“You were raised to rule,” said Olivenko.

“Or so my mother said,” Param replied. “I have no idea when her plan for me changed, but my education, such as it was, never changed. You don’t announce to the cattle that you’re going to slaughter them.”

“You were raised with courtly manners,” said Olivenko. “You heard people talking in elevated language, observing the courtesies.”

“As Rigg does,” said Param.

“But the expendable Ramex trained him to be able to do that.”

“Exactly.”

“So you and Rigg were taught to behave in a certain way. You were given skills. But how was Umbo raised?”

“As a peasant boy,” said Param. “I didn’t say it was his fault.”

“He was the son of a cobbler in a small village. He attended the village school. In that school, he was taught the history of Stashiland. He was taught that the royal family were rapacious monsters, who came to Aressa as uncivilized barbarians from the northeast. They killed most of the ruling class of Stashiland, and raped the few women of that class that they allowed to live, after killing their children, so they could ‘start fresh.’”

“I’ve read the history. I’m not proud of our origins. But that was many hundreds of years ago.”

“Not so very many,” said Olivenko. “And Umbo wasn’t taught that history as a distant memory, to be ignored or glossed over. He was taught it as if it was a fair description of the way the Sessamids have always ruled in Stashiland.”

“And that’s a lie,” said Param.

“So there was no murderousness when Aptica Sessamin decreed that no male could inherit the Tent of Light and had all her male relatives executed like criminals, for the crime of being male? Including the male babies?”

“That was ugly,” Param admitted. “But it was a long time ago.”

“Your mother’s grandmother,” said Olivenko. “I’m not arguing with you, I’m reminding you of what Umbo was taught. The People’s Schools taught children that everybody had the right to rule, when their turn came, and nobody was better by birth than anyone else.”

“Obviously false.”

“By birth,” Olivenko repeated. “By lineage. Umbo was taught that just because your mother was powerful didn’t mean you had any more right to that power than anyone else. He was taught that power had to be earned, and that if you showed merit, you could become anything.”

“But that’s not how the People’s Republic worked at all,” said Param with contempt. “I saw how those hypocrites pretended everything was so egalitarian as they promoted their relatives and friends and established a whole new class of nobles.”

“I’m reminding you of what Umbo was taught in Fall Ford at the base of the Stashi Falls,” said Olivenko. “So all of a sudden, his boyhood friend—a boy who was even lower in social standing than Umbo, remember, because he lived a wandering life as a trapper’s son—his boyhood friend has a bag of jewels and starts talking like a lord. That came as a shock, you can imagine.”

“Rigg was coming out of his disguise, coming into his heritage,” said Param.

“Coming to prison as fast as the People’s Republic could arrest him, is that what you mean?”

“It was our fate during that time,” said Param.

“So Umbo does everything he can to get his friend out of imprisonment, and he does it just in time—”

“Rigg got us out of prison! Using his talent and mine together. He found the passages in the walls, and I got us through those walls into the passages, and—”

“You weren’t free of danger until Umbo pushed you and Rigg back in time a few days—which is where you acquired me,” said Olivenko.

“I was not saying that Umbo wasn’t helpful and good,” said Param.

“Only that his word was worthless, because he was born in a village to ordinary people.”

“Not worthless, just uncorroborated.”

“Remember, I’m trying to help you understand why Rigg got so angry with you. Umbo was his friend in that village, in a time of Rigg’s life when other boys wouldn’t have befriended him. Rigg was the stranger, the outsider, and everybody assumed he was a bastard. At least Umbo’s parents were married.”

“I know they’re friends,” said Param. “But Rigg’s supposed to be my brother, and to take the side of—”

“When people were trying to kill you, he took your side, didn’t he?”

“Nobody was trying to kill Umbo.”

“And then I remember a time when you announced you weren’t going to journey another step. You rebelled against Rigg.”

“That didn’t mean I wanted to follow Umbo!”

“And you didn’t. You followed me.”

“You’re an educated man,” said Param.

“Educated by the side of your father,” said Olivenko. “But still born to a much lower class. Not a natural leader, right?”

“More of a leader than the others.”

“Param, are you really this blind? I speak the language of court, in the accents of court, because I worked very hard to learn to talk that way. And so you followed me when you wouldn’t listen to anybody else. But I was never the leader of that group. I was simply the one person who could get you to do anything.”

“You led us!”

“They let me pretend to lead,” said Olivenko, “because Loaf wasn’t talking yet, and Umbo was taking care of Loaf. But the fact is, it was Umbo who did everything that kept us alive.”

“You did it with him!”

“I did what he told me to do,” said Olivenko. “Umbo understood that you were out of your element, that everything was strange for you. He also understood that you would only listen to me. So he made sure that I knew the right things to do, so that I’d be the one to say them, so that you’d listen.”

“That’s ridiculous!” said Param. “You make me sound like a helpless, spoiled infant!”

Olivenko shook his head. “I make you sound like someone who had lived inside the walls of a house, a prisoner, humiliated by any clown whom the People’s Revolutionary Council allowed to come harass you. I make you sound like a young woman who was physically weak and who had a habit of vanishing when ever things became stressful. You were trying very hard not to disappear and retreat by reflex, only you got tired, physically exhausted for the first time in your life. Umbo and Rigg and Loaf and I had experienced that many times, and we knew how to go on anyway. You didn’t. It’s not an easy thing to learn, and you never had to learn it.”

“You’re on their side,” said Param. She stopped walking at all.

“Have the courage to hear the truth from a friend.”

“You’re not a friend! You’re a . . .”

“Jumped-up peasant boy who became a scholar and then a city guard. I’m not insulted by those facts—that’s my life. Just as it’s no shame to you that you were hopelessly unprepared to deal with rough living and endless walking. We are who we are. When changes come, we start with what we are right then, and then we work to try to become whoever we need to be.”

The way he said it sounded soothing. Natural. But she was no fool. She knew he was patronizing her. Handling her, coping with her, getting around her, placating her, all those phrases for manipulation and control.

And yet she kept walking, and kept listening, because even though she wasn’t in love with him anymore—she knew now that that had been a mere phase—she knew that he was a perceptive man, and he had been Father’s friend, hadn’t he?

“Param,” said Olivenko, “we’re not in Aressa Sessamo anymore. Out here, we’re the people who pass between the Walls. We belong nowhere, we’re citizens of nothing, and there are only two classes that matter: Time-shifter and non-time-shifter. Loaf and I are non-shifters. You and Rigg and Umbo are shifters. Not only that, Umbo was the first to be able to move into the past all by himself. Can you do that? Could Rigg, until we were in Vadeshfold? We all survived and escaped from Ramfold because of one person.”