And then, as Mikal drifted off to sleep, Ansset sang to him of his captivity, the songs and words of his time of loneliness in captivity, and as the men on the ship had wept, so Mikal wept, only more. Then they both slept.

  A few days later Mikal, Ansset, the Chamberlain, and the Captain of the Guard met in Mikal’s small receiving room, where a solid block of clear glass as perfect as a lens stretched as a meters-long table from one end of the room to the other. They gathered at one end. The Chamberlain was adamant.

  “Ansset is a danger to you, my Lord.”

  The Captain of the Guard was equally adamant. “We found the conspirators and killed them all.”

  The Chamberlain rolled his eyes heavenward in disgust.

  The Captain of the Guard became angry, though he kept the fact hidden behind heavy-lidded eyes. “It all fit—the accent that Ansset told us they had, the wooden ship, calling each other freemen, their emotionalism—they could have been no one else but the Freemen of Eire. Just another nationalist group, but they have a lot of sympathizers here in America—damn these ‘nations,’ where but on old Earth would people subdivide their planet and think the subdivisions meant anything.”

  “So you went in and wiped them all out,” the Chamberlain sneered, “and not one of them had any knowledge of the plot.”

  “Anyone who could block out the Songbird’s mind as well as he did can hide a conspiracy like that!” the Captain of the Guard snapped back.

  “Our enemy is subtle,” the Chamberlain said. “He kept everything else from Ansset’s knowledge—so why did he let him have all these clues that steered us to Eire? I think we were given bait and you bit. Well, I haven’t bitten yet, and I’m still looking.”

  “In the meantime,” Mikal said, “try to avoid harassing Ansset too much.”

  “I don’t mind,” Ansset hurriedly said, though he minded very much: the constant searches, the frequent interrogations, the hypnotherapy, the guards who followed him constantly to keep him from meeting with anyone.

  “I mind,” Mikal said. “It’s good for you to keep watch, because we still don’t know what they’ve done to Ansset’s mind. But in the meantime, let Ansset’s life be worth living.” Mikal glared pointedly at the Captain of the Guard, who got up and left. Then Mikal turned to the Chamberlain and said, “I don’t like how easily the Captain was fooled by such an obvious ploy. Keep up your investigation. And tell me anything your spies within the Captain’s forces might have to say.”

  The Chamberlain tried for a moment to protest that he had no such spies—but Mikal laughed until the Chamberlain gave up and promised to complete a report.

  “My days are numbered,” Mikal said to Ansset. “Sing to me of numbered days.” And so Ansset sang him a playful song about a man who decided to live for two hundred years and so counted his age backward, by the number of years he had left. “And he died when he was only eighty-three,” Ansset sang, and Mikal laughed and tossed another log on the fire. Only an emperor or a peasant in the protected forests of Siberia could afford to burn wood.

  Then one day Ansset, as he wandered through the palace, noticed a different direction and a quickened pace to the hustling and bustling of servants down the halls. He went to the Chamberlain.

  “Try to keep quiet about it,” the Chamberlain said. “You’re coming with us, anyway.”

  And within an hour Ansset rode beside Mikal in an armored car as a convoy swept out of Capital. The roads were kept clear, and in an hour and fifteen minutes the armored car stopped. Ansset bounded out of the hatchway. He was startled to see that the entire convoy was missing, and only the single armored car remained. He immediately suspected treachery, and looked down at Mikal in fright.

  “Don’t worry,” Mikal said. “We sent the convoy on.”

  They got out of the car and with a dozen picked guards (not from the palace guard, Ansset noticed) they made their way through a sparse wood, along a stream, and finally to the banks of a huge river.

  “The Delaware,” whispered the Chamberlain to Ansset, who had already guessed as much.

  “Keep your esoterica to yourself,” Mikal said, sounding irritable, which meant he was enjoying himself immensely. He hadn’t been a part of any kind of planetside military operation in forty years, ever since he became an emperor and had to control fleets and planets instead of a few ships and a thousand men. There was a spring to his step that belied his century and a quarter.

