Ruins (Pathfinder Trilogy) (41 page)

Loaf grunted.

“Any progress?” asked Olivenko. “Have you thought that pushing Umbo out the door might have been part of it? Not to make any suggestions.”

“Don’t be sarcastic with me,” said Param.

“I think he was being delicate and respectful,” said Loaf. “If
I
had said that, it would have been sarcastic.”

“I shouldn’t have pushed him,” said Param.

“We’re making progress,” said Loaf.

“Someone else should have done it,” said Param. “I shouldn’t be reduced to protecting the name of the royal family myself.”

“The royal family that tried to kill us all back in Ramfold?” asked Loaf. “The royal family in which the queen tried to murder her own children while she bedded General Citizen?”

“Leadership comes naturally to some people. Look at Rigg and Umbo. Raised in the same village. But Rigg is a natural leader, and Umbo is . . .”

“A peasant boy,” said Loaf. “I think that’s what you called him, when you accused him of being a liar.”

“I never accused him of—”

“I have perfect recall now,” said Loaf. And when he quoted her own words back to her—“And we’re supposed to take the word of a peasant boy?”—his voice sounded astonishingly similar to her own. All the intonations were exactly right.

“I didn’t suggest that he was lying,” said Param. “I merely said that it was unreasonable to expect someone like me or Rigg to take the word of a peasant boy as if it were indistinguishable from fact.”

“So you studied the history of the wallfolds for nearly a year and you’re still as ignorant as ever,” said Loaf.

Instead of time-slicing to get away from Loaf, Param slowed down and let him move on ahead. But Olivenko stayed with her, walking at her slower pace.

Param could feel the hideous music of the Wall playing with the back of her mind, making her angry, sad, despairing, lonely, anguished; but not the way it was the first time she had experienced the Wall, not overwhelming, not terrifying. “Are you going to criticize me, too?”

“You were raised to rule,” said Olivenko.

“Or so my mother said,” Param replied. “I have no idea when her plan for me changed, but my education, such as it was, never changed. You don’t announce to the cattle that you’re going to slaughter them.”

“You were raised with courtly manners,” said Olivenko. “You heard people talking in elevated language, observing the courtesies.”

“As Rigg does,” said Param.

“But the expendable Ramex trained him to be able to do that.”

“Exactly.”

“So you and Rigg were
taught
to behave in a certain way. You were given skills. But how was Umbo raised?”

“As a peasant boy,” said Param. “I didn’t say it was his
fault
.”

“He was the son of a cobbler in a small village. He attended the village school. In that school, he was taught the history of Stashiland. He was taught that the royal family were rapacious monsters, who came to Aressa as uncivilized barbarians from the northeast. They killed most of the ruling class of Stashiland, and raped the few women of that class that they allowed to live, after killing their children, so they could ‘start fresh.’”

“I’ve read the history. I’m not proud of our origins. But that was many hundreds of years ago.”

“Not so very many,” said Olivenko. “And Umbo wasn’t taught that history as a distant memory, to be ignored or glossed over. He was taught it as if it was a fair description of the way the Sessamids have always ruled in Stashiland.”

“And that’s a lie,” said Param.

“So there was no murderousness when Aptica Sessamin
decreed that no male could inherit the Tent of Light and had all her male relatives executed like criminals, for the crime of being male? Including the male babies?”

“That was ugly,” Param admitted. “But it was a long time ago.”

“Your mother’s grandmother,” said Olivenko. “I’m not arguing with you, I’m reminding you of what Umbo was taught. The People’s Schools taught children that everybody had the right to rule, when their turn came, and nobody was better by birth than anyone else.”

“Obviously false.”

“By birth,” Olivenko repeated. “By lineage. Umbo was taught that just because your mother was powerful didn’t mean you had any more right to that power than anyone else. He was taught that power had to be earned, and that if you showed merit, you could become anything.”

“But that’s not how the People’s Republic worked at all,” said Param with contempt. “I saw how those hypocrites pretended everything was so egalitarian as they promoted their relatives and friends and established a whole new class of nobles.”

