Commitment Hour

EIGHT A Call for the Weasel

I awoke male. Male-Me in Male-me.

The cabin was dark and the sheets beneath me damp with sweat: mine and Cappie's, slick for each other. When I licked my lips, they tasted of her.

Oh, boy — I was in deep, deep donkey dung.

I could remember everything my sister self had done… as much as you can ever remember what happens when you make love. It had been a novelty for my female half — she had taken her time. That had been what Cappie wanted too: she whispered that she longed for comfort. Tenderness. No inventive athletics, just melting into each other, touching and being touched.

Ooo, yuck.

My sister self, gurgling lovey-dovey sentiments to another woman… what had I been thinking?

And I couldn't quite reconstruct the exact sequence of events. Had Female-Me been aroused before the touching began? It didn't bother me if my male body had responded physically to physical stimulation; but if my female half had been excited purely by looking at a female Cappie, before the strokes and caresses…

Well, at least our bodies had been male and female. At least we had that. Last summer down-peninsula, when I had been female and the woman doctor had… no, I didn't want to remember. That had been a perversion: two physical women. But this time, Cappie and I had been in male and female bodies, and that was all that mattered.

In sex, souls didn't count. Did they?

Cappie lay sleeping beside me. I couldn't see in the dark, but I imagined she had a smile on her face.

Yikes.

I'd made love with Cappie… promised to become Mocking Priestess on her behalf… formed a pact that I'd become female and she'd become male, even though that sort of arrangement was strictly against the Patriarch's Law…

And speaking of the Patriarch's Law, I was supposed to be on vigil.

Yikes again.

I had to restrain myself from leaping out of the bed. How soon was sunrise? Could I get back to the marsh in time?

With agonizing caution, I pulled away from Cappie's sleeping body, holding my breath so I wouldn't smell the cowbarn sweat and sex that oozed off her skin. She was naked, of course, no longer wearing her father's clothes; plain old Cappie now, except for the short-chopped hair. In the darkness, that haircut made her look disturbing — I didn't like seeing her scalp so easily, or the raw shape of her skull. It was like one of those terror tales the old men told around the campfire: the hero embraces a beautiful woman and when he pulls away, finds that she's turned into a worm-eaten corpse.

No. That wasn't fair. Cappie may have looked scrawny and underdeveloped as she lay uncovered in the darkness, but she was no horrible monster. She was just… ordinary.

Didn't my female half realize that?

My life had progressed beyond this unsophisticated girl in my bed. I was famous the whole length of the peninsula. Admired by far more interesting women.

I couldn't let myself get trapped by mediocrity when I was just coming into my own. This was no time to make senseless commitments.

I managed to find my clothes — scattered over the floor and furniture, but thank heaven the cabin was small — and I took everything outside so there was less chance of waking Cappie while I dressed. No one saw me. Only one of the nearby cabins was occupied, and that belonged to Chum and Thorn: a pair of nineteen-year-olds who lived together like crashing thunderheads. One second they'd be screeching over who should empty the chamberpot, and the next they'd be passionately a'moan with rough lovemaking that smacked against their cabin walls and knocked out chips of mortar. Since tomorrow would be their last sex switch before permanent Commitment, I was sure they had battered themselves into raw-chapped stupor hours ago. They would never open their eyes long enough to notice me on my own porch, pulling on my pants and hurrying off into the darkness.

Hurrying off, then hurrying back again. A gentleman doesn't abandon a woman in the middle of the night, without at least leaving a note. Just inside the door, Cappie and I kept a white pine board and a stick of charcoal for leaving each other messages. Holding the charcoal with a feather touch to avoid making noise, I wrote GONE BACK TO VIGIL… then added, LOVE, FULLIN.

Anything else would have been rude.

The black sky was just beginning to lighten over Mother Lake as I reached the trail to the marsh. Dawn was still a good hour away. I slowed down and tried to force myself to relax, to keep an eye out for snapping turtles, but I didn't have the concentration. My mind kept going back to Cappie.

