barely, as it was so noisy out in the common room.
“She likes us,” said Umbo.
“I know, I could feel it too,” said Rigg. “She’s really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children.”
“Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew.”
“They were delicious.”
Rigg stripped off his clothes and even though he really was cold now, he had the promise of the blankets to encourage him. There was such a great pile of them that he wouldn’t have to curl up with Umbo to stay warm. That would make a nice change, because out in the woods, Umbo had moved around a lot in his sleep, leaving them both to wake up freezing cold five times a night.
The door opened.
“Hey, we’re naked in here!” protested Rigg. Umbo just dragged a blanket up to cover himself.
As Leaky set down a chamber pot, she said, “Don’t splash when you use this, and for the sake of Saint Spider, keep the lid on tight when you’re done or I’ll never get the stink out of this room.” She set a basket of large leaves beside the pot. “These go inside the pot when you’ve used them.”
“We’re from Fall Ford,” said Umbo. “That far upriver, sheeshee don’t stink.”
“You just don’t notice, sleeping with the pigs like privicks do.” She closed the door and locked it again.
They took turns using the chamber pot and when they were done they both agreed that a tight-closed lid was an excellent idea.
“I liked those leaves,” said Umbo. “Way more comfortable than any we used in the woods.”
“I’ll make it a point to find out what tree they come from and pull one along behind us in a big pot on wheels.”
Rigg spread out his blanket, folded it double thick, and then covered himself with two more while Umbo did the same. The light of the Ring came through the high window, which had apparently been angled for just that purpose. There were no branches above them to block it out.
“The leaves outside made for softer sleeping,” said Rigg.
“But there are no stones jabbing me,” said Umbo. “And no bugs or snakes or other vermin crawling all over me.”
“So far,” said Rigg.
He waited for Umbo’s retort-something like “If I don’t see them, I don’t care”-but Umbo said nothing at all.
Can you believe it? thought Rigg. Umbo’s already asleep. And in that moment, so was Rigg.
CHAPTER 6
Leaky and Loaf It was still two days before the jump into the fold when Ram suddenly found himself strapped into his chair. The expendable was kneeling in front of him, looking up into his eyes.
“Was I asleep?” asked Ram.
“We jumped the fold, Ram,” said the expendable.
“On schedule and I simply don’t remember the past two days? Or early?”
“We generated the seventh cross-grain field,” said the expendable, “and the fold came into existence four steps earlier than predicted.”
“Was it the fold or merely a fold?” asked Ram.
“It was the fold we wanted. We’re exactly where we were supposed to be.”
“What a convenient error,” said Ram. “We inadvertently trigger fold creation four steps early, and yet it still takes us to our destination.”
“All the folds, all the cross-graining of fields, everything we did was polarized, so to speak: It always pointed us exactly where we wanted to go.”
“So spacetime, naughty as it was, suddenly got the idea and leapt ahead of us?”
“We got ourselves caught in the midst of a stutter,” said the expendable. “We were trying to avoid that because we didn’t know what would happen to us in a stutter-most of the computers predicted the ship would be sectioned or obliterated.”
Ram had been scanning all the reports from every part of the ship. “But neither happened. We’re still intact.”
“More than intact,” said the expendable.
“How can you be more than intact?” asked Ram. • • • The floor was hard and the room was cold, but Rigg awoke feeling more comfortable than he had in many days, and he burrowed down into the blankets to see if he could sleep a little longer.
“They took our clothes,” said Umbo.
Rigg opened one eye. Umbo, wrapped in a blanket, was sitting on a chair looking glum in the dim light eking its way down through the shutterblind.
“Probably having somebody wash them,” said Rigg.
Then he realized that if their clothes were gone, it meant someone had come into the room without waking them. They could have taken anything. Rigg bounded up from his blankets and searched for his pack. It was right where he had left it, and the money was where he had tucked it when he undressed.
“Not thieves,” he said.
“Well, we knew that,” said Umbo.
The key sounded noisily in the lock. Was it that loud last night? Not with the noise from the common room to drown it out. But when someone came and took their clothes?
Leaky came in, not bringing breakfast, not carrying clean clothes. She merely stood there looking coldly at them. “Wrap yourselves in something and come with me. Right now.”
Rigg didn’t know what to make of her attitude. She seemed furious, and yet also much more respectful than she had been last night. She averted her gaze as they rearranged their blankets to cover themselves a bit more securely, then stood aside for them to pass through the door.
The common room was empty except for Loaf, who stood behind the counter, propping himself on it with straight arms. In front of him a white cloth was spread. At the end of the counter was a pile of rags that Rigg immediately identified as his own and Umbo’s unwashed clothing.
As he came nearer, Rigg saw something on the cloth sparkle in the light from the half-shuttered windows. Large gemstones, of different colors. Eighteen of them.
“Where’s the light blue one shaped like a teardrop?” asked Rigg.
Leaky walked beyond him to the pile of clothes and slid it toward the middle of the bar. “Find it yourself, saints know we didn’t take it.” Rigg began at once examining the waistband of the trousers-which had been neatly sewn closed again in each spot where a stone had been.
Loaf’s voice was a low growl when he spoke. “What do you mean, having such wealth on you, and talking poor as you did?” Like his wife, Loaf was angry-and yet he was also deferential.
“Asking for our charity,” added Leaky, “when all the time you had that.”
“We didn’t ask for your charity,” said Rigg, “we offered you money-too much money, if I recall.”
“And acted like you were afraid of running out of it,” said Leaky sullenly, “which you couldn’t do if you live to a hundred.”
Rigg worked his fingers along the waistband of the trousers on the counter. He found where the light blue gem had been sewn, and there it was indeed, though harder to feel because it was also involved with a vertical side seam, which thickened the cloth over it. He pulled it out and laid it on the cloth. There was no reason to hide it now. If Loaf and Leaky were thieves, they wouldn’t be laying out the stones, they’d be pretending they knew nothing about them. If they had even allowed Rigg to wake up alive.
“It’s my inheritance from my father,” said Rigg. “He said I should take it to Aressa Sessamo and show the stones to a banker there.”
“Inheritance?” asked Loaf, looking wary. “If your father had wealth like this, why do you dress so poor?”
