"So you knew all along that they were in that village."

"Your father knew, and warned me. They add just one more uncertainty to the equation. It would have been better to pass them by. And I wouldn't have had an arrow in my throat, either." He chuckled. "But I don't mind."

She smiled at him, but he was still lying to her.

Something was wrong with what he said. Perhaps he hadn't known who they were. Perhaps Father hadn't warned him. It was impossible to guess, and she couldn't very well ask him now. With his first lie, he might still be a friend. With the second lie, she could only treat him as an enemy. Let him think his lie has succeeded. Father taught her, and your enemy won't be driven to more desperate measures.

What bothered her most was that never before in her life had she thought of Angel as her enemy. "What did Father fear they would do, when he warned you?"

"I don't know. I thought at the time he feared another gebling invasion. But I don't think it's human blood these two are thirsting for. The other kings called the geblings to Skyfoot with a cry of war on their lips. These two are almost in disguise. No gebling king has ever traveled in the company of humans. Living humans, anyway."

The more she listened to him, the more obvious it became that it was all lies, and Angel was growing more and more confident that she believed him. Angel had a plan, no doubt something he and Father had worked out some time ago, and part of the plan required him not to tell her all he knew. She was still a child in Angel's eyes, still not to be trusted with the knowledge to make an intelligent decision on her own. Angel was determined to keep her blind and force her down the road he and Father had chosen for her. Well, Angel, you may find I'm not quite the helpless babe you think I am. I can't force you to confide in me, but when the time comes, you'll wish you had, because I'll do as I have decided for myself, whether you like it or not, and if you try to stop me, Angel, even you might find that I'm too much for you.

She didn't believe it, though. Her bravado was a sham.

Never before had she felt so childish and weak as now. I am not Heptarch yet, she realized. I have no kingdom and no power, just the destiny that you and Father and Unwyrm and the geblings and the priests all have in mind for me. You have so many plans for me that no matter what I do, it's what someone wanted me to do. A single puppet with a thousand strings, and I don't know who is holding any of them.

Her face showed none of this to Angel. Instead she smiled wickedly, the way she did when she teased him.

"So you think I'd be safe to let Ruin know I have the scepter that should be his, and then ask him to cut open my brain and put it in?"

Angel held out his open hands. "I didn't say it was without risks."

She poked him playfully. "Go back to spending the days asleep. You were more helpful then."

She could see his tension ease, as she pretended to be the lighthearted, trusting girl she had always been with him in private. He believed her. "I think Ruin will agree," he said, "that the scepter is more human than gebling now. The Heptarchs have had it for more than three hundred generations. Still, I'm not saying you should up and tell him right now."

"It's impossible to know what to do," she said. "All the prophecies hint at disaster, but they don't tell me what causes the disaster. Anything I choose might destroy the world or save it, and I don't know which is which. And you aren't even going to help me decide."

He smiled. "You knew you might be leading the world to disaster when you decided to go to Cranning.

I'm just going along for the ride. Been lots of fun, so far." He got up and walked weakly back to his pallet under the canopy.

Patience sat and watched the water for some time. Just when she had begun to feel confident, Angel turned out to be playing his own game. There was no one she could trust completely.

Yet she couldn't brood for long. For whenever her attention was not closely engaged with work or conversation, her mind turned back to that constant, nagging need to go north, to go upriver, to find relief from the urgent pressure of her body's desire.

River's hawk circled, swooped down to the boat. She turned to watch as it tore open a dove, ate its gut, and dropped the body, feathers and all, into the jar. The monkey was playing with itself; this was a calm, slow reach of the river, so the pilot didn't need a voice for a while.

The balance of River's ecology was a marvel and a mystery to her. River himself, he was fairly easy to understand; like all heads, he was somewhat insane, living for the journey up and down Cranwater. As long as the boat was sailing, he was well rewarded. But the monkey and the hawk-what did they get? The n key ate with the humans, and seemed content enough. Be sides, he had nowhere else to go. Monkeys were a species humans had brought with them to this world; they had no natural habitat here, and could survive only as pets. So maybe, at some primitive level, the monkey knew that his slavery at the bellows was the only way that he could live.

But the hawk-she could not understand the hawk. It could provide for itself. It needed no one. What did it gain from its service to River? Why did it stay? River had no hands to restrain it, no power to reward or punish it. The hawk seemed to live for pure generosity.

Perhaps the hawk conceived River to be part of itself, feeding the head out of the same instinct that made parents feed their children. Or perhaps the hawk had been trained, folded into a pattern in which it could not conceive of leaving River to die. Perhaps the hawk did not long for freedom. Or perhaps, being free, this was what the hawk freely chose to do.

When Will called them to dinner at noon, Patience did not want to come. It was Reek's hand on her shoulder that brought her. "Whatever Angel said to you," whispered the gebling woman, "you're still the heart of all our futures. Come, eat."

Yes, thought Patience. Come, puppet. Come, folded paper. Dance your dance, hold the shape we gave you.

Until your usefulness is over. Then someone-the geblings, Unwyrm, perhaps some mad Vigilant along the way-someone will burn you up.

LATE ONE AFTERNOON THEY WERE TRIMMING SAIL AS THEY rounded a bend through a narrow channel between sandbars, when River clicked his tongue twice and the monkey began to screech. By now everyone knew this meant River wanted a quick change in course. They stopped all conversation and listened-River's voice was never loud.

"Hard port!" he said. Will, who was at the helm, heeled the lever toward the starboard side, and almost at the same moment Sken grabbed Patience and a gebling and ran to the left side of the boat. Patience only had time to catch a glimpse of what they were avoiding-a large buoy, big enough that if they had collided head on, with their speed from such a brisk wind, it would have done real damage to buoy and boat alike. As it was, they still bumped into it, but side-on and slower.

"That's supposed to be two mile upriver," said the pilot. "Last flood season must have dragged her anchor down here so far. Cast a line."

Sken didn't hesitate. She knotted a rope onto a grappling hook, swung the hook above her head, and cast it against the buoy, now bobbing some dozen yards behind them. The hook caught on the first throw, but Patience didn't know whether that was remarkable or just what a competent riverwoman would be expected to do.

"What are you doing with that!" demanded Ruin.

"Putting it back where it belongs," said Sken, as if it were-a fact that should be obvious even to a child.

"None of our affair," said Ruin.

"There's too many on the river feels that way already," said Sken. "But River and me, we feel the same on this. When something's out of place that you can fix, then you fix it, so next pilot won't risk what almost got us."