What had I done?

What had I promised?

What would she think when she found me gone?

This mess was my sister self's fault. If she hadn't showed up, I could have fobbed Cappie off forever. Evaded conversation. Avoided promises.

A gentleman doesn't break his promises — a smart gentleman doesn't make any.

Now what was I going to do?

I didn't want to hurt her; that would just cause trouble. Cappie wouldn't hesitate to make an embarrassing scene in public, even on Commitment Day. My only choice was to play along with what my female self had tied me to, at least until we reached Birds Home. Then… well, if Cappie was going to Commit male, I could go male too, making a relationship impossible.

Or maybe I could Commit Neut, get myself banished, and escape everything.

Not funny, Fullin.

My violin was safe where I left it, inside the log near the duck flats. I took it out of the case, tuned up, and played… not exercises or any specific song, just playing, soft or loud, sweet or savage, whatever came from second to second. It helped. Music doesn't solve problems, any more than daylight eliminates stars; but while the sun shines the stars are invisible, and while the music sang from my bow, Cappie, Steck, Female-Me, and everyone else who choked up my life vanished into the breakers of sound.

In the sky, stars began to fade. Light seeped up from the eastern horizon, pasty-faced and watery as predawn usually is. (Zephram once observed to me, "Master Day is not a morning person.") In the wan yellow light, flies began to buzz and frogs to chug, while loons still called night songs to each other and fish splashed the surface of open water, on the grab for fluff and insects.

Buzz, chug, hoo-ee-oo, splash.

Buzz, chug, hoo-ee-oo, splash.

In time, I eased the violin off my shoulder and let the marsh sing without me. Or at least make noise. I couldn't tell if the sound was wholesomely relaxing… or getting on my nerves.

After minutes of sitting, my stomach rolled with a puma-like growl. I put my instrument back in its case, then pulled out the bread and cheese I had taken from Zephram's. As I worried the rock-old cheddar with my teeth, I considered what to do next. Officially, my vigil would end as soon as the sun cleared the horizon… not that I could see the horizon with bulrushes all around me, but if I climbed the dead tree near the duck flats, I'd have a clear view all the way to Mother Lake. I still might not see the sun directly, but I'd easily catch its glare spooning the water to sparkles.

When I reached the flats, they were still jumbled with footprints from Steck's boots, plus the occasional smudge of moccasins from Cappie and me. No sign of ducks. I crossed to the dead tree and tried to waggle it, just to check how securely it was set into the wet ground. As far as I could tell it was rooted like stone, though it had stood bare and sapless since I came to practice violin as a child. Back then, I could only reach the lowest branch if I stood on tiptoe and jumped; now, I scrambled up easily, as high as I wanted to go. That was just high enough to see Mother Lake — you can't trust old bleached wood to hold your weight, even when the tree feels solid. I intended to peek for the sun, then get down again before the branches snapped beneath me.

That was before I saw Hakoore coming in a canoe.

Cypress Creek runs down the very center of the marsh, a meander of clear water among the cattails. If you start at Mother Lake, you can boat up the creek as far as Stickleback Falls, and even then it's an easy portage to Camron Lake and points south. The duck flats don't touch the creek itself, but when the water is high enough you can paddle to the flats if you know the right route through the reedy mat of marsh… at least I assume that's true, because the canoe was doing precisely that.

Hakoore wasn't paddling. He sat stiffly in the front while his granddaughter Dorr stroked in the stern. Dorr was twenty-five years old and tyrannized by the old man. I found her intermittently attractive, or at least pretty-ish, but she had no idea how to put herself together for good effect. On hot days, you might see her wearing a sweater; on cold, she might wander barefoot around the town common, hair tumbled shapelessly around her face. If Dorr had been a violinist, she'd be the sort who played with the energy of a devil, but never bothered to tune up first… and would always be slashing her way through a scherzo when the audience wanted a ballad.

