Ansset woke walking down a street.

  “Out of the way, ya chark!” shouted a harsh accent behind him, and Ansset dodged to the left as an eletrecart zipped past his right arm. “Sausages,” shouted a sign on the trunk behind the driver.

  Then Ansset was seized by a terrible vertigo as he realized that he was not in the cell of his captivity, that he was fully dressed (in native Earth costume, but clothing for all that), was alive, was free. The quick joy that realization brought was immediately soured by a rush of the old guilt, and the conflicting emotions and the suddenness of his liberation were too much for him, and for a moment too long he forgot to breathe, and the darkening ground slid sideways, tipped up, hit him—

  “Hey, boy, are you all right?”

  “Did the chark slam you, boy?”

  “Ya got the license number? Ya got the number?”

  “Four-eight-seven something, who can tell.”

  “He’s comin’ around and to.” Ansset opened his eyes. “Where is this place?” he asked softly.

  Why, this is Northet, they said. “How far is the palace?” Ansset asked, vaguely remembering that Northet was a town not far to the north and east of Capital.

  “The palace? What palace?”

  “Mikal’s palace—I must go to Mikal—” Ansett tried to get up, but his head spun and he staggered. Hands held him up.

  “The kit’s kinky, that’s what.”

  “Mikal’s palace.”

  “It’s only eighteen kilometer, boy, ya plan to fly?”

  The joke brought a burst of laughter, but Ansset impatiently regained control of his body and stood. Whatever drug had kept him unconscious was now nearly worked out of his system. “Find me a policeman,” Ansset said. “Mikal will want to see me immediately.”

  Some still laughed, a man’s voice said, “We’ll be sure to tell him you’re here when he comes to my house for supper!” but some others looked carefully at Ansset, realizing he spoke without American accent, and that his bearing was not that of a streetchild, despite his clothing. “Who are you, boy?”

  “I’m Ansset. Mikal’s Songbird.” Then there was silence, and half the crowd rushed off to find the policeman, and the other half stayed to look at him and realize how beautiful his eyes were, to touch him with their own eyes and hold the moment to tell about it to children and grandchildren. Ansset, Mikal’s Songbird, more valuable than all the treasure Mikal owned.

  “I touched him myself, helping him up, I held him up.”

  “You would’ve fallen, but for me, Sir,” said a large strong man bowing ridiculously low.

  “Can I shake your hand. Sir?” Ansset smiled at them, not in amusement but in gratitude for their respect for him. “Thank you. You’ve all helped me. Thank you.”

  The policeman came, and after apologizing for the dirtiness of his armored eletrecart he lifted Ansset onto the seat and took him to the headquarters, where a flyer from the palace was already settling down on the pad. The Chamberlain leaped from the flyer, along with half a dozen servants, who gingerly touched Ansset and helped him to the flyer. The door slid shut, and Ansset closed his eyes to hide the tears as he felt the ground rush away as the palace came to meet him.

  But for two days they kept him away from Mikal. “Quarantine,” they said at first, until Ansset stamped his foot and said, “Nonsense,” and refused to answer any more of the hundreds of questions they kept firing at him from dawn to dark and long after dark. The Chamberlain came.

  “What’s this I hear about you not wanting to answer questions, my boy?” asked the Chamberlain with the false joviality that Ansset had long since learned to recognize as a mask for anger or fear.

  “I’m not your boy,” Ansset retorted, determined to frighten some cooperation out of the Chamberlain. Now and then it had worked in the past. “I’m Mikal’s and he wants to see me. Why am I being kept like a prisoner?”

  “Quaran—”

  “Chamberlain, I’m healthier than I’ve ever been before, and these questions don’t have a thing to do with my health.”

  “All right,” the Chamberlain said, fluttering his hands with impatience and nervousness. Ansset had once sung to Mikal of the Chamberlain’s hands, and Mikal had laughed for hours at some of the words. “I’ll explain. But don’t get angry at me, because it’s Mikal’s orders.”

  “That I be kept away from him?”

  “Until you answer the questions! You’ve been in court long enough, Songbird, and you’re surely bright enough to know that Mikal has enemies in this world.”

