Commitment Hour

like a sad memory. As we walked toward the canoe, I could hear him clack his molars together every few steps, as if he were still chewing the ghost of some long-ago breakfast.

'So,' he said as we walked, 'your Cappie intends to be priestess.'

'Not my Cappie,' I answered quickly. 'I don't control her.'

'True.' Hakoore nudged me knowingly with his elbow. 'Cappie is just a girl you live with, right, boy? She's the only female your age, so it's natural you two would… be boy and girl together. But beyond that?' He made a rasping sound in his throat. 'I don't suppose you have feelings for her.'

The old snake said 'feelings' with so much intensity, I clenched my jaw. Did he want me to agree with him, that she was just some meaningless convenience? Even if I'd outgrown Cappie, a gentleman doesn't talk about a lady as if she's something he wants to scrape off his moccasin. I couldn't tell Hakoore Cappie meant nothing to me, whether or not it was true. But the Patriarch's Man was waiting for me to speak — to deny her, to say something disloyal.

'There's feelings and there's feelings,' I answered carefully. 'Depends what feelings you mean.'

Hakoore actually smiled — as much as a frown-lined face like his could ever support an amiable expression. He reached out with his free hand and patted my wrist almost fondly.

'You're a weasel, aren't you, boy?'

His thumb suddenly dug into my flesh, gouging the soft web between my thumb and index finger. There's a nerve there that hurts when it gets squeezed. Hakoore knew all about that nerve.

'You're a weasel, aren't you?' he said again.

'What do you mean by—'

The old man squeezed and the pain was enough to clot my voice silent. 'I mean,' Hakoore said, 'that you'd kill your own mother under the right circumstances.' He released the pressure and gave a fierce grin. His teeth were yellow and jagged. 'You're a weasel, and one way or another, you see the rest of the world as your meat.'

I didn't answer. He was wrong, but it seemed politic to hold my tongue.

Hakoore studied me for a moment with his milky eyes, then gave a soft snort of amusement. 'Look in the boat, boy.'

We had reached the edge of the flats where the canoe's nose was pulled up onto the mud. Snug in the middle of the boat, tucked safely under the central thwart, lay the battered false-gold box containing the Patriarch's Hand.

What now? I thought. Did the old snake want me to take another oath?

Hakoore released his grip on my arm. 'Get it,' he said, pushing me toward the canoe. 'Take it out.'

Mistrustfully, I reached down and wrapped my fingers around the brass handle on the nearest end of the box. One pull told me the container was heavier than I expected; it took several good heaves for me to drag it out from under the thwart and lift it into the air.

'Wait,' Hakoore said. He leaned into the boat and pulled out a blanket that lay under the front seat — probably one of Dorr's own creations, but the blanket was too dirty for me to be certain. I noticed Hakoore didn't wobble as he bent over; our Patriarch's Man was only infirm when it suited his purpose. With a few dusty shakes, he opened up the blanket and let it settle onto the mud. 'Set the box on that,' he told me. 'Be careful.'

I gave him an aggrieved look. Did he think I intended to take risks with the cove's greatest treasure? But I held my tongue. Squatting, I laid the heavy chest on the blanket. 'There,' I said. 'Now what is this—'

'Quiet!' he interrupted. 'You're going to learn something.' He lowered himself to his knees with the slow inevitability of an old dog taking its place by the fire. For a moment he just knelt there, stroking the tarnished gold surface with his fingers. Then he lifted the lid and exposed the mummified hand to the brightening light of dawn. It seemed smaller than it had looked last night, the skin rough and puckered. 'Do you know what that is?' Hakoore asked.

'The Patriarch's Hand,' I answered, wondering if this was a trick question.

'And I suppose you think it was cut off the Patriarch himself.'

'It wasn't?'

He gave me the sort of look he'd been giving to lunkhead boys for forty years. 'Who'd have the nerve to cut off the Patriarch's hand? I wouldn't. Even after he'd died, no one in the cove would dare.'

'I always assumed the Patriarch left instructions for his successor to—'

Hakoore waved me to silence. 'Why would a man want to be mutilated after death? Even the Patriarch wasn't that crazy.'

I gaped at him. No one ever called the Patriarch crazy… except for all the women in the village, and they didn't count.

'The hand belonged to the Patriarch,' Hakoore told me, 'but it wasn't cut off his own wrist. It was just his property.'

The old snake spoke dismissively as if the truth was self-evident; but all my life, I'd been told the hand was an actual piece of the Patriarch. When people swore oaths on it — when it was used at baby blessings and funerals — the Elders always spoke of it as the Patriarch's own flesh. If it was just one of the Patriarch's possessions… if he had hacked it off some criminal… or a heretic… or a Neut…

Hakoore actually chuckled at the expression on my face — his version of a chuckle at any rate, a toneless hisk-hisk sound. 'Touch the hand, boy,' he said. 'I'll show you something interesting.'

