mikal's songbird
T
he doorknob turned. That would be dinner. Ansset rolled over on the hard bed, his muscles aching. As always, he tried to ignore the burning feeling of guilt in the pit of his stomach. But it was not Husk with food on a tray. This time it was the man called Master, though Ansset believed that was not his name. Master was always angry and fearsomely strong, one of the few men who could make Ansset feel and act like the eleven-year-old child his body said he was.
"Get up, Songbird."
Ansset slowly stood. They kept him naked in his prison, and only his pride kept him from turning away from the harsh eyes that looked him up and down. Ansset's cheeks burned with shame that took the place of the guilt he had wakened to.
"It's a good-bye feast we're having for you, Chirp, and ye're going to twitter for us."
Ansset shook his head.
"If ye can sing for the bastarrd Mikal, ye can sing for honest freemen."
Ansset's eyes blazed. "Watch how you speak of him, you barbarian traitor! He's your emperor!"
Master advanced a step, raising his hand angrily. "My orders was not to mark you, Chirp, but I can give you pain that doesn't leave a scar if ye don't mind how you talk to a freeman. Now ye'll sing."
Ansset, afraid of the man's brutality as only someone who has never known physical punishment can be afraid, nodded—but still hung back. "Can you please give me my clothing?"
"It ain't cold where we're going," Master retorted.
"I've never sung like this," Ansset said, embarrassed. "I've never performed without clothing."
Master leered. "What is it then that you do without clothing? Mikal's catamite has naw secrets we can't see."

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Ansset didn't understand the word, but he understood the leer, and he followed Master out the door and down a dark corridor with his heart even more darkly filled with shame. He wondered why they were having a "good-bye feast" for him. Was he to be set free? (Had someone paid some unknown ransom for him?) Or was he to be killed?
The floor rocked gently as they walked down the wooden corridor. Ansset had long since decided he was imprisoned on a ship. The amount of real wood used in it would have seemed gaudy and pretentious in a rich man's home. Here it seemed only shabby.
Far above he could hear the distant cry of a bird, and a steady singing sound that he imagined to be wind whipping through ropes and cables. He had sung the melody himself sometimes, and often harmonized.
And then Master opened the door and with a mocking bow indicated that Ansset should enter first. The boy stopped in the doorframe. Gathered around a long table were twenty or so men, some of whom he had seen before, all of them dressed in the strange costumes of Earth barbarians. Ansset couldn't help remembering Mikal's raucous laughter whenever they came to court, pretending to be heirs of great civilizations that to minds accustomed to thinking on a galactic scale were petty and insignificant indeed. And yet as he stood looking at their rough faces and unsmiling eyes, he felt that it was he, with the soft skin of the imperial court, that was petty and insignificant, a mere naked child, while these men held the strength of worlds in their rough, gnarled hands.
They looked at him with the same curious, knowing, lustful look that Master had given him. Ansset relaxed his stomach and firmed his back and ribs to conquer emotion, as he had been taught in the Songhouse before he turned three. He stepped into the room.
"Up on the table!" roared Master behind him, and hands lifted him onto the wood smeared with spilled wine and rough with crumbs and fragments of food. "Now sing, ye little bastarrd."
The eyes looked his naked body over, and Ansset almost cried. But he was a Songbird, and many called him the best who had ever lived. Hadn't Mikal brought him from one end of the galaxy to his new Capital on old Earth? And when he sang, no matter who the audience, he would sing well.
And so he closed his eyes and shaped the ribs around his lungs, and let a low tone pass through his throat. At first he sang without words, soft and low, knowing the sound would be hard to hear. "Louder," someone said, but he ignored the instructions. Gradually the jokes and laughter died down as the men strained to hear.
The melody was a wandering one, passing through tones and quarter tones easily, gracefully, still low in pitch, but rising and falling rhythmically. Unconsciously Ansset moved his hands in strange gestures to accompany his song. He was never aware of those gestures, except that once he had read in a newsheet, "To hear Mikal's Songbird is heavenly, but to watch his hands dance as he sings is nirvana." That was a prudent thing to write about Mikal's favorite—when the writer lived in Capital. Nevertheless, no one had even privately disputed the comment.
And now Ansset began to sing words. They were words of his own captivity, and the melody became high, in the soft upper notes that opened his throat and tightened the muscles at the back of his head and tensed the muscles along the front of his thighs. The notes pierced, and as he slid up and down through haunting third tones (a technique that few Songbirds could master) his words spoke of dark, shameful evenings in a dirty cell, a longing for the kind looks of Father Mikal (not by name, never by name in front of these barbarians), of dreams of the broad lawns that stretched from the palace to the

Mikal's Songbird    569
Susquehanna River, and of lost, forgetten days that ended in wakeful evenings in a tiny cell of splintered wood.
And he sang of his guilt.
At last he became tired, and the song drifted off into a whispered dorian scale that ended on the wrong note, on a dissonant note that faded into silence that sounded like part of the song.
Finally Ansset opened his eyes. All the men who were not weeping were watching him. None seemed willing to break the mood, until a youngish man down the table aid in the thick accent, "Ah, but thet was better than name and Mitherma." His comment was greeted by sighs and chuckles of agreement, and the looks that met Ansset's eyes were no longer leering and lustful, but rather soft and kind. Ansset had never thought to see such looks in those rough faces.
"Will ye have some wine, boy?" asked Master's voice behind him, and Husk poured. Ansset sipped the wine, and dipped a finger in it to cast a drop into the air in the graceful gesture of court. "Thank you," he said, handing back the metal cup with the same grace he would have used with a goblet at court. He lowered his head, though it hurt him to use that gesture of respect to such men, and asked, "May I leave now?"
"Do you have to? Can't you sing again?" the men around the table murmured, as if they had forgotten he was their prisoner. And Ansset refused as if he were free to choose. "I can't do it twice. I can never do it twice."
They lifted him off the table, then, and Master's strong arms carried him back to his room. Ansset lay on the bed after the door locked shut, trembling. The last time he had sung was for Mikal, and the song had been light and happy. Then Mikal had smiled the soft smile that only touched his old face when he was alone with his Songbird, had touched the back of Ansset's hand, and Ansset had kissed the old hand and gone out to walk along the river. It was then that they had taken him—rough hands from behind, the sharp slap of the needle, and then waking in the cell where now he lay looking at the walls.
He always woke in the evening, aching from some unknown effort of the day, and wracked by guilt. He strained to remember, but always in the effort drifted off to sleep, only to wake again the next evening suffering from the lost day behind him. But tonight he did not try to puzzle out what lay behind the blocks in his mind. Instead he drifted off to sleep thinking of the songs in Mikal's kind gray eyes, humming of the firm hands that ruled an empire a galaxy wide and could still stroke the forehead of a sweet-singing child and weep at a sorrowful song. Ah, sang Ansset in his mind, ah, the weeping of Mikal's sorrowful hands.
Ansset woke walking down a street.
"Out of the way, ya chark!" shouted a harsh accent behind him, and Ansset dodged to the left as an eletrecart zipped past his right arm. "Sausages," shouted a sign on the trunk behind the driver.
Then Ansset was seized by a terrible vertigo as he realized that he was not in the cell of his captivity, that he was fully dressed (in native Earth costume, but clothing for all that), was alive, was free. The quick joy that realization brought was immediately soured by a rush of the old guilt, and the conflicting emotions and the suddenness of his liberation were too much for him, and for a moment too long he forgot to breathe, and the darkening ground slid sideways, tipped up, hit him—
"Hey, boy, are you all right?"
"Did the chark slam you, boy?"
"Ya got the license number? Ya got the number?"

