"Forget that, Fullin." Cappie suddenly leaned in close. "All I need to know is whether you want to belong to me. Can you let yourself be mine? Male or female, that's the thing I never feel from you. I know when you want to bed me. I know when you're glad for my company. I know how you're happy to live with someone who'll do most of the chores, because you've convinced me it's important you have time to play your music. But are you ready to be mine? Whether or not we can be married. You say you love me… or at least your female half does. But can you give yourself to me? Can you let yourself go without hiding behind anything?"

I didn't answer.

After a while, Cappie said, "I'm going to Commit female, Fullin. My male half needs you too much."

She opened her hand to let go of the Patriarch's coat. The sleeve fell — limp cloth, worn and faded.

"Just so you know," she added, "in case I end up as the next priestess… Leeta says there's an unwritten law that the priestess and Patriarch's Man must secretly get married. The Patriarch saw it as a sneaky way to 'subjugate' women under male command. That's the Patriarch for you. But Hakoore and Leeta have been happy with each other over the years. I hope the next Patriarch's Man, whoever he is, won't be someone who makes me feel so cryingly lonesome."

Without looking back Cappie strode away, disappearing out of the hall and out of Mayoralty House.

I intended to wait five minutes — give Cappie plenty of time to leave, even if she ran into the mayor, or Rashid and Steck. But the atmosphere of the Patriarch's Hall oppressed me: the cloying smell of dust, the pointless faded finery, the picture of the couple swearing their love on the Patriarch's Hand. When I was young, this room seemed full of treasures; now I realized it was a place that adult Tobers sent their children but never went themselves. After only sixty seconds, I fairly ran away from the ominous mementos, as if ghosts were chasing me — down the corridor and out to the wide front steps where Rashid and Steck sat with Embrun in the sunshine.

Steck looked at me quizzically when I arrived, as if she could claim some right to ask what had happened between Cappie and me. She couldn't; by my age, boys didn't confide in their real mothers, let alone Neut strangers. If we had been alone, Steck might have pressed me… but Rashid was interrogating Embrun, and showed no sign of acknowledging my return, let alone allowing the conversation to be diverted to my personal life.

From the sound of it, Embrun's information about Bonnakkut hadn't taken much time to tell. Rashid's questions had already shifted to his real interest, learning more about Birds Home and the Tober sex change process. For that, Embrun could actually be helpful — he had Committed the previous summer, so the memory was still fresh in his head.

"And it's a disembodied voice?" Rashid was saying. "Asking, 'Male, female, or both?' "

"Right you are, master," Embrun replied. He had sprawled himself on the house's cracked concrete steps in an effort to look casual, as if he talked to Spark Lords all the time. I noticed though that he seldom looked in Rashid's direction. It wasn't humility; he was just devoting his attention to Steck, ogling her in that deepcut neckline.

I could have punched him in the nose.

"So," Rashid said, "if it's not too personal, could you tell me why you chose male?"

Embrun glanced at me with the look of someone trying to decide if he can get away with lying. Finally he decided to tell the truth. "I didn't have much choice, did I?" he answered. "My female half got kicked stupid. I couldn't live like that."

He proceeded to tell about the accident and its consequences, embellishing details here and there, because he seldom got a chance to share his story with newcomers. The way I originally heard it, Girl-Embrun had been teasing the horse when it kicked her — poking it with a stick. In the tale Embrun told Rashid, however, his female half's motives were far more noble: trying to pull out a thorn that had speared the horse's rump, making it bleed.

Off the top of my head, I couldn't think of any local vegetation with thorns growing as high as a horse's flank. In fact the stupid animal had nowhere to pick up a thorn at all, unless it decided to sit on the mayor's rose bushes. Still, I couldn't see the harm in letting Embrun glamorize himself, provided he didn't go too far.

Besides, it was interesting to hear him describe what it was like to be… well, brain-damaged. Not that he could remember much from his female years: just moments of emotion, pain at touching a hot stove, or fear and confusion one time when she got lost in the woods. Mostly, those years had just disappeared from his memory, like muddy dreams that are gone when you wake.

As Embrun continued, Rashid took on the expression of a man mulling over a profound revelation. When it was over, he murmured, "You received the injury as a five-year-old girl. You switched to a boy at six and poof, you were fine — except that you couldn't remember much of the past year. Then when you returned to being a girl at seven, you were… disadvantaged again?"

"That's right, master," Embrun nodded enthusiastically. "I'm not lying, am I, Fullin?"

"Not on that," I agreed. "His girl half truly had her brains jarred loose by that kick. Her body kept growing after, but her mind stayed stuck where it was."

"So your female body was damaged, but your male body wasn't," Rashid said. He turned to me. "Is it the same for everyone else in Tober Cove? I mean, injuries to your female body don't affect your male, and vice versa?"

"Of course," I said. Holding out my arm, I pointed to a pale pink scar just above my wrist. "That's a gash I got as a kid, exploring a half-collapsed house on the other side of town — I didn't see a nail sticking out of a board. My male body has the wound, but my female one doesn't."

"This is amazing!" Rashid said.

"Oh, that's nothing, master," Embrun told him. "What about Yailey the Hunter? She's got my head-kick beat."

"Who's Yailey the Hunter?"

"Eight years ago now," Embrun answered, "Yailey drowned. He was sixteen — out diving ropeless with a bunch of other boys off some rocks up the coast. Tried some fancy dive he'd read about in an OldTech book, and fucked the… I mean, he made an awful mistake. Hit his head on the way down. And the thing was, he'd gone off a ways from his friends so's he could practice the dive without them laughing at him. By the time they came to check on him, Yailey was face down and floating.

"The other boys were in tears as they carried him into town," Embrun went on. "I remember that much, even if it was one of my dull years. Scared me, all that wailing. Anyhow, the drowning happened in late spring. Then solstice came, the children headed off to Birds Home, and when we came back, guess who was tagging along with us? Girl Yailey."

"You mean," said Rashid, "her male body died, but a female version of her came back at solstice?"

"That's what happened," I assured him. "Yailey herself lit the funeral pyre for her male body. Hakoore delayed the cremation until he found out whether Yailey came back from Birds Home — apparently this has happened before."

"Where is this Yailey?" Rashid asked, ablaze with enthusiasm. "I must talk to her."

"Sorry, master," Embrun said, "she's hard to find. Dying like that upset her — not that she remembered it. Everything went black the moment she hit her head. But it still nettled under her skin."

"And knowing Tober Cove," Steck muttered, "people treated her like a monstrosity."

"I don't remember anyone ragging on her," Embrun said — untruthfully, because he himself called her names in the schoolyard: Hey, Corpse-girl! Mistress Want! "But Yailey turned more and more edgy as time went on. Especially close to the next solstice."