“Good,” said Mother.
That was when Rigg sensed the paths of three of the intruders converge on Flacommo in the garden. At first he thought they had come to him for instructions. Then his path abruptly lurched forward, and the intruder’s paths followed, and then Flacommo’s path stopped and the intruders moved even more quickly away from him.
“Flacommo is dead,” said Rigg. “Or at least unconscious, but I think dead.”
“Oh,” said Mother. “Poor Flacommo. He loved this house. He bought it so I could live here with him. A place of refuge for me-but not for him.”
“We have to go, Mother. Whoever these intruders are, they’re violent men with murder on their minds.”
“Rigg, if they wanted me dead, they could have killed me in my sleep a thousand times,” said Mother.
“You mean the spies in the walls?” asked Rigg. Only then did he realize that the spy on duty was not moving; his path still led to the exact spot where it had come to rest the night before. Was he asleep? And still asleep, even though they were talking? They spoke softly, but audibly enough. Heavy sleepers did not make good spies.
Rigg had expected some kind of attack ever since he’d been here, but in his mind it was either a mob or the army or the city guards, storming the house and either killing everyone in sight-that would be the mob-or quickly taking control of the royal family. But these intruders were still moving so quietly that no one but Rigg himself-and, of course, Flacommo, if he wasn’t dead-had firsthand knowledge they were there.
“They’re coming directly toward your room now,” said Rigg. “Don’t you think this would be a good time for us all to leave?”
“No,” said Mother. Why was she so nonchalant? “This isn’t like previous times, Mother. They killed Flacommo.”
“Sometimes it seemed that he was my only friend.” Not grieving, merely wistful.
“If you don’t care about your own safety, what about Param? What about me?”
“I care very much about you. I want you both right here in the room with me.”
He almost told her then-that Param was not in the room, not invisible. Param was already well inside the secret passages that only the two of them knew about. They had spent the past weeks exploring the whole system, finding how every door worked. It was a luxury for Param, to be unseen and yet able to move at a normal pace and hear all that was being said. Her invisibility had been a curse of a gift, cutting her off from everyone and everything except Mother. Now she could move throughout the house, spying on everyone-spying on the spies.
But apparently she hadn’t told Mother, and if Param had decided not to confide in her about this, Rigg was not going to disobey that decision.
Besides, it was now too late. The intruders were coming along the corridor and if he tried to leave, there’d be a chase, and he doubted Mother would be able to keep up. He couldn’t imagine her running full tilt, not because she was old or feeble but because she always moved with such dignity.
Why didn’t she say, “I’m going to stay, but you go ahead, Rigg”? Isn’t that what a mother would do? Or like a bird, why didn’t she drift out into the corridor and decoy them away from Rigg? Maybe because he wasn’t really a son to her, having been a stranger until a few months ago; maybe because in fact she thought he should have been killed at birth.
But shouldn’t she be steering them away from Param, whom she believed to be in this room? Or did she count on Param’s invisibility to protect her?
Nothing Mother was doing-or rather, not doing-made any sense at all. It’s as if she welcomed the coming of the intruders. But how could that be, if the first thing they did was to kill Flacommo? There was no need to kill him, regardless of what happened inside his house today. Flacommo was no danger to anyone.
The spy behind the wall still did not move. It wasn’t natural for someone’s path to have no movement at all- some wavering to show the normal small movements that everyone made. For the first time it occurred to Rigg that the spy might be dead. But there was no path leading to him since his shift began. Could he have been poisoned before he came, and then died there?
Param was moving through the passages on a path that would lead to the other side of Mother’s room, where there was a secret door. They had found the mechanism but had never tried it, for fear that opening it would leave some trace-a scratch on the floor, a seam in the wall-that would show Mother that the door existed. Again, without discussing it, both of them had decided not to tell Mother. Rigg had assumed it was because they were both protecting her from a further erosion of her sense of privacy; but now he realized that it was because neither of them trusted her enough to let her know about the passages.
Mother knew these intruders were coming. She knew who they were, whom they served, and what they intended to do. That’s why she was not afraid. She knew she would not be harmed.
Well, why didn’t she say so? “We’re all safe, Rigg.” Simple enough words, but she didn’t say them.
Was it because she thought he would know if she was lying?
Rigg scanned the perimeter of the house, and then beyond, looking for more intruders. If this was not a mere assassination team, then there must be more soldiers coming to guard the royal family.
And there they were, not at the gates or even in the streets, but gathered-several hundred of them-in three houses across the street, filling the ground floor of all three. They were waiting for a signal, probably: We have the royal family in custody, come now.
General Citizen was among them.
“General Haddamander Citizen,” said Rigg aloud.
Mother turned toward him with raised eyebrows. “What about him?”
“He’s commanding the military force that’s waiting across the street. My question is-will he come to rescue you from these intruders? Or are they acting under his orders? Or both-he sent them, but then he’ll come and kill them and put the blame on others for whatever they do here today?”
“Why are you asking me?” asked Mother.
“Who else?” asked Rigg.
There was a light knock on the door. The intruders were gathered in the corridor just outside the room.
“Come in,” said Mother. “No one needs to knock to enter this room.”
The door opened, and six men entered. They were strong, soldierly men, but wearing the clothes of common day-workers. And instead of weapons, they held in their hands thick bars of iron, nearly a man’s height in length. They immediately lined up along the wall that had the door in it, holding the iron bars at opposite angles, so that each pair formed an X.
Then they began slowly moving the iron bars in a pattern that seemed designed to create a constantly shifting barrier. A wall of iron.
“What are they doing, Mother?” asked Rigg. But he already knew.
“Come out of hiding now, Param,” said Mother. “Don’t let this iron hurt you when it passes through you.”
“You told them,” said Rigg. “How to hurt Param. How to force her to become visible.”
“You’re quite an amazing young man,” said Mother to him. “All you can see is the danger to Param, but none of the danger to you.”
“What I see,” said Rigg, “is a monster. Why would you do this to your own daughter? I’m the one who’s a liability to you. I’m the manchild that Aptica Sessamin decreed should be killed.”
“Rigg, my darling son, my poor stupid sweetling, even now you don’t see the truth?”
“It makes no sense for you to have us both killed.”
“Once upon a time the people of the Sessamoto tribe hunted on the plains where lions also hunted. We had great respect for each other. We knew their ways, and they knew ours. We learned the law of the lion.”
Father had taught Rigg about all the animals, or so Rigg thought. They had not trapped animals on the plains of the west, but only in the mountain forests. Still, Rigg knew about lions. How a new alpha male, after killing the old one, would take over his mates. But if any of them had cubs, he would kill them.
“General Citizen wants you to kill us both?”
“I’m still of child-bearing age, dear boy,” said Mother. “He wants his own children to inherit-without complications.”
That was something Rigg had never guessed. Yet it had been General Citizen himself who told Rigg about the different factions in the city-for and against allowing male heirs to live, or in favor of killing the entire royal family, or maintaining the status quo. Of course he had never mentioned yet another possibility-that someone would seize the queen, marry her, and kill her heirs in order to found a new dynasty.