570    maps in a mirror
"Four-eight-seven something, who can tell."
"He's comin' around and to."
Ansset opened his eyes. "Where is this place?" he asked softly.
Why, this is Northet, they said.
"How far is the palace?" Ansset asked, vaguely remembering that Northet was a town not far to the north and east of Capital.
"The palace? What palace?"
"Mikal's palace—I must go to Mikal—" Ansett tried to get up, but his head spun and he staggered. Hands held him up.
"The kit's kinky, that's what."
"Mikal's palace."
"It's only eighteen kilometer, boy, ya plan to fly?"
The joke brought a burst of laughter, but Ansset impatiently regained control of his body and stood. Whatever drug had kept him unconscious was now nearly worked out of his system. "Find me a policeman," Ansset said. "Mikal will want to see me immediately. "
Some still laughed, a man's voice said, "We'll be sure to tell him you're here when he comes to my house for supper!" but some others looked carefully at Ansset, realizing he spoke without American accent, and that his bearing was not that of a streetchild, despite his clothing. "Who are you, boy?"
"I'm Ansset. Mikal's Songbird."
Then there was silence, and half the crowd rushed off to find the policeman, and the other half stayed to look at him and realize how beautiful his eyes were, to touch him with their own eyes and hold the moment to tell about it to children and grandchildren. Ansset, Mikal's Songbird, more valuable than all the treasure Mikal owned.
"I touched him myself, helping him up, I held him up."
"You would've fallen, but for me, sir," said a large strong man bowing ridiculously low.
"Can I shake your hand, sir?"
Ansset smiled at them, not in amusement but in gratitude for their respect for him. "Thank you. You've all helped me. Thank you."
The policeman came, and after apologizing for the dirtiness of his armored eletrecart he lifted Ansset onto the seat and took him to the headquarters, where a flyer from the palace was already settling down on the pad. The Chamberlain leaped from the flyer, along with half a dozen servants, who gingerly touched Ansset and helped him to the flyer. The door slid shut, and Ansset closed his eyes to hide the tears as he felt the ground rush away as the palace came to meet him.
But for two days they kept him away from Mikal. "Quarantine," they said at first, until Ansset stamped his foot and said, "Nonsense," and refused to answer any more of the hundreds of questions they kept firing at him from dawn to dark and long after dark. The Chamberlain came.
"What's this I hear about you not wanting to answer questions, my boy?" asked the Chamberlain with the false joviality that Ansset had long since learned to recognize as a mask for anger or fear.
"I'm not your boy," Ansset retorted, determined to frighten some cooperation out of the Chamberlain. Now and then it had worked in the past. "I'm Mikal's and he wants to see me. Why am I being kept like a prisoner?"
"Quaran—"

Mikal's Songbird    571
"Chamberlain, I'm healthier than I've ever been before, and these questions don't have a thing to do with my health."
"All right," the Chamberlain said, fluttering his hands with impatience and nervousness. Ansset had once sung to Mikal of the Chamberlain's hands, and Mikal had laughed for hours at some of the words. "I'll explain. But don't get angry at me, because it's Mikal's orders."
"That I be kept away from him?"
"Until you answer the questions! You've been in court long enough, Songbird, and you're surely bright enough to know that Mikal has enemies in this world."
"I know that. Are you one of them?" Ansset was deliberately goading the Chamberlain, using his voice like a whip in all the ways that made the Chamberlain angry and fretful and so forgetful.
"Hold your tongue, boy!" the Chamberlain said. Ansset inwardly smiled. Victory. "You're also bright enough to know that you weren't kidnapped five months ago by any friends of the emperor's. We have to know everything about your captivity."
"I've told you everything a hundred times over."
"You haven't told us how you spent your days."
Again Ansset felt a stab of emotion. "I don't remember my days."
"And that's why you can't see Mikal!" the Chamberlain snapped. "Do you think we don't know what happened? We've used the probes and the tasters and no matter how skillfully we question, we can't get past the blocks. Either the person who worked on your mind laid the blocks very skillfully, or you yourself are holding them locked, and either way we can't get in."
"I can't help it," Ansset said, realizing now what the questioning meant. "How can you think I mean any danger to Father Mikal."
The Chamberlain smiled beatifically, in the pose he reserved for polite triumph. "Behind the block, someone may have very carefully planted a command for you to
"I'm not an assassin!" Ansset shouted.
"How would you know," the Chamberlain snarled back. "It's my duty to protect the person of the emperor. Do you know how many assassination attempts we stop? Dozens, every week. The poison, the treason, the weapons, the traps, that's what half the people who work here do, is watch everyone who comes in and watch each other too. Most of the assassination attempts are stopped immediately. Some get closer. Yours may be the closest of all."
"Mikal must want to see me!"
"Of course he does, Ansset! And that's exactly why you can't—because whoever worked on your mind must know that you're the only person that Mikal would allow near him after something like this—Ansset! Ansset, you little fool! Call the Captain of the Guard. Ansset, slow down!"
But the Chamberlain was slowing down with age, and he steadily lost ground to Ansset as the boy darted down the corridors of the palace. Ansset knew all the quickest ways, since exploring the palace was one of the most pleasant of his pastimes, and in five years in Mikal's service no one knew the labyrinth better than Ansset.
He was stopped routinely at the doors to the Great Hall, and he quickly made his way through the detectors (Poison? No. Metal? No. Energy? No. Identification? Clear.) and he was just about to step through the vast doors when the Captain of the Guard arrived.

572    maps in a mirror
"Stop the boy."
Ansset was stopped.
"Come back here, Songbird," the Captain barked. But Ansset could see, at the far end of the huge platinum room, the small chair and the whitehaired man who sat on it. Surely Mikal could see him! Surely he'd call!
"Bring the boy back here before he embarrasses everyone by calling out." Ansset was dragged back. "If you must know, Ansset, Mikal gave me orders to bring you within the hour, even before you made your ridiculous escape from the Chamberlain. But you'll be searched first. My way."
Ansset was taken off into one of the search rooms. He was stripped and his clothing was replaced with fresh clothes (that didn't fit! Ansset thought angrily), and then the searchers' fingers probed, painfully and deep, every aperture of his body that might hold a weapon. ("No weapon, and your prostate gland's all right, too," one of them joked. Ansset didn't laugh.) Then the needles, probing far under the skin to sample for hidden poisons. A layer of skin was bloodlessly peeled off his palms and the soles of his feet, to be sampled for poisons or flexible plastic needles. The pain was irritating. The delay was excruciating.
But Ansset bore what had to be borne. He only showed anger or impatience when he thought that doing so might gain some good effect. No one, not even Mikal's Songbird, survived long at court unless he remained in control of his temper, however he had to hide it.
At last Ansset was pronounced clean.
"Wait," the Captain of the Guard said. "1 don't trust you yet."
Ansset gave him a long, cold look. But the Captain of the Guard—like the Chamberlain—was one of the few people at court who knew Mikal well enough to know they had nothing to fear from Ansset unless they really treated him unjustly, for Mikal never did favors, not even for the boy, who was the only human being Mikal had ever shown a personal need for. And they knew Ansset well enough to know that he would never ask Mikal to punish someone unfairly, either.
The Captain took a nylon cord and bound Ansset's hands together behind him, first at the wrists, and then just below the elbows. The constriction was painful.
"You're hurting me," Ansset said.
"I may be saving my emperor's life," the Captain answered blandly. And then Ansset passed through the huge doors to the Great Hall, his arms bound, surrounded by guards with lasers drawn, preceded by the Captain of the Guard.
Ansset still walked proudly, but he felt a hearty fury toward the guards, toward the courtiers and supplicants and guards and officials lining the walls of the unfurnished room, and especially toward the Captain. Only toward Mikal did he feel no anger.
They let him stop.
Mikal raised his hand in the ritual of recognition. Ansset knew that Mikal laughed at the rituals when they were alone together—but in front of the court, the ritual had to be followed strictly.
Ansset dropped to his knees on the cold and shining platinum floor.
"My Lord," he said in clear, bell-like tones that he knew would reverberate from the metal ceiling, "I am Ansset, and I have come to ask for my life." In the old days, Mikal had once explained, that ritual had real meaning, and many a rebel lord ot soldier had died on the spot. Even now, the pro forma surrender of life was taken seriously, as Mikal maintained constant vigilance over his empire.
"Why should 1 spare you?" Mikal asked, his voice old but firm. Ansset thought he

