“I think we always intended to,” said Rigg. “Why else did we send Olivenko to study military history and strategy? Why else did you need to learn to slice backward as well as forward in time?”
“But now that we’re face to face with it,” said Param, “I don’t know if I have the stomach for it.”
“Maybe that’s why the people I met spoke only of the Rebel King,” said Umbo.
“Even that is significant,” said Olivenko. “Rigg’s the son of King Knosso. Shouldn’t they be calling him ‘the rightful king’?”
“Only after we win,” said Umbo. “Right now, if Haddamander’s soldier came through town and somebody remembered you ever saying ‘the rightful king’ about Rigg Sessamekesh . . .”
“You’re missing the point,” said Loaf. “‘The Rebel King’ isn’t referring to Rigg. Rigg is obviously Captain Toad, and he isn’t making any claim to the Tent of Light. The Rebel King is the husband of Queen Param.”
“I was afraid of that,” said Umbo.
“Though at some point,” said Rigg, “Param and you really should make it official. The sooner you have an heir, the better.”
“That’s . . . practical,” said Umbo.
“And really intrusive,” said Param.
“You know you have to go to war,” said Olivenko. “Rigg and Ram Odin decided the Walls aren’t coming down—we all agreed to that, once we heard the things they learned. But we still have to live somewhere. For now, the Larfolders are providing us a refuge, mostly because they don’t spend that much time on land. But Larfold has mice all over it.”
“Not to mention mermasks in the water,” said Param. “If we tried to live here, our children or grandchildren would envy the Larfolders their life in the sea, and they’d ask for mermasks and leave the land and become . . .”
“Become a different kind of human being,” said Rigg. “It wouldn’t be a tragedy, but it’s not wrong for us, as land dwellers, to want our children to build lives on the land.”
“Vadeshfold is empty,” said Loaf.
“But it has wild facemasks in the water,” said Umbo.
“There’s an obvious solution to that,” said Loaf. “Anyone who has a facemask like mine will be immune to the wild facemasks.”
“But not everyone can bear them,” said Leaky. Her tone of voice was emotional, bordering on anger.
“I’m only saying,” said Loaf, “that we shouldn’t think of Vadeshfold as empty.” He touched his facemask, which was still obvious, even though it had gone so far toward converging with a natural human face. “Someday, there may be people who want to live with these as closely as the Larfolders live with their mermasks. Vadeshfold should belong to them.”
“All of this is pointless,” said Param, “if Noxon doesn’t prevent the destruction of Garden.”
“True,” said Loaf. “But only in the sense that nothing we do will last for more than a few years. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight to give the people of Ramfold some hope of relief from General Citizen.”
“From Mother, you mean,” said Param.
“We don’t know how much influence your mother still has,” said Olivenko. “She might be as much a prisoner now as ever.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice to imagine that she isn’t guilty of any of King Haddamander’s oppression,” said Rigg.
“We know better,” said Param. “If anything, she’s the one goading him to be more and more cruel.”
“That’s not an unreasonable guess,” said Rigg. “But the people Umbo met spoke only of King Haddamander, just as they spoke only of the Rebel King and Captain Toad.”
“Meaning that Mother and I have become unimportant,” said Param.
“Meaning that war is the business of men,” said Olivenko, “as it always has been, even when women fight alongside us.”
“What worries me,” said Loaf, “is that we might move in circles here. Umbo went into the future and learned that there’s a Rebel King, and a Captain Toad who leads raids all over Stashiland. But we still haven’t decided if putting Umbo forward as king is a good idea, or that our war should consist of doing a bunch of raiding. The Sessamids didn’t conquer and unite all of Stashiland—the whole of Ramfold, eventually—by raiding. Raiding is what they did when they were still a tribe of horse-riding nomads from the northwest.”
“It would be easy to take note of the decision we apparently already made, and spare ourselves the trouble of discussing it,” said Ram Odin.
“I’m not quite sure that you are part of the decision,” said Param.