“Where are we going?” asked Umbo.

“To your lodgings,” said Rigg.

“Are you even going to ask me where we’re staying?” asked Umbo.

Rigg stopped and looked at him as if he were insane. “It’s me. The guy who sees paths. I know where you live.” Then he took off walking again, only this time Umbo realized that he was heading on the shortest route to their lodgings.

“What’s your sister like?” asked Umbo.

“Invisible,” said Rigg.

That was no answer. “Are you still mad?” asked Umbo.

“I’m scared,” said Rigg. “Total strangers want me dead.”

“If it’s any consolation,” said Loaf as he caught up with them, “for a minute there I saw their point.”

When they neared the inn, Loaf stopped them. “The bank has been watching us. They probably know where we live. What if they also know something about our connection with you? We did jump from a boat while in custody.”

“And Rigg is the only living prince of the royal house,” said Umbo.

“Nobody knows my face.”

“I think you told us about spies in the house,” said Loaf. “They know your face. Do you know their faces?”

“I know their paths,” said Rigg, “and they’re nowhere near here.”

“I’d feel safer going somewhere else.”

So they fell in behind Loaf as he made his way to a cheap little noodle bar. “Don’t order anything that claims to be meat,” said Loaf.

“You never warned me about that,” said Umbo.

“I didn’t think I had to, since you had two days of dysentery after ordering the lamb.”

“Are we sure it was the lamb?” asked Umbo.

“Eat it again and see,” said Loaf, with perhaps too much relish in his tone.

They sat at the bar and slurped their way through peppery broth-soaked short-noodles. Umbo didn’t have the lamb; he liked the radish-and-onion chicken broth better anyway.

“I’m not leaving without my sister,” said Rigg quietly, between slurps.

“That’s not our problem,” said Loaf. “We can’t get into your house anyway. We can’t get near your house.”

“I think General C. is getting ready to make a move,” said Rigg. “I only wish I knew whether he was in the group that wants me dead or the group that wants to make me . . . boss.”

“Does it matter?” asked Umbo. “You want to stay away from him either way.”

“But it’ll help to know whether they’re trying to get to me or my sister.”

“For all you know the whole thing is being orchestrated by your mother,” said Loaf.

“Everybody connects with everybody, eventually,” said Rigg. “So I can’t say it’s impossible. But I don’t think it’s likely. I think she just wants to be left alone.”

“And so she lives in that fancy house and meets with important people?” asked Loaf.

“She doesn’t meet with anybody.”

“They say that everybody who matters has some kind of connection with Flacommo’s house,” said Loaf. “They say that your mother is already boss in everything but name.”

“Trust me,” said Rigg. “From inside the house, it doesn’t look that way. She receives visitors, yes, but she’s never alone with them. She’s never alone with anybody except my sister.”

“So what?” asked Umbo. “I mean, so what either way? I thought you didn’t care about intrigues and plots and conspiracies. I thought you just wanted to get away.”

“I do,” said Rigg.

“So why not just go? Get your sister and your mother and get out of the house and go?”

“It’s not that simple,” said Rigg.

“I think it is,” said Umbo. “I think you like being . . . in the boss’s family. I think you like being important. I think you don’t really want to go anywhere.”

Rigg looked like he wanted to snap back a sharp answer, but restrained himself. “All right, yes, I like some things about being there. The food is . . . amazing.”

“And the famous and educated people?”

“I’ve met some interesting people, yes,” agreed Rigg.

“And access to the library? You said you spend a lot of time there.”

“The library is the closest thing I’ve found to being with Father. Like him, the library knows everything, even if I haven’t found a way to get it to tell me all that I want to know.”

“Well, we know stuff, too,” said Umbo. “Like for instance I know how to go back in time whenever I want. Going back a few days, I can get to the time I want within a few minutes. It’s harder when I’m going back more than a few months. I haven’t even tried to do a year. But still.”

Rigg looked genuinely impressed. “Was it hard? To learn to calibrate it like that?”

“Yes,” said Umbo and Loaf together.

“It was really annoying for a few months,” said Loaf.

“I can only find people when I know when they stayed in the same place—and I have to get to that place.”

“You have a better gift than mine, Umbo,” said Rigg, “and that’s the truth. But we both have better gifts than my sister. Hers is great when she wants to disappear, and when she’s doing it, she doesn’t age as fast as other people because she doesn’t actually live through most of the time when she’s . . . that way.

The countergirl wasn’t paying attention to them; nor were any of the other customers—but then, a good spy wouldn’t look like he was paying attention, would he? So they tried to be at least a little cryptic in the things they said.

“But she also moves so slowly,” said Rigg. “Like she’s half-frozen. And it’s dangerous. When people walk through her, it . . . damages her a little. When she walks through solid objects, it makes her dangerously sick.”

“Then she shouldn’t do that,” said Loaf.

“And she doesn’t,” said Rigg. “I’m just saying—her gift isn’t as useful as you’d think. But here’s the real question, Umbo. You’ve always been able to spread your gift to include me, even when we weren’t in physical contact. Does that only work with me? Or have you brought Loaf back in time with you?”

“It’s harder,” said Umbo. “Well, not harder, it just takes more concentration and makes me tireder.”

“So you’ve tried it with him?” asked Rigg.

“When we went back to steal one of the . . . items . . . from ourselves,” said Loaf, “he took me along. Yes, he can do it.”

“Steal from yourselves?” asked Rigg. “What would you do that for?”

“Ask Mister I’m-So-Funny,” said Loaf. “It never made sense to me.”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it,” said Umbo to Loaf.

“We need to try something,” said Rigg. “When you put your whatever-it-is on me so I could see the people on the paths and go to their time, I went alone.”

“That’s because I didn’t know how to do it to myself yet,” said Umbo.

“So we need to see if you can put all three of us into that slowed-down time thing, and then see if I can drag all three of us back into a much earlier time. Not months, centuries ago.”

“Centuries? Like when we got the dagger?”

“Millennia,” said Rigg.

Loaf leaned over to Umbo. “That means thousands of—”

“I know what it means,” said Umbo. “Do you have a particular time in mind?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “Eleven thousand, two hundred years ago.”

Umbo and Loaf both sat in silence, contemplating the implications of this.

“Before the calendar began,” said Loaf finally.

“Before humans existed on this planet,” said Rigg.

Umbo’s mind reeled. “Are you saying we’re not from here?”

“When we have more time,” said Rigg, “I have a lot to tell you—things I learned in the library, things I learned from the scholars. From Father Knosso’s research and from a guard named Ovilenko who was his apprentice for a while.”

“You’re trusting a guard?” asked Loaf.

“You don’t know him and I do, so don’t waste our time,” said Rigg. “I have to get back to Flacommo’s house, and soon, before somebody misses me. If they search the house and don’t find me, then when I do get back where will I say that I was? I came here to see if we could actually travel in time together.”