Since Olivenko was urging him to analyze a situation outside himself, and that was exactly what Umbo had just realized Rigg could do and he could not, he swallowed his rebellious responses and forced himself to think about the new question. “The great families don’t want her to have the love of the common people.”

“Close,” said Olivenko. “They don’t mind if she has their love. They only worry about what she plans to do with it.”

Now it became clear to Umbo. “They’re afraid that she’d be playing for the love of the common people so she would no longer need their support.” Now a further insight occurred to him. “The great families need her to need their support. So they don’t have to fear the royal power.”

“Now you’re thinking more like a ruler’s consort,” said Olivenko. “Back to the original question.”

Umbo had to think for a moment. Oh, yes. Why she needed to marry Umbo for reasons of state. “I’m a poor privick from as far upriver as you can get. I can’t think of any other reason.”

“Is that all you are?” asked Olivenko.

“Isn’t that bad enough?” asked Umbo.

“I’m asking you to think of why she needs to marry you for the good of the kingdom. Not for reasons why she should find the idea disgusting.”

That had been what he was doing, hadn’t it? “All right,” said Umbo. “What else am I, besides a person of such low standing that . . .”

No, Umbo thought. That was the kind of self-denigration that Olivenko was telling him to stop.

What am I, besides poor and ignorant and annoying?

“I’m the only other timeshaper besides her brother Rigg,” said Umbo tentatively.

Olivenko’s answer was sarcastic enough to show Umbo how obvious he thought the answer was. “You finally noticed that, did you? Why would that lead her to need to marry you?”

“I’m the only timeshaper who isn’t in the royal family. And my abilities run rings around hers. But not around Rigg’s.”

“Oh, yes, her brother Rigg, the one with the facemask, so ugly and strange that she had better keep him out of the public view,” said Olivenko, “because he’ll make people afraid. You’re the timeshaper who can show his face. And in case you didn’t notice—and you obviously haven’t—you’re a rather good-looking young man, now that you’re getting some height on you, and when you aren’t pouting, you can be downright likeable. Maybe even charismatic. People might want to associate with a handsome young man who can go wherever he wants in time and space.”

For the first time Umbo realized that while the people in this little traveling society of theirs might not have much respect for him, he could really dazzle strangers.

“Oh, now you see it,” said Olivenko. “It’s to your credit that you never even thought of it before. But it worries me that you now find the idea so attractive.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to. I saw your expression of resentment and impatience turn into happy contemplation. I didn’t have to have a facemask to see that transformation.”

Umbo wondered briefly if Olivenko resented the fact that Loaf now had facemask-enhanced abilities. But in the meantime, his mind was still caught up in analyzing Param’s situation.

“If Param became Queen-in-the-Tent,” said Umbo, “and a more-powerful timeshaper—me—was out there, I could easily become a focus for discontent in the kingdom. Her enemies might gather around me, want to follow me.” And then, remembering who her enemies were likely to be, and how they were likely to regard a privick like him, he said, “Or more likely they’d try to get control of me and use me.”

“Or both,” said Olivenko. “There’ll be as many different motives for people to gather around you as there are people doing the gathering.”

“But none of those motives will make them friends of the Sessamids.”

“Add to that her keen awareness of how quick you are to resent her, especially because she’s treated you badly in the past, and it should be clear that in order to keep you from being a divisive force in the kingdom, she either has to marry you . . .”

“Or kill me,” said Umbo. “I suppose I should be grateful that she decided on marriage.”

“It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t also like you. I said you were good-looking and likeable, and she’s not oblivious to that. Plus, you used to be her puppy dog, you were so in love with her.”

“She got rid of those feelings soon enough.”

“No she didn’t,” said Olivenko. “You’re still devoted to her. Only now you know her well enough that it’s not the beautiful princess that you have an adolescent crush on, it’s the woman she’s turning into, the woman who has stopped treating you badly—”

“Stopped treating me badly in order to neutralize me as a threat to her kingdom.”

“No. Wrong lesson,” said Olivenko. “Her change in feelings toward you happened during a time when nobody thought of her going back into Ramfold. When for all she knew she would go on wandering with us forever.”

“It’s you she fell in love with,” said Umbo.

“Had her adolescent puppy-dog crush on,” corrected Olivenko. “Only I knew that’s what it was and guided her through that phase and out the other side.”

Umbo recognized at once that yes, that was exactly what Olivenko had done. And since Olivenko had now assigned himself to think about kingdom politics, Umbo said, “You could have exploited that. You could have made her devoted to you.”

“For a while, yes,” said Olivenko. “Long enough to get her to marry me, perhaps, though I’m just as common as you. I do know more about the language and manners of the court, but I would have been a liability to her without any timeshaping talents to make up for it. As soon as she realized that, then she’d either be miserable, living with a bad choice of consort—or I’d be thrown away. Or killed. Not necessarily by her or by her order—there would be plenty of courtiers who would understand how embarrassing and useless I was, and would therefore help their queen by discreetly killing her husband. Or catching him in some act of infidelity.”

“But you would never . . .”

“It wouldn’t matter if I was actually guilty,” said Olivenko. “Lack of truthfulness doesn’t weaken a story if you can get enough people to believe the lie.”

Umbo thought of the comparison between him and Olivenko. “But if they would try to get rid of you, when you know the language and manners of court—”

“You’ll learn them quickly. And even if someone sees you as a problem or an obstacle, you won’t be as easy to get rid of.”

“Because I can go back and warn myself.”

“Or go back and stab the assassin in the back.”

“Ah, but then there’d be two of me,” said Umbo. “Our old system of warning people without actually traveling back in time had the virtue of not creating copies.”

Olivenko nodded. “It would be bad for the kingdom if every time somebody tried to kill you, the number of Umbos doubled.”

“It might get them to stop trying.”

“But what would you do with the copies?” asked Olivenko. “What Ram Odin did, when he found out he had been re-created eighteen times?”

Umbo shuddered at the thought of his own two dead copy-­bodies that Odinex had killed the first time Umbo visited his ­buried starship. “I can see that it makes sense, but I don’t know if . . .”

“All it takes is one of your copies to decide that he’s the original and the others aren’t necessary. But you see my point. Married to you, Param has you close, where you won’t be starting a rival power center.”

“Instead, my great personal charm will make people want to kill me.”

“You think there won’t be people trying to kill her?” asked Olivenko. “When it’s about power, it’s always a matter of life and death.”

“So another reason for marrying me,” said Umbo, “might be so I’d be close enough to save her from assassins and traitors.”