heard a quaver of eagerness in the voice. More likely a quaver of age, he told himself. Mikal would never allow himself to reveal emotion in front of the court.
"You should not," Ansset said. This was leaving the ritual, and going down the dark road that met danger head-on. Mikal must have been told of the Chamberlain's fears. Therefore, if Ansset made any attempt to hide the danger, his life would be forfeited by law.
"Why not?" Mikal said, impassively.
"Because, my Lord Mikal Imperator, I was kidnapped and held for five months, and during those months things were done to me that are now locked behind blocks in my mind. I may, unwittingly, be an assassin. I must not be allowed to live. "
"Nevertheless," Mikal answered, "I grant you your life."
Ansset, his muscles strong enough even after his captivity to allow him to bow despite his bound arms, touched his lips to the Root.
'Why are you bound?"
"For your safety, my Lord."
"Unbind him," said Mikal. The Captain of the Guard untied the nylon cord.
His arms free, Ansset stood. He went beyond form, and he turned his voice into a song, with an edge to his voice that snapped every head in the hall toward him. "My Lord, Father Mikal," he sang, "there is a place in my mind where even I cannot go. In that place my captors may have taught me to want to kill you." The words were a warning, but the song said safety, the song said love, and Mikal arose from his throne. He understood what Ansset was asking and he would grant it.
"I would rather, my Son Ansset, I would rather meet death in your hands than any other's. Your life is more valuable to me than my own." Then Mikal turned and went back into the door that led to his private chambers. Ansset and the Captain of the Guard followed, and as they left the whispers rose to a roar. Mikal had gone much farther than Ansset had even hoped. The entire Capital—and in a few weeks, the entire empire—would hear how Mikal had called his Songbird Son Ansset, and the words, "Your life is more valuable to me than my own," would become the stuff of legends.
Ansset sighed a song as he entered the familiar rooms where Father Mikal lived.
Mikal turned abruptly and glared at the Captain of the Guard. "What did you mean by that little trick, you bastard?"
"I tied his hands as a precaution. I was within my duties as a warden of the gate."
"I know you were within your duties, but you might use some common decency. What harm can an eleven-year-old boy do when you've probably already skinned him alive searching for weapons and you have a hundred lasers trained on him at every moment!"
"I wanted to be sure."
"Well, you're too damned thorough. Get out. And don't let me ever catch you being any less thorough, even when it makes me angry. Get out!" The Captain of the Guard left, Mikal's roar following him. As soon as the door closed, Mikal started to laugh. "What an ass! What a colossal donkey!" Then he threw himself to the floor with all the vigor of a young man, though Ansset knew his age to be one hundred and twenty-three, which was old, in a civilization where death normally came at a hundred and fifteen. Under him the floor that had been rigid when his weight pressed down on the two small spaces touched by his feet now softened, gave gently to fit the contours of his body. Ansset also went to the floor, and lay there laughing.
"Are you glad to be home, Ansset?" Mikal asked tenderly.
"Now I am. Until this moment I wasn't home."

"Ansset, my Son, you never can speak without singing." Mikal laughed softly.
Ansset took the sound of the laugh and turned it into a song. It was a soft song, and it was short, but at the end of it Mikal was lying on his back looking at the ceiling, tears streaming down from his eyes.
"I didn't mean the song to be sad, Father Mikal."
"How was I to know that now, in my dotage, I'd do the foolish thing I avoided all my life? Oh, I've loved like I've done every other passionate thing, but when they took you I discovered, my Son, that I need you." Mikal rolled over and looked at the beautiful face of the boy who lay looking at him adoringly. "Don't worship me, boy, I'm an old bastard who'd kill his mother if one of my enemies hadn't already done it."
"You'd never harm me."
"I harm everything I love," Mikal said bitterly. Then he let his face show concern. "We were afraid for you. Since you were gone there was an outbreak of insane crime. People were kidnapped for no reason on the street, some in broad daylight, and a few days later their bodies would be found, broken and torn by someone or something. No ransom notes. Nothing. We thought you had been taken like that, and that somewhere we'd find your body. Are you whole? Are you well?"
"I'm stronger than I've ever been before." Ansset laughed. "I tested my strength against the hook of my hammock, and I'm afraid I ripped it out of the wall."
Mikal reached out and touched Ansset's hand. "I'm afraid," Mikal said, and Ansset listened, humming softly, as Mikal talked. The emperor never spoke in names and dates and facts and plans, for then if Ansset were taken by an enemy the enemy would know too much. He spoke to the Songbird in emotions instead, and Ansset sang solace to him. Other Songbirds had pretty voices, others could impress the crowds, and, indeed, Mikal used Ansset for just that purpose on certain state occasions. But of all Songbirds, only Ansset could sing his soul; and he loved Mikal from his soul.
Late in the night Mikal shouted in fury about his empire: "Did I build it to fall? Did I burn over a dozen worlds and rape a hundred others just to have the whole thing fall in chaos when I die?" He leaned down and whispered to Ansset, their eyes a few inches apart, "They call me Mikal the Terrible, but I built it so it would stand like an umbrella over the galaxy. They have it now: peace and prosperity and as much freedom as their little minds can cope with. But when I die they'll throw it all away." Mikal whirled and shouted at the walls of his soundproofed chamber, "In the name of nationalities and religions and races and family inheritances the fools will rip the umbrella down and then wonder why, all of a sudden, it's raining."
Ansset sang to him of hope.
"There's no hope. I have fifty sons, three of them legitimate, all of them fools who try to flatter me. They couldn't keep the empire for a week, not all of them, not any of them. There's not a man I've met in all my life who could control what I've built in my lifetime. When I die, it all dies with me." And Mikal sank to the floor wearily.
For once Ansset did not sing. Instead he jumped to his feet, the floor turning firm under him. He raised an arm above his head, and said, "For you, Father Mikal, I'll grow up to be strong! Your empire shall not fall!" He spoke with such grandeur in his childish speaking voice that both he and Mikal had to laugh.
"It's true, though," Mikal said, tousling the child's hair. "For you I'd do it, I'd give you the empire, except they'd kill you. And even if I lived long enough to train you to be a ruler of men, I wouldn't do it. The man who will be my heir must be cruel and vicious and sly and wise, completely selfish and ambitious, contemptuous of all other people, brilliant in battle, able to outguess and outmaneuver every enemy, and strong

