Commitment Hour

'So it got me wondering,' he went on, 'what man in the cove can handle Cappie and come out on top?' He poked a bony finger into my chest. 'Guess whose name came to mind.'

'But I don't want to be anyone's disciple…'

'Shut up!' he snapped, jabbing his finger into the pain-hub of nerves at my sternum. 'I don't care about a weaselly boy's personal preferences. All I care is whether you're suitable for the job.'

'I'm not. The only thing I'm fit for is playing violin…'

'You won't be fit for that if you don't shut up! The hand won't let go till I want it to; you understand that, boy? And how are you going to play violin with crushed fingers?'

I choked back the retort that came close to spilling out of my mouth: It's holding my right hand, youold fool; I play violin with my left. But giving that away might be a tactical error. Besides, how could I hold the bow if my right hand got ground to powder? How could I pluck pizzicato? Without two good hands, I'd be just some kid who'd once had delusions of grandeur — condemned to work the farms or perch boats for the rest of my life, as if I'd never dreamed of more.

'All right,' I muttered. 'What do you want?'

'To ask some questions. To see whether you appreciate the cove's need for a Patriarch's Man.'

'And if I lie, the hand will hurt me.'

Hakoore nodded. 'The Patriarch found it useful for getting at the truth.'

'I'll bet.'

'Don't go insolent on me, boy! I can always order the hand to grab a different part of your anatomy. Something you really don't want mangled.'

I glared at him for a moment, then gave a defiant flick of my head. 'Ask your questions,' I told him. 'See for yourself that I'm wrong for the position.'

The Patriarch's Man just smiled, an ancient yellow smile.

'First question,' Hakoore said. 'Do you believe in the gods?'

'Yes.'

'All the gods? Even Mistress Want and Master Disease?'

'Yes.' After last night, I wondered if I believed in Master Disease too much, but I didn't say so aloud.

'Do you pray to the gods?'

'Sometimes.'

He gave me a withering look. I expected him to ask how often was sometimes, but he must have presumed the worst. Instead he asked, 'Is the cove important to you, boy?'

'Absolutely.'

'And how far would you go in order to keep the cove safe?'

I hesitated. 'That's hard to say,' I finally answered. 'It depends on the circumstances.'

'Of course, it depends on the circumstances, you idiot!' Hakoore roared. 'Everything depends on the circumstances.' He gave me a steely glare. 'Stop being such a weasel.'

Easy for you, I thought. You aren't the one whose fingers get mulched if you answer wrong. Out loud, I told him, 'Describe some threat to the cove and I'll tell you what I'd do.'

'Don't give me orders, boy!' He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. 'Last year,' Hakoore said, 'a Feliss merchant came here, supposedly to see the leaves, but what he really wanted was to buy his way into the village. He had a lot of money, a pregnant wife… and when the baby came, he wanted it brought up like a Tober, alternating sexes. Thought that would be healthy for the child.'

'He was right,' I answered.

'Of course he was,' Hakoore agreed. 'And he was willing to pay for it — donations to the Council of Elders, to the school, to me, to Leeta — not bribes, he insisted, but gifts to help the people.'

'I hope the Elders spat in his face.'

'You don't know the Elders,' Hakoore answered. 'They have a long list of projects they'd love to start if only they had the money… and some of the projects are even sensible. Like paying to train a replacement for Doctor Gorallin; she's going to retire in ten or fifteen years, and it'll take that long to put one of our own through medical school. It'll take a lot of gold too. If the council took the merchant's money, they could guarantee the cove would have competent doctoring for the next forty years. That's a hard thing to turn down.'

'I didn't think of that,' I admitted. 'But the council still must have said no in the end. We didn't have an outsider family move in.'

'The council didn't reject the merchant,' Hakoore told me. 'I did. Started shouting threats and scared the nipples off every man there.' He allowed himself the ghost of a smile. 'One of the fun parts of my job.'

'You think it's fun to make it harder for Tober Cove to afford a doctor?'

'No,' he sighed. 'That's one of the ugly parts of my job.'

'So why did you do it?'

'Because if one merchant buys his way in, another will try too. Only the next one will just want a summer home — come up for solstice, let Master Crow and Mistress Gull process the kids, then go back to Feliss. A lot of Tobers would be outraged at such a proposal, but others would just say, 'Get a good price.' That way we could buy more books for the school… or maybe some muskets for the Warriors Society so they can match the firepower of any gun-toting criminals who come up-peninsula.'

