“Did you know the voice?”

  “Voices. Never the same. Not even for the same sentence, the voices changed for every word.”

  Ansset kept seeing the faces of the bound men he was told to maim and then kill. He remembered that though he cried out against it, he was still forced to do it. “How did they force you to do it!” Was Riktors reading his mind? “I don’t know. I don’t know. There were words, and then I had to.”

  “What words?”

  “I don’t know! I never knew!” And Ansset was crying again.

  Mikal spoke softly. “Who taught you how to kill that way?”

  “A man. I never knew his name. On the last day, he was tied where the others had been. The voices made me kill him.” Ansset struggled with the words, the struggle made harder by the realization that this time, when he had killed his teacher, he had not had to be forced. He had killed because he hated the man. “I murdered him.”

  “Nonsense,” the Chamberlain said. “You were a tool.”

  “I said to shut up,” Mikal said curtly. “Can you remember anything else, my Son?”

  “I killed the crew of the ship, too. All except Husk. The voices told me to. And then there were footsteps, above me, on the deck.”

  “Did you see who it was?”

  Ansset forced himself to remember. “No. He told me to lie down. He must have known the—code, whatever it is, I didn’t want to obey him, but I did.”

  “And?”

  “Footsteps, and a needle in my arm, and I woke up on the street.”

  Everyone was silent then, for a few moments, all of them thinking quickly. The Chamberlain broke first. “My Lord, the great threat to you and the strength of the Songbird’s love for you must have impelled him despite the mental block—”

  “Chamberlain,” Mikal said, “your life is over if you speak again before I address you. Captain. I want to know how those Kinshasan’s got past your guard?”

  “They were dignitaries. By your order, my Lord, no dignitaries are given the body search. Their wooden knives passed all the detectors. I’m surprised this hadn’t been tried before.”

  Ansset noticed that Riktors spoke confidently, not coweringly as another Captain might have done after assassins got through his guard. And, better in control of himself, Ansset listened for the melodies of Riktors’s voice. They were strong. They were dissonant. Ansset wondered if he would be able to detect Riktors in a lie. To a strong, selfish man all things that he chose to say became truth, and the songs of his voice said nothing.

  “Riktors, you will prepare orders for the utter destruction of Kinshasa.”

  Riktors saluted.

  “Before Kinshasa is destroyed—and that means destroyed, not a blade of grass, Riktors—before Kinshasa is destroyed, I want to know what connection there is between the assassination attempt this morning and the manipulation of my Songbird.”

  Riktors saluted again. Mikal spoke to the Chamberlain. “Chamberlain, what would you recommend I do with my Songbird?”

  As usual, the Chamberlain took the safe way. “My Lord, it is not a matter to which I have given thought. The disposition of your Songbird is not a matter on which I feel it proper to advise you.”

  “Very carefully said, my dear Chamberlain.” Ansset tried to be calm as he listened to them discuss how he should be disposed of. Mikal raised his hand in the gesture that, by ritual, spared the Chamberlain’s life. Ansset would have laughed at the Chamberlain’s struggle not to show his relief, but this was not a time for laughter, because Ansset knew his relief would not come so easily.

  “My Lord,” Ansset said, “I beg you to put me to death.”

  “Dammit, Ansset, I’m sick of the rituals,” Mikal said.

  “This is no ritual,” Ansset said, his voice tired and husky from misuse. “And this is no song, Father Mikal. I’m a danger to you.”

  “I know it.” Mikal looked back and forth between Riktors and the Chamberlain.

  “Chamberlain, have Ansset’s possessions put together and readied for shipment to Alwiss. The prefect there is Timmis Hortmang, prepare a letter of explanation and a letter of mark. Ansset will arrive there wealthier than anyone else in the prefecture. Those are my orders. See to it.” He turned his head downward and to the right. Both Riktors and the Chamberlain moved to leave. Ansset—and therefore the guards who had lasers trained on him—did not.

  “Father Mikal,” Ansset said softly, and he realized that the words had been a song.

  But Mikal made no answer. He only got up from the chair and left the chamber.