enough inside himself to live utterly alone all his life." Mikal smiled. "Even I don't fit my list of qualifications, because now I'm not utterly alone."
And then, as Mikal drifted off to sleep, Ansset sang to him of his captivity, the songs and words of his time of loneliness in captivity, and as the men on the ship had wept, so Mikal wept, only more. Then they both slept.
A few days later Mikal, Ansset, the Chamberlain, and the Captain of the Guard met in Mikal's small receiving room, where a solid block of clear glass as perfect as a lens stretched as a meters-long table from one end of the room to the other. They gathered at one end. The Chamberlain was adamant.
"Ansset is a danger to you, my Lord."
The Captain of the Guard was equally adamant. "We found the conspirators and killed them all."
The Chamberlain rolled his eyes heavenward in disgust.
The Captain of the Guard became angry, though he kept the fact hidden behind heavy-lidded eyes. "It all fit—the accent that Ansset told us they had, the wooden ship, calling each other freemen, their emotionalism—they could have been no one else but the Freemen of Eire. Just another nationalist group, but they have a lot of sympathizers here in America—damn these 'nations,' where but on old Earth would people subdivide their planet and think the subdivisions meant anything."
"So you went in and wiped them all out," the Chamberlain sneered, "and not one of them had any knowledge of the plot."
"Anyone who could block out the Songbird's mind as well as he did can hide a conspiracy like that!" the Captain of the Guard snapped back.
"Our enemy is subtle," the Chamberlain said. "He kept everything else from Ansset's knowledge—so why did he let him have all these clues that steered us to Eire? I think we were given bait and you bit. Well, I haven't bitten yet, and I'm still looking."
"In the meantime," Mikal said, "try to avoid harassing Ansset too much."
"I don't mind," Ansset hurriedly said, though he minded very much: the constant searches, the frequent interrogations, the hypnotherapy, the guards who followed him constantly to keep him from meeting with anyone.
"I mind," Mikal said. "It's good for you to keep watch, because we still don't know what they've done to Ansset's mind. But in the meantime, let Ansset's life be worth living." Mikal glared pointedly at the Captain of the Guard, who got up and left. Then Mikal turned to the Chamberlain and said, "I don't like how easily the Captain was fooled by such an obvious ploy. Keep up your investigation. And tell me anything your spies within the Captain's forces might have to say."
The Chamberlain tried for a moment to protest that he had no such spies—but Mikal laughed until the Chamberlain gave up and promised to complete a report.
"My days are numbered," Mikal said to Ansset. "Sing to me of numbered days." And so Ansset sang him a playful song about a man who decided to live for two hundred years and so counted his age backward, by the number of years he had left. "And he died when he was only eighty-three," Ansset sang, and Mikal laughed and tossed another log on the fire. Only an emperor or a peasant in the protected forests of Siberia could afford to burn wood.
Then one day Ansset, as he wandered through the palace, noticed a different direction and a quickened pace to the hustling and bustling of servants down the halls. He went to the Chamberlain.
"Try to keep quiet about it," the Chamberlain said. "You're coming with us, anyway."

And within an hour Ansset rode beside Mikal in an armored car as a convoy swept out of Capital. The roads were kept clear, and in an hour and fifteen minutes the armored car stopped. Ansset bounded out of the hatchway. He was startled to see that the entire convoy was missing, and only the single armored car remained. He imme-diately suspected treachery, and looked down at Mikal in fright.
"Don't worry," Mikal said. "We sent the convoy on."
They got out of the car and with a dozen picked guards (not from the palace guard, Ansset noticed) they made their way through a sparse wood, along a stream, and finally to the banks of a huge river.
"The Delaware," whispered the Chamberlain to Ansset, who had already guessed as much.
"Keep your esoterica to yourself," Mikal said, sounding irritable, which meant he was enjoying himself immensely. He hadn't been a part of any kind of planetside military operation in forty years, ever since he became an emperor and had to control fleets and planets instead of a few ships and a thousand men. There was a spring to his step that belied his century and a quarter.
Finally the Chamberlain stopped. "That's the house, and that's the boat."
A flatboat was moored on the river by a shambling wooden house that looked like it had been built during the American colonial revival over a hundred years before.
They crept up on the house, but it was empty, and when they rushed the flatboat the only man on board aimed a laser at his own face and blasted it to a cinder. Not before Ansset had recognized him, though.
"That was Husk," Ansset said, feeling sick as he looked at the ruined corpse. Inexplicably, he felt a nagging guilt. "He's the man who fed me."
Then Mikal and Chamberlain followed Ansset through the boat. "It's not the same," Ansset said.
"Of course not," said the Chamberlain. "The paint is fresh. And there's a smell of new wood. They've been remodeling. But is there anything familiar?"
There was. Ansset found a tiny room that could have been his cell, though now it was painted bright yellow and a new window let sunlight flood into the room. Mikal examined the windowframe. "New," the emperor pronounced. And by trying to imagine the interior of the flatboat as it might have been unpainted, Ansset was able to find the large room where he had sung his last evening in captivity. There was no table. But the room seemed the same size, and Ansset agreed that this could very well have been the place he was held.
Down in the ship they heard the laughter of children and a passing eletrecart that clattered along the bumpy old asphalt road. The Chamberlain laughed. "Sorry I took you the long way. It's really quite a populated area. I just wanted to be sure they didn't have time to be warned."
Mikal curled his lip. "If it's a populated area we should have arrived in a bus. A group of armed men walking along a river are much more conspicuous."
"I'm not a tactician," said the Chamberlain,
"Tactician enough," said Mikal. "We'll go back to the palace now. Do you have anyone you can trust to make the arrest? I don't want him harmed."
But it didn't do any good to give orders to that effect. When the Captain of the Guard was arrested, he raged and stormed and then a half-hour later, before there was time to examine him with the probe and taster, one of the guards slipped him some poison and he drifted off into death. The Chamberlain rashly had the offending guard impaled with nails until he bled to death.

Ansset was confused as he watched Mikal rage at the Chamberlain. It was obviously a sham, or half a sham, and Ansset was certain that the Chamberlain knew it. "Only a fool would have killed that soldier! How did the poison get into the palace past the detectors? How did the soldier get it to the Captain? None of the questions will ever be answered now!"
The Chamberlain made the mandatory ritual resignation. "My Lord Imperator, I was a fool. I deserve to die. I resign my position and ask for you to have me killed."
Following the ritual, but obviously annoyed by having it thrust at him before he was through raging, Mikal lifted his hand and said, "Damn right you're a fool." Then, in proper form, he said, "I grant you your life because of your infinitely valuable services to me in apprehending the traitor in the first place." Mikal cocked his head to one side. "So, Chamberlain, who do you think I should make the next Captain of the Guard?"
Ansset almost laughed out loud. It was an impossible question to answer. The safest answer (and the Chamberlain liked to do safe things) would be to say he had never given the matter any thought at all, and wouldn't presume to advise the emperor on such a vital matter. But even so, the moment would be tense for the Chamberlain.
And Ansset was shocked to hear the Chamberlain answer, "Riktors Ashen, of course, my Lord."
The "of course" was insolent. The naming of the man was ridiculous. At first Ansset looked at Mikal to see fury there. But instead Mikal was smiling. "Why of course," he said blandly. "Riktors Ashen is the obvious choice. Tell him in my name that he's appointed."
Even the Chamberlain, who had mastered the art of blandness at will, looked surprised for a moment. Again Ansset almost laughed. He saw Mikal's victory: the Chamberlain had probably named the one man in the palace guard that the Chamberlain had no control over, assuming that Mikal would never pick the man the Chamberlain recommended. And so Mikal had picked him: Riktors Ashen, the victor of the battle of Mantrynn, a planet that had revolted only three years before. He was known to be incorruptible, brilliant, and reliable. Well, now he'd have a chance to prove his reputation, Ansset thought.
Then he was startled out of his reverie by Mikal's voice. "Do you know what his last words were to me?"
By the instant understanding that needed no referents for Mikal's pronouns Ansset knew he was talking about the now-dead Captain of the Guard.
"He said, 'Tell Mikal that my death frees more plotters than it kills.' And then he said that he loved me. Imagine, that cagey old bastard saying he loved me. 1 remembered him twenty years ago when he killed his closest friend in a squabble over a promotion. The bloodiest men get most sentimental in their old age, I suppose."
Ansset asked a question—it seemed a safe time. "My Lord, why was the Captain arrested?"
"Hmmm?" Mikal looked surprised. "Oh, I suppose no one told you, then. He visited that house regularly throughout your captivity. He said he visited a woman there. But the neighbors all testified under the probe that a woman never lived there. And the Captain was a master at establishing mental blocks."'
"Then the conspiracy is broken!" Ansset said, joyfully assuming that the guards would stop harassing him and the questions would finally end.
"The conspiracy is barely dented. Someone was able to get poison to the Captain. Therefore plotters still exist within the palace. And therefore Riktors Ashen will be instructed to keep a close watch on you."

