"Well, as far as it goes," said Angel, "he tells a reasonably true story. The Wise were playing with genetics in a way never before possible. They had developed living gels that read the genetic code of foreign tissues and mirrored the genetic molecule in slowly shifting crystals on the surface. It enabled the scientists to study the genetic code in great detail, without any magnification at all. And by altering the crystals in the gel, the tissue samples could also be altered. Then they could be implanted in the host's reproductive cells. It was a similar technique that kept your father from having a daughter for so many years. And a similar technique that changed him back, so you could be born."

Patience answered scornfully. "So God didn't like them meddling with the mirror of the will, and took them away?"

"The mirror of the will, the triune soul-you shouldn't scoff at it, even if you have decided to be a Skeptic. This religion has lasted pretty well over the years, and partly because some of the ideas work. You can live with the triune soul as a model for the way the mind works. The will, contained in the genetic molecules-why not? It's the most primitive part of ourselves, the thing that we can't understand, why we finally choose what we choose- why not put it in the genes? And then the passions-the desire for greatness on the one side, and all the destructive desires on the other. Why not put them in the limbic node, the animal part of the brain? And the identity, the sense of self, that is our memories, the cerebRuin, all that we remember doing and seeing, and what we conceive it to mean. There's a certain power in conceiving your own self in that way, Patience. It allows you to separate yourself from your memories and your passions, to impose discipline on your life. We are never deceived into believing that either our environment or our desires cause our behavior."

"More to the point. Angel. What happened to Prekeptor, with or without his religion?"

"He was sent home. Though I must tell you that you put the fear of God in him."

"He was already trembling with it."

"No, that was the love of God. Fear was your contribution.

They had to wash his clothes after he saw you slit your own throat. All his sphincter muscles released."

She let herself laugh, though it wasn't kind to be amused. Still, he had been so fervent that she couldn't help laughing to think of the crisis of faith he must have had, to see the Mother of God apparently dying before Kristos could make an appearance.

They stayed in the city for hours, talking and playing until the sun set behind Fort Senester in Gladmouth Bay.

Then Angel took her home, to see her father.

Never before had he looked so old and frail to her. A strange hollow look to his eyes, a sunken look to his skin- He was wasting. She was only thirteen years old, and her father was already beginning to die, before she ever had a chance to know him.

He was stiff and formal with her, of course; deliberately, so she would be sure to know that this was for an audience, and not particularly for her. He commended her, commented on her behavior, criticizing freely some of the things she had done that she knew perfectly well he approved of completely.

And when it was over, he handed her a slip of paper.

On it was the name of Lord Jeeke of Riismouth, a marcher lord, one of the Fourteen Families. She was to visit him with her tutor as part of an educational tour of the kingdom. Lord Jeeke was to die no sooner than a week after she left, so that no one could connect her with his death.

It was surprisingly simple. The journey took three days. On her first night there, she shared a wine glass with Lord Jeeke, which was filled with a nonhuman hormone that was, by itself, harmless. Then she infected Jeeke's mistress with spores of a parasitic worm. The spores were passed to Jeeke through intimate contact; the hormone caused the worms to grow and reproduce rapidly.

They infested Jeeke's brain, and three weeks later he was dead.

She was already back in King's Hill when the news reached them. She wrote letters of condolence to Jeeke's family. Father read them and patted her shoulder. "Well done, Patience."

She was proud to have him say so. But she was also curious. "Why did King Oruc want him dead?"

"For the good of the King's House."

"His personal pique, then?"

"The King's House isn't Heptagon House, Patience.

The King's House is all the world."

"For the good of the world? Jeeke was a gentle and harmless man."

"And a weak one. He was a marcher lord, and he had neglected his military duties. The world was more pleasant because he was a good man. But if his weakness had led, as was likely, to rebellion and border war, many would have died or been left crippled or homeless by the war. For the sake of the King's House."

"His life against the possibility of war."

"Some wars must be fought for the good of the King's House. And some must be avoided. You and I are instRuinents in the hands of the King."

Then he kissed her, and as his mouth rested by her ear he whispered, "I'm dying. I won't live three years.

When I die, cut into my left shoulder, midway along and above the clavicle. You'll find a tiny crystal. As you live, cut it out and keep it, whatever the cost." Then he pulled away and smiled at her, as if nothing strange had been spoken.

You cannot die, Father, she cried out silently. In all my life we've never spoken. You cannot die.

She performed four more assassinations for King Oruc, and a dozen other missions. She turned fourteen, and then fifteen. And all the while Father waited back in King's Hill, growing weaker and older. On her fifteenth birthday he told her she didn't need a tutor anymore, and sent Angel away to be overseer of some lands he held outside the city. Patience knew what it meant.

Not long after, Father woke up too weak to get out of bed. He sent the nearest servant to fetch a physician, and for a moment they were alone. Instantly he handed her a knife. "Now," he whispered. She cut. He did not even wince from the pain. She took from the wound a small crystal globe, beautiful and perfect.

"The scepter of the Heptarchs of Imakulata," he whispered.

"The Usurper and his son never knew what or where it was." He smiled, but in his pain his smile was ghastly. "Never let a gebling know you have it," he said.

A servant came in, realizing they had been left alone too long; but she came too late and saw nothing, for towels covered the slightly bleeding wound, and the tiny amber-colored globe was in Patience's pocket.

Patience fingered it, pressed on it as if to squeeze some nectar from it. My father is dying. Father is dying, and the only thing I have from him is a hard little crystal I cut from his flesh, covered with his blood.