“That’s what I’m used to calling it,” said Rigg impatiently. “You do that thing, and I’ve got a sledgehammer and as they’re stepping toward us, ready to beat us up, then one by one I smash them in the knees. Every single one who takes a step toward me.”
Umbo was smiling. “I bet after a couple of them fall over screaming with their knees all bent the wrong way, the rest hop away like ebbecks.”
“And we don’t get beaten up after all,” said Rigg. “So actually we’re perfectly fine.”
Umbo laughed. “It’s better than revenge, because we stop them before they do it in the first place!”
“The only thing I don’t get is how it could possibly work,” said Rigg. “The only reason we’d be doing it is because they beat us up. But then afterward, we can’t remember why we attacked these guys, because we don’t have a bruise and they never laid a hand on us.”
Umbo thought about that for a while. “I don’t mind that,” he said. “Who cares if we remember? We’ll just trust ourselves that we wouldn’t do that kind of thing unless we had a good reason.”
“But if all we remember is smacking people with sledgehammers, and never the reason why…”
“Well, don’t worry about it,” said Umbo. “With any luck they’ll kill us, so we won’t be able to go back in time and stop them, and so we won’t remember anything cause we’ll be dead.”
“That eases my mind,” said Rigg.
Then something dawned on Umbo. “You remembered growing up without any stories of the Wandering Saint, right? So you still remembered the way things were before you changed things in the past.”
“And you didn’t.”
“I think that’s convenient,” said Umbo. “One of us will remember how it was before we changed things, and the other one will remember the way it went after we changed it.”
Something still bothered Rigg about Umbo’s analysis, if he could only figure out what it was. “So let’s say we get beaten up, like I said. I don’t forget the part about getting beaten up. So I remember all the things we did after getting beaten-how we hid, how somebody nursed us back to strength, and then how we went back to the place and got even. But you don’t remember. All you remember is the new way, where they almost beat us up but some of them fall over with their knees broken and the rest run away. So… you didn’t go anywhere to recover from your injuries, because you never were hurt. So in this new story, where you didn’t have to recover from injuries, what did you do instead? And why did you end up coming back with me to prevent something from happening, when you don’t remember it happening at all? It’s just impossible.”
“Here it is,” said Umbo. “We both do both things. Only right at the moment where you break their knees, you lose one memory and I lose the other.”
“It still doesn’t work,” said Rigg, “because if we both see the bad guys fall over and we walk away, then we have to somehow do the things we did before so we end up at the place at the right time to break their knees. How will we know when that is?”
Umbo leaned over and started beating his forehead softly against the table. “I’m so hungry I can’t think.”
“And it’s too cold in here to sleep,” said Rigg.
“And we’ve still got the ability to change the past together, only whatever we do, we just figured out that it can’t be done.”
“And yet we do it,” said Rigg.
“We’re like the most useless saints ever. We can do miracles, only they’re pretty worthless.”
“We can do what we can do,” said Rigg. “I won’t complain about it.”
“Remind me why we didn’t go back in time and rob enough people in the past that we could afford passage on a downriver boat?”
Rigg lay down on the floor. “Ack! It is cold.”
“So get back up on the chair where it’s warm.”
“We’re going to die in this room,” said Rigg.
“That solves all our problems.”
The door opened. A woman almost as large as the taverner came in carrying two bowls with spoons in them.
“Speaking of saints,” said Umbo, “here’s one with the miracle of food.”
“I’m no saint,” said the woman. “Loaf will tell you that.”
“Loaf?” asked Rigg, smelling the stew and staring at the bowls. She set them down on the little table and Rigg and Umbo instantly sat down.
“Loaf is my husband,” she said. “The one who locked you in here instead of throwing you and your money out into the street the way I would have.”
“His name is Loaf?” asked Umbo, his mouth already full.
“And my name is Leaky. You think those names are funny?”
“No,” said Rigg, stopping himself from laughing. “But I do wonder how you got them.”
She leaned against the wall, watching them shovel in the food. “We came from a village out in the western desert. Our people name their babies before the next sundown, and they pick the name because of what we do or look like or remind somebody of, or from a dream or a joke or any damn thing. And we have to keep that name until we earn a hero name, which almost nobody ever manages to do. So Loaf looked like a big loaf of bread, somebody said, and I drooled and puked and peed in a continuous dribble of something so my father started calling me Leaky and he wouldn’t let my mother change it on my naming day, and I’ve beaten about a hundred people into the ground for laughing at my name. Do you think I can’t handle you?”
“I have a deep abiding faith that you can,” said Rigg, “and I’ll do my best not to earn a beating. But I have to wonder, when you came here why didn’t you change your name? Nobody in these parts knew you, did they?”
“You think we’re the kind of folks to start out in a new place by lying to everybody?”
“But it wouldn’t be a lie if you changed your name. Then you just say, ‘My name is Glorious Lady,’ and since that now is your name, it isn’t a lie.”
“Anybody calling me Glorious Lady is a liar, even if it’s my own self,” she said. “And you’re getting closer to that beating every time you open your mouth. Next time just put food in it.”
Rigg had food in his mouth the whole time he was talking, chewing and swallowing in the pauses, but he knew what she meant.
“You’re sleeping in here tonight,” Leaky announced. “I’m going to bring you some blankets.”
“A lot of blankets, I hope,” said Umbo.
“Plenty, compared to sleeping outdoors on a night like this. Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the past few weeks?”
“But we don’t like it,” said Umbo.
“I don’t mind,” said Rigg.
“And I don’t care what you like or don’t like,” said Leaky.
“I like this soup,” said Umbo.
“It’s stew,” said Leaky. “Trust a privick not to know the difference.” As she left, she relocked the door behind her. They buckled down to the serious business of eating every scrap of food they could see.
As they neared the bottoms of their bowls, they slowed down enough to talk a little.
“I’m still hungry,” said Umbo, “but my stomach is packed solid and I can’t fit anything in.”
“That’s how you get fat,” said Rigg. “Eating even after you’re full.”
“I guess I just remember being hungry so clearly that being full doesn’t wipe out the hunger.”
“If the people of Fall Ford named babies the way Loaf’s and Leaky’s village did, I wonder what your name would have been,” said Rigg. “‘Turdmaker’!”
“Yours would be ‘Crazy Baby.’”
“The craziness didn’t show up till later,” said Rigg. “Mostly since knowing you.”
True to her word, Leaky returned quite soon and seemed surprised that they had already finished eating. She held up their bowls and made a show of looking for some trace of the stew. “If you barf because you ate so fast, make sure you keep it all on the blanket or I’ll have you scrubbing the puke off the floor till it smells like fresh-cut lumber in here.”
“It smelled a lot worse than puke when we got here,” said Umbo. “We’d be improving it.”
“It’s the only reason I’d ever be glad you came here. Strip off those filthy traveling clothes before you get into these blankets. And I mean all of them.” With that she left again. Again they heard the door lock-but only just