Dorr wasn't a musician, though — she made quilts and dyed blankets that were eagerly sought by well-to-do buyers down-peninsula. Her designs were striking: sad-eyed trees with blood dribbling down their bark; catfish leaping into bonfires; horses with human faces crushed under stone-weight thunderclouds. I often said to myself that Dorr desperately needed a man… but until Hakoore was gone she was chained to the old despot, like a heifer marked with her owner's brand.

By the time I caught sight of the canoe, Dorr had already spotted me in the tree. Our eyes met. Her face was expressionless and her mouth stayed closed — she wouldn't tell Hakoore I was there. (The more he treated her like a dumb animal, the more she behaved that way… at least when he was around.) I had hopes of scurrying back to the ground without being seen, but Hakoore must have possessed enough dregs of eyesight to notice me backlit against the brightening sky.

"Who's in that tree?" he hissed.

Dorr didn't answer his question. I forced myself to call down, "Me. Fullin."

"What are you doing?"

"Checking whether it's dawn yet."

"Is it?"

"Yes." Truth was, I couldn't make out any sunlight shining on Mother Lake, but I decided to feather the issue. If the sun hadn't risen, I was breaking vigil again by communicating with people; therefore, the sun had risen.

"Come down," said Hakoore. "It's time we talked."

I didn't like the sound of that — Hakoore's talks could shrivel a man's testicles at fifty paces. On the other hand, I had no choice. Moving slowly, trying to look the soul of cautious prudence when I was actually just delaying the confrontation, I descended from one branch to the next until my feet touched solid mud. By that time, Dorr had run the nose of the canoe onto the flats and helped her grandfather get out.

"So, boy," Hakoore said, hobbling toward me, "up a tree, were you? To see if it was dawn."

"Yes."

"Woman!" he snapped at Dorr. "Go do something productive. Don't you use these plants for dyes? Pick some. Don't hurry back."

Dorr said nothing. She brushed noiselessly through the nearest stand of rushes and disappeared. Hakoore peered whitely after her for a time, then turned back to me. "I climbed a tree on my vigil too… to see if it was dawn."

Some men would say that with a companionable smile of nostalgia. Hakoore didn't, but his hissing voice did seem less venomous than usual. That worried me — the old snake was setting me up for something.

After a moment he said, "Take me to the boat." He held out his bony hand, and reluctantly I let him take my arm, the way he always walked with Dorr. I couldn't remember him touching me before — he preferred to commandeer the help of important people like the mayor, or ignorable ones like Dorr. Then again, we were in the middle of a marsh. If he needed help walking, he didn't have a lot of choices.

His grip on my arm was tight and he leaned hard against me… not that he weighed enough to be a burden. Hakoore might be close to the same age as my foster father, but he looked several decades older: shriveled, gaunt and hunched. He had an old man's smell to him, a mix of ancient sweat and urine, rising from his clothes like a sad memory. As we walked toward the canoe, I could hear him clack his molars together every few steps, as if he were still chewing the ghost of some long-ago breakfast.

"So," he said as we walked, "your Cappie intends to be priestess."

"Not my Cappie," I answered quickly. "I don't control her."

"True." Hakoore nudged me knowingly with his elbow. "Cappie is just a girl you live with, right, boy? She's the only female your age, so it's natural you two would… be boy and girl together. But beyond that?" He made a rasping sound in his throat. "I don't suppose you have feelings for her."

The old snake said "feelings" with so much intensity, I clenched my jaw. Did he want me to agree with him, that she was just some meaningless convenience? Even if I'd outgrown Cappie, a gentleman doesn't talk about a lady as if she's something he wants to scrape off his moccasin. I couldn't tell Hakoore Cappie meant nothing to me, whether or not it was true. But the Patriarch's Man was waiting for me to speak — to deny her, to say something disloyal.

