“Not in so many words, but yes, I think he prepared me to learn that. And I think that’s what Father Knosso learned from the timeline and from you. The idea of different strains of life growing with uncrossable barriers between them—I think he guessed at the purpose of the Wall.”
“Much good it did him,” said Olivenko bitterly.
“How could he know that the creatures on the other side would kill him?” asked Rigg.
“This is all very amusing,” said Bleht. “Now I have real work to do. Next time you interrupt me, have something substantive to say.” There was no stopping her now. But as he watched her walk away, Rigg was pretty sure she was as intrigued by these ideas as he was. Why else did she stay to hear him out? Indeed, he had not really clarified his ideas or understood some of their ramifications until he had been in dialogue with her.
“Father Knosso was a seed, then,” said Olivenko, who had not let go of the conversation, though to him it was very personal, not theoretical at all. “A seed that wanted to plant itself in the next plot.”
“And the plants in the new plot rejected him,” said Rigg.
Suddenly Olivenko started breathing hard. For a moment Rigg thought, He’s awfully young to be having a heart attack. Then he realized that what he was seeing was sobs. Olivenko was crying, only he was doing his best to suppress the emotion, so the sobs were only visible and audible as gasps.
Rigg looked away until his guard’s breathing calmed again.
“I’m sorry,” said Olivenko.
“I understand,” said Rigg.
“All these years, I wondered if he was insane. That would put everything I learned from him into doubt. It’s why I gave up scholarship and turned to the opposite life. Because I had been caught up in the babblings of a madman.”
“He might have been insane,” said Rigg. “I’m his son—I might be just as mad.”
“You’re not,” said Olivenko. “He wasn’t. He wasn’t even wrong. He simply had the bad luck to find his way across the Wall at a place where they were waiting for him. How could he have known what they would do?”
“And so the mystery is solved,” said Rigg. “As far as we can solve it from the information that we have.”
They sat in their chairs in silence.
“What will you do now?” asked Olivenko.
“The only thing that makes any sense,” said Rigg. “There’s a power struggle going on in this city, with an empire as the prize to the cleverest, strongest, or most brutal player. A lot of those players want me dead. I need to find a way to escape from this city and hide where they can’t find me.”
“I’m probably not the person that you should have told.”
“You’re almost the only person I could tell, because you’re the only one who won’t think that I’m insane when I say it. Anywhere I try to hide within this wallfold, I’ll eventually be found. My only protection would be to join in the game—to try to assemble a military force and defeat all the others. To become a ruling emperor myself.”
“From what I’ve seen of you, I think you might just be able to do it.”
“I know a bit of history,” said Rigg. “Stupider men than I am have achieved it.” It sounded only a little ridiculous to Rigg, at his age to call himself a man. “But the only way for me to win is to walk to the Tent of Light over the bodies of hundreds, maybe thousands, of the very people I would be sworn to protect. To fight to save a kingdom from some threat, that would justify those deaths. But to fight only to save my own sorry life and become King-in-the-Tent—that’s not worth a single life.”
“Then what will you do?”
“I’ll leave the wallfold,” said Rigg.
Olivenko shook his head. “That doesn’t work as well as you might think.”
“I won’t escape by sea,” said Rigg. “Those creatures live in the water. Maybe I’d be safe on land. Or maybe, if I cross through the Wall far enough to the south of here, I’ll end up in a different wallfold from the one where Father Knosso died.”
“You search for the source of Father Knosso’s ideas about how to get through the Wall. You find out that he didn’t learn anything from the Great Library. So why do you think you know how to cross through the Wall?”
“The same way Father Knosso did,” said Rigg. “Make a guess, and see if it works.”
“What’s your guess?”
“I’m going to tell my guard?” said Rigg—but he smiled as he said it.
“It was worth a try,” said Olivenko.