'One gun is too many,' I muttered.

'And one merchant is too many too,' Hakoore replied. 'Not that I have anything against merchants in themselves…'

'No,' I said, 'you've always been so welcoming to my father.'

The old snake glared at me. 'You think I was hard on Zephram? There are times I still think I should have booted him out. With the money he's brought here, the cove has expanded its perch fleet, bought more cattle, improved the sawmill…'

I rolled my eyes. 'How awful!'

Hakoore sighed. 'I know they aren't bad in themselves, Fullin, but they're distractions. Tobers are starting to think prosperity is their due. That'll kill this town, it really will. Money is only smart about making more money; it's sheep-stupid about everything else. The cove is already sunk so deeply in materialism—'

'Come on,' I interrupted, 'why is it greedy to want your kids to have a doctor when they grow up?'

'Materialism isn't the same as greed,' Hakoore snapped. 'Materialism is reducing everything to an equation of tangible profit and loss. It's saying that a family of outsiders will cost this much for housing and this much for schooling and this much for ongoing annoyance factor, so if we get twice that many crowns back in payment, we should take the deal. Materialism is an uncomprehending blindness to anything that isn't right in front of your nose — believing that material effects are the only things that exist, and there's nothing else you'd ever think to put on the scales. Hell, boy, materialism is the belief in scales at all: nothing is absolutely right or absolutely wrong, but just something to be weighed against everything else.'

'Okay, right,' I told him, trying to calm his tirade, 'I'll be sure not to let myself fall into materialistic… yoww!'

The Patriarch's hand had tightened again. When I looked down, my fingers had turned birch-white.

'Pity about your hand,' Hakoore said without sympathy. 'Still it was nice you tried to humor me. Respect for your elders and all that.'

My voice came out in a strained whisper. 'Can we skip the sermons from here on out? Please — just ask your questions and I'll answer them.'

'That's what I like to see,' Hakoore smiled. 'Abject submission. And as for questions… if you had been Patriarch's Man, would you have said no to that rich merchant?'

'I don't know,' I whispered.

'Do you need more information?' Hakoore asked helpfully. 'Do you want to know exactly how much money he offered us?'

'That doesn't matter.'

The old snake nodded. 'At least you understand that much. So why can't you make a decision?'

'Because… because…' I closed my eyes and tried to find the most sincere, honest part of my heart. It wasn't all that difficult once I started searching. 'Because,' I said, opening my eyes, 'because I have a son. Of course, I don't want Southerners barging in here, but I want Waggett to have a good doctor too. If it ever came to the point where we had to take Southern money or else our children got sick…'

Hakoore's expression wilted. 'That's just it, isn't it, boy? That's where the knife cuts.' His milky eyes stared at me for a moment, then turned away.

'A hundred and fifty years ago,' he said, 'the Patriarch rode on the backs of our people with spurs of iron. When babies grew famished, he blamed outsiders… Neuts… scientists. And he started a reign of terror that kept Southerners scared for a whole century after he died. But the fear seeped away eventually. In my lifetime, I've seen the Southerners start to get interested in us again. More tourists… more traders… more of their godless materialism rubbing off on us. Still, if I tried to choke the town the way the Patriarch did — if I said no trading with the South or I'd pronounce the Great Curse — who could I blame when children grew sick with starvation? People think I'm harsh, but I'm not the unbending man our Patriarch was. Once upon a time, I was a mother, just like you, boy. I nursed my little girl…'

He closed his eyes and lifted his hands as if holding an infant to his chest. I looked away. I don't know if I was embarrassed or just giving him his privacy.

After a while, he whispered, 'Enough.' He reached into the hand's tarnished metal box and pressed at another dent. Click. The grip around my knuckles suddenly went limp; the Patriarch's Hand slumped as lifeless as an ugly glove.

I'd have let it fall onto the mud, but I couldn't get my fingers to uncurl.

'Put the hand back in the box,' Hakoore said quietly.

'You've run out of questions?'

'I was going to ask you everything my predecessor asked me,' he replied, 'but you'd just say you didn't know the answers and I'd say I couldn't blame you. Put the