"There's feelings and there's feelings," I answered carefully. "Depends what feelings you mean."

Hakoore actually smiled — as much as a frown-lined face like his could ever support an amiable expression. He reached out with his free hand and patted my wrist almost fondly.

"You're a weasel, aren't you, boy?"

His thumb suddenly dug into my flesh, gouging the soft web between my thumb and index finger. There's a nerve there that hurts when it gets squeezed. Hakoore knew all about that nerve.

"You're a weasel, aren't you?" he said again.

"What do you mean by—"

The old man squeezed and the pain was enough to clot my voice silent. "I mean," Hakoore said, "that you'd kill your own mother under the right circumstances." He released the pressure and gave a fierce grin. His teeth were yellow and jagged. "You're a weasel, and one way or another, you see the rest of the world as your meat."

I didn't answer. He was wrong, but it seemed politic to hold my tongue.

Hakoore studied me for a moment with his milky eyes, then gave a soft snort of amusement. "Look in the boat, boy."

We had reached the edge of the flats where the canoe's nose was pulled up onto the mud. Snug in the middle of the boat, tucked safely under the central thwart, lay the battered false-gold box containing the Patriarch's Hand.

What now? I thought. Did the old snake want me to take another oath?

Hakoore released his grip on my arm. "Get it," he said, pushing me toward the canoe. "Take it out."

Mistrustfully, I reached down and wrapped my fingers around the brass handle on the nearest end of the box. One pull told me the container was heavier than I expected; it took several good heaves for me to drag it out from under the thwart and lift it into the air.

"Wait," Hakoore said. He leaned into the boat and pulled out a blanket that lay under the front seat — probably one of Dorr's own creations, but the blanket was too dirty for me to be certain. I noticed Hakoore didn't wobble as he bent over; our Patriarch's Man was only infirm when it suited his purpose. With a few dusty shakes, he opened up the blanket and let it settle onto the mud. "Set the box on that," he told me. "Be careful."

I gave him an aggrieved look. Did he think I intended to take risks with the cove's greatest treasure? But I held my tongue. Squatting, I laid the heavy chest on the blanket. "There," I said. "Now what is this—"

"Quiet!" he interrupted. "You're going to learn something." He lowered himself to his knees with the slow inevitability of an old dog taking its place by the fire. For a moment he just knelt there, stroking the tarnished gold surface with his fingers. Then he lifted the lid and exposed the mummified hand to the brightening light of dawn. It seemed smaller than it had looked last night, the skin rough and puckered. "Do you know what that is?" Hakoore asked.

"The Patriarch's Hand," I answered, wondering if this was a trick question.

"And I suppose you think it was cut off the Patriarch himself."

"It wasn't?"

He gave me the sort of look he'd been giving to lunkhead boys for forty years. "Who'd have the nerve to cut off the Patriarch's hand? I wouldn't. Even after he'd died, no one in the cove would dare."

"I always assumed the Patriarch left instructions for his successor to—"

Hakoore waved me to silence. "Why would a man want to be mutilated after death? Even the Patriarch wasn't that crazy."

I gaped at him. No one ever called the Patriarch crazy… except for all the women in the village, and they didn't count.

"The hand belonged to the Patriarch," Hakoore told me, "but it wasn't cut off his own wrist. It was just his property."

The old snake spoke dismissively as if the truth was self-evident; but all my life, I'd been told the hand was an actual piece of the Patriarch. When people swore oaths on it — when it was used at baby blessings and funerals — the Elders always spoke of it as the Patriarch's own flesh. If it was just one of the Patriarch's possessions… if he had hacked it off some criminal… or a heretic… or a Neut…

Hakoore actually chuckled at the expression on my face — his version of a chuckle at any rate, a toneless hisk-hisk sound. "Touch the hand, boy," he said. "I'll show you something interesting."

