The Patriarch's hand had tightened again. When I looked down, my fingers had turned birch-white.

"Pity about your hand," Hakoore said without sympathy. "Still it was nice you tried to humor me. Respect for your elders and all that."

My voice came out in a strained whisper. "Can we skip the sermons from here on out? Please — just ask your questions and I'll answer them."

"That's what I like to see," Hakoore smiled. "Abject submission. And as for questions… if you had been Patriarch's Man, would you have said no to that rich merchant?"

"I don't know," I whispered.

"Do you need more information?" Hakoore asked helpfully. "Do you want to know exactly how much money he offered us?"

"That doesn't matter."

The old snake nodded. "At least you understand that much. So why can't you make a decision?"

"Because… because…" I closed my eyes and tried to find the most sincere, honest part of my heart. It wasn't all that difficult once I started searching. "Because," I said, opening my eyes, "because I have a son. Of course, I don't want Southerners barging in here, but I want Waggett to have a good doctor too. If it ever came to the point where we had to take Southern money or else our children got sick…"

Hakoore's expression wilted. "That's just it, isn't it, boy? That's where the knife cuts." His milky eyes stared at me for a moment, then turned away.

"A hundred and fifty years ago," he said, "the Patriarch rode on the backs of our people with spurs of iron. When babies grew famished, he blamed outsiders… Neuts… scientists. And he started a reign of terror that kept Southerners scared for a whole century after he died. But the fear seeped away eventually. In my lifetime, I've seen the Southerners start to get interested in us again. More tourists… more traders… more of their godless materialism rubbing off on us. Still, if I tried to choke the town the way the Patriarch did — if I said no trading with the South or I'd pronounce the Great Curse — who could I blame when children grew sick with starvation? People think I'm harsh, but I'm not the unbending man our Patriarch was. Once upon a time, I was a mother, just like you, boy. I nursed my little girl…"

He closed his eyes and lifted his hands as if holding an infant to his chest. I looked away. I don't know if I was embarrassed or just giving him his privacy.

After a while, he whispered, "Enough." He reached into the hand's tarnished metal box and pressed at another dent. Click. The grip around my knuckles suddenly went limp; the Patriarch's Hand slumped as lifeless as an ugly glove.

I'd have let it fall onto the mud, but I couldn't get my fingers to uncurl.

"Put the hand back in the box," Hakoore said quietly.

"You've run out of questions?"

"I was going to ask you everything my predecessor asked me," he replied, "but you'd just say you didn't know the answers and I'd say I couldn't blame you. Put the hand back where it belongs."

Carefully, I lowered my arm toward the box. Because my fingers had no feeling left in them, I had to use my other hand to pry my grip open. The mechanical hand-thing fell off me into the box and rocked a bit before lying still: flat on its back, fingers in the air… like a dead fly, legs up on your windowsill.

"So I suppose I failed your test," I said as I straightened up.

"Idiot boy," Hakoore rasped. "It wasn't a test you could fail. I told you, I don't care about your opinions. I've chosen you as my disciple, and that's that."

I massaged my fingers to try to get them working again. "Then why hurt me if you never cared about my answers?"

He gave me a look. "Had to get your attention, didn't I? Had to start you thinking. Had to let you know that a Patriarch's Man must be ready to be a ruthless bastard for the good of the cove."

"I knew that already," I growled.

He smiled… then suddenly slapped me flat across the face. It wasn't hard and it wasn't fast, but it stung like fire. "You haven't seen anything yet," he hissed. "After you've Committed, you and I will get together with the Patriarch's Hand day after day after day. I'll get the warriors to hold you down if need be; Bonnakkut would like that. My own master had to hold me down a few times before I accepted my fate. You'll accept your fate too. Patriarch's Man."

"I'll Commit female," I snapped. "You can't make me Patriarch's Man if I'm a woman."

"If you do that, boy, I'll make your life hell. You know I can."

"You can't. The most sacred tenet of Tober law is that we can each choose male or female, and no one can punish us for the choice."

"Just wait and see," Hakoore snarled. "When I say you're going to be my disciple, boy, it's not a request. It's a calling from the Patriarch himself. A vocation. A command. Whatever you may have wanted to do with your life doesn't interest me. You are what the Patriarch says you are."

With a last ferocious glare at me, he raised two fingers to his lips and blew a piercing whistle. "Dorr! We're leaving."

His granddaughter slid through the rushes immediately. In one hand she held a clump of bedraggled greenery; in the other was a knife nearly as long as Steck's machete. I suspect she had simply cut off the first bunch of reeds she'd seen, then hidden in the bulrushes to eavesdrop. She must have heard everything, Hakoore's sermon and his threats… but her face was devoid of expression. Without looking in my direction, Dorr gave Hakoore her arm and helped him clamber into the canoe.

"Your vigil is over," the old man snapped as he settled in the prow. "Go home. And even if the gods didn't send you a duck, you know what sex they want you to Commit."

Dorr lowered her eyes. She must have felt ashamed for her grandfather, trying to influence my free Commitment choice. With a stab of her paddle, she pushed the canoe off the mud and stroked quickly out of sight.

So first I swore loud enough to panic every frog, duck and muskrat in the marsh. The curses were uncreatively repetitive, but heartfelt.

Then I massaged my fingers for several minutes until they could move again. They made soft cracking sounds when I flexed them, and I couldn't close them all the way to a fist, but it didn't feel like there was permanent damage.

I checked that I could still hold the violin bow. I could.

I checked that I could still hold a ferocious grudge against Hakoore. I was on top of that too.

Then I started the walk back home.

"Should I Commit male or female?" I shouted at a red-winged blackbird. It flew off without answering. Sometimes the gods visit Earth in the form of birds, but this one just seemed to be a dumb animal.

"Male or female?" I called to a garter snake trying to hide from me in long grass. The snake didn't budge a scale.

"Male or female?" I asked a squirrel on an upper branch of an elm. At least the squirrel made eye contact with me. I took this as an encouraging sign. "You see, it's Commitment Day morning," I explained, "and I should have made up my mind by now."

The squirrel decided my problems were too big for its brain… not surprising since a squirrel's brain is about the size of a ladybug. With a sudden leap, the squirrel scrabbled up the elm tree and out of sight.

"Thanks a lot!" I called after it. "Consider yourself a fur scarf if I ever catch you!"

The squirrel didn't seem impressed. A fine Patriarch's Man I'd make if I couldn't even intimidate a tree-rat.

Not that I wanted to be Patriarch's Man.

Although it might be amusing to get Bonnakkut alone with the mechanical hand for five minutes. Find out if his talk about Cappie was all hot air.

No. Not the Patriarch's Man. Not the old snake's disciple.