Reluctantly I placed my right fingertips on the hand's papery skin. Hakoore reached down too, pressing hard against a small protrusion on the box's metal side. The spot he touched looked like nothing more than a slight dent. I had no idea what he might be up to… until I heard the box give a soft click.

With a shudder, the hand squirmed under my fingers. Before I could flinch back, the hand had locked onto mine with an arm wrestler's grip.

I jumped back, shaking my hand frantically the way you do to shake off a speck of burning debris spat up by a campfire. The hand came with me, right out of its box, and clung like hot tar as I hopped around the flats trying to dislodge it.

'Hah, boy,' Hakoore laughed, 'if you could see the expression on your face!' Hisk-hisk: the sound of his laugh. Hisk- hisk. 'If all those pretty girls who swoon at your fiddle-playing could see what a duck turd you look like now…' He stopped, still laughing, hisk- hisk-hisk. The sound put my teeth on edge, like a blacksmith filing iron.

'What's going on?' I demanded. 'Is this some kind of magic?'

'Magic!' The word was a sudden angry bark. 'What kind of superstitious fool are you, boy? The hand and the box are just machines, special machines. You think a real hand could last over a century without rotting to dust? Use your sense! And don't ask me to explain how it works: I don't know. But it's not sorcery or deviltry, just wires and things.'

I couldn't imagine how wires and things could make a hand that moved as fast as a striking rattlesnake. Still, the mayor had an OldTech clock where a goldfinch came out and chirped every hour; if our ancestors could make mechanical birds, a mechanical hand wasn't out of the question.

'Well, you certainly gave me a start,' I told Hakoore, 'and I'm glad you had a good laugh. Now can you make the hand let go? It's holding a little tight.'

'You think that's tight?' Hakoore's milky eyes glittered in the light of the dawning sun. 'It can squeeze much harder. It can squeeze like iron tongs.'

'I'm sure,' I agreed. 'But you've had your joke and I'm suitably impressed. Maybe it's time we both went home for breakfast.'

'A joke,' he said, still smiling. 'You think the Patriarch's hand is a joke?'

'No, no,' I corrected myself quickly, 'the hand isn't a joke, it's a sacred artifact, but…'

I gasped. The hand had suddenly tightened its grip, wringing me hard around the knuckles — the way Bonnakkut had sometimes grabbed my hand and mashed my fingers together, back when he bullied me in the schoolyard.

'You don't believe it's a sacred artifact,' Hakoore hissed softly. 'Now that you know it's mechanical, you think it's just another piece of OldTech garbage.'

'It's sacred, it's special, I believe that!'

The hand squeezed again. I felt one of my knuckles give under the pressure with an audible click. It wasn't broken — not yet. Just slipped slightly out of alignment.

'Stop doing that!' I shouted at the old snake.

'I'm not doing anything,' he replied, all innocence. 'The hand has a mind of its own. My old master explained it this way: when people lie, they sweat. Not normal summer sweat, but damp-palm-nervous liar's sweat. And the Patriarch's hand can taste that sweat in your palm, boy. It doesn't like the taste. Lies turn its stomach.'

It's a hand. I wanted to say. It doesn't have a stomach. But I kept myself under control and told him, 'I don't believe the OldTechs could make something like this. In all the OldTech books I've read, there's no mention of anything close.'

Hakoore gave me a coy look. 'Maybe not. Maybe the hand is older than the Patriarch, dating back to the founding of the cove.' He grinned at me with those jagged yellow teeth. 'The founders of Tober Cove were something special, boy — far beyond the OldTechs. There are secrets I could tell you, passed down from one Patriarch's Man to the next; but I can't share those secrets with you until…'

He let the last word hang pointedly in the air. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of asking what he meant, but the hand was still pulping my knuckles. Even worse, there might be other hidden buttons Hakoore could press in the box, buttons that would make the hand clinch up on me even if I wasn't lying.

'Until what?' I asked through gritted teeth.

'Until you agree to be my disciple and become the next Patriarch's Man.'

'Me?' My voice was almost a squeak — I blame that on the pain in my half-crushed hand. 'Your disciple? Who says I want to be your disciple?'

'Who says I care what you want?' Hakoore rasped back, mimicking my tone. 'I'm not choosing you for your opinions, boy.'

'But why choose me at all?'

'Since Leeta told me she was making Cappie her apprentice, I've been thinking about a successor too. It appeals to me, easing back the same time Leeta does. Especially after seeing Cappie last night, trying to play priestess while dressed like a man. The girl's got fire; she'll hit the cove like a lightning strike. And she's smart — when women have problems, Cappie will solve them. Won't be long before men turn to her too… not for everything, but for important things. Show me the man who wouldn't rather talk to Cappie than to me. Present company excluded, of course.'

He actually gave me a grin.