Reluctantly I placed my right fingertips on the hand's papery skin. Hakoore reached down too, pressing hard against a small protrusion on the box's metal side. The spot he touched looked like nothing more than a slight dent. I had no idea what he might be up to… until I heard the box give a soft click.

With a shudder, the hand squirmed under my fingers. Before I could flinch back, the hand had locked onto mine with an arm wrestler's grip.

I jumped back, shaking my hand frantically the way you do to shake off a speck of burning debris spat up by a campfire. The hand came with me, right out of its box, and clung like hot tar as I hopped around the flats trying to dislodge it.

"Hah, boy," Hakoore laughed, "if you could see the expression on your face!" Hisk-hisk: the sound of his laugh. Hisk-hisk. "If all those pretty girls who swoon at your fiddle-playing could see what a duck turd you look like now…" He stopped, still laughing, hisk-hisk-hisk. The sound put my teeth on edge, like a blacksmith filing iron.

"What's going on?" I demanded. "Is this some kind of magic?"

"Magic!" The word was a sudden angry bark. "What kind of superstitious fool are you, boy? The hand and the box are just machines, special machines. You think a real hand could last over a century without rotting to dust? Use your sense! And don't ask me to explain how it works: I don't know. But it's not sorcery or deviltry, just wires and things."

I couldn't imagine how wires and things could make a hand that moved as fast as a striking rattlesnake. Still, the mayor had an OldTech clock where a goldfinch came out and chirped every hour; if our ancestors could make mechanical birds, a mechanical hand wasn't out of the question.

"Well, you certainly gave me a start," I told Hakoore, "and I'm glad you had a good laugh. Now can you make the hand let go? It's holding a little tight."

"You think that's tight?" Hakoore's milky eyes glittered in the light of the dawning sun. "It can squeeze much harder. It can squeeze like iron tongs."

"I'm sure," I agreed. "But you've had your joke and I'm suitably impressed. Maybe it's time we both went home for breakfast."

"A joke," he said, still smiling. "You think the Patriarch's hand is a joke?"

"No, no," I corrected myself quickly, "the hand isn't a joke, it's a sacred artifact, but…"

I gasped. The hand had suddenly tightened its grip, wringing me hard around the knuckles — the way Bonnakkut had sometimes grabbed my hand and mashed my fingers together, back when he bullied me in the schoolyard.

"You don't believe it's a sacred artifact," Hakoore hissed softly. "Now that you know it's mechanical, you think it's just another piece of OldTech garbage."

"It's sacred, it's special, I believe that!"

The hand squeezed again. I felt one of my knuckles give under the pressure with an audible click. It wasn't broken — not yet. Just slipped slightly out of alignment.

"Stop doing that!" I shouted at the old snake.

"I'm not doing anything," he replied, all innocence. "The hand has a mind of its own. My old master explained it this way: when people lie, they sweat. Not normal summer sweat, but damp-palm-nervous liar's sweat. And the Patriarch's hand can taste that sweat in your palm, boy. It doesn't like the taste. Lies turn its stomach."

It's a hand. I wanted to say. It doesn't have a stomach. But I kept myself under control and told him, "I don't believe the OldTechs could make something like this. In all the OldTech books I've read, there's no mention of anything close."

Hakoore gave me a coy look. "Maybe not. Maybe the hand is older than the Patriarch, dating back to the founding of the cove." He grinned at me with those jagged yellow teeth. "The founders of Tober Cove were something special, boy — far beyond the OldTechs. There are secrets I could tell you, passed down from one Patriarch's Man to the next; but I can't share those secrets with you until…"

He let the last word hang pointedly in the air. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of asking what he meant, but the hand was still pulping my knuckles. Even worse, there might be other hidden buttons Hakoore could press in the box, buttons that would make the hand clinch up on me even if I wasn't lying.

"Until what?" I asked through gritted teeth.

"Until you agree to be my disciple and become the next Patriarch's Man."