578    maps in a mirror
Ansset tried to keep the smile on his face. He failed.
"I know, I know," Mikal said wearily. "But it's still locked in your mind."
It was unlocked the next day. The court was gathered in the Great Hall, and Ansset resigned himself to a morning of wandering through the halls—or else standing near Mikal as he received the boring procession of dignitaries paying their respects to the emperor (and then going home to report how soon they thought Mikal the Terrible would die, and who might succeed him, and what the chances were for grabbing a piece of the empire). Because the palace bored him and he wanted to be near Mikal, and because the Chamberlain smiled at him and asked, "Are you coming to court?" Ansset decided to attend.
The order of dignitaries had been carefully worked out to honor loyal friends and humiliate upstarts whose dignity needed deflating. A minor official from a distant star cluster was officially honored, the first business of the day, and then the rituals began: princes and presidents and satraps and governors, depending on what title survived the conquest a decade or a score or fourscore years ago, all proceeding forward with their retinue, bowing (how low they bowed showed how afraid they were of Mikal, or how much they wanted to flatter him), uttering a few words, asking for private audience, being put off or being invited, in an endless array.
Ansset was startled to see a group of Black Kinshasans attired in their bizarre old Earth costumes. Kinshasa insisted it was an independent nation, a pathetic nose-thumbing claim when empires of planets had been swallowed up by Mikal Conqueror. Why were they being allowed to wear their native regalia and have an audience? Ansset raised an eyebrow at the Chamberlain, who also stood near the throne.
"It was Mikal's idea," the Chamberlain said voicelessly. "He's letting them come and present a petition right before the president of Stuss. Those toads from Stuss'll be madder than hell."
At that moment Mikal raised his hand for some wine. Obviously he was as bored as anyone else.
The Chamberlain poured the wine, tasted it, as was the routine, and then took a step toward Mikal's throne. Then he stopped, and beckoned to Ansset, who was already moving back to Mikal's side. Surprised at the summons, Ansset came over,
"Why don't you take the wine to Mikal, Sweet Songbird?" the Chamberlain said. The surprise fell away from Ansset's eyes, and he took the wine and headed purposefully back to Mikal's throne.
At that moment, however, pandemonium broke loose. The Kinshasan envoys reached into their elaborate curly-haired headdresses and withdrew wooden knives— which could pass every test given by machines at the doors of the palace. They rushed toward the throne. The guards fired quickly, their lasers dropping five of the Kinshasans, but all had aimed at the foremost assassins, and three continued unharmed. They rushed toward the throne, arms extended so the knives were already aimed directly at Mikal's heart.
Mikal, old and unarmed, rose to meet them. A guard managed to shift his aim and get off a shot, but it was wild, and the others were hurriedly recharging their lasers— which only took a moment, but that was a moment too long.
Mikal looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed.
But at that moment Ansset threw the wine goblet at one of the attackers and then leaped out in front of the emperor. He jumped easily into the air, and kicked the jaw of the first of the attackers. The angle of the kick was perfect, the force sharp and incredibly hard, and the Kinshasan's head flew fifty feet away into the crowd, as his

body slid forward until the wooden knife touched Mikal's foot. Ansset came down from the jump in time to bring his hand upward into the abdomen of another attacker so sharply that his arm was buried to the elbow in bowels, and his fingers crushed the man's heart.
The other attacker paused just a moment, thrown from his relentless charge by the sudden onslaught from the child who stood so harmlessly by the emperor's throne. That pause was long enough for recharged lasers to be aimed, to flash, and the last Kinshasan assassin fell, dropping ashes as he collapsed, flaming slightly.
The whole thing, from the appearance of the wooden knives to the fall of the last attacker, had taken five seconds.
Ansset stood still in the middle of the hall, gore on his arm, blood splashed all over his body. He looked at the gory hand, at the body he had pulled it out of. A rush of long-blocked memories came back, and he remembered other such bodies, other heads kicked from torsos, other men who had died as Ansset learned the skill of killing with his hands. The guilt that had troubled him before swept through him with new force now that he knew the why of it.
The searches had all been in vain. Ansset himself was the weapon that was to have been used against Father Mikal.
The smell of blood and broken intestines combined with the emotions sweeping his body, and he doubled over, shuddering as he vomited.
The guards gingerly approached him, unsure what they should do. But the Chamberlain was sure. Ansset heard the voice, trembling with fear at how close the assassination had come, and how easily a different assassination could have come, saying, "Keep him under guard. Wash him. Never let him be out of a laser's aim for a moment. Then bring him to Mikal's chambers in an hour." The guards looked toward Mikal, who nodded.
Ansset was still white and weak when he came into Mikal's chambers. The guards still had lasers trained on him. The Chamberlain and the new Captain of the Guard, Riktors Ashen, stood between Mikal and the boy.
"Songbird," Riktors said, "it seems that someone taught you new songs." Ansset lowered his head. "You must have studied under a master." "I n-never," Ansset stuttered. He had never stuttered in his life. "Don't torture the boy, Captain," Mikal said.
The Chamberlain launched into his pro forma resignation. "I should have examined the boy's muscle structure and realized what new skills he had been given. I submit my resignation. I beg you to take my life."
The Chamberlain must be even more worried than usual, Ansset thought with that part of his mind that was still capable of thinking. The old man had prostrated himself in front of the emperor.
"Shut up and get up," Mikal said rudely. The Chamberlain arose with his face gray. Mikal had not followed the ritual. The Chamberlain's life was still on the line. "We will now be certain," Mikal said to Riktors. "Show him the pictures." Ansset stood watching as Riktors took a packet off a table and began removing newsheet clippings from it. Ansset looked at the first one and was merely sickened a little. The second one he recognized, and he gasped. With the third one he wept and threw the pictures away from him.
"Those are the pictures," Mikal said, "of the people who were kidnapped and murdered during your captivity."

