embankment, and then lying down in thick bushes.
He did not even slow down-but he drifted to the far side of the road. And as he got closer, he was able to recognize the path. It was the same one he had followed down Cliff Road, and had seen again behind the boy who faced Nox in the doorway of her house.
“Umbo!” called Rigg. “If you plan to kill me, then come ahead and try. But don’t wait for me in ambush. That’s a coward’s way, an assassin’s path. I didn’t mean to let your brother die, I truly meant to save him.”
Umbo rose up among the bushes. “I’m not here to kill you,” he said.
“You seem to be alone,” said Rigg, “so I believe you.”
“My father banished me,” said Umbo.
“Why?”
“I was supposed to keep Kyokay out of trouble.” There was a world of misery and shame in the words.
“Kyokay was too big for you to control,” said Rigg. “Your father should know that. Why didn’t he watch him?”
“If I said that to my father…” Umbo shuddered.
“Come down out of the bushes,” said Rigg. “I don’t have much time to stay and talk. I have to get as far as I can before dark.” He didn’t bother to explain that he could find his path as easily by night as by day.
Umbo half slid, half stepped down the slope. He fetched up on the road at a jog, and came to a stop right in front of Rigg. They were about of a size, though that would probably change-Father had been very tall, and Umbo’s father was no giant.
“I’m going with you, if you’ll let me,” said Umbo.
Umbo had tried to get Rigg killed with his accusations back at Nox’s house. And now he wanted to be Rigg’s traveling companion? “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You know how to live and travel on your own,” said Umbo. “I don’t.”
“You’re not going as far as I am,” said Rigg.
“Yes I am,” said Umbo. “Because I have nowhere at all to go.”
“Your father will relent in a day or two. Just linger at the fringes of town until he comes looking for you to apologize.” Rigg remembered the time when, drunk, Tegay the cobbler had threatened to kill Umbo the next time he saw him. Umbo and Rigg had both believed him-they were about five years old-and so they fled into the woods on the west bank of the river. It wasn’t six hours before Tegay came out of his house and hollered, then pleaded for his son to come home.
“Not this time,” said Umbo, no doubt remembering the same event. “You didn’t hear him. You didn’t see his face when he said it. I’m dead, he said. His son Umbo died at the falls along with the brother he was supposed to take care of. ‘Because my son would have done all he could to save his brother, not watched another boy try to do it and then accuse him falsely of murder.’”
“So you’re saying it’s somehow my fault that your father threw you out?”
“Even if he changes his mind,” said Umbo, “I can’t stay here. I spent my whole life worrying about Kyokay, watching out for him, protecting him, hiding him, catching him, nursing him. I was more father to him than Father ever was. More mother to him than Mother was, too. But now he’s gone. I don’t even know why I’m alive, if I don’t have him to keep watch over. His constant chatter-I never thought I’d miss it.” And he began to cry. He cried like a man, his shoulders heaving, and sobs almost howls, his cheeks flowing with tears and making no effort to hide them. “By the Wandering Saint,” Umbo finally said. “I’ll be a true friend to you, Rigg, though I was false to you this very day. I’ll stand by you always, in everything.”
Rigg had no idea what to do. He had seen mothers and fathers comfort crying children-but those had been little kids, crying eye-rubbing baby tears with little hiccupy sobs. A man’s tears needed a man’s comfort, and as Rigg thought back to any experience that might show him what to do, Umbo came out of it himself.
“Sorry for letting go like that,” said Umbo. “I didn’t know that was going to happen. Thanks for not trying to comfort me.”
What a relief, thought Rigg. Doing nothing happened to be exactly the thing to do.
“Let me come with you,” said Umbo. “You’re the only friend I have.”
And it occurred to Rigg that with Father dead and Nox left behind, Rigg had no other friend than Umbo. If he truly was Rigg’s friend.
“I travel alone,” said Rigg.
“Now that’s just stupid,” said Umbo. “You’ve never traveled alone, you were always with your father.”
“I travel alone now.”
“If you can’t have your father, you won’t have any companion?”
Then, as Father had trained him, Rigg thought past his feelings. Yes, he was hurt and angry and grieving and filled with spite and bitter at the irony of Umbo now asking him for help, after nearly getting him killed. But that had nothing to do with deciding the wisest course.
Will Umbo be trustworthy? He always has been in the past, and he seems truly sorry for accusing me falsely.
Does Umbo have the stamina for the road I travel? He doesn’t have to. I have money enough to stay at inns if the weather turns bad.
Will he be useful? Two strong young striplings would be much safer on the road than one boy alone. If there came a time they needed to keep watch at night, there’d be the two of them to divide the task.
“Can you cook anything?” asked Rigg. “I can always catch some animal we can eat, but… meat begs for seasoning.”
“You’ll have to do it,” said Umbo. “I’ve never cooked meat.”
Rigg nodded. “What can you do?”
“Put a new sole on your shoes, when you wear a hole in them or the stitching comes out. If you provide me with the leather and a heavy needle.”
Rigg couldn’t help but laugh. “Who brings a cobbler along on a journey?”
“You do,” said Umbo. “For the sake of the old days, when I kept the other boys from throwing rocks at you for being a wild boy from the woods.”
It was true that Umbo had looked out for him when they were much smaller, and Rigg was seen as a stranger among the village children.
“No promises,” said Rigg, “but you can start the journey with me and we’ll talk about how well or badly it’s working at the end of each day.”
“Yes,” said Umbo. “Yes.”
Rigg strode boldly into the great stream of ancient paths that flowed up and down the road like a river going both ways at once. Rigg thought of what he had seen at the top of Stashi Falls-how everything had slowed down and the paths had become people rushing by. Now he understood that all these paths still contained a vision of the real person passing, a vision that could become real. Now he was plunging into that flow of people up and down the road, swept onward with half the current and yet at the same time fighting his way upstream against the other half.
“Are you in a rush?” Umbo asked when he caught up and began to jog alongside Rigg. “Or have you changed your mind and you’re deliberately leaving me behind?”
Rigg slowed down. He had merely been walking as fast as he and Father always did on every journey, but few adult men and no boys Umbo’s size could match the pace without real exertion. Umbo was strong and healthy, only a little smaller than Rigg, but he was a cobbler’s son, a village boy. His legs had never tried to cover distance this way before, taking long strides every hour, day after day.
Rigg almost answered as heartlessly as Father always had: “Keep up if you can, and don’t if you can’t.” But why should he speak like Father? Rigg had always resented his utter unwillingness to make any concessions to Rigg’s age and size.
So instead of giving a snippy, cold answer, Rigg simply slowed down and walked at Umbo’s version of a brisk pace.
They said very little for the two hours until dusk obscured the path. The silence felt wrong-and when Rigg realized it was because in times past Kyokay had always been with them, keeping up a stream of chatter, it felt even more wrong.
At last, though, it was dark enough that while Rigg could still find his way among the paths, Umbo could