"Me?" My voice was almost a squeak — I blame that on the pain in my half-crushed hand. "Your disciple? Who says I want to be your disciple?"

"Who says I care what you want?" Hakoore rasped back, mimicking my tone. "I'm not choosing you for your opinions, boy."

"But why choose me at all?"

"Since Leeta told me she was making Cappie her apprentice, I've been thinking about a successor too. It appeals to me, easing back the same time Leeta does. Especially after seeing Cappie last night, trying to play priestess while dressed like a man. The girl's got fire; she'll hit the cove like a lightning strike. And she's smart — when women have problems, Cappie will solve them. Won't be long before men turn to her too… not for everything, but for important things. Show me the man who wouldn't rather talk to Cappie than to me. Present company excluded, of course."

He actually gave me a grin.

"So it got me wondering," he went on, "what man in the cove can handle Cappie and come out on top?" He poked a bony finger into my chest. "Guess whose name came to mind."

"But I don't want to be anyone's disciple…"

"Shut up!" he snapped, jabbing his finger into the pain-hub of nerves at my sternum. "I don't care about a weaselly boy's personal preferences. All I care is whether you're suitable for the job."

"I'm not. The only thing I'm fit for is playing violin…"

"You won't be fit for that if you don't shut up! The hand won't let go till I want it to; you understand that, boy? And how are you going to play violin with crushed fingers?"

I choked back the retort that came close to spilling out of my mouth: It's holding my right hand, youold fool; I play violin with my left. But giving that away might be a tactical error. Besides, how could I hold the bow if my right hand got ground to powder? How could I pluck pizzicato? Without two good hands, I'd be just some kid who'd once had delusions of grandeur — condemned to work the farms or perch boats for the rest of my life, as if I'd never dreamed of more.

"All right," I muttered. "What do you want?"

"To ask some questions. To see whether you appreciate the cove's need for a Patriarch's Man."

"And if I lie, the hand will hurt me."

Hakoore nodded. "The Patriarch found it useful for getting at the truth."

"I'll bet."

"Don't go insolent on me, boy! I can always order the hand to grab a different part of your anatomy. Something you really don't want mangled."

I glared at him for a moment, then gave a defiant flick of my head. "Ask your questions," I told him. "See for yourself that I'm wrong for the position."

The Patriarch's Man just smiled, an ancient yellow smile.

"First question," Hakoore said. "Do you believe in the gods?"

"Yes."

"All the gods? Even Mistress Want and Master Disease?"

"Yes." After last night, I wondered if I believed in Master Disease too much, but I didn't say so aloud.

"Do you pray to the gods?"

"Sometimes."

He gave me a withering look. I expected him to ask how often was sometimes, but he must have presumed the worst. Instead he asked, "Is the cove important to you, boy?"

"Absolutely."

"And how far would you go in order to keep the cove safe?"

I hesitated. "That's hard to say," I finally answered. "It depends on the circumstances."

"Of course, it depends on the circumstances, you idiot!" Hakoore roared. "Everything depends on the circumstances." He gave me a steely glare. "Stop being such a weasel."

Easy for you, I thought. You aren't the one whose fingers get mulched if you answer wrong. Out loud, I told him, "Describe some threat to the cove and I'll tell you what I'd do."

"Don't give me orders, boy!" He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. "Last year," Hakoore said, "a Feliss merchant came here, supposedly to see the leaves, but what he really wanted was to buy his way into the village. He had a lot of money, a pregnant wife… and when the baby came, he wanted it brought up like a Tober, alternating sexes. Thought that would be healthy for the child."

"He was right," I answered.

"Of course he was," Hakoore agreed. "And he was willing to pay for it — donations to the Council of Elders, to the school, to me, to Leeta — not bribes, he insisted, but gifts to help the people."

"I hope the Elders spat in his face."