"I k-killed them," Ansset said, dimly aware that there was no trace of song in his voice, just the frightened stammering of an eleven-year-old boy caught up in something too monstrous for him to comprehend. "They had me practice on them."
"Who had you practice!" Riktors demanded.
"They! The voices—from the box." Ansset struggled to hold onto memories that had been hidden from him by the block. He also longed to let the block in his mind slide back into place, forget again, shut it out.
"What box?" Riktors would not let up.
"The box. A wooden box, Maybe a receiver, maybe a recording, I don't know."
"Did you know the voice?"
"Voices. Never the same. Not even for the same sentence, the voices changed for every word."
Ansset kept seeing the faces of the bound men he was told to maim and then kill. He remembered that though he cried out against it, he was still forced to do it.
"How did they force you to do it!"
Was Riktors reading his mind? "1 don't know. I don't know. There were words, and then I had to."
"What words?"
"I don't know! I never knew!" And Ansset was crying again.
Mikal spoke softly. "Who taught you how to kill that way?"
"A man. I never knew his name. On the last day, he was tied where the others had been. The voices made me kill him." Ansset struggled with the words, the struggle made harder by the realization that this time, when he had killed his teacher, he had not had to be forced. He had killed because he hated the man. "I murdered him."
"Nonsense," the Chamberlain said. "You were a tool."
"I said to shut up," Mikal said curtly. "Can you remember anything else, my Son?"
"I killed the crew of the ship, too. All except Husk. The voices told me to. And then there were footsteps, above me, on the deck."
"Did you see who it was?"
Ansset forced himself to remember. "No. He told me to lie down. He must have known the—code, whatever it is, I didn't want to obey him, but I did."
"And?"
"Footsteps, and a needle in my arm, and I woke up on the street."
Everyone was silent then, for a few moments, all of them thinking quickly. The Chamberlain broke first. "My Lord, the great threat to you and the strength of the Songbird's love for you must have impelled him despite the mental block—"
"Chamberlain," Mikal said, "your life is over if you speak again before I address you. Captain. I want to know how those Kinshasan's got past your guard?"
"They were dignitaries. By your order, my Lord, no dignitaries are given the body search. Their wooden knives passed all the detectors. I'm surprised this hadn't been tried before."
Ansset noticed that Riktors spoke confidently, not coweringly as another Captain might have done after assassins got through his guard. And, better in control of himself, Ansset listened for the melodies of Riktors's voice. They were strong. They were dissonant. Ansset wondered if he would be able to detect Riktors in a lie. To a strong, selfish man all things that he chose to say became truth, and the songs of his voice said nothing.
"Riktors, you will prepare orders for the utter destruction of Kinshasa."
Riktors saluted.

"Before Kinshasa is destroyed—and that means destroyed, not a blade of grass, Riktors—before Kinshasa is destroyed, I want to know what connection there is between the assassination attempt this morning and the manipulation of my Songbird."
Riktors saluted again, Mikal spoke to the Chamberlain. "Chamberlain, what would you recommend  I do with my Songbird?"
As usual, the Chamberlain took the safe way, "My Lord, it is not a matter to which I have given thought. The disposition of your Songbird is not a matter on which I feel it proper to advise you."
"Very carefully said, my dear Chamberlain." Ansset tried to be calm as he listened to them discuss how he should be disposed of. Mikal raised his hand in the gesture that, by ritual, spared the Chamberlain's life. Ansset would have laughed at the Chamberlain's struggle not to show his relief, but this was not a time for laughter, because Ansset knew his relief would not come so easily.
"My Lord," Ansset said, "I beg you to put me to death."
"Dammit, Ansset, I'm sick of the rituals," Mikal said.
"This is no ritual," Ansset said, his voice tired and husky from misuse. "And this is no song, Father Mikal. I'm a danger to you."
"I know it." Mikal looked back and forth between Riktors and the Chamberlain.
"Chamberlain, have Ansset's possessions put together and readied for shipment to Alwiss. The prefect there is Timmis Hortmang, prepare a letter of explanation and a letter of mark. Ansset will arrive there wealthier than anyone else in the prefecture. Those are my orders. See to it." He turned his head downward and to the right. Both Riktors and the Chamberlain moved to leave. Ansset—and therefore the guards who had lasers trained on him—did not.
"Father Mikal," Ansset said softly, and he realized that the words had been a song.
But Mikal made no answer. He only got up from the chair and left the chamber.
Ansset had several hours before nightfall, and he spent them wandering through the palace and the palace grounds. The guards dogged his steps. At first he let the tears flow. Then, as the horror of the morning hid again behind the only partly broken block in his mind, he remembered what the Songmaster had taught him, again and again, "When you want to weep, let the tears come through your throat. Let pain come from the pressure in your thighs. Let sorrow rise and resonate through your head."
Walking by the Susquehanna on the cold lawns of autumn afternoon shade, Ansset sang his grief. He sang softly, but the guards heard his song, and could not help but weep for him, too.
He stopped at a place where the water looked cold and clear, and began to strip off his tunic, preparing to swim. A guard reached out and stopped him. Ansset noticed the laser pointed at his foot. "I can't let you do that. Mikal gave orders you were not to be allowed to take your own life."
"I only want to swim," Ansset answered, his voice low with persuasion.
"I would be killed if any harm came to you," the guard said.
"I give you my oath that I will only swim, and not try to break free."
The guard considered. The other guards seemed content to leave the decision up to him. Ansset hummed a sweet melody that he knew oozed confidence. The guard gave in.
Ansset stripped and dove into the water. It was icy cold, and stung him. He swam in broad strokes upstream, knowing that to the guards on the bank he would already seem like only a speck on the surface of the river. Then he dove and swam under the water, holding his breath as only a singer or a pearldiver could, and swam across the

current toward the near shore, where the guards were waiting. He could hear, though muffled by the water, the cries of the guards. He surfaced, laughing.
Two of the guards had already thrown off their boots and were up to their waists in water, preparing to try to catch Ansset's body as it swept by. But Ansset kept laughing at them, and they turned at him angrily.
"Why did you worry?" Ansset said. "I gave my word."
Then the guards relaxed, and Ansset swam for an hour under the afternoon sun. The motion of the water, and constant exertion to keep place against the current took his mind off his troubles, to some extent. Only one guard watched him now, while the others played polys, casting fourteen-sided dice in a mad gambling game that soon engrossed them.
Ansset swam underwater from time to time, listening to the different sound the guards' quarreling and laughing made when water covered his ears. The sun was nearly down, now, and Ansset dove underwater again to swim to shore on one breath. He was halfway to shore when he heard the sharp call of a bird overhead, muffled as it was by the river.
Ansset made a sudden connection in his mind, and came up immediately, coughing and sputtering. He dog-paddled in to shore, shook himself, and put on his tunic, wet as he was.
"We've got to get back to the palace," he said, filling his voice with urgency, putting the pitch high to penetrate the guards' sluggishness after an hour of gaming. The guards quickly followed him, overtook him.
"Where are you going?" one of them asked.
"To see Mikal."
"We're not to do that—we were ordered! You can't go to Mikal."
But Ansset walked on, fairly sure that until he actually got close to the emperor the guards would not try to restrain him. Even if they had not been present for the demonstration of Ansset's skill in the Great Hall that morning, the story would surely have reached their ears that Mikal's Songbird could kill two men in two seconds.
He had heard the call of a bird as he swam underwater. He remembered that on his last night of captivity in the ship, he had heard the cry of another bird high above him. But never, never had he heard another sound from outside.
And yet where the flatboat was the city noise had come loudly, could be heard clearly below decks. Therefore even if the boat was his prison, it had not been moored by that house. And if that were so, the evidence against the former Captain of the Guard was a fraud. And Ansset knew now who in the court had taken Ansset to use as an assassin.
They were met in a corridor by a messenger. "There you are. The Lord Mikal commands the presence of the Songbird, as quickly as possible. Here," he said, handing the orders to the guard who made decisions, who took out his verifier and passed it over the seal on the orders. A sharp buzz testified that the orders were genuine.
"All right then, Songbird," said the guard. "We'll go there after all." Ansset started to run. The guards kept up easily, following him through the labyrinth. To them it was almost a game, and one of them said, between breaths, "I never knew this way led where we're going!" to which one of the other guards replied, "And you'll never find it again, either."
And then they were in Mikal's chambers. Ansset's hair was still wet, and his tunic still clung to his small body where it had not yet had time to dry from the river water.

