slow down relative to him, though she was walking as quickly as before. For a moment she thought he hadn’t noticed that she vanished, but no, he kept walking, kept walking; he had to know she wasn’t by him; he wasn’t going to stop and wait for her.

He isn’t going to pamper me. He isn’t going to let me control him by disappearing. He told me the truth, that’s what he did, and if I can’t take it, then too bad for me.

Param stopped time-slicing and called out to him. “Please wait for me,” she said.

Olivenko stopped and turned around. “Oh, you’re back,” he said. “Well, good. That’s good. I’m sorry I spoke so plainly. I hoped you’d have the courage to hear it, but I was afraid you might have too much arrogance to bear it.”

“Both,” said Param. “I have both.”

“But here you are,” said Olivenko. “I like you, Param. More to the point, I respect you. I’m the only one here who really understands anything about your life—and that’s only from being close to your father, and hearing him talk about you. Watching him shed tears when he talked about how helpless he was to protect you. ‘How am I even a man, when they can treat my little girl like that, and I do nothing.’ And I said to him, ‘What good will it do her if you’re dead? Because that’s what will happen if you try to stop them from treating her that way.’ And he said, ‘I would be a better father, dead because I stood between her and danger, than I am now, alive because I don’t have the courage.’ ”

“He didn’t have the power,” said Param. “And look what he did die for!”

“He died to try to cross the Wall,” said Olivenko. “And now we’ve done it. His dream, and we’ve fulfilled it.”

“Turns out not to be so much a dream as a nightmare,” said Param.

“Nightmare?” said Olivenko. “All those people—including your mother the queen, and General Citizen the dictator of Ramfold—they’re all nothing compared to us! We’re the walkers-through-walls, the world-striders! The rest of them don’t even know the world is about to be destroyed, but we’re working to try to prevent it. We’re the gods that the whole world will sing about one day.”

“They’ll get three notes into the song and the Destroyers will incinerate them,” said Param.

“Well, we only get the song if we succeed.”

“If the mice succeed, you mean,” said Param.

“Whoever,” said Olivenko. “We’ll mention the mice, of course. We’ll tell how the magical mice helped us save the world.”

Param laughed at his joke. “Yes, that’s what the People’s Revolutionary Council taught us—whoever controls the history gets to be the hero!”

“Param, I honor your office as daughter of the Queen-in-the-Tent, I can’t help that, it’s my whole upbringing. And I like you because you’re charming and when you’re not feeling sorry for yourself you’re even funny and happy and smart. But I respect you because you have had the hardest life of any of us, a life so lonely it breaks my heart to imagine it, and you lived it. Your mother was your whole world and she betrayed you—Rigg had only known her for a few months, he hardly knew her. But you thought you did.”

“Oh, I knew her,” said Param. “I wasn’t as surprised as you seem to think.”

“Not surprised, but still betrayed,” said Olivenko.

“I’m glad you respect me,” said Param. “And I’m glad you took the time to talk to me. Because I do see your point. I spoke so harshly to Umbo, not because he deserved it, but because by putting him down as a peasant, I could cling to the only value I thought I had—my royal blood. But thanks to you, I now see how worthless that is.”

“I wasn’t saying that it—”

“ ‘Worthless’ was my word, not yours,” said Param, putting her hand on his wrist so they both stopped walking. “But it’s the right word. And I see your point. I am who I am. Even though my time-slicing is a pretty pathetic talent, since it makes me so vulnerable to anybody who knows how it works, and it makes me so slow, I’m a shifter. And I’m trying to learn how to be somewhat useful, and you respect me for my efforts, and I appreciate it. That’s what I’m saying. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, my lady,” said Olivenko. Then he bowed over her hand like a courtier, and kissed it.

It was a gesture that had always been done by people who were only trying to suck up to Mother. But because Olivenko actually meant it for her, and because he was a good and wise man, and because she was, in fact, still desperately in love with him, Param was overwhelmed by it, and she burst into tears.

They walked the rest of the way through the Wall with his arm around her.

“Took you long enough,” said Rigg when they finally reached him.

“So take us back in time so we don’t waste a moment of this precious experience of Larfold,” said Olivenko. “Though as far as I can see, it looks suspiciously similar to Odinfold. Complete with the mice.”

“They’re dispersing,” said Rigg.

Umbo was striding down the slope toward them. Apparently he had had time to crest the rise and see what lay on the other side.

“Pristine wilderness as far as I can see,” Umbo reported, when he was near enough for anyone but Loaf to hear him. “But you’ll tell us if there are any human paths.” Clearly Umbo was talking only to Rigg, though Param and Olivenko stood beside him.

“No paths,” said Rigg. “Not even in the early days of the colony.”

“They took to the sea right away,” said Param. “And then they stopped talking to Larex, and we have no more of their history.”

Umbo didn’t exactly ignore her. He waited for her to finish talking, and he was listening. But he didn’t look at her once. And when she was done, he said, “There’s one thing we should be seeing, and we’re not.”

For a moment Param didn’t know what he was talking about. But then he pulled out his jeweled knife, and she realized. “No expendable to greet us.”

“There wasn’t one in Odinfold, either,” said Umbo. “But the way I see it, Larex has been without a job for eleven thousand years. He’s too busy to come chat us up when we come into his wallfold?”