"You don't know the Elders," Hakoore answered. "They have a long list of projects they'd love to start if only they had the money… and some of the projects are even sensible. Like paying to train a replacement for Doctor Gorallin; she's going to retire in ten or fifteen years, and it'll take that long to put one of our own through medical school. It'll take a lot of gold too. If the council took the merchant's money, they could guarantee the cove would have competent doctoring for the next forty years. That's a hard thing to turn down."

"I didn't think of that," I admitted. "But the council still must have said no in the end. We didn't have an outsider family move in."

"The council didn't reject the merchant," Hakoore told me. "I did. Started shouting threats and scared the nipples off every man there." He allowed himself the ghost of a smile. "One of the fun parts of my job."

"You think it's fun to make it harder for Tober Cove to afford a doctor?"

"No," he sighed. "That's one of the ugly parts of my job."

"So why did you do it?"

"Because if one merchant buys his way in, another will try too. Only the next one will just want a summer home — come up for solstice, let Master Crow and Mistress Gull process the kids, then go back to Feliss. A lot of Tobers would be outraged at such a proposal, but others would just say, 'Get a good price.' That way we could buy more books for the school… or maybe some muskets for the Warriors Society so they can match the firepower of any gun-toting criminals who come up-peninsula."

"One gun is too many," I muttered.

"And one merchant is too many too," Hakoore replied. "Not that I have anything against merchants in themselves…"

"No," I said, "you've always been so welcoming to my father."

The old snake glared at me. "You think I was hard on Zephram? There are times I still think I should have booted him out. With the money he's brought here, the cove has expanded its perch fleet, bought more cattle, improved the sawmill…"

I rolled my eyes. "How awful!"

Hakoore sighed. "I know they aren't bad in themselves, Fullin, but they're distractions. Tobers are starting to think prosperity is their due. That'll kill this town, it really will. Money is only smart about making more money; it's sheep-stupid about everything else. The cove is already sunk so deeply in materialism—"

"Come on," I interrupted, "why is it greedy to want your kids to have a doctor when they grow up?"

"Materialism isn't the same as greed," Hakoore snapped. "Materialism is reducing everything to an equation of tangible profit and loss. It's saying that a family of outsiders will cost this much for housing and this much for schooling and this much for ongoing annoyance factor, so if we get twice that many crowns back in payment, we should take the deal. Materialism is an uncomprehending blindness to anything that isn't right in front of your nose — believing that material effects are the only things that exist, and there's nothing else you'd ever think to put on the scales. Hell, boy, materialism is the belief in scales at all: nothing is absolutely right or absolutely wrong, but just something to be weighed against everything else."

"Okay, right," I told him, trying to calm his tirade, "I'll be sure not to let myself fall into materialistic… yoww!"

The Patriarch's hand had tightened again. When I looked down, my fingers had turned birch-white.

"Pity about your hand," Hakoore said without sympathy. "Still it was nice you tried to humor me. Respect for your elders and all that."

My voice came out in a strained whisper. "Can we skip the sermons from here on out? Please — just ask your questions and I'll answer them."

"That's what I like to see," Hakoore smiled. "Abject submission. And as for questions… if you had been Patriarch's Man, would you have said no to that rich merchant?"

"I don't know," I whispered.

"Do you need more information?" Hakoore asked helpfully. "Do you want to know exactly how much money he offered us?"

"That doesn't matter."

The old snake nodded. "At least you understand that much. So why can't you make a decision?"

"Because… because…" I closed my eyes and tried to find the most sincere, honest part of my heart. It wasn't all that difficult once I started searching. "Because," I said, opening my eyes, "because I have a son. Of course, I don't want Southerners barging in here, but I want Waggett to have a good doctor too. If it ever came to the point where we had to take Southern money or else our children got sick…"

Hakoore's expression wilted. "That's just it, isn't it, boy? That's where the knife cuts." His milky eyes stared at me for a moment, then turned away.