Mikal was smiling. "Ansset, my Son, it's fine now." Mikal waved an arm, dismissing the guards. "We were so foolish to think we needed to send you away," he said. "The Captain was the only one in the plot close enough to give the signal. Now that he's dead, no one knows it! You're safe now—and so am I!"
Mikal's speech was jovial, delighted, but Ansset, who knew the songs of his voice as well as he knew his own, read in the words a warning, a lie, a declaration of danger. Ansset did not run to him. He waited.
"In fact," Mikal said, "you're my best possible bodyguard. You look small and weak, you're always by my side, and you can kill faster than a guard with a laser." Mikal laughed. Ansset was not fooled. There was no mirth in the laugh.
But the Chamberlain and Captain Riktors Ashen were fooled, and they laughed along with Mikal. Ansset forced himself to laugh, too. He listened to the sounds the others were making. Riktors sounded sincere enough, but the Chamberlain—
"It's a cause for celebration. Here's wine," said the Chamberlain. "I brought us wine. Ansset, why don't you pour it?"
Ansset shuddered with memories. "I?" he asked, surprised, and then not surprised at all. The Chamberlain held out the full bottle and the empty goblet. "For the Lord Mikal," the Chamberlain said.
Ansset shouted and dashed the bottle to the floor. "Make him keep silent!"
The suddenness of Ansset's violent action brought Riktors's laser out of his belt and into his hand.
"Don't let the Chamberlain speak!"
"Why not?" asked Mikal innocently, but Ansset knew there was no innocence behind the words. For some reason Mikal was pretending not to understand.
The Chamberlain believed it, believed he had a moment. He said quickly, almost urgently, "Why did you do that? I have another bottle. Sweet Songbird, let Mikal drink deeply!"
The words hammered into Ansset's brain, and by reflex he whirled and faced Mikal. He knew what was happening, knew and screamed against it in his mind. But his hands came up against his will, his legs bent, he compressed to spring, all so quickly that he couldn't stop himself. He knew that in less than a second his hand would be buried in Mikal's face, Mikal's beloved face, Mikal's smiling face—
Mikal was smiling at him, kindly and without fear. Ansset stopped in midspring, forced himself to turn aside, despite the tearing in his brain. He could be forced to kill, but he couldn't be forced to kill that face. He shoved his hand into the floor, bursting the tense surface, releasing the gel to flow out across the room.
Ansset hardly noticed the pain in his arm where the impact had broken the skin and the gel was agonizing the wound. All he felt was the pain in his mind as he still struggled against the compulsion he had only just barely deflected, that still drove him to try to kill Mikal, that still he fought against, fought down, tried to block.
His body heaved upward, his hand flew through the air, and shattered the back of the chair where Mikal still sat. Blood spurted and splashed, and Ansset was relieved to see that it was his own blood, and not Mikal's.
In the distance he heard Mikal's voice saying, "Don't shoot him." And, as suddenly as it had come, the compulsion ceased. His mind spun as he heard the Chamberlain's words fading away: "Songbird, what have you done!"
Those were the words that had set him free.
Exhausted and bleeding, Ansset lay on the floor, his right arm covered with blood.

The pain reached him now, and he groaned, though his groan was as much a song of ecstasy as of pain. Somehow Ansset had withstood it long enough, and he had not killed Father Mikal.
Finally he rolled over and sat up, nursing his arm. The bleeding had settled to a slow trickle.
Mikal was still sitting in the chair, despite its shattered back where Ansset's hand had struck. The Chamberlain stood where he had stood ten seconds before, at the beginning of Ansset's ordeal, the goblet looking ridiculous in his hand. Riktors's laser was aimed at the Chamberlain.
"Call the guards, Captain," Mikal said,
"I already have," Riktors said. The button on his belt was glowing. Guards came quickly into the room. "Take the Chamberlain to a cell," he ordered them. "If any harm comes to him, all of you will die and your families, too. Do you understand?" The guards understood.
Ansset held his arm. Mikal and Riktors Ashen waited while a doctor treated it. The pain subsided.
The doctor left.
Riktors spoke first. "Of course you knew it was the Chamberlain, my Lord."
Mikal smiled faintly.
"That was why you let him persuade you to call Ansset back here."
Mikal's smile grew broader.
"But, my Lord, only you could have known that the Songbird would be strong enough to resist a compulsion that was five months in the making."
Mikal laughed. And this time Ansset heard mirth in the laughter.
"Riktors Ashen. Will they call you Riktors the Usurper? Or Riktors the Great?"
It took the Captain of the Guard a moment to realize what had been said. Only a moment. But before his hand could reach his laser, which was back in his belt, Mikal's hand held a laser that was pointed at Riktors's heart.
"Ansset my Son, will you take the Captain's laser from him?"
Ansset got up and took the Captain's laser from him. He could hear the song of triumph in Mikal's voice. But Ansset's head was still spinning, and he didn't understand why lasers had been drawn between the emperor and his incorruptible Captain.
"Only one mistake, Riktors. Otherwise brilliantly done. And I really don't see how you could have avoided the mistake, either."
"You mean Ansset's strength?"
"Not even I counted on that. I was prepared to kill him, if I needed to," Mikal said, and Ansset, listening, knew it was true. He wondered why that knowledge didn't hurt him. He had always known that, eventually, not even he would be indispensable to Mikal, if somehow his death served some vital purpose.
"Then I made no mistakes," Riktors said. "How did you know?"
"Because my Chamberlain, unless he were under some sort of compulsion, would never have had the courage to suggest your name as the Captain's successor. And without that, you wouldn't have been in a position to take over after you exposed the Chamberlain as the engineer of my assassination, would you? It was good. The guard would have followed you loyally. No taint of assassination would have touched you. Of course, the entire empire would have rebelled immediately. But you're a good tactician and a better strategist, and your men would have followed you well. I'd have given you one chance in four of making it—and that's better odds than any other man in the empire."