  Finally the Chamberlain stopped. “That’s the house, and that’s the boat.”

  A flatboat was moored on the river by a shambling wooden house that looked like it had been built during the American colonial revival over a hundred years before.

  They crept up on the house, but it was empty, and when they rushed the flatboat the only man on board aimed a laser at his own face and blasted it to a cinder. Not before Ansset had recognized him, though.

  “That was Husk,” Ansset said, feeling sick as he looked at the ruined corpse. Inexplicably, he felt a nagging guilt. “He’s the man who fed me.”

  Then Mikal and Chamberlain followed Ansset through the boat. “It’s not the same,” Ansset said.

  “Of course not,” said the Chamberlain. “The paint is fresh. And there’s a smell of new wood. They’ve been remodeling. But is there anything familiar?”

  There was. Ansset found a tiny room that could have been his cell, though now it was painted bright yellow and a new window let sunlight flood into the room. Mikal examined the windowframe. “New,” the emperor pronounced. And by trying to imagine the interior of the flatboat as it might have been unpainted, Ansset was able to find the large room where he had sung his last evening in captivity. There was no table. But the room seemed the same size, and Ansset agreed that this could very well have been the place he was held.

  Down in the ship they heard the laughter of children and a passing eletrecart that clattered along the bumpy old, asphalt road. The Chamberlain laughed. “Sorry I took you the long way. It’s really quite a populated area. I just wanted to be sure they didn’t have time to be warned.”

  Mikal curled his lip. “If it’s a populated area we should have arrived in a bus. A group of armed men walking along a river are much more conspicuous.”

  “I’m not a tactician,” said the Chamberlain.

  “Tactician enough,” said Mikal. “We’ll go back to the palace now. Do you have anyone you can trust to make the arrest? I don’t want him harmed.”

  But it didn’t do any good to give orders to that effect. When the Captain of the Guard was arrested, he raged and stormed and then a half-hour later, before there was time to examine him with the probe and taster, one of the guards slipped him some poison and he drifted off into death. The Chamberlain rashly had the offending guard impaled with nails until he bled to death.

  Ansset was confused as he watched Mikal rage at the Chamberlain. It was obviously a sham, or half a sham, and Ansset was certain that the Chamberlain knew it. “Only a fool would have killed that soldier! How did the poison get into the palace past the detectors? How did the soldier get it to the Captain? None of the questions will ever be answered now!”

  The Chamberlain made the mandatory ritual resignation. “My Lord Imperator, I was a fool. I deserve to die. I resign my position and ask for you to have me killed.”

  Following the ritual, but obviously annoyed by having it thrust at him before he was through raging, Mikal lifted his hand and said, “Damn right you’re a fool.” Then, in proper form, he said, “I grant you your life because of your infinitely valuable services to me in apprehending the traitor in the first place.” Mikal cocked his head to one side. “So, Chamberlain, who do you think I should make the next Captain of the Guard?”

  Ansset almost laughed out loud. It was an impossible question to answer. The safest answer (and the Chamberlain liked to do safe things) would be to say he had never given the matter any thought at all, and wouldn’t presume to advise the emperor on such a vital matter. But even so, the moment would be tense for the Chamberlain.

  And Ansset was shocked to hear the Chamberlain answer, “Riktors Ashen, of course, my Lord.”

  The “of course” was insolent. The naming of the man was ridiculous. At first Ansset looked at Mikal to see fury there. But instead Mikal was smiling. “Why of course,” he said blandly. “Riktors Ashen is the obvious choice. Tell him in my name that he’s appointed.”

  Even the Chamberlain, who had mastered the art of blandness at will, looked surprised for a moment. Again Ansset almost laughed. He saw Mikal’s victory: the Chamberlain had probably named the one man in the palace guard that the Chamberlain had no control over, assuming that Mikal would never pick the man the Chamberlain recommended. And so Mikal had picked him: Riktors Ashen, the victor of the battle of Mantrynn, a planet that had revolted only three years before. He was known to be incorruptible, brilliant, and reliable. Well, now he’d have a chance to prove his reputation, Ansset thought.