“I’m reminding you of what Umbo was taught in Fall Ford at the base of the Stashi Falls,” said Olivenko. “So all of a sudden, his boyhood friend—a boy who was even lower in social standing than Umbo, remember, because he lived a wandering life as a trapper’s son—his boyhood friend has a bag of jewels and starts talking like a lord. That came as a shock, you can imagine.”

“Rigg was coming out of his disguise, coming into his heritage,” said Param.

“Coming to prison as fast as the People’s Republic could arrest him, is that what you mean?”

“It was our fate during that time,” said Param.

“So Umbo does everything he can to get his friend out of imprisonment, and he does it just in time—”

“Rigg got us out of prison! Using his talent and mine together. He found the passages in the walls, and I got us through those walls into the passages, and—”

“You weren’t free of danger until Umbo pushed you and Rigg back in time a few days—which is where you acquired
me
,” said Olivenko.

“I was
not
saying that Umbo wasn’t helpful and good,” said Param.

“Only that his word was worthless, because he was born in a village to ordinary people.”

“Not worthless, just uncorroborated.”

“Remember, I’m trying to help you understand why Rigg got so angry with you. Umbo was his friend in that village, in a time of Rigg’s life when other boys wouldn’t have befriended him. Rigg was the stranger, the outsider, and everybody assumed he was a bastard. At least Umbo’s parents were married.”

“I know they’re friends,” said Param. “But Rigg’s supposed to be my
brother
, and to take the side of—”

“When people were trying to kill you, he took your side, didn’t he?”

“Nobody was trying to kill Umbo.”

“And then I remember a time when you announced you weren’t going to journey another step. You rebelled against Rigg.”

“That didn’t mean I wanted to follow Umbo!”

“And you didn’t. You followed
me
.”

“You’re an educated man,” said Param.

“Educated by the side of your father,” said Olivenko. “But still born to a much lower class. Not a natural leader, right?”

“More of a leader than the others.”

“Param, are you really this blind? I speak the language of court, in the accents of court, because I worked very hard to learn to talk that way. And so you followed me when you wouldn’t listen to anybody else. But I was never the
leader
of that group. I was simply the one person who could get
you
to do anything.”

“You led us!”

“They let me pretend to lead,” said Olivenko, “because Loaf wasn’t talking yet, and Umbo was taking care of Loaf. But the fact is, it was Umbo who did everything that kept us alive.”

“You did it with him!”

“I did what he told me to do,” said Olivenko. “Umbo understood that you were out of your element, that everything was strange for you. He also understood that you would only listen to me. So he made sure that I knew the right things to do, so that I’d be the one to say them, so that you’d listen.”

“That’s ridiculous!” said Param. “You make me sound like a helpless, spoiled infant!”

Olivenko shook his head. “I make you sound like someone who had lived inside the walls of a house, a prisoner, humiliated by any clown whom the People’s Revolutionary Council allowed to come harass you. I make you sound like a young woman who was physically weak and who had a habit of vanishing when
ever things became stressful. You were trying very hard
not
to disappear and retreat by reflex, only you got tired, physically exhausted for the first time in your life. Umbo and Rigg and Loaf and I had experienced that many times, and we knew how to go on anyway. You didn’t. It’s not an easy thing to learn, and you never had to learn it.”

“You’re on their side,” said Param. She stopped walking at all.

“Have the courage to hear the truth from a friend.”

“You’re not a friend! You’re a . . .”

“Jumped-up peasant boy who became a scholar and then a city guard. I’m not insulted by those facts—that’s my life. Just as it’s no shame to you that you were hopelessly unprepared to deal with rough living and endless walking. We are who we are. When changes come, we start with what we are right then, and then we work to try to become whoever we need to be.”

The way he said it sounded soothing. Natural. But she was no fool. She knew he was patronizing her.
Handling
her, coping with her, getting around her, placating her, all those phrases for manipulation and control.

And yet she kept walking, and kept listening, because even though she wasn’t in love with him anymore—she knew now that that had been a mere phase—she knew that he was a perceptive man, and he
had
been Father’s friend, hadn’t he?

