He could see that it truly pained Shouter to have to cooperate with him, but in due time he must have seen the necessity of it, for he reached out his right hand and together, they drew the table toward themselves, so now the bowls of barley soup were within comfortable reach.

Rigg reached with his left hand to take the spoon from the right side of the bowl. Shouter did the same with his right.

“This is going to be clumsy,” said Rigg. “I’m right-handed. Using a spoon with my left hand on a boat that’s prone to yaw, I might spill.”

Since Rigg could plainly see that Shouter was left-handed, he was deliberately giving Shouter an opening to say that he was at the same disadvantage. Instead, Shouter grimly set about bringing dribbling spoonfuls to his mouth, spilling a little onto the table and his lap.

Rigg had spent considerable time with Father practicing to be as ambidextrous as possible—able to shoot a bow, clean and skin an animal, and write smoothly and legibly with either hand. He could have eaten without dribbling, but instead he matched Shouter spill for spill.

“I don’t think it’s an accident they bound your left hand to my right,” said Rigg. “To make us both clumsier.”

Shouter didn’t even look at him.

As they both kept eating, Rigg spoke between bites. “For what it’s worth, my friends and I had no idea we were going to be arrested today, and whatever they did to put you in the water, I wasn’t part of it.”

Shouter turned to gaze at him with furious eyes, but still refused to speak. That was all right—he had made contact and it was just a matter of time.

“So you don’t hate me because you’re wet, you hate me because of who I’m supposed to be. Just so you know, I’m not claiming to be anybody but myself.”

Shouter gave a single bark of a laugh.

“The only parent I knew was my father, who raised me mostly in the forests. He died several months ago, and left—”

“Spare me,” said Shouter. “How many times do you think that story is going to work?”

“As often as the truth works.”

“I’m here to kill you,” said Shouter.

Rigg felt a thrill of fear run through his body. Shouter meant it. Well, that was certainly useful information.

“All right then,” said Rigg. “I can’t stop you.”

“You can’t even slow me down.”

Rigg waited.

“Well?” he asked.

“Not here,” said Shouter. “Not in this room. Then they’d have to have a trial and execute me, and it would become public. Stories would spread about how a soldier under General Citizen’s command murdered the rightful King-in-the-Tent. It would be as bad as leaving you alive.”

“So the general has given you orders to—”

“Fool,” said Shouter. “Do you think I need orders in order to see my duty and do it?”

Rigg thought again of the hatred on the man’s face. “This isn’t about duty.”

Shouter said nothing for a long while. Then: “Killing you is more than a duty. But the manner will be dutiful.”

“Just for my own interest,” said Rigg, “are you killing me because you think I really am the Sessamekesh? Or because you think I’m an imposter?”

“Just for your own interest,” said Shouter, “it doesn’t matter.”

“But your hatred for me—does it spring from a love of the royal family or a loathing for them?”

“If you’re truly royal or if you’re an imposter, your purposes can only be served by restoring the royal family to power.”

“Your hatred of the royals is personal.”

“My great-grandfather was a very rich and powerful trader. Someone accused him of putting on airs as if he were nobility—the crime was sumptuary presumption. Trying to pass as a lord. Wearing the clothes of a lord. Assuming the dignities of a lord.”

“That was a crime?” asked Rigg.

“Not a mere crime. Each charge was a count of treason. Under the monarchy, it was law that everyone must stay in his class. Merchants cannot become armiger, armigers cannot become noble, and nobles could not aspire to the monarchy. If my great-grandfather had been accused of dressing as a warrior, bearing arms, the penalty would have been a steep fine and house arrest for a year. But he was charged with dressing as a noble, which would have jumped him up two ranks. The penalty was the same as if he had attempted to murder the queen.”

Rigg had never heard of any such nonsense, but he did not doubt the truth of Shouter’s story. “Death?”

“A slow and gruesome public death,” said Shouter. “With his body parts fed to the royal hunting dogs in front of the merchants’ guild. His family was stripped of all wealth, including the clothing of a merchant, and wearing only the loincloths and mantles of beggars they were turned loose in the street to be the prey of any.”

“That’s not fair,” said Rigg.

“After my great-grandfather was executed, his eldest son, my grandfather, was killed almost at once by the servants of a rival merchant—the one who had denounced his father, no doubt. Without protectors, without money or property, all the women and young boys of the family would have been forced into prostitution, the men into bonded service in the mines. Instead they were taken under the protection of the Revolutionary Council. My father was only nine. He grew up to show the Council the loyalty they deserved. I was raised on that loyalty and I feel it still. I would die to keep the royal deathworms from infesting Stashiland again.”

He had called it Stashiland—the name of the valley and delta of the Stashik River, before the Sessamoto came from the northeast to conquer it and establish the empire. For the first time, Rigg began to understand just how deep memory could go, and how much pain could still be felt because of things that happened decades before.

“I have never—”

“I know you have never harmed me or anyone that way. But if your game is played at all, no matter what kind of player you are, those who would treat commoners that way will use you to seize power again. The Council is the worst sort of government—corrupt, arbitrary, self-righteous, fanatical. But they’re better than any of the alternatives. And my family owes them our survival.”

“Well, this all makes perfect sense,” said Rigg. “If I have to die, it’s just as well to be murdered by someone whose family lost everything at the hands of people I’ve never met and never claimed to be related to, and whom I would fight against myself if they behaved that way.”

“You’re wasting your breath,” said Shouter.

“For my own satisfaction,” said Rigg, “may I know the real name of the man who’s going to kill me?”

“My great-grandfather was Talisco Waybright. My grandfather was also Talisco, and my father, and I as well, though the Waybright name was stripped from us, and replaced with ‘Urine.’”

“Not really,” said Rigg.

“It’s a common-enough name in Aressa Sessamo,” said Shouter. “It was given to convicts, along with other colorful and degrading names. After the revolution, most of us kept those names as a badge of pride. I will not call myself Waybright again until the royal family all are dead. Though I may decide that your death is enough for me to earn the old name back again.”

“So how do you plan to separate us so you can kill me?”

“I’ll share no plans with you.”

You already have, Rigg thought. Since you plan to kill me in such a way as to avoid a trial for murder, you’re going to make it look like an accident, and as proof of it, you intend to die with me. It’s a dutiful death. But I’ll pretend not to know.

As they finished eating, soaking up the last of the soup with fresh city-made bread, Rigg looked, without seeming to, at the way the manacles were fastened. Heavy iron bands that were closed at their wrists and also attached to each other by a single lock. An easy one to pick open, as Father had taught him the mechanisms of the most common locks. Rigg assumed the leg irons were attached the same way, but the problem would be getting to them with some kind of tool while Shouter—no, Talisco Waybright—was fighting him.