  Then he was startled out of his reverie by Mikal’s voice. “Do you know what his last words were to me?”

  By the instant understanding that needed no referents for Mikal’s pronouns Ansset knew he was talking about the now-dead Captain of the Guard.

  “He said, ‘Tell Mikal that my death frees more plotters than it kills.’ And then he said that he loved me. Imagine, that cagey old bastard saying he loved me. I remember him twenty years ago when he killed his closest friend in a squabble over a promotion. The bloodiest men get most sentimental in their old age, I suppose.”

  Ansset asked a question—it seemed a safe time. “My Lord, why was the Captain arrested?”

  “Hmmm?” Mikal looked surprised. “Oh, I suppose no one told you, then. He visited that house regularly throughout your captivity. He said he visited a woman there. But the neighbors all testified under the probe that a woman never lived there. And the Captain was a master at establishing mental blocks.”

  “Then the conspiracy is broken!” Ansset said, joyfully assuming that the guards would stop harassing him and the questions would finally end.

  “The conspiracy is barely dented. Someone was able to get poison to the Captain. Therefore plotters still exist within the palace. And therefore Riktors Ashen will be instructed to keep a close watch on you.”

  Ansset tried to keep the smile on his face. He failed.

  “I know, I know,” Mikal said wearily. “But it’s still locked in your mind.”

  It was unlocked the next day. The court was gathered in the Great Hall, and Ansset resigned himself to a morning of wandering through the halls—or else standing near Mikal as he received the boring procession of dignitaries paying their respects to the emperor (and then going home to report how soon they thought Mikal the Terrible would die, and who might succeed him, and what the chances were for grabbing a piece of the empire). Because the palace bored him and he wanted to be near Mikal, and because the Chamberlain smiled at him and asked, “Are you coming to court?” Ansset decided to attend.

  The order of dignitaries had been carefully worked out to honor loyal friends and humiliate upstarts whose dignity needed deflating. A minor official from a distant star cluster was officially honored, the first business of the day, and then the rituals began: princes and presidents and satraps and governors, depending on what title survived the conquest a decade or a score or fourscore years ago, all proceeding forward with their retinue, bowing (how low they bowed showed how afraid they were of Mikal, or how much they wanted to flatter him), uttering a few words, asking for private audience, being put off or being invited, in an endless array.

  Ansset was startled to see a group of Black Kinshasans attired in their bizarre old Earth costumes. Kinshasa insisted it was an independent nation, a pathetic nose-thumbing claim when empires of planets had been swallowed up by Mikal Conqueror. Why were they being allowed to wear their native regalia and have an audience? Ansset raised an eyebrow at the Chamberlain, who also stood near the throne.

  “It was Mikal’s idea,” the Chamberlain said voicelessly. “He’s letting them come and present a petition right before the president of Stuss. Those toads from Stuss’ll be madder than hell.”

  At that moment Mikal raised his hand for some wine. Obviously he was as bored as anyone else.

  The Chamberlain poured the wine, tasted it, as was the routine, and then took a step toward Mikal’s throne. Then he stopped, and beckoned to Ansset, who was already moving back to Mikal’s side. Surprised at the summons, Ansset came over.

  “Why don’t you take the wine to Mikal, Sweet Songbird?” the Chamberlain said. The surprise fell away from Ansset’s eyes, and he took the wine and headed purposefully back to Mikal’s throne.

  At that moment, however, pandemonium broke loose. The Kinshasan envoys reached into their elaborate curly-haired headdresses and withdrew wooden knives—which could pass every test given by machines at the doors of the palace. They rushed toward the throne. The guards fired quickly, their lasers dropping five of the Kinshasans, but all had aimed at the foremost assassins, and three continued unharmed. They rushed toward the throne, arms extended so the knives were already aimed directly at Mikal’s heart.