“Param,” said Olivenko, “we’re not in Aressa Sessamo anymore. Out here, we’re the people who pass between the Walls. We belong nowhere, we’re citizens of nothing, and there are only two classes that matter: Time-shifter and non-time-shifter. Loaf and I are non-shifters. You and Rigg and Umbo are shifters. Not
only that, Umbo was the first to be able to move into the past all by himself. Can you do that? Could Rigg, until we were in Vadeshfold? We all survived and escaped from Ramfold because of one person.”

“Umbo,” said Param. “I know that. But I saved him, too, you know.”

“Yes, you were on the rock and when he finally let go of Rigg and me and Loaf, because he was about to die, you helped him disappear and dragged him off the rock. But even then, you couldn’t safely land from that leap until he took you into the past. Right? Am I getting the story right?”

“Yes,” said Param, and she got his point well enough. “It was unbelievably rude of me to forget how much I owed Umbo.”

“No, you’re not getting my point yet,” said Olivenko. “Of course you were ungrateful and spiteful and nasty and mean, but that’s what Umbo was taught to expect from royals, so that wouldn’t have bothered him. In fact, it
didn’t
bother him. You pushed him out of the flyer, but when he got up, he wasn’t going to do anything to you. He probably wasn’t even going to complain. It was Rigg who yelled at you. It was Rigg who, apparently, was going to push you out the door after him or some such thing, which Rigg and Umbo came back to prevent.”

“Yes, and I’m still angry at Rigg for being so disloyal.”

“Disloyal! No, Param.
I’m
the fool who still can’t get over being loyal to you because you’re a princess, next in line for the Tent of Light. But Rigg doesn’t give a mouse’s petoot about that, because he grew up like Umbo. Rigg wasn’t being disloyal. He was being
loyal
. Because in our company, Umbo is the royalty. Don’t you get
that? Don’t you see? In this tiny world where the only classes are shifters and non-shifters, Umbo is the first of the shifters. He’s the one that everything depended on. He’s the king.”

“He is
not
the king,” said Param. “We follow Rigg.”

“That’s right. Umbo is the king, but he doesn’t rule, Rigg does, because Rigg has better training, and Rigg can see the paths, so Rigg can time-shift with more accuracy, and much farther, and Rigg has all that education that Umbo would have had if Ramex had chosen
him
instead of your brother. Umbo should be the highest among us, but he isn’t. Rigg’s in that place, partly because
you
treat him that way.”

“Because he’s a—he’s one of—”

“He’s royal,” said Olivenko. “But that’s not why any of the rest of us follow him. We follow him because he’s smart and creative, because Ramex educated him to be ready for situations the rest of us aren’t prepared for, and because he doesn’t
want
to be boss and so his hand rests gentle on the reins.”

“He doesn’t want to lead us?” asked Param.

“It’s something that he and I have in common. Whereas you and Umbo both think you should lead, but Umbo can’t because nobody would follow him, and you can’t because you’re completely incompetent.”

Param was so stung by those words that, by reflex, she began to time-slice, becoming invisible to him. Time-slicing made her slow down relative to him, though she was walking as quickly as before. For a moment she thought he hadn’t noticed that she vanished, but no, he kept walking, kept walking; he had to know she wasn’t by him; he wasn’t going to stop and wait for her.

He isn’t going to pamper me. He isn’t going to let me control him by disappearing. He told me the truth, that’s what he did, and if I can’t take it, then too bad for me.

Param stopped time-slicing and called out to him. “Please wait for me,” she said.

Olivenko stopped and turned around. “Oh, you’re back,” he said. “Well, good. That’s good. I’m sorry I spoke so plainly. I hoped you’d have the courage to hear it, but I was afraid you might have too much arrogance to bear it.”

“Both,” said Param. “I have both.”

“But here you are,” said Olivenko. “I like you, Param. More to the point, I respect you. I’m the only one here who really understands anything about your life—and that’s only from being close to your father, and hearing him talk about you. Watching him shed tears when he talked about how helpless he was to protect you. ‘How am I even a man, when they can treat my little girl like that, and I do nothing.’ And I said to him, ‘What good will it do her if you’re dead? Because that’s what will happen if you try to stop them from treating her that way.’ And he said, ‘I would be a better father, dead because I stood between her and danger, than I am now, alive because I don’t have the courage.’”