They sat at the bar and slurped their way through peppery broth-soaked short-noodles. Umbo didn’t have the lamb; he liked the radish-and-onion chicken broth better anyway.
“I’m not leaving without my sister,” said Rigg quietly, between slurps.
“That’s not our problem,” said Loaf. “We can’t get into your house anyway. We can’t get near your house.”
“I think General C. is getting ready to make a move,” said Rigg. “I only wish I knew whether he was in the group that wants me dead or the group that wants to make me . . . boss.”
“Does it matter?” asked Umbo. “You want to stay away from him either way.”
“But it’ll help to know whether they’re trying to get to me or my sister.”
“For all you know the whole thing is being orchestrated by your mother,” said Loaf.
“Everybody connects with everybody, eventually,” said Rigg. “So I can’t say it’s impossible. But I don’t think it’s likely. I think she just wants to be left alone.”
“And so she lives in that fancy house and meets with important people?” asked Loaf.
“She doesn’t meet with anybody.”
“They say that everybody who matters has some kind of connection with Flacommo’s house,” said Loaf. “They say that your mother is already boss in everything but name.”
“Trust me,” said Rigg. “From inside the house, it doesn’t look that way. She receives visitors, yes, but she’s never alone with them. She’s never alone with anybody except my sister.”
“So what?” asked Umbo. “I mean, so what either way? I thought you didn’t care about intrigues and plots and conspiracies. I thought you just wanted to get away.?
?
“I do,” said Rigg.
“So why not just go? Get your sister and your mother and get out of the house and go?”
“It’s not that simple,” said Rigg.
“I think it is,” said Umbo. “I think you like being . . . in the boss’s family. I think you like being important. I think you don’t really want to go anywhere.”
Rigg looked like he wanted to snap back a sharp answer, but restrained himself. “All right, yes, I like some things about being there. The food is . . . amazing.”
“And the famous and educated people?”
“I’ve met some interesting people, yes,” agreed Rigg.
“And access to the library? You said you spend a lot of time there.”
“The library is the closest thing I’ve found to being with Father. Like him, the library knows everything, even if I haven’t found a way to get it to tell me all that I want to know.”
“Well, we know stuff, too,” said Umbo. “Like for instance I know how to go back in time whenever I want. Going back a few days, I can get to the time I want within a few minutes. It’s harder when I’m going back more than a few months. I haven’t even tried to do a year. But still.”
Rigg looked genuinely impressed. “Was it hard? To learn to calibrate it like that?”
“Yes,” said Umbo and Loaf together.
“It was really annoying for a few months,” said Loaf.
“I can only find people when I know when they stayed in the same place—and I have to get to that place.”
“You have a better gift than mine, Umbo,” said Rigg, “and that’s the truth. But we both have better gifts than my sister. Hers is great when she wants to disappear, and when she’s doing it, she doesn’t age as fast as other people because she doesn’t actually live through most of the time when she’s . . . that way.
The countergirl wasn’t paying attention to them; nor were any of the other customers—but then, a good spy wouldn’t look like he was paying attention, would he? So they tried to be at least a little cryptic in the things they said.