Free The Children of the Company by Kage Baker Page B

are you?” I demanded, sifting through my memory for tales I’d heard from other children. “Are you a luporchan?”
    That sent him into gales of shrill laughter. “Of course I am! Of course I am, slave, and what’s more I’m a Prince among luporchans . Son of the Queen. Though I’m a bad Prince and in royal disfavor, as you can see.” He rattled his chains at us.
    “Oh, shut up,” Lewis snapped at him. “You’re some kind of half-human hybrid, aren’t you? And that poor boy from the monastery was being brought here to make more like you, wasn’t he?”
    “Was Mother feeling lustful again?” The Prince shook his head. “Another hairy baby, I suppose, and perhaps he’ll be as disobedient as me. That’s the price we pay, though, isn’t it?”
    “Is it?” Lewis licked his lips. “Listen, if they’re going to dismantle me, will you at least tell me what you people are?”
    “What we are? ” The Prince frowned. Then he leaned forward in his chains, looking sly. “I’ll tell you a story, fili. No harp to accompany me? Too bad. You’ll just have to make up the music in your head as we go along.
    “This is ‘The Tale of the Three Branches.’
    “In the Beginning, the great World-Tree bore three branches, and from each branch came a son. The eldest son was wide and strong, practical and brave, but not very imaginative. The second son was tall and graceful, creative and gifted, but prone to silliness and instability.”
    “I wonder if you’re describing Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons?” speculated Lewis.
    “Is that what they call themselves? The third son was small and weak and unfortunately something of an idiot, but he had one talent: he could invent clever things. He wasn’t clever himself, you understand, in fact he could barely speak or think, but he had an affinity for patterns and systems. And from these three sons of these three branches came the three races of man.
    “And the children of the two older sons were able to reason and speak with each other, and they interbred: and these powerful and clever ones made war on the kin of the youngest son, to take by force the ingenious things they made.
    “It was difficult for ideas to penetrate the heads of the kin, but this much
got through to them: they must at all costs defend themselves against the big people, and hide from them somehow. And so this was what the stupid things focused on, with the dedication of ants, to the exclusion of all else, for all eternity, while their big cousins invented civilization and trade and art.
    “But the more they stayed in their hiding places the stupider and weaker they became, as generations passed, and it became pitifully easy for the big people to find them, and raid them, and rape their queens. Then a remarkable thing happened! Half-breed children were born in the dark warrens of the kin who were bigger, and cleverer, and braver than the others. And they became the leaders because it occurred to them they could lead. So the kin prospered, and found better places to hide, and made more ingenious devices for protecting themselves. And this way, for a while, they had the advantage in the long, long game of hide and seek.
    “Sadly, this advantage was lost.” The Prince glared at Lewis. “It seems that at the other end of time the big people found a way to create a new race, unnatural and immortal, clockwork and flesh mingled, a disgusting alteration of humanity. Of course they made them a slave race—”
    “Oh, we are not either,” Lewis said testily.
    “—And they reached back through time to plant these vile mechanisms in every civilization, to act as their agents, their spies, their thieves. Need I mention that one of their objectives was to find us, and help themselves to our useful inventions?”
    “No, that’s certainly not true,” Lewis objected. “They don’t even believe you exist! If they had, they’d have warned me about you. But I was always told you people were a