  “I know that. Are you one of them?” Ansset was deliberately goading the Chamberlain, using his voice like a whip in all the ways that made the Chamberlain angry and fretful and so forgetful.

  “Hold your tongue, boy!” the Chamberlain said. Ansset inwardly smiled. Victory. “You’re also bright enough to know that you weren’t kidnapped five months ago by any friends of the emperor’s. We have to know everything about your captivity.”

  “I’ve told you everything a hundred times over.”

  “You haven’t told us how you spent your days.”

  Again Ansset felt a stab of emotion. “I don’t remember my days.”

  “And that’s why you can’t see Mikal!” the Chamberlain snapped. “Do you think we don’t know what happened? We’ve used the probes and the tasters and no matter how skillfully we question, we can’t get past the blocks. Either the person who worked on your mind laid the blocks very skillfully, or you yourself are holding them locked, and either way we can’t get in.”

  “I can’t help it,” Ansset said, realizing now what the questioning meant. “How can you think I mean any danger to Father Mikal.”

  The Chamberlain smiled beatifically, in the pose he reserved for polite triumph. “Behind the block, someone may have very carefully planted a command for you to—”

  “I’m not an assassin!” Ansset shouted.

  “How would you know,” the Chamberlain snarled back. “It’s my duty to protect the person of the emperor. Do you know how many assassination attempts we stop? Dozens, every week. The poison, the treason, the weapons, the traps, that’s what half the people who work here do, is watch everyone who comes in and watch each other too. Most of the assassination attempts are stopped immediately. Some get closer. Yours may be the closest of all.”

  “Mikal must want to see me!”

  “Of course he does, Ansset! And that’s exactly why you can’t—because whoever worked on your mind must know that you’re the only person that Mikal would allow near him after something like this—Ansset! Ansset, you little fool! Call the Captain of the Guard. Ansset, slow down!”

  But the Chamberlain was slowing down with age, and he steadily lost ground to Ansset as the boy darted down the corridors of the palace. Ansset knew all the quickest ways, since exploring the palace was one of the most pleasant of his pastimes, and in five years in Mikal’s service no one knew the labyrinth better than Ansset.

  He was stopped routinely at the doors to the Great Hall, and he quickly made his way through the detectors (poison? No. Metal? No. Energy? No. Identification? Clear) and he was just about to step through the vast doors when the Captain of the Guard arrived.

  “Stop the boy.”

  Ansset was stopped.

  “Come back here, Songbird,” the Captain barked. But Ansset could see, at the far end of the huge platinum room, the small chair and the white-haired man who sat on it. Surely Mikal could see him! Surely he’d call!

  “Bring the boy back here before he embarrasses everyone by calling out.” Ansset was dragged back. “If you must know, Ansset, Mikal gave me orders to bring you within the hour, even before you made your ridiculous escape from the Chamberlain. But you’ll be searched first. My way.”

  Ansset was taken off into one of the search rooms. He was stripped and his clothing was replaced with fresh clothes (that didn’t fit! Ansset thought angrily), and then the searchers’ fingers probed, painfully and deep, every aperture of his body that might hold a weapon. (“No weapon, and your prostate gland’s all right, too,” one of them joked. Ansset didn’t laugh.) Then the needles, probing far under the skin to sample for hidden poisons. A layer of skin was bloodlessly peeled off his palms and the soles of his feet, to be sampled for poisons or flexible plastic needles. The pain was irritating. The delay was excruciating.

  But Ansset bore what had to be borne. He only showed anger or impatience when he thought that doing so might gain some good effect. No one, not even Mikal’s Songbird, survived long at court unless he remained in control of his temper, however he had to hide it.

  At last Ansset was pronounced clean.

  “Wait,” the Captain of the Guard said. “I don’t trust you yet.”

  Ansset gave him a long, cold look. But the Captain of the Guard—like the Chamberlain—was one of the few people at court who knew Mikal well enough to know they had nothing to fear from Ansset unless they really treated him unjustly, for Mikal never did favors, not even for the boy, who was the only human being Mikal had ever shown a personal need for. And they knew Ansset well enough to know that he would never ask Mikal to punish someone unfairly, either.

