“Then it’s a good thing it isn’t my father who’s going there,” said Rigg cheerfully. “The decision to duplicate my father’s research was my own. There was no restriction placed on my access to the library.”

The guard looked for a moment as if he had no intention of believing a word Rigg said, but then he must have calculated how much time it would take to check, only to find out that Rigg was right. “If they throw you out, don’t blame me,” said the guard.

“Would it be all right if we ran there? Together, I mean. I haven’t had any kind of run since we got to Aressa Sessamo, and my legs are begging to be exercised.”

“No,” said the guard.

“I can’t outrun you—that’s why you’re the first guard I asked to let me run. Look at you. No matter how fast I raced, it would take you only three steps to catch me. And you like to run, or you wouldn’t have that body.”

The guard’s face showed his skepticism of Rigg’s flattery, but he was listening, and what Rigg said apparently made sense to him. “Stay in front of me,” said the guard.

“It’s you that must stay behind me. I’m stiff and out of practice—I can’t think of anyone who couldn’t beat me in a footrace.”

So they ran together to the Library of Life, the guard running lightly just behind and beside him, always close enough to reach out a hand and take Rigg by the hair. When they arrived, Rigg was panting, but the guard wasn’t even breathing hard. It’s no good for me to have let myself get out of condition, Rigg thought. What if I have to make a quick escape?

Not without Param, whatever I do. In all the years of her soft, indoor life, she’s never had to build up stamina or speed. She’s slender and there’s no muscle on her. However slow I am as a runner, I’m going to be faster than Param. That’s what happens when you’re a prisoner, however luxurious your surroundings may be. Your body gets soft and weak, so that even if you manage to escape, you’ll be easy to catch.

Inside the Library of Life, Rigg went at once to the main desk and asked the librarian on duty, “Is Bleht here today?”

“Who?”

“Bleht—she’s a microbiologist.”

“I know who Bleht is,” said the librarian. “Who, I would like to know, are you?”

“My name is Rigg Sessamekesh.”

The librarian glanced at the guard standing behind him. He must have nodded, because her face went a little red. “At once, of course.” Her manner was now obsequious as she left her desk and went in search of the great microbiologist.

“It never stops surprising me,” murmured Rigg to the guard, “that people still react to my name as if being royal meant something.”

“It means many things to many people,” said the guard.

“What does it mean to you?” asked Rigg.

“That I have to make sure you don’t get near anyone who would like to kill you.”

“What if the person who wants to kill me is you?” asked Rigg.

“You’re a strange boy,” said the guard. “But so was your father, and he was a good man.”

Only then did Rigg look to see if someone’s path inside the libraries had coincided with Father Knosso’s with any regularity, and sure enough, there was this man’s path, though he was young then, scarcely Rigg’s own age.

“You knew him,” said Rigg.

“I accompanied him to the library,” said the guard. “I laid him in the boat on his last voyage.”

“You saw the hands of the creatures that seized him and drowned him?”

“I didn’t have a telescope. I saw him pulled over the side. It looked like arms rather than tentacles or jaws.”

“What was my father like?” asked Rigg.

“You,” said the guard.

“What is your name?”

“When I’m tending to a prisoner, I have no name.”

“And when you’re home? What is your name then?”

“My landlady calls me several.”

“Why won’t you tell me?”

The guard chuckled. “Ovilenko,” he said. “It was also my father’s name.”

“Were you there when my father found the information that led him to think he could get through the Wall as long as he was unconscious?”

“I was,” said Ovilenko.

“What was he studying at the moment?” asked Rigg.

“Nothing at all,” said Ovilenko. “We weren’t even in the library.”

Rigg sighed. “So he thought it up out of nothing.”

“I believe so.”

“His research was useless. It led him nowhere.”

“He told me that it showed him all the avenues that wouldn’t take him where he wanted to go.”

Rigg wanted to ask why Ovilenko hadn’t bothered to tell him this until now. But whatever his reasons, Ovilenko would not want to have to defend himself, and Rigg did not want to antagonize him. Until this moment Rigg had supposed Olivenko was one of the men who despised the royals—after all, wasn’t that the kind of man that the Council would choose to fulfil this duty?

But Ovilenko knew Rigg’s father, and liked him, apparently. Maybe he had been surly up to now because he just didn’t like Rigg. That would also explain his not having told Rigg till now that Father Knosso had not found his answers through research at all. No doubt Ovilenko would simply tell him, You didn’t ask.

“So he bet his life,” said Rigg, “on a guess.”

“That’s what I said to him,” said Ovilenko.

“And what did he answer?”

“‘Every day we all bet our lives a thousand times on a thousand guesses.’”

“But Father Knosso lost the bet.”

Ovilenko nodded. Rigg noticed a slight stiffening of the man’s attitude.

“You don’t like me to call him ‘father,’” said Rigg.

“Call him what you like,” said Ovilenko. He grew even colder and more withdrawn.

“Because you don’t think I really am his son?”

“You look like him. Your voice sounds like his. You’re as cocksure of yourself.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Rigg. “I never thought I had any father but the man who died in the high forest last autumn. I was brought here because other people thought I might be the son of Knosso and Hagia. I was a gnat in this world, happily hovering. But I buzzed in the wrong ear and got swatted.”

Ovilenko made no response at all.

“So why don’t you like me calling Knosso ‘father’?”

“What else would you call him?”

“I saw how you turned cold when I mentioned him.”

“Did I? Then I failed.”

Rigg decided to try to pierce this barrier with irony. “What is the military punishment for such a breach of discipline? To flail at you with the flat of a sword? Imagine—a soldier showing any kind of human reaction.”

“It wasn’t the soldier Ovilenko who disappointed me,” said Ovilenko. “It was the caster of clays.”

Clays was a gambling game involving beads that were either hollow, holed, or solid. The nine clays had to be drawn randomly from a bag and rolled down a wooden chute, in full view as they rolled. The player could lift any three, but no more, to find out their weight. The gaps in the holed clays might or might not have been visible as they rolled. The discipline of the clay-caster was to show no change of expression as he lifted the clays. To visibly stiffen one’s face was one of the worst expressions to show.

“So what are the stakes?” asked Rigg. “I’ve won—but there was no bet on the table.”

“You’ve won nothing, young citizen,” said Ovilenko.

“Knowledge, I think,” said Rigg, though in fact if he knew something, he didn’t know what it was.

“You learned nothing except that I should not gamble.”

“I think I know something,” said Rigg, and now he realized that perhaps he did. “You hardened your face when I called my father by his name. I thought you were concealing anger, but I was wrong. It was grief, because you called him ‘Father Knosso,’ too. Am I right?”

Ovilenko looked away. “The game is yours, I concede it.”

“I’m surprised they’d let a soldier guard me, who knew my father and liked him.”

“It’s not well known that I knew your father. I wasn’t a soldier then. I told you I accompanied him to the library, but it was not as a guard, it was as a very junior apprentice. I would bring him drinks of water. I would carry stacks of books. I would listen to him talking aloud. I would take dictation and he would spell the hard words for me. It was my education.”