Orson Card - Pathfinder

“Shut up,” said Loaf.

Umbo whistled louder, and danced.

“Why wasn’t that plan going to work? When you come back and give your nasty little messages, why not an explanation?”

“Obviously,” said Umbo, “because somebody is watching my future self as I give the message, and so the message can’t be long and it can’t be very specific.”

“Or you just got cold feet and pretended to get a message,” said Loaf darkly.

“Think for a minute,” said Umbo. “The countsman was ready. They had already been spying on us. Nothing that we did by that point was going to work.”

“Then why didn’t you go back to when we were first sitting in our room in the inn and tell us that none of our plans was going to work?”

“Would you have believed a message like that?”

“No,” said Loaf. “But it would have saved time.”

“We don’t even know for sure if the . . . item . . . is still in the strongbox inside the safe,” said Umbo. “They could have moved it. If we had Rigg with us—”

“Look closely,” said Loaf. “We don’t have Rigg with us.”

“But if we—”

“But we don’t.”

“Yes you do,” said Rigg.

Umbo looked to his left and there was Rigg, walking right alongside them in broad daylight. “Silbom’s right ear!” said Umbo.

“Ananso-wok-wok,” said Loaf in his native language. Or at least that’s how it sounded to Umbo.

“Very subtle,” said Rigg. “No one will ever guess you’re surprised to see me.”

Rigg was right—they didn’t want to make a scene. But Umbo couldn’t help grinning to have Rigg with them again, apparently out of captivity.

“Why is it always Silbom’s right ear?” grumbled Loaf.

“Around here they say ‘Ram’s left elbow,’” said Rigg.

“In the army, it wasn’t anybody’s ear or anybody’s elbow,” said Loaf darkly.

“Are you free?” asked Umbo. “Or are we about to be overrun by soldiers chasing you?”

“There are a lot of secret passages in the house where I’m staying, and some of them lead outside. Nobody knows I’m gone, but I have to get back right away. I found your paths, though, and it looked to me like you were doing something very brave and unnecessary, like trying to get the one jewel back.”

“We have all the others,” said Loaf. “We wanted the complete set.”

“There’s probably some deep, magical reason why we need all nineteen jewels,” said Rigg. “But whatever it is, I haven’t found any reference in the library to nineteen jewels.”

“It was all we could think of to do to help you,” said Umbo. “We came here to rescue you, but we can’t even get near the house where you’re staying, and even finding out which house it was made people suspicious.”

“Why would they think you wanted to rescue me?” asked Rigg.

“They didn’t,” said Loaf. “They assumed we were privicks who wanted to come cut your hair or steal your clothes or some other nonsense. Apparently that sort of thing is completely out of fashion among the local citizens. In fact, from what we’ve gathered since we got here, you’re the most exciting person in the city.”

“In the world,” said Umbo.

“In the wallfold, anyway,” said Rigg. “Let me guess—a lot of them want to make me king, and a lot of others want me dead while my mother and sister are set up in the Tent of Light, and others don’t want royals to exist at all, others want royals to exist so they can be continuously imprisoned and abused, and most of the mothers want to find out what I’m wearing so they can dress their sons the same way.”

“That about covers it,” said Loaf.

“I guess you learned how to travel back in time,” said Rigg to Umbo.

“Obviously,” said Umbo, “or I couldn’t have given messages to you and me back in O.”

“Not obviously,” said Rigg. “Or haven’t you figured out that once it’s done, you don’t have to do it again?”

“Yes, we figured it out,” said Loaf, “but I hate it, because it doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“It makes sense to me,” said Rigg. “It’s like working a maze on paper. You draw your line up the wrong path. You go back to where you made the bad decision. You don’t have to keep going up the wrong path, you can do it differently.”

“Time isn’t a maze,” said Loaf.

“Yes it is,” said Rigg.

“What’s a maze?” asked Umbo. He hated it when everybody else knew something that he didn’t know.

“The point is, have you learned how to do what Umbo does?” asked Loaf.

“I nearly broke my brain trying to do it when I was a prisoner on the boat,” said Rigg. “Not a twitch or a shimmer or whatever I should have felt.”

“I can’t see paths either,” said Umbo.

“But that’s fine,” said Rigg, “because as long as we’re together, you can include me in your—whatever you do. Your shift in time. The question is, have you learned how to jump forward in time?”

“Everybody does that,” said Loaf. “One second at a time, we move one second into the future.”

“My sister can do it,” said Rigg.

“She sees the future?” asked Umbo.

“No, nothing that useful. She skips over bits of time. It makes her move very slowly, but while she’s doing it, she’s invisible.”

Loaf shook his head. “Why didn’t I just keep your money back in Leaky’s Landing and then let the rivermen toss you in the water?”

“She’s my sister ,” said Rigg. “It makes sense that she can do things with time, too.”

“Nothing makes sense,” said Loaf.

“I’m not your brother,” said Umbo. “I’m not any kind of relative at all. And nobody else in my family can do anything .”

“Somehow Father knew what you could do,” said Rigg. “How did he know?”

“I told him,” said Umbo.

“Right, you just walked up to him and said, ‘By the way, I can slow down time.’”

“So he knew. He was . . . your father .”

“But he wasn’t,” said Rigg. “I’ve been getting to know my real father. Knosso Sissamik. He was a great man in his own way. A thinker, but also somebody who did things.”

“What I want to know,” said Loaf, “is why Umbo and I are even here. You don’t want the jewel, you can get in and out of your confinement whenever you want—”

“Not ‘whenever I want,’” said Rigg. “Today was my first chance. Ever. I did it because I found your paths and realized you were here. And now I’m not sure I can get back without being discovered.”

“Get back?” asked Loaf. “Why would you want to get back?”

“Because Mother and Param are still there.”

“Param?” asked Umbo.

“My sister,” said Rigg.

“They were doing fine without you,” said Loaf. “What do you owe to them?”

“What do you owe to Leaky?” asked Rigg defiantly.

“We’ve known each other most of our lives,” said Loaf. “You’ve known your sister for, what, twenty minutes?”

“Well if you don’t want to help me do the thing I need to do, then why are you here?”

“Tell us what you need us to do,” said Umbo, trying to defuse the argument.

“Things are coming to a head,” said Rigg. “I don’t know what it means, but they’re spying on us more and more. And there are meetings—the spies are meeting with more people. Different people.”

“Spies?” asked Loaf.

“I don’t know who they are, I only know their paths. They used to meet with members of the Council. Now they’re meeting more often with General Citizen.”

“Who?” asked Umbo.

“The officer who arrested us.”