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“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.”
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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.
