“If I wanted to get hit,” said Umbo, “I could have stayed at home. My father did it plenty. For free.”
Leaky laughed. “He was joking, you fools. This is a rough town with a lot of hitting, but Loaf never lays a hand on any, except when he throws troublemakers out.”
“I had my fill of hurting people when I was in the army,” said Loaf. “I won’t lay a hand on you.”
Umbo relaxed, and so did Rigg.
“Umbo is my son,” Loaf went on, “and Rigg will be my wife’s brother’s boy, your cousin, and his family have a bit more money than us. He was visiting us and we’re taking him to meet his father’s men in O.”
“Why all the lying?” asked Rigg.
“To explain why your clothes will be nicer than ours. When we meet Cooper, he has to believe you are what you say. The letter means something but not as much as you’d like, since it wasn’t addressed to him. He doesn’t know Wandering Man any more than I do. So he has to look at you and see a boy who might come from a family with money.”
“If the banker catches us lying about anything,” said Rigg, “then he won’t believe the jewels are mine.”
“We’ll tell him as much of the truth as he needs to hear. The lies are for nosy people along the way, to explain why you’re dressed different from us. And why you talk so much better than your friend.”
“He does not!” said Umbo, outraged.
“Are you deaf, boy?” asked Leaky. “This Rigg here sounds like he’s been to school. The way he pronounces his words so clear.”
“I’ve been to school!” said Umbo.
“I mean a downriver school,” said Leaky. “We get travelers like that now and then. You really can’t hear the difference in the way he talks?”
“He talks like his father,” said Umbo. “What do you expect?”
“That’s my point,” said Loaf. “You talk like a privick, and he talks like a snooty boy from the schools. He talks like money.”
“Well, I only know how to sound like who I really am,” said Umbo.
“And that’s why I’m calling you my son,” said Loaf, “and him my rich nephew, so why are we having this argument? Besides, I’m going to do the talking anyway. Don’t answer if anybody asks you a question, just look at me. Got it?”
“Yes,” said Rigg.
“This is so stupid,” said Umbo.
“You say that because it’s not your money,” said Leaky.
“Not yours either,” Umbo insisted.
“This boy never backs down,” Loaf growled.
“That’s what makes him a good friend,” said Rigg.
“Some of the money’s ours,” Leaky said to Umbo. “In exchange for the clothes we’re going to buy you two and the passages we’re going to pay for and the days Loaf spends away from here and the bouncers I’ll have to hire when he’s not here to keep the peace. If we don’t make a fair profit on this great and noble service we’re providing you, then he’s a stingy lad and you’re no better.”
“I’ll pay fairly,” said Rigg. “And just so you know, Umbo speaks like an educated boy from Fall Ford, but Father taught me to talk in several different accents and a few completely different languages, too. At home I talk just like Umbo, but for the last week I’ve been talking the way Father said they talk in Aressa Sessamo, cause people understood me better and laughed less.”
“Of course they did,” said Loaf. “That’s the imperial city. And your father sounds like a man who meant you to travel.”
Rigg remembered telling Father that he already knew everything he’d ever need to know—but Father knew all along that Rigg would not be spending his whole life trapping animals in the mountains. Father might not have told Rigg anything about his plans for Rigg’s future, but he’d certainly prepared him to speak wherever he went. Maybe someday Rigg would even have a use for all the astronomy and physics Father taught him. Maybe it would matter that Rigg knew that the Ring was made of dust and tiny stones circling the world, shining in the night because of reflected sunlight. Now that would be a journey!
They went to buy clothes right away that morning; the tailor measured and by evening the clothes were delivered—two of everything for each of them, in different fabrics. “Why do I need two?” asked Umbo.
“So you can wear one while you clean the other,” said Leaky. “Though it’s no surprise you don’t know about washing.”
Rigg interrupted before they could bandy words yet again. “So should I open up a seam and put the jewels back in my clothes? And if I do, which pair of trousers? I tell you I don’t ever want to be caught wearing the wrong pair if a thief steals the other, or if I have to run from somebody.”
“The jewels aren’t very big,” said Umbo. “Can’t you just keep them in a little bag in your pocket?”
Loaf wouldn’t have that. “Pickpockets take whatever they find. Never put in your pocket anything you mean to own for long.”
“I’ll make you a ribbon to put around your waist and tie right tightly,” said Leaky. “And you hang a little bag from the ribbon, inside your trousers, right in front. No one will see it, or if they do, they’ll think it’s your boy parts.”
“Your family jewels,” said Umbo, chortling.
But at that moment, Rigg caught something in Umbo’s eyes, some emotion he couldn’t identify, something that made his eyes shine a little. And he thought: He hasn’t completely forgiven me for letting Kyokay die. It was one thing before, when he didn’t know about the jewels. He could forgive me then, and share blame. But now that he sees me as rich, and knows I hid it from him, it changes everything. He thinks he has reason not to trust me. Does that mean I have reason not to trust him?
It took four days to make the downriver passage to O. First thing the boat’s captain said when they booked passage was, “Pilgrims?” and later Loaf explained that thousands of people a year go to visit the Tower of O. To the captain, though, he told the story that they had agreed on, and Rigg realized that the most important part of the tale was the part about meeting his “father’s men.” It told the captain they were looked for, and by a man of power. They’d be safe enough aboard this boat.
At first it was a delight to travel by boat. The river did all the work—even the rivermen aboard the boat had little enough to do. They were there for the return voyage, when they’d have to pole and row to get upstream against the swift current. For now the rivermen lolled about the deck; and on the cabin roof, where passengers were required to stay, Loaf and Rigg and Umbo did the same.
Until Rigg’s legs began to feel twitchy for lack of use. Father had never let him spend a single whole day abed—not even when he was sick, which wasn’t often. Umbo seemed content enough, and Loaf was positively in heaven, dozing day and night, whenever he could.
It was one of those times when Loaf was sleeping and Rigg was walking around and around the corral—for so it seemed, this small platform edged with a fence—that Umbo came up to him. “Why can’t you hold still?”
“I never got much practice at it,” said Rigg. “It requires a talent for laziness.”
“So what do you see? Paths on the river, too? The people aren’t actually walking, except the insane ones, they just sit there. So do they leave a path even though they’re holding still?”
“Yes,” said Rigg. “They’re moving through space so they leave a path.”
“All right, then that brings another question. I learned in school that the world is a planet moving through space, and the sun moves through space, too. So when the world moves, why don’t all our paths get left out in space? If the world’s like a boat, then even if we’re standing still, we should be leaving paths behind us in space because the world is moving us, the way this boat moves us even while we’re sitting here.”
Rigg closed his eyes, picturing it—all the paths leading out into space.
“It should do what you said,” Rigg finally answered. “But it doesn’t. That’s all I know. All the paths stay where people passed by, on the land or in boats. So I guess there’s something that holds the paths to the exact place on Garden that the people moved through, no matter how long ago. Maybe gravity holds the paths in place. I don’t know.”