"A hundred and fifty years ago," he said, "the Patriarch rode on the backs of our people with spurs of iron. When babies grew famished, he blamed outsiders… Neuts… scientists. And he started a reign of terror that kept Southerners scared for a whole century after he died. But the fear seeped away eventually. In my lifetime, I've seen the Southerners start to get interested in us again. More tourists… more traders… more of their godless materialism rubbing off on us. Still, if I tried to choke the town the way the Patriarch did — if I said no trading with the South or I'd pronounce the Great Curse — who could I blame when children grew sick with starvation? People think I'm harsh, but I'm not the unbending man our Patriarch was. Once upon a time, I was a mother, just like you, boy. I nursed my little girl…"

He closed his eyes and lifted his hands as if holding an infant to his chest. I looked away. I don't know if I was embarrassed or just giving him his privacy.

After a while, he whispered, "Enough." He reached into the hand's tarnished metal box and pressed at another dent. Click. The grip around my knuckles suddenly went limp; the Patriarch's Hand slumped as lifeless as an ugly glove.

I'd have let it fall onto the mud, but I couldn't get my fingers to uncurl.

"Put the hand back in the box," Hakoore said quietly.

"You've run out of questions?"

"I was going to ask you everything my predecessor asked me," he replied, "but you'd just say you didn't know the answers and I'd say I couldn't blame you. Put the hand back where it belongs."

Carefully, I lowered my arm toward the box. Because my fingers had no feeling left in them, I had to use my other hand to pry my grip open. The mechanical hand-thing fell off me into the box and rocked a bit before lying still: flat on its back, fingers in the air… like a dead fly, legs up on your windowsill.

"So I suppose I failed your test," I said as I straightened up.

"Idiot boy," Hakoore rasped. "It wasn't a test you could fail. I told you, I don't care about your opinions. I've chosen you as my disciple, and that's that."

I massaged my fingers to try to get them working again. "Then why hurt me if you never cared about my answers?"

He gave me a look. "Had to get your attention, didn't I? Had to start you thinking. Had to let you know that a Patriarch's Man must be ready to be a ruthless bastard for the good of the cove."

"I knew that already," I growled.

He smiled… then suddenly slapped me flat across the face. It wasn't hard and it wasn't fast, but it stung like fire. "You haven't seen anything yet," he hissed. "After you've Committed, you and I will get together with the Patriarch's Hand day after day after day. I'll get the warriors to hold you down if need be; Bonnakkut would like that. My own master had to hold me down a few times before I accepted my fate. You'll accept your fate too. Patriarch's Man."

"I'll Commit female," I snapped. "You can't make me Patriarch's Man if I'm a woman."

"If you do that, boy, I'll make your life hell. You know I can."

"You can't. The most sacred tenet of Tober law is that we can each choose male or female, and no one can punish us for the choice."

"Just wait and see," Hakoore snarled. "When I say you're going to be my disciple, boy, it's not a request. It's a calling from the Patriarch himself. A vocation. A command. Whatever you may have wanted to do with your life doesn't interest me. You are what the Patriarch says you are."

With a last ferocious glare at me, he raised two fingers to his lips and blew a piercing whistle. "Dorr! We're leaving."

His granddaughter slid through the rushes immediately. In one hand she held a clump of bedraggled greenery; in the other was a knife nearly as long as Steck's machete. I suspect she had simply cut off the first bunch of reeds she'd seen, then hidden in the bulrushes to eavesdrop. She must have heard everything, Hakoore's sermon and his threats… but her face was devoid of expression. Without looking in my direction, Dorr gave Hakoore her arm and helped him clamber into the canoe.

"Your vigil is over," the old man snapped as he settled in the prow. "Go home. And even if the gods didn't send you a duck, you know what sex they want you to Commit."

Dorr lowered her eyes. She must have felt ashamed for her grandfather, trying to influence my free Commitment choice. With a stab of her paddle, she pushed the canoe off the mud and stroked quickly out of sight.