  Ansset had several hours before nightfall, and he spent them wandering through the palace and the palace grounds. The guards dogged his steps. At first he let the tears flow. Then, as the horror of the morning hid again behind the only partly broken block in his mind, he remembered what the Songmaster had taught him, again and again, “When you want to weep, let the tears come through your throat. Let pain come from the pressure in your thighs. Let sorrow rise and resonate through your head.”

  Walking by the Susquehanna on the cold lawns of autumn afternoon shade, Ansset sang his grief. He sang softly, but the guards heard his song, and could not help but weep for him, too.

  He stopped at a place where the water looked cold and clear, and began to strip off his tunic, preparing to swim. A guard reached out and stopped him. Ansset noticed the laser pointed at his foot. “I can’t let you do that. Mikal gave orders you were not to be allowed to take your own life.”

  “I only want to swim,” Ansset answered, his voice low with persuasion.

  “I would be killed if any harm came to you,” the guard said.

  “I give you my oath that I will only swim, and not try to break free.”

  The guard considered. The other guards seemed content to leave the decision up to him. Ansset hummed a sweet melody that he knew oozed confidence. The guard gave in.

  Ansset stripped and dove into the water. It was icy cold, and stung him. He swam in broad strokes upstream, knowing that to the guards on the bank he would already seem like only a speck on the surface of the river. Then he dove and swam under the water, holding his breath as only a singer or a pearldiver could, and swam across the current toward the near shore, where the guards were waiting. He could hear, though muffled by the water, the cries of the guards. He surfaced, laughing.

  Two of the guards had already thrown off their boots and were up to their waists in water, preparing to try to catch Ansset’s body as it swept by. But Ansset kept laughing at them, and they turned at him angrily.

  “Why did you worry?” Ansset said. “I gave my word.”

  Then the guards relaxed, and Ansset swam for an hour under the afternoon sun. The motion of the water, and constant exertion to keep place against the current took his mind off his troubles, to some extent. Only one guard watched him now, while the others played polys, casting fourteensided dice in a mad gambling game that soon engrossed them.

  Ansset swam underwater from time to time, listening to the different sound the guards’ quarreling and laughing made when water covered his ears. The sun was nearly down, now, and Ansset dove underwater again to swim to shore on one breath. He was halfway to shore when he heard the sharp call of a bird overhead, muffled as it was by the river.

  Ansset made a sudden connection in his mind, and came up immediately, coughing and sputtering. He dog-paddled in to shore, shook himself, and put on his tunic, wet as he was.

  “We’ve got to get back to the palace,” he said, filling his voice with urgency, putting the pitch high to penetrate the guards’ sluggishness after an hour of gaming. The guards quickly followed him, overtook him.

  “Where are you going?” one of them asked.

  “To see Mikal.”

  “We’re not to do that—we were ordered! You can’t go to Mikal.”

  But Ansset walked on, fairly sure that until he actually got close to the emperor the guards would not try to restrain him. Even if they had not been present for the demonstration of Ansset’s skill in the Great Hall that morning, the story would surely have reached their ears that Mikal’s Songbird could kill two men in two seconds.

  He had heard the call of a bird as he swam underwater. He remembered that on his last night of captivity in the ship, he had heard the cry of another bird high above him. But never, never had he heard another sound from outside.

  And yet where the flatboat was the city noise had come loudly, could be heard clearly below decks. Therefore even if the boat were his prison, it had not been moored by that house. And if that were so, the evidence against the former Captain of the Guard was a fraud. And Ansset knew now who in the court had taken Ansset to use as an assassin.

  They were met in a corridor by a messenger. “There you are. The Lord Mikal commands the presence of the Songbird, as quickly as possible. Here,” he said, handing the orders to the guard who made decisions, who took out his verifier and passed it over the seal on the orders. A sharp buzz testified that the orders were genuine.

  “All right then, Songbird,” said the guard. “We’ll go there after all.” Ansset started to run. The guards kept up easily, following him through the labyrinth. To them it was almost a game, and one of them said, between breaths, “I never knew this way led where we’re going!” to which one of the other guards replied, “And you’ll never find it again, either.”

  And then they were in Mikal’s chambers. Ansset’s hair was still wet, and his tunic still clung to his small body where it had not yet had time to dry from the river water.