  The Captain took a nylon cord and bound Ansset’s hands together behind him, first at the wrists, and then just below the elbows. The constriction was painful.

  “You’re hurting me,” Ansset said.

  “I may be saving my emperor’s life,” the Captain answered blandly. And then Ansset passed through the huge doors to the Great Hall, his arms bound, surrounded by guards with lasers drawn, preceded by the Captain of the Guard.

  Ansset still walked proudly, but he felt a hearty fury toward the guards, toward the courtiers and supplicants and guards and officials lining the walls of the unfurnished room, and especially toward the Captain. Only toward Mikal did he feel no anger.

  They let him stop.

  Mikal raised his hand in the ritual of recognition. Ansset knew that Mikal laughed at the rituals when they were alone together—but in front of the court, the ritual had to be followed strictly.

  Ansset dropped to his knees on the cold and shining platinum floor.

  “My Lord,” he said in clear, belllike tones that he knew would reverberate from the metal ceiling, “I am Ansset, and I have come to ask for my life.” In the old days, Mikal had once explained, that ritual had real meaning, and many a rebel lord or soldier had died on the spot. Even now, the pro forma surrender of life was taken seriously, as Mikal maintained constant vigilance over his empire.

  “Why should I spare you?” Mikal asked, his voice old but firm. Ansset thought he heard a quaver of eagerness in the voice. More likely a quaver of age, he told himself. Mikal would never allow himself to reveal emotion in front of the court.

  “You should not,” Ansset said. This was leaving the ritual, and going down the dark road that met danger head-on. Mikal must have been told of the Chamberlain’s fears. Therefore, if Ansset made any attempt to hide the danger, his life would be forfeited by law.

  “Why not?” Mikal said, impassively.

  “Because, my Lord Mikal Imperator, I was kidnapped and held for five months, and during those months things were done to me that are now locked behind blocks in my mind. I may, unwittingly, be an assassin. I must not be allowed to live.”

  “Nevertheless,” Mikal answered, “I grant you your life.”

  Ansset, his muscles strong enough even after his captivity to allow him to bow despite his bound arms, touched his lips to the floor.

  “Why are you bound?”

  “For your safety, my Lord.”

  “Unbind him,” said Mikal. The Captain of the Guard untied the nylon cord.

  His arms free, Ansset stood. He went beyond form, and he turned his voice into a song, with an edge to his voice that snapped every head in the hall toward him. “My Lord, Father Mikal,” he sang, “there is a place in my mind where even I cannot go. In that place my captors may have taught me to want to kill you.” The words were a warning, but the song said safety, the song said love, and Mikal arose from his throne. He understood what Ansset was asking and he would grant it.

  “I would rather, my Son Ansset, I would rather meet death in your hands than any other’s. Your life is more valuable to me than my own.” Then Mikal turned and went back into the door that led to his private chambers. Ansset and the Captain of the Guard followed, and as they left the whispers rose to a roar. Mikal had gone much farther than Ansset had even hoped. The entire Capital—and in a few weeks, the entire empire—would hear how Mikal had called his Songbird Son Ansset, and the words, “Your life is more valuable to me than my own,” would become the stuff of legends.

  Ansset sighed a song as he entered the familiar rooms where Father Mikal lived.

  Mikal turned abruptly and glared at the Captain of the Guard. “What did you mean by that little trick, you bastard?”

  “I tied his hands as a precaution. I was within my duties as a warden of the gate.”

  “I know you were within your duties, but you might use some common decency. What harm can an eleven-year-old boy do when you’ve probably already skinned him alive searching for weapons and you have a hundred lasers trained on him at every moment!”

  “I wanted to be sure.”

