It was Angel's voice. At once she closed his box, like a little girl caught by her father.

"It belongs to you," said Angel, "because I belong to you."

"I don't feel like it does," she said. "Or you. I've never really owned anything."

"It's a very subtle thing. Most people think they own many things, and don't. You think you never owned anything, and yet you do."

"What do I own?"

"Me. This box. All of mankind."

She shook her head. "I may have responsibility for all of mankind, but I never asked for it, and I don't own them."

"Ah. So you think duty and ownership are different things. The mother and father care for the baby and keep it alive-do they own it? And if they don't care for it, is it truly theirs? The child obeys the parents, serves them, and as they depend on its service, the child comes to own them, also. Yet he deceives himself that he is owned."

"You're very subtle, but if you're trying to say that I owned Father, you really have no hope of being one of the Wise."

"In my way of thinking, what I said is true. But I confess that most people think of ownership another way.

They think they own what they make part of themselves. Like Sken, with this boat. She feels its parts as if they were part of her; she feels the wind on the sail as if the sail were her body and the wind tilted her forward; she feels the rocking of the boat as if it were the rhythmic beating of her own heart. She owns this boat, because this boat is part of herself."

"The way River owns Cranwater."

"Yes," said Angel. "He doesn't feel the loss of his body, because currents and flows, banks and channels, they're his arms and legs, his gut and groin."

Patience tried to think of something she owned as Sken owned the boat. There was nothing she felt was part of herself. Nothing at all. Even her clothing, even her weapons were not her own, not in that sense. To herself, she was always naked and unarmed, and therefore no stronger than her own wit and no larger than the reach of her own arms and legs. "If that's ownership, then I own nothing," said Patience.

"Not so. You own no one thing, because you have let nothing become part of you, except a few weapons and languages and memories. But you also own everything, because the whole world, as a whole, it is part of you, you feel the face of the globe as if it were your own body, and all the pains of mankind as if they were your own pains."

Let him think what he wants, but I know it isn't so. I don't feel all mankind as mine, though Father taught me often that that was what the Heptarch ought to feel. I am solitary, cut off from everyone and everything. But believe what you like, Angel. She changed the subject.

"Are you sure you're well enough to be up? And walking?"

"I'm not walking right now, am I? I'm sitting. Actually, though, I've felt much better for days. I just enjoy being lazy."

"I've needed you so much, these weeks-"

"You haven't needed me at all, and you've rather enjoyed finding out that you could do things on your own. But I'm glad you didn't decide to jettison me. I can be useful to you, you know. For instance, you don't need that poison."

"I might."

"You have something better."

"What?"

"The globe you took from your father's shoulder after he died."

Father had told her that no one else knew he had it.

"What globe is that?"

"For more than a week on the Glad River, every time we slept ashore you spent fifteen minutes sifting through your nightstools. There's only one thing you could have swallowed that was worth performing such a repugnant task."

"I thought you were asleep."

"Child, who could sleep through a stench like that?"

"Don't be foul. Angel."

"I assume you found it."

"Father told me to take it, but never what it did, or how to use it."

"Your father never used it. Or at least, not to its full capacity. To be fully useful, it must be placed somewhere else in your body. In the deepest place in your brain." Angel smiled. "And right now you have a very good surgeon."

"Father told me that I should never let a gebling know I have this."

"One must lake risks in this world."

"What is it?"

He switched into Gauntish. "Your scepter, my beloved Heptarch. But few of your recent predecessors have had the courage to wear it in their brain."

She answered in the same language. "You're saying Father wasn't brave enough for such an operation?"

"The operation is safe enough. But it's had such varying effects on different Heptarchs. Some have gone quite mad. One of them even murdered all his children, except one. Another started simultaneous wars with all his neighbors and ended up with the kingdom reduced to Heptam itself and a few islands to the west. Other Heptarchs have said it is like seeing the world for the first time, and they ruled brilliantly. But the odds are against you. Still, planted in your brain, it responds to your desires. Once it was there, if you ever truly wanted to die, you would die. So you might want to take the risk."

"What if it drove me mad?"

"Then you would probably become obsessed with going to Cranning to face the enemy of mankind, unprepared, uninformed, and unlikely to do anything but fail,"

"In other words, what I'm doing now?"

"How could you do anything more insane? Unless you decided to take along two geblings who no doubt mean to kill you as soon as you've got them safely to Unwyrm."

She remembered what he had said about geblings a moment ago. "Why am I forbidden to let a gebling see that I have this jewel?"

"Because it isn't a jewel."

"It isn't?"

"It's an organic crystal taken from the brain of the King of Cranning in the fifth generation of the world."

"The gebling king. What did he use it for?"

"The geblings were reluctant to discuss it with us. We know how it works on humans, but who knows what it did for him."

Patience nodded. "If it was stolen from the gebling king, I suppose by right it belongs to Reck and Ruin."

An expression passed suddenly across Angel's face, then vanished. Not a grimace that anyone else could see, for Angel was skilled at keeping his face blank. But Patience saw it, and knew that he was surprised, perhaps even frightened. What had surprised him? Didn't he know that, together, the brother and sister were king of the geblings? Of course he didn't know. Ruin had been sewing Angel's wound when Patience overheard the geblings' conversation that revealed to her who they were. Angel had been unconscious, and no one had spoken of it since.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Didn't you know they were king? It's something I overheard when you were not yet healed."

"No, I had no idea. I'll have to think about that," said Angel. "That might change things. It might indeed. It gives me pause." He smiled and patted her hand, looking mildly nonplussed.

But Patience was even more confused than before. For Angel was lying to her. She knew what he would look like if his words were sincere and he were hiding nothing.

But he was hiding something-all he showed right now was his mask. He had not been surprised at all, and he did not have to think about anything or change any plans. He had known all along who the geblings were.

And if that was so, then what he hadn't known was that she knew who they were.

There are two things to do with a lie: pretend you believe it, or confront the liar with your knowledge of the lie. The first is what you do with enemies; she could only think of Angel as a friend. "How long have you known?" she asked him.

He was preparing to lie to her again, then stopped himself. "No," he said. "You're the Heptarch now, and I can't hold back from you. Your father told me their names, many years ago, their names and where they lived. The Heptarchy has made it a point to keep track of the gebling kings."