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commoner, and inheriting the baggage the Rules placed on the new body before she had it.”
    “I don’t mind if you don’t,” she told him sincerely. “In fact, because I was Ruddygore’s ward and educated on Earth, I had some feeling for what it was like among the common people. I haven’t missed it nearly as much as I thought I might. The only frustration I really have sometimes is that I used to be strong as an ox. Now I couldn’t lift my own shadow. I’m not used to having to depend on others to protect me, even in so simple a thing as walking down a street. Strange places, dark places, strange crowds all seem somehow threatening now. I guess most women grow up with that, but I didn’t, and I’m still learning how to cope with it. I’m still learning to be tough again, in a different way. That’s also been part of this trip. Not just for you to learn, but me as well.”
    At the City-States, where they’d docked after crossing the Sea of Dreams, Joe had decided Irving needed experience. So he’d taken a long vacation while he, Tiana, and the boy rode up through Leander and High Pothique on horseback. During that time, Irving had turned thirteen. And now they were nearing the end of the journey.
    The boy seemed puzzled. “I don’t get it. You say the fairy
    folk got problems ‘cause they’re locked in to doin’ one thing while we’re not, then you say you’re just as locked in by them Rules as they is—are.”
    “He’s got you there,” Joe said, somewhat approvingly of his boy’s debating logic.
    The argument disturbed her.. “No, we have more potential before we’re locked in. We don’t have to turn out the way we do. We set out upon a path and only when that path is certain do the Rules specifically kick in for us.”
    “Yeah, like Dad had a choice of whether or not to be a fighter, maybe? Or did you set out all along to be a dancer?”
    She sighed. “No, but I had a choice of dancer or queen, at least. And your father’s personality, his mind and body, likes and dislikes, modes and inclinations, made him a mercenary when he came here. With an education, with skills, you can become all sorts of things.”
    “Uh-huh. Like the law says ‘cause I was born in America I could be president, but the real life said I was born poor and black with a choice of choosin’ up gangs or bein’ carved up by both of ‘em. Uh-huh.”
    Joe took pity on Tiana and decided to rescue her. “You just said it, Irv. Not too many people get choices no matter where they are. But some do—they’re smart enough or maybe they just luck out. It’s hard to say for sure. It’s lots of things we can’t control, from race to brains to breaks. But even folks who have all the right things sometimes wind up in the mud, and sometimes folks who have nothing really do wind up with it all. Not many, but some. Right now you’re coming up on that point. You can be a fighter if you have the guts—I know you got the makings in you, since you’re half Apache—or you can chicken out and become a laborer. That’s more choice than you were heading to back home. But when you’re locked in here, you’re locked in. The system depends on that, on nobody rocking too much of the boat, so they made sure nobody could rock it but so much.”
    “Sounds just like back home,” the boy responded.
    A little before midday the next morning, they went up high on a bluff and looked down on the river.
    It was incredibly wide, perhaps more than a mile wide at this point, and swift-flowing; within its broad expanse you could see currents and small whirlpools and eddies. It was the aorta of Husaquahr, the source of its power and wealth and riches and of life itself. Virtually every drop of rain that fell for a thousand miles in any direction wound up in it; all other rivers and streams were its servants, its arteries. The people, both human and fairy, of this land thought of it less as a thing of nature than as something nearly divine; it was