  Mikal, old and unarmed, rose to meet them. A guard managed to shift his aim and get off a shot, but it was wild, and the others were hurriedly recharging their lasers—which only took a moment, but that was a moment too long.

  Mikal looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed.

  But at that moment Ansset threw the wine goblet at one of the attackers and then leaped out in front of the emperor. He jumped easily into the air, and kicked the jaw of the first of the attackers. The angle of the kick was perfect, the force sharp and incredibly hard, and the Kinshasan’s head flew fifty feet away into the crowd, as his body slid forward until the wooden knife touched Mikal’s foot. Ansset came down from the jump in time to bring his hand upward into the abdomen of another attacker so sharply that his arm was buried to the elbow in bowels, and his fingers crushed the man’s heart.

  The other attacker paused just a moment, thrown from his relentless charge by the sudden onslaught from the child who stood so harmlessly by the emperor’s throne. That pause was long enough for recharged lasers to be aimed, to flash, and the last Kinshasan assassin fell, dropping ashes as he collapsed, flaming slightly.

  The whole thing, from the appearance of the wooden knives to the fall of the last attacker, had taken five seconds.

  Ansset stood still in the middle of the hall, gore on his arm, blood splashed all over his body. He looked at the gory hand, at the body he had pulled it out of. A rush of long-blocked memories came back, and he remembered other such bodies, other heads kicked from torsos, other men who had died as Ansset learned the skill of killing with his hands. The guilt that had troubled him before swept through him with new force now that he knew the why of it.

  The searches had all been in vain. Ansset himself was the weapon that was to have been used against Father Mikal.

  The smell of blood and broken intestines combined with the emotions sweeping his body, and he doubled over, shuddering as he vomited.

  The guards gingerly approached him, unsure what they should do.

  But the Chamberlain was sure. Ansset heard the voice, trembling with fear at how close the assassination had come, and how easily a different assassination could have come, saying, “Keep him under guard. Wash him. Never let him be out of a laser’s aim for a moment. Then bring him to Mikal’s chambers in an hour.”

  The guards looked toward Mikal, who nodded.

  Ansset was still white and weak when he came into Mikal’s chambers. The guards still had lasers trained on him. The Chamberlain and the new Captain of the Guard, Riktors Ashen, stood between Mikal and the boy.

  “Songbird,” Riktors said, “it seems that someone taught you new songs.”

  Ansset lowered his head.

  “You must have studied under a master.”

  “I n-never,” Ansset stuttered. He had never stuttered in his life.

  “Don’t torture the boy, Captain,” Mikal said.

  The Chamberlain launched into his pro forma resignation. “I should have examined the boy’s muscle structure and realized what new skills he had been given. I submit my resignation. I beg you to take my life.”

  The Chamberlain must be even more worried than usual, Ansset thought with that part of his mind that was still capable of thinking. The old man had prostrated himself in front of the emperor.

  “Shut up and get up,” Mikal said rudely. The Chamberlain arose with his face gray. Mikal had not followed the ritual. The Chamberlain’s life was still on the line.

  “We will now be certain,” Mikal said to Riktors. “Show him the pictures.”

  Ansset stood watching as Riktors took a packet off a table and began removing newsheet clippings from it. Ansset looked at the first one and was merely sickened a little. The second one he recognized, and he gasped.

  With the third one he wept and threw the pictures away from him.

  “Those are the pictures,” Mikal said, “of the people who were kidnapped and murdered during your captivity.”

  “I k-killed them,” Ansset said, dimly aware that there was no trace of song in his voice, just the frightened stammering of an eleven-year-old boy caught up in something too monstrous for him to comprehend. “They had me practice on them.”

  “Who had you practice!” Riktors demanded.

  “They! The voices—from the box.” Ansset struggled to hold onto memories that had been hidden from him by the block. He also longed to let the block in his mind slide back into place, forget again, shut it out.

  “What box?” Riktors would not let up.

  “The box. A wooden box. Maybe a receiver, maybe a recording, I don’t know.”