'He's probably found some kind of beetle he's never seen before.'
'Not quite,' I told her.
She turned away, then abruptly turned back. 'I'll make you a deal, Fullin. Spend the morning with Rashid and me, until you have to go to Birds Home. Do that and I'll stay away from Zephram and Waggett.'
'I won't be your son,' I said.
'You are,' she replied, 'and for twenty years, I've told myself that means something. I won't talk you into Committing Neut, if that's what you're afraid of. You're my child, and I want you to have every freedom to choose who you want to be. But this is our only time together, Fullin. A single morning for the rest of our lifetimes. Years down the road, this day will be as important to you as it is to me. Even if you decide you hate my guts, at least you'll
I hate it when adults say, 'Trust me.' It's not that I think they're lying — it's that they're telling me I'm too green to appreciate some great truth they've learned from experience. The more painful the experience, the more mysteriously profound they believe the truth must be… when most of the time, it's as plain as dung in the street and they've just been too thickheaded to notice. 'You only want to spend time with me?' I asked.
'That's all,' Steck replied.
'And you'll leave Waggett and Zephram alone?'
'I'll leave Waggett alone,' she said, 'and I won't seek out Zephram. If he comes to me, that's his choice.'
I thought about it. I didn't like the picture of my father deliberately approaching a Neut (my foster father seeking out my mother), but if he had ghosts he needed to lay to rest, I could hold my nose and suffer through. After all, Steck wanted me close by her side, didn't she? So I'd be there to keep things platonic if Zephram came calling.
'All right,' I told Steck, 'you've got a deal. Give me a minute to talk to my father.'
'He's in the back.'
For some reason, I bowed to her slightly before leaving the room… but I took Waggett with me.
Zephram was in his bedroom with the door open. He wasn't doing anything — he was sitting fully dressed on the bed, staring bleakly into space.
'Maybe,' I said, 'I should have warned you she was here.'
After a silence, he answered, 'That would have been nice.'
'I swore an oath to keep it secret. On the Patriarch's hand.'
'Oh, well then.' He didn't finish his sentence.
Eventually, I said, 'It must have been a shock.'
'Yes.'
'Did you recognize her yourself, or did she approach you after?'
'I recognized her, Fullin. Even though I'd only seen that face once, twenty years ago… I recognized her. No one else did — I looked around the crowd and they didn't seem to see her at all. They had worked so hard to put her out of their minds. I never understood why anyone would want to forget something…' He shook his head. 'No, I guess I understand.'
'Are you going to be all right? I need you to look after Waggett.'
'Can't you do it, Fullin? Today of all days… I'm not so good all of a sudden.'
'Look,' I said briskly, 'you need something to take your mind off Steck. And she's promised to leave you and Waggett alone if I go with her.' I plunked Waggett down in Zephram's lap. Dully, as if it was a great effort, my father put his hands on either side of the boy's small ribcage to hold him in place.
'There you go,' I told him. 'You'll have fun together. And you know what to do — you saw me through all my Commitment Days.'
'I'm feeling old today, Fullin.'
'Children make people feel young,' I answered. 'Everyone says that. You be a good boy, Waggett.' I gave him a quick kiss on the forehead, then left before Zephram could argue more. Frankly, I couldn't see why the old man was making such a fuss. He only had to babysit a well-behaved toddler. I was stuck with the Neut.
'How's Zephram?' Steck asked when I came back into the front room.
'You rattled him,' I said. 'If you cared about him, you shouldn't have given him such a shock.'
'Things are simple for you, aren't they, Fullin?'
'No. Things are just complicated for everyone else.'
Steck sighed. 'I hoped you'd grow up like Zephram. Instead, you grew up like me. I've never believed in heredity before, and I don't like it.'
She stood up, smoothing her dress and overshirt selfconsciously; it must have been a long time since she'd worn such aggressively feminine clothing. I found myself peering at that V neckline again, and forced my gaze away. Next thing I knew, I might be staring at her crotch.
'Are you ready?' she asked.
'Sure, Steck.'
'Call me Maria — Rashid thinks it would be better if I use a Southern name today. Heaven forbid that my presence ever remind the town of ugly deeds twenty years ago.'
'So you don't want me to call you Mother?'
She looked at me pensively. 'If you ever call me Mother,' she said at last, 'I'll know you truly hate me.'
'Then let's go, M—' But I couldn't finish the word. 'Maria,' I substituted.
Steck gave a tiny smile. 'Show me where Rashid is. We have a full morning ahead.'
TWELVE
I had no chance to watch the look on Steck's face when she saw Bonnakkut's body — the path through the trees was too narrow for us to walk side by side, so I was obliged to take the lead, with my back to the Neut.
Approaching from this direction, we could see the murder scene from twenty paces off. Not that we could see the corpse itself: Rashid knelt on the ground in front of it, conducting an examination of the wounds. As we drew closer, I saw he had snipped off Bonnakkut's bloody shirt to provide a clear view of the belly injuries. Rashid's nose was only a finger away from the body as he peered through a magnifying glass at the slashes.
'Not a beetle after all,' Steck said behind me.
I turned. She wore a guarded expression, very contained. It could be the look of a person who was clamping down on real shock; it could also be the look of someone who'd been preparing for this since committing the murder.
'Do we know who did this?' she asked.
'No.'
'Definitely a surprise attack,' Rashid said without looking up. 'No defense wounds.'
'What's a defense wound?' I asked.
Steck answered. 'Cuts on the hands or arms from trying to block the blade. You see them in almost every knife attack… unless the victim was dead before he knew what was happening.'
'You two have seen a lot of murders?'
'Enough. When someone important like a Governor or Elemarch gets killed, it's best if a Spark conducts the investigation. More impartial.'
'And that's what they do down south — kill Governors and Elemarchs?'
'If 'down south' means Feliss,' Steck said, 'the answer is no. Feliss is a bourgeois little province that's too self-satisfied to indulge in assassination. But there's more to the world than Feliss.'
'I know that.' Theoretically, I was supposed to have memorized all the provinces and their capitals — Tober Cove had a good Elemarchy School that taught such things. But even if I'd never gone to the trouble of learning the list myself, I'd heard Cappie recite it enough times when her father demanded. Two hundred and fifty-six provinces; Earth was a big planet.
'The stabs in the belly were likely made after death,' Rashid announced suddenly. He straightened up and brushed hair out of his eyes. 'The throat slash came first: one slice, that was it. Hard to be a hundredpercent sure without any real equipment, but that's my guess.'
'Sounds like a crime of passion,' Steck said. 'The victim's dead on the ground, but the killer still wants to stick him a few more times.'
'Either that,' Rashid agreed, 'or someone wants us to jump to that conclusion.' He turned to me. 'Do people read OldTech mysteries in this town?'
'People read all kinds of things,' I answered. 'We have a library.'
'With almost fifty books,' Steck added disdainfully.
'Hundreds of books,' I retorted. 'The cove has come a long way since you lived here.'
'So much outside information,' she marveled. 'It must drive Hakoore wild.'
I didn't answer… but I couldn't help remembering what the old snake said about prosperity corrupting our people.
And now we had a murder.
Voices sounded a short distance in front of us. Moments later Cappie appeared, leading our Doctor Gorallin. Gorallin was a steely woman: steel gray hair and steel gray eyes, with a spine as rigid as metal and fingers of unforgiving iron when she was probing your body for hernias, lumps, and other offenses to propriety. She