  Mikal was smiling. “Ansset, my Son, it’s fine now.” Mikal waved an arm, dismissing the guards. “We were so foolish to think we needed to send you away,” he said. “The Captain was the only one in the plot close enough to give the signal. Now that he’s dead, no one knows it! You’re safe now—and so am I!”

  Mikal’s speech was jovial, delighted, but Ansset, who knew the songs of his voice as well as he knew his own, read in the words a warning, a lie, a declaration of danger. Ansset did not run to him. He waited.

  “In fact,” Mikal said, “you’re my best possible bodyguard. You look small and weak, you’re always by my side, and you can kill faster than a guard with a laser.” Mikal laughed. Ansset was not fooled. There was no mirth in the laugh.

  But the Chamberlain and Captain Riktors Ashen were fooled, and they laughed along with Mikal. Ansset forced himself to laugh, too. He listened to the sounds the others were making. Riktors sounded sincere enough, but the Chamberlain—

  “It’s a cause for celebration. Here’s wine,” said the Chamberlain. “I brought us wine. Ansset, why don’t you pour it?”

  Ansset shuddered with memories. “I?” he asked, surprised, and then not surprised at all. The Chamberlain held out the full bottle and the empty goblet. “For the Lord Mikal,” the Chamberlain said.

  Ansset shouted and dashed the bottle to the floor. “Make him keep silent!”

  The suddenness of Ansset’s violent action brought Riktors’s laser out of his belt and into his hand.

  “Don’t let the Chamberlain speak!”

  “Why not?” asked Mikal innocently, but Ansset knew there was no innocence behind the words. For some reason Mikal was pretending not to understand.

  The Chamberlain believed it, believed he had a moment. He said quickly, almost urgently, “Why did you do that? I have another bottle. Sweet Songbird, let Mikal drink deeply!”

  The words hammered into Ansset’s brain, and by reflex he whirled and faced Mikal. He knew what was happening, knew and screamed against it in his mind. But his hands came up against his will, his legs bent, he compressed to spring, all so quickly that he couldn’t stop himself. He knew that in less than a second his hand would be buried in Mikal’s face, Mikal’s beloved face, Mikal’s smiling face—

  Mikal was smiling at him, kindly and without fear. Ansset stopped in midspring, forced himself to turn aside, despite the tearing in his brain. He could be forced to kill, but he couldn’t be forced to kill that face. He shoved his hand into the floor, bursting the tense surface, releasing the gel to flow out across the room.

  Ansset hardly noticed the pain in his arm where the impact had broken the skin and the gel was agonizing the wound. All he felt was the pain in his mind as he still struggled against the compulsion he had only just barely deflected, that still drove him to try to kill Mikal, that still he fought against, fought down, tried to block.

  His body heaved upward, his hand flew threw the air, and shattered the back of the chair where Mikal still sat. Blood spurted and splashed, and Ansset was relieved to see that it was his own blood, and not Mikal’s.

  In the distance he heard Mikal’s voice saying, “Don’t shoot him.” And, as suddenly as it had come, the compulsion ceased. His mind spun as he heard the Chamberlain’s words fading away: “Songbird, what have you done!”

  Those were the words that had set him free.

  Exhausted and bleeding, Ansset lay on the floor, his right arm covered with blood. The pain reached him now, and he groaned, though his groan was as much a song of ecstasy as of pain. Somehow Ansset had withstood it long enough, and he had not killed Father Mikal.

  Finally he rolled over and sat up, nursing his arm. The bleeding had settled to a slow trickle.

  Mikal was still sitting in the chair, despite its shattered back where Ansset’s hand had struck. The Chamberlain stood where he had stood ten seconds before, at the beginning of Ansset’s ordeal, the goblet looking ridiculous in his hand. Riktors’s laser was aimed at the Chamberlain.

  “Call the guards, Captain,” Mikal said.

  “I already have,” Riktors said. The button on his belt was glowing. Guards came quickly into the room. “Take the Chamberlain to a cell,” he ordered them. “If any harm comes to him, all of you will die and your families, too. Do you understand?” The guards understood.

