“If Param became Queen-in-the-Tent,” said Umbo, “and a more-powerful timeshaper—me—was out there, I could easily become a focus for discontent in the kingdom. Her enemies might gather around me, want to follow me.” And then, remembering who her enemies were likely to be, and how they were likely to regard a privick like him, he said, “Or more likely they’d try to get control of me and use me.”

“Or both,” said Olivenko. “There’ll be as many different motives for people to gather around you as there are people doing the gathering.”

“But none of those motives will make them friends of the Sessamids.”

“Add to that her keen awareness of how quick you are to resent her, especially because she’s treated you badly in the past, and it should be clear that in order to keep you from being a divisive force in the kingdom, she either has to marry you . . .”

“Or kill me,” said Umbo. “I suppose I should be grateful that she decided on marriage.”

“It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t also like you. I said you were good-looking and likeable, and she’s not oblivious to that. Plus, you used to be her puppy dog, you were so in love with her.”

“She got rid of those feelings soon enough.”

“No she didn’t,” said Olivenko. “You’re still devoted to her. Only now you know her well enough that it’s not the beautiful princess that you have an adolescent crush on, it’s the woman she’s turning into, the woman who has stopped treating you badly—”

“Stopped treating me badly in order to neutralize me as a threat to her kingdom.”

“No. Wrong lesson,” said Olivenko. “Her change in feelings toward you happened during a time when nobody thought of her going back into Ramfold. When for all she knew she would go on wandering with us forever.”

“It’s you she fell in love with,” said Umbo.

“Had her adolescent puppy-dog crush on,” corrected Olivenko. “Only I knew that’s what it was and guided her through that phase and out the other side.”

Umbo recognized at once that yes, that was exactly what Olivenko had done. And since Olivenko had now assigned himself to think about kingdom politics, Umbo said, “You could have exploited that. You could have made her devoted to you.”