"I gave myself even odds," Riktors said, but Ansset heard the fear singing through the back of his brave words. Well, why not? Death was certain now, and Ansset knew of no one, except perhaps an old man like Mikal, who could look at death, especially death that also meant failure, without some fear. But Mikal did not push the button on the laser. "Kill me now and finish it," Riktors Ashen said.
Mikal tossed the laser away. "With this? It has no charge. The Chamberlain installed a charge detector at every door in my chambers over fifteen years ago. He would have known if I was armed."
Immediately Riktors took a step forward, the beginning of a rush toward the emperor. Just as quickly Ansset was on his feet, despite the bandaged arm ready to kill with the other hand, with his feet, with his head. Riktors stopped cold.
"Ah," Mikal said. "No one knows like you do what my bodyguard can accomplish in so short a time."
And Ansset realized that if Mikal's laser was not loaded, he couldn't have stopped Ansset if Ansset had not had strength enough to stop himself. Mikal had trusted him.
And Mikal spoke again. "Riktors, your mistakes were very slight. I hope you have learned from them. So that when an assassin as bright as you are tries to take your life, you know all the enemies you have and all the allies you can call on and exactly what you can expect from each."
Ansset's hands trembled. "Let me kill him now," he said.
Mikal sighed. "Don't kill for pleasure, my Son. If you ever kill for pleasure you'll come to hate yourself. Besides, weren't you listening? I'm going to adopt Riktors Ashen as my heir."
"I don't believe you," Riktors said. But Ansset heard hope in his voice. "I'll call in my sons—they stay around court, hoping to be closest to the palace when I die," Mikal said. "I'll make them sign an oath to respect you as my heir. Of course they'll all sign it, and of course you'll have them all killed the moment you take the throne. And, let's see, that moment will be three weeks from tomorrow, that should give us time. I'll abdicate in your favor, sign all the papers, it'll make the headlines on the newsheets for days. I can just see all the potential rebels tearing their hair with rage. It's a pleasant picture to retire on."
Ansset didn't understand. "Why?" he asked. "He tried to kill you." Mikal only laughed. It was Riktors who answered. "He thinks I can hold his empire together. But I want to know the price."
Mikal leaned forward on his chair. "A small price. A house for myself and my Songbird until I die. And then he is to be free for the rest of his life, with an income that doesn't make him dependent on anybody's favors. Simple enough?" "I agree."
"How prudent." And Mikal laughed again.
The vows were made, the abdication and coronation took a great deal of pomp and the Capital's caterers became wealthy. All the contenders were slaughtered, and Riktors spent a year going from system to system to quell (brutally) all the rebellions.
After the first few planets were burned over, the other rebellions mostly quelled themselves.
It was only the day after the newsheets announced the quelling of the most threatening rebellion that the soldiers appeared at the door of the little house in Brazil where Mikal and Ansset lived.

"How can he!" Ansset cried out in anguish when he saw the soldiers at the door, "He gave his word."
"Open the door for them, Son," Mikal said.
"They're here to kill you!"
"A year was all that I hoped for. I've had that year. Did you really expect Riktors to keep his word? There isn't room in the galaxy for two heads that know the feel of the imperial crown."
"I can kill most of them before they could come near. If you hide, perhaps—
"Don't kill anyone, Ansset. That's not your song. The dance of your hands is nothing without the dance of your voice, Songbird."
The soldiers began to beat on the door, which, because it was steel, did not give way easily. "They'll blow it open in a moment," Mikal said. "Promise me you won't kill anyone. No matter who. Please. Don't avenge me."
"I will."
"Don't avenge me. Promise. On your life. On your love for me."
Ansset promised. The door blew open. The soldiers killed Mikal with a flash of lasers that turned his body to ashes. They kept firing until nothing but ashes was left. Then they gathered them up. Ansset watched, keeping his promise but wishing with all his heart that somewhere in his mind there was a wall he could hide behind. Unfortunately, he was too sane.
They took the ashes of the emperor and twelve-year-old Ansset to Capital. The ashes were placed in a huge urn, and displayed with state honors. Ansset they brought to the funeral feast under heavy guard, for fear of what his hands might do.
After the meal, at which everyone pretended to be somber, Riktors called Ansset to him. The guards followed, but Riktors waved them away. The crown rested on his hair.
"I know I'm safe from you," Riktors said.
"You're a lying bastard," Ansset said, "and if I hadn't given my word I'd tear you end to end."
It might have seemed ludicrous that a twelve-year-old should speak that way to an emperor, but Riktors didn't laugh. "If I weren't a lying bastard, Mikal would never have given the empire to me."
Then Riktors stood. "My friends," he said, and the sycophants gave a cheer. "From now on I am not to be known as Riktors Ashen, but as Riktors Mikal, The name Mikal shall pass to all my successors on the throne, in honor of the man who built this empire and brought peace to all mankind." Riktors sat amid the applause and cheers, which sounded like some of the people might have been sincere. It was a nice speech, as impromptu speeches went.
Then Riktors commanded Ansset to sing.
"I'd rather die," Ansset said.
"You will, when the time comes," Riktors answered.
Ansset sang then, standing on the table so that everyone could see him, just as he had stood to sing to an audience he hated on his last night of captivity in the ship. His song was wordless, for all the words he might have said were treason. Instead he sang melody, flying unaccompanied from mode to mode, each note torn from his throat in pain, each note bringing pain to the ears that heard it. The song broke up the banquet as the grief they had all pretended to feel now burned within them. Many went home weeping; all felt the great loss of the man whose ashes dusted the bottom of the urn.
Only Riktors stayed at the table after Ansset's song was over.
"Now," Ansset said, "they'll never forget Father Mikal."

"Or Mikal's Songbird," Riktors said. "But I am Mikal now, as much of him as could survive. A name and an empire."
"There's nothing of Father Mikal in you," Ansset said coldly.
"Is there not?" Riktors said softly. "Were you fooled by Mikal's public cruelty? No, Songbird." And in his voice Ansset heard the hints of pain that lay behind the harsh and haughty emperor.
"Stay and sing for me, Songbird," Riktors said. Pleading played around the edges of his voice.
Ansset reached out his hand and touched the urn of ashes that rested on the table. "I'll never love you," he said, meaning the words to hurt.
"Nor I you," Riktors answered. "But we may, nonetheless, feed each other something that we hunger for. Did Mikal sleep with you?"
"He never wanted to. I never offered."
"Neither will I," Riktors said. "I only want to hear your songs,"
There was no voice in Ansset for the word he decided to say. He nodded. Riktors had the grace not to smile. He just nodded in return, and left the table. Before he reached the doors, Ansset spoke: "What will you do with this?"
Riktors looked at where Ansset rested his hand. "The relics are yours. Do what you want." Then Riktors Mikal was gone.
Ansset took the urn of ashes into the chamber where he and Father Mikal had sung so many songs to each other. Ansset stood for a long time before the fire, humming the memories to himself. He gave the songs back to Father Mikal, and then reached out and emptied the urn on the blazing fire.
The ashes put the fire out.
"The transition is complete," Songmaster Onn said to Songmaster Esste as soon as the door was closed.
"I was afraid," Songmaster Esste confided in a low melody that trembled. "Riktors Ashen is not unwise. But Ansset's songs are stronger than wisdom."
They sat together in the cold sunlight that filtered through the windows of the High Room of the Songhouse. "Ah," sang Songmaster Onn, and the melody was of love for Songmaster Esste.
"Don't praise me. The gift and power were Ansset's."
"But the teacher was Esste. In other hands Ansset might have been used as a tool for power, for wealth, for control. In your hands—"
"No, Brother Onn. Ansset himself is too much made of love and loyalty. He makes other men desire what he himself already is. He is a tool that cannot be used for evil."
"Will he ever know?"
"Perhaps; I do not think he yet suspects the power of his gift. It would be better if he never found out how little like the other Songbirds he is. And as for the last block in his mind—we laid that well. He will never know it is there, and so he will never search for the truth about who controlled the transfer of the crown."
Songmaster Onn sang tremulously of the delicate plots woven in the mind of a child of five, plots that could have unwoven at any point. "But the weaver was wise, and the cloth has held."
"Mikal Conqueror," said Songmaster Esste, "learned to love peace more than he loved himself, and so will Riktors Mikal. That is enough. We have done our duty for mankind. Now we must teach other little Songbirds."
"Only the old songs," sighed Songmaster Onn.

"No," answered Songmaster Esste with a smile. "We will teach them to sing of Mikal's Songbird."
"Ansset has already sung that."
They walked slowly out of the High Room as Songmaster Esste whispered, "Then we will harmonize!" Their laughter was music down the stairs.