  Ansset held his arm. Mikal and Riktors Ashen waited while a doctor treated it. The pain subsided.

  The doctor left.

  Riktors spoke first. “Of course you knew it was the Chamberlain, my Lord.”

  Mikal smiled faintly.

  “That was why you let him persuade you to call Ansset back here.” Mikal’s smile grew broader.

  “But, my Lord, only you could have known that the Songbird would be strong enough to resist a compulsion that was five months in the making.” Mikal laughed. And this time Ansset heard mirth in the laughter.

  “Riktors Ashen. Will they call you Riktors the Usurper? Or Riktors the Great?”

  It took the Captain of the Guard a moment to realize what had been said. Only a moment. But before his hand could reach his laser, which was back in his belt, Mikal’s hand held a laser that was pointed at Riktors’s heart.

  “Ansset, my Son, will you take the Captain’s laser from him?”

  Ansset got up and took the Captain’s laser from him. He could hear the song of triumph in Mikal’s voice. But Ansset’s head was still spinning, and he didn’t understand why lasers had been drawn between the emperor and his incorruptible Captain.

  “Only one mistake, Riktors. Otherwise brilliantly done. And I really don’t see how you could have avoided the mistake, either.”

  “You mean Ansset’s strength?”

  “Not even I counted on that. I was prepared to kill him, if I needed to,” Mikal said, and Ansset, listening, knew it was true. He wondered why that knowledge didn’t hurt him. He had always known that, eventually, not even he would be indispensable to Mikal, if somehow his death served some vital purpose.

  “Then I made no mistakes,” Riktors said. “How did you know?”

  “Because my Chamberlain, unless he were under some sort of compulsion, would never have had the courage to suggest your name as the Captain’s successor. And without that, you wouldn’t have been in a position to take over after you exposed the Chamberlain as the engineer of my assassination, would you? It was good. The guard would have followed you loyally. No taint of assassination would have touched you. Of course, the entire empire would have rebelled immediately. But you’re a good tactician and a better strategist, and your men would have followed you well. I’d have given you one chance in four of making it—and that’s better odds than any other man in the empire.”

  “I gave myself even odds,” Riktors said, but Ansset heard the fear singing through the back of his brave words. Well, why not? Death was certain now, and Ansset knew of no one, except perhaps an old man like Mikal, who could look at death, especially death that also meant failure, without some fear.

  But Mikal did not push the button on the laser.

  “Kill me now and finish it,” Riktors Ashen said.

  Mikal tossed the laser away. “With this? It has no charge. The Chamberlain installed a charge detector at every door in my chambers over fifteen years ago. He would have known if I was armed.”

  Immediately Riktors took a step forward, the beginning of a rush toward the emperor. Just as quickly Ansset was on his feet, despite the bandaged arm ready to kill with the other hand, with his feet, with his head. Riktors stopped cold.

  “Ah,” Mikal said. “No one knows like you do what my bodyguard can accomplish in so short a time.”

  And Ansset realized that if Mikal’s laser was not loaded, he couldn’t have stopped Ansset if Ansset had not had strength enough to stop himself. Mikal had trusted him.

  And Mikal spoke again. “Riktors, your mistakes were very slight. I hope you have learned from them. So that when an assassin as bright as you are tries to take your life, you know all the enemies you have and all the allies you can call on and exactly what you can expect from each.”

  Ansset’s hands trembled. “Let me kill him now,” he said.

  Mikal sighed. “Don’t kill for pleasure, my Son. If you ever kill for pleasure you’ll come to hate yourself. Besides, weren’t you listening? I’m going to adopt Riktors Ashen as my heir.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Riktors said. But Ansset heard hope in his voice.

  “I’ll call in my sons—they stay around court, hoping to be closest to the palace when I die,” Mikal said. “I’ll make them sign an oath to respect you as my heir. Of course they’ll all sign it, and of course you’ll have them all killed the moment you take the throne. And, let’s see, that moment will be three weeks from tomorrow, that should give us time. I’ll abdicate in your favor, sign all the papers, it’ll make the headlines on the newsheets for days. I can just see all the potential rebels tearing their hair with rage. It’s a pleasant picture to retire on.”