The first few years after Mikal's death will be interesting, Kya-Kya decided, and wondered why, when those years were bound to be miserable and full of slaughter, she was so glad to know she would be alive and working in government during them.
Mikal stood, and so everyone stood, and when he had gone they erupted into dozens of different conversations. Kya-Kya was amused at how effectively Mikal had taken everyone in with his warmth and casualness. Had they forgotten that this man had killed billions of people on burned-over worlds, that only brute force and utter callousness had brought him to power? And yet she also had to admire the fact that after a life like the one Mikal had led, he was able to so conceal his viciousness that everyone In the room but her-no, be honest, everyone in the room-now thought of him as grandfatherly. Kind. A gentleman and gentle man. And wise.
Well, give the old bastard that. He was smart enough to stay alive as the number one target in the galaxy. He'd probably die in bed.
Contempt is so easy, said Ansset's voice beside her.
She spun to face him. I thought you were gone. What did you mean, telling me to listen? She was surprised that she spoke angrily to him.
Because you weren't, The boy's voice was gentle, but she heard the undertones of songtalk.
Don't try it with me. I can't be fooled.
Only a fool can't be fooled, Ansset answered. He had grown, she noticed. You pretend not to like Mikal. But of all the people here, you're the one most like him.
What did he mean? She was infuriated. She was flattered. Do I look like the killer type? she asked.
You'll get what you want, Ansset answered. And you'll kill to get it, if you have to.
Not just songs but psychology, too. How far-reaching your training must have been.
I know your songs, Kya-Kya, Ansset said. I heard your singing when you came to Esste in my stall that day.
I never sang.
No, Kya-Kya. You always sang. You just never heard the song.
Ansset started to turn away. But his air of confidence, of superiority, angered Kya-Kya. Ansset! she called, and he stopped and faced her. They're using you, she said. You think they care about you, but they're only using you. A tool. A foolish, ignorant tool! She had not spoken loudly, but when she turned she realized that many of the other students were looking back and forth between her and Ansset. She walked away from the boy and threaded her way through the students, who knew enough not to say anything, but who no doubt wondered how she had gotten into a conversation with Mikal's Songbird, and no doubt marveled that she had been able to bring herself to be angry at him.
That had been enough to keep the students gossiping for days. But before she reached the door, she heard all the conversations fall silent, and Ansset's voice rose above the fading chatter to sing a wordless song that she, alone of all the students, knew was a song of hope and friendship and honest good wishes. She closed her mind to the boy's Songhouse tricks and left the room, where she could wait outside in silence with the guards until the guide came to lead them all away.
The buses, all fleskets from the Institute, took them home to Princeton with only one stop, in the ancient city of Philadelphia, where one of the older men students was kidnapped and found, mutilated terribly, near the Delaware River. He was the fifteenth in a wave of kidnap murders that had terrorized Philadelphia and many other cities in the area. The rest of the students returned in utter gloom to Princeton and resumed their studies. But Kya-Kya did not forget Ansset. Could not forget him. Death was in the air, and while Mikal could not be responsible for the mad killings in Philadelphia, she could not help but believe that he, too, would die mutilated. But the mutilation had been going on for years, and she thought of Ansset, and how he, too, might be twisted and deformed, and for all that she cared nothing for the Songhouse and even less for Mikal's Songbird, she could not help but hope that somehow the beautiful boy who had remembered her after all these years could emerge unsullied from Susquehanna and go home to the Songhouse clean.
And she fretted, because she was in school and the world was passing on quickly toward great events that she would not be part of unless she hurried or the world waited just a little bit for her. She was twenty years old and brilliant and impatient and frustrated as hell. She cried for the Songhouse one night when she went to bed especially tired.
5
Ansset walked m the garden by the river. In the Songhouse, the garden had been a patch of flowers in the courtyard, or the vegetables in the farmland behind the last chamber. Here, the garden was a vast stretch of grass and shrubs and tall trees that stretched along the two forks of the Susquehanna to where they joined. On the other side of both rivers was dense, lush forest, and the birds and animals often emerged from the trees to drink or eat from the river. The Chamberlain had pleaded with Ansset not to wander in the garden. The space was too large, kilometers in every direction, and the wilderness too dense to do any decent patrolling.
But in the two years he had lived in Mikal's palace, Ansset had tested the limits of his life and found they were broader than the Chamberlain would have liked. There were things Ansset could not do, not because of rules and schedules but because it would displease Mikal, and displeasing Mikal was never something Ansset desired. He could not follow Mikal into meetings unless he was specifically invited. There were times when Mikal needed to be alone-Ansset never had to be told, he noticed the mood come over Mikal and left him.
There were other things, however, that Ansset had learned he could do. He could enter Mikal's private room without asking permission. He discovered, by trial and error, that only a few doors in the palace would not open to his fingers. He had wandered the labyrinth of the palace and knew it better than anyone; it was a way he often amused himself, to stand near a messenger when he was being sent on an errand, and then plan a route that would get him to the destination long before the messengers. It unnerved them, of course, but soon they got into the spirit of the game and raced him, occasionally reaching the end before Ansset.
And Ansset could walk in the garden when he wanted to. The Chamberlain had argued over it with Mikal, but Mikal had looked Ansset in the eye and asked, Does it matter to you, to walk in the garden?
It does, Father Mikal.
And you have to walk alone?
If I can.
Then you will. And that was the end of the argument. Of course, the Chamberlain had men watching from a distance, and occasionally a flit passed overhead, but usually Ansset had the feeling of being alone.
Except for the animals. It was something he hadn't had that much experience with at the Songhouse. Occasional trips to the open country, to the lake, to the desert. But there had not been so many creatures, and there had not been so many songs. The chatter of squirrels, the cries of geese and jays and crows, the splash of leaping fish. How could men have borne to leave this world? Ansset could not fathom the impulse that would have forced his ancient ancestors into the cold ships and out to planets that, as often as not, killed them. In the peace of birdsong and rushing water it was impossible to imagine wanting to leave this place, if it was your home.