  “Well, you’re too damned thorough. Get out. And don’t let me ever catch you being any less thorough, even when it makes me angry. Get out!” The Captain of the Guard left, Mikal’s roar following him. As soon as the door closed, Mikal started to laugh. “What an ass! What a colossal donkey!” Then he threw himself to the floor with all the vigor of a young man, though Ansset knew his age to be one hundred and twenty-three, which was old, in a civilization where death normally came at a hundred and fifteen. Under him the floor that had been rigid when his weight pressed down on the two small spaces touched by his feet now softened, gave gently to fit the contours of his body. Ansset also went to the floor, and lay there laughing.

  “Are you glad to be home, Ansset?” Mikal asked tenderly.

  “Now I am. Until this moment I wasn’t home.”

  “Ansset, my Son, you never can speak without singing.” Mikal laughed softly.

  Ansset took the sound of the laugh and turned it into a song. It was a soft song, and it was short, but at the end of it Mikal was lying on his back looking at the ceiling, tears streaming down from his eyes.

  “I didn’t mean the song to be sad, Father Mikal.”

  “How was I to know that now, in my dotage, I’d do the foolish thing I avoided all my life? Oh, I’ve loved like I’ve done every other passionate thing, but when they took you I discovered, my Son, that I need you.” Mikal rolled over and looked at the beautiful face of the boy who lay looking at him adoringly. “Don’t worship me, boy, I’m an old bastard who’d kill his mother if one of my enemies hadn’t already done it.”

  “You’d never harm me.”

  “I harm everything I love,” Mikal said bitterly. Then he let his face show concern. “We were afraid for you. Since you were gone there was an outbreak of insane crime. People were kidnapped for no reason on the street, some in broad daylight, and a few days later their bodies would be found, broken and torn by someone or something. No ransom notes. Nothing. We thought you had been taken like that, and that somewhere we’d find your body. Are you whole? Are you well?”

  “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been before.” Ansset laughed. “I tested my strength against the hook of my hammock, and I’m afraid I ripped it out of the wall.”

  Mikal reached out and touched Ansset’s hand. “I’m afraid,” Mikal said, and Ansset listened, humming softly, as Mikal talked. The emperor never spoke in names and dates and facts and plans, for then if Ansset were taken by an enemy the enemy would know too much. He spoke to the Songbird in emotions instead, and Ansset sang solace to him. Other Songbirds had pretty voices, others could impress the crowds, and, indeed, Mikal used Ansset for just that purpose on certain state occasions. But of all Songbirds, only Ansset could sing his soul; and he loved Mikal from his soul.

  Late in the night Mikal shouted in fury about his empire: “Did I build it to fall? Did I burn over a dozen worlds and rape a hundred others just to have the whole thing fall in chaos when I die?” He leaned down and whispered to Ansset, their eyes a few inches apart, “They call me Mikal the Terrible, but I built it so it would stand like an umbrella over the galaxy. They have it now: peace and prosperity and as much freedom as their little minds can cope with. But when I die they’ll throw it all away.” Mikal whirled and shouted at the walls of his soundproofed chamber, “In the name of nationalities and religions and races and family inheritances the fools will rip the umbrella down and then wonder why, all of a sudden, it’s raining.”

  Ansset sang to him of hope.

  “There’s no hope. I have fifty sons, three of them legitimate, all of them fools who try to flatter me. They couldn’t keep the empire for a week, not all of them, not any of them. There’s not a man I’ve met in all my life who could control what I’ve built in my lifetime. When I die, it all dies with me.” And Mikal sank to the floor wearily.

  For once Ansset did not sing. Instead he jumped to his feet, the floor turning firm under him. He raised an arm above his head, and said, “For you, Father Mikal, I’ll grow up to be strong! Your empire shall not fall!” He spoke with such grandeur in his childish speaking voice that both he and Mikal had to laugh.

  “It’s true, though,” Mikal said, tousling the child’s hair. “For you I’d do it, I’d give you the empire, except they’d kill you. And even if I lived long enough to train you to be a ruler of men, I wouldn’t do it. The man who will be my heir must be cruel and vicious and sly and wise, completely selfish and ambitious, contemptuous of all other people, brilliant in battle, able to outguess and outmaneuver every enemy, and strong enough inside himself to live utterly alone all his life.” Mikal smiled. “Even I don’t fit my list of qualifications, because now I’m not utterly alone.”