Looking around the room, I was struck by how he had spent that money on personal indulgences. Paintings of himself. Fine clothes and trinkets brought from the South. Still-corked wine bottles that probably contained nothing but vinegar.

Supposedly, my violin dated back to those times. Leeta claimed the old tyrant had paid a master violinist to come up-peninsula and settle in the cove, so that the "palace" would always have music. Such an extravagance was typical of the Patriarch — killing innocent Southern peddlers to "cleanse" the cove, then immediately importing a Southerner of his own because it suited his pleasure.

Still, I shouldn't complain: I was descended from that hired Southern musician… as was Steck.

Neither she nor I spent much time looking at individual items in the hall; it was more a matter of absorbing the whole ambience, letting our attention wander from the Patriarch's tooled leather saddle to his "coat of many colors" constructed by the Hearth and Home Guild at his dictatorial command. I blanched at a tapestry showing a couple making their marriage vows on the Patriarch's Hand — unbidden, my mind conjured up the image of that hand suddenly coming to life and grabbing the woman by the throat as the Patriarch hissed, "Do you love him? Do you?"

But I put that out of my mind; I had promised Cappie to Commit female and become priestess. To hell with the Patriarch and all his successors.

Spinning away from the sight of the tapestry, I nearly bumped into Rashid. He had planted himself in front of a wall-sized painting of the Patriarch during the Harsh Purification: a fierce white-haired man with a blazing torch in his hand. The artist, no doubt working under the Patriarch's eye, had painted the ghost of a halo around the old tyrant's head. The painter had also placed three blackened figures in the background, burning their last in a well-fueled pyre.

After a long moment contemplating the scene, Rashid turned to me. "What do you think of that, Fullin? About the burnings and the Patriarch and all? Just doing what the gods demanded?"

I hesitated. "You remember I'm female at the moment?"

"What does that have to do with it?" Rashid asked.

Steck snorted. "What do you expect? Men and women have completely different opinions about the old bastard."

"How can that be?" Rashid said. "When Fullin changes from man to woman, how can his opinions suddenly change? Are Tobers all multiple personality cases, or do they just—"

"My opinion on the Patriarch," I interrupted, "is that he should have died when he was a baby… like everyone thought he would."

Rashid frowned. "He was an unhealthy baby?"

"Too sick to give the Gift of Blood," I replied, "so he was Locked male all his life. Everything else follows from that."

"Tell me," Rashid said.

Steck and I met each other's gaze. Perhaps my mother and I didn't have much in common, but I could see that for the moment we were thinking like two women.

And women who spend time thinking all have the same opinion of the Patriarch.

May he rot forever in the death-grip of Mistress Want.

The Patriarch (who erased all record of his real name) was born two hundred years ago — a child of Master Crow and always prick-proud how his parentage made him one half divine. Leeta told all the girls in Hearth and Home that the Patriarch despised people fathered by normal men: whenever he needed to make an example of someone, he chose someone of "thin human blood" to be whipped.

But that was after he came to power. The Patriarch's story started only a few months after he was born: a baby boy who got sick just before summer solstice. High fever, vomiting, convulsions… when Hakoore preached his annual sermon on the Patriarch's life, he took morbid delight in hissing out the list of symptoms. Hakoore loved to label the illness as the work of devils who wanted to kill our Redeemer before he could save the world; but when I told this story to Rashid, I steered away from mentioning devils.

I'd come to feel sheepish on the devil issue.

Anyway, there was no question the infant Patriarch suffered extreme sickness, whatever the cause — the doctor of that day believed the baby wasn't strong enough to give the Gift. Yes, the child would be Locked male all his life… but, "Male is better than dead," as the doctor told the Patriarch's mother.

("I'd have to agree," Rashid said.

Steck and I exchanged "isn't that just so typical" looks.)

So the Gift was never taken. In time the baby recovered ("…through sheer force of will!" Hakoore preached). The infant even traveled to Birds Home the following summer with all the other children. That was common practice — whether or not the boy had given the Gift, the gods might decide to switch his sex anyway. They were gods; they could break their own rules.

But they didn't. (They never did.) The Patriarch went out a boy and came back the same way. At that age, he didn't understand why it broke his mother's heart.

He must have found out soon enough. I didn't grow up with any Locked kids, but I can imagine how Tober children would have treated someone who was so creepily handicapped — with an inconsistent mix of cruelty, pity and indifference, changing from hour to hour depending on the whim of the schoolyard mob. When a boy receives that kind of treatment, the outcome is determined by how he reacts: if he makes himself likable, the other children soon forget he's different; if he tries to make himself likable but isn't, he becomes the school goat or perhaps class clown; and if he fights back verbally or physically, he becomes hated, taunted, and shunned… in other words, a pariah.

Guess which option the Patriarch took.

A big-muscled pariah turns himself into a bully; a small one becomes the brat who steals and tells lies to get everybody else in trouble. The Patriarch tried the bully route for a while, picking on kids weaker than himself, but in Tober Cove, little kids often have big brothers (or big sisters with all the instincts of big brothers). The young Patriarch soon realized he couldn't make a success of bullyhood, at least until he became a teenager and could match big brothers in size. Therefore he went the other direction — becoming a weasel, as Hakoore might put it, although the Patriarch's Man never used that term when speaking of our Revered Redeemer. ("The other children spurned him because they were shamed by his inner radiance.")

Time passed. The boy grew crafty. He learned to ingratiate himself to adults, who were (then as now) easier to manipulate than children. Leeta liked to tell us he had a knack for wheedling perks and privileges out of grownup women — he always had a ready tale of woe, how he felt deprived by never knowing the joys of femininity. It may seem naive that they believed him… certainly in light of how he treated women later on. But you have to understand that no one was used to a child like this. No one back then had ever dealt with a boy who never became a girl.

It's hard for me to imagine what it's like to have a single, unified soul. When you're just one person, everything that happens in your life can only happen to you; it's always immediate. With most of us… well, when I was a girl of five, I decided I didn't like oatmeal. I don't know why — kids sometimes get attacks of the Stubborns, and then it becomes a matter of honor: no oatmeal would ever pass my lips. I tried to tell Cappie that oatmeal was poison… some complicated tale about the Mishi pirates crossing wheat with poison ivy and getting oats. No doubt I drove poor Zephram to distraction; not to mention, it was all empty pigheadedness after the first few days, just an obstinate refusal to admit I was making a fuss over nothing.

Then summer solstice came, I turned male, and my old pointless obstinacy seemed like someone else's problem. I had different areas of stubbornness — that was when I began plink-plink-plinking at my mother's violin — but fighting about oatmeal just wasn't worth the headaches. Yes, I could remember that it was important to me only the day before; but I felt as if my sister self had told me it should be important, not that I really believed it myself.