The Summer Queen (119 page)

Moon stood beside BZ, feeling his arm draw her close as they
watched the tall, unsteady figure of Reede Kullervo go out of the room.

“Gods,” BZ murmured, hearing the door slam. “I hope this is
the right thing.” His hand tightened at his side.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” she asked.

He looked back at her, his face troubled. “I can’t force
him, Moon. He’s barely holding it together now. If he breaks we’ll lose
Vanamoinen forever.” He shook his head. “We can’t risk that. We have to believe
that he’ll come back on his own.”

“He’s only a boy, BZ,” she said softly, still seeing the
despair, the knowledge of something more terrible than her own deepest fears,
that lay in Reede’s eyes. “He’s so afraid.” She put her arms around him,
holding on.

“He should be.” BZ sighed, stroking her hair, kissing her. “He
has every right to be, may the gods help him .... Come back to bed with me.”

She nodded, letting him lead the way, setting his own pace
as they climbed the stairs. “What kind of hold does the Source have on him? Is
it drugs?”

BZ glanced at her in surprise. “Yes, probably. How did you
know?

“I remember the Source.” She followed him into his bedroom,
holding on to his hand. “Arienrhod used the water of life to buy virals from
him, at Winter’s end—”

He grimaced, remembering, and nodded. “That’s what he does
best. But I don’t know what he has Reede chained with. It’s nothing ordinary,
or Reede could get it somewhere else.” He shrugged out of his robe, unfastened
his pants and sat down carefully on the edge of the bed to pull them off.

Moon let her own borrowed robe slip from her shoulders, the
smooth warmth of its imported fabric like the caress of his hands along her
skin. She lay down in his bed, sliding beneath the covers as if she were
entering the sea, as if she belonged there. He lay down beside her, and for a
moment she forgot the aching weariness of her body as he settled next to it.
She watched the lines of pain and weariness disappear from his face as his
fingers brushed her cheek, touched the bandageskm still covering her arm. She
smiled; her smile faded.

“BZ,” she said, “who were you talking about, when you said ‘we’?
‘We know, you said, ‘we suspect’—You said that more than once, and you weren’t
talking about you and me.”

He looked away as if he were suddenly chagrined, or conflicted.
He looked back at her again, finally; touched the sibyl tattoo at her throat
with a gentle finger. “I was talking about Survey.”

“Survey?” she repeated, with mild incredulity. “You mean
that nest of Kharemoughi snobs who meet in what you refer to as a ‘social club,’
to discuss Tiamat’s endless shortcomings?”

He laughed. “So that’s why you wouldn’t come to the initiation,
when I made them admit Tiamatans?”

She pushed up onto an elbow, feeling her hair slip down
across her shoulder. “I have more pressing things to do with my time than spend
it that way,” she said irritably.

“There’s more to Survey than there seems. The Survey you’ve
seen is only the surface—there are depths, layers within layers ... even I don’t
know how many.”

Her sudden urge to laughter died stillborn as she saw his expression,
and realized that he was completely serious.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this.” He pressed his hand
against his eyes. “But gods, if anyone has the right to know the truth about
this, you do. I’m staking my life on it ... “He shook his head. “The real Survey
is a secret organization that dates back to the end of the Old Empire. It has
its roots in the Empire’s colonization guild. I told you that there was a man
named Vanamoinen ....”

Moon listened silently as he told her everything, feeling
her understanding of the strange conversation that had passed between himself
and Reede grow, feeling her vision of the universe transformed by a secret
almost as profound as the one that they shared together. “But Survey doesn’t
control everything that happens in the Hegemony ... does it?” she said,
finally.

He shook his head, and laughed once. “Human nature being
what it is, no. They try ... but as often as not they meet themselves coming
the other way, on any given level, in any given situation. Even at the highest level
Survey can only influence, never control.”

“And Reede Kullervo belongs to Survey, and the Source does—?”

BZ nodded, resting his head on his arm. “There is a faction
of Survey that calls itself the Brotherhood, and their goal is no longer the
greater good, but their own good. They follow the same road, but to a different
destination. The Brotherhood sees the Hegemony as prey. Their interests are in
anything that upsets the stability of the status quo—drugs, political
corruption, war—because whenever the balance is off, they profit from the
suffering. Reede was one of their minions ... and now he’s their tool. Kitaro—”
He broke off. “Kitaro had been trying to arrange this meeting between us for
months; but he’s so closely watched that I’d begun to think it would never
happen.” He fell silent, as if he were contemplating the strange legacy of
Reede”s unexpected visit.

“And who do you belong to?” Moon asked, at last. She settled
back onto the yielding surface of the mattress, feeling it mold itself to her body.
“If Reede belongs to the Brotherhood.”

“The status quo. Or I did.” He looked up, at the ceiling
draped with shadows in the half light. “They sometimes call it the Golden Mean;
they claim to carry on the work of Survey by maintaining the Hegemony’s balance
of order—which, to them, means that Kharemough keeps control of this segment of
the Old Empire. For a while I hoped it was really that simple ....” His eyes
darkened.

“Was it coming here that made you change your mind?” She put
her hand on his shoulder.

“It only finished a process. Nothing is ever that simple ...
not right, not wrong.” He looked back at her and smiled, with sorry and irony. “Without
Order, Chaos would have no reason for existing ... and without Chaos, there’s
no reason for Order. They need each other, they feed on each other. They’re
only whole together. Survey calls it ‘the Great Game,’ in their vanity.”

“What—or who—is really at the center ... the top, then?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “However high I get, there are
always levels above me.”

“Then how do you know who to trust?”

“I don’t.” His smile turned rueful. “Maybe it doesn’t even
matter, to die Great Game. The sibyl network needed Vanamoinen back, and on
Tiamat. Every faction tried to control him, manipulate him—and everyone’s failed.
And yet he’s here .... That’s why I believe that he’ll help us. That’s why I
believe we can’t force it, that we have to let it happen as it will.”

“But you can’t be certain,” she said softly.

“No,” he murmured, glancing away. “I can’t be certain of anything.”

“When I was small, my grandmother taught me that the mers
were the Sea’s children, blessed and protected by Her. And that I was, too ....”
She felt her throat clog with sudden grief.

He pulled her into his arms, holding her, kissing her
forehead, as if she were a child. “And once I believed that my life was over,”
he whispered, closing his eyes as he kissed her lips. “Gods, I do love you ....”

She closed her own eyes, felt tears slip out and down her
face, onto his skin, burning hot. Astonished at how, in the center of this
storm, his arms around her could still create an eye of calm; could make her
believe that everything would turn out as it should .... “There isn’t much
night left,” she said, taking his face in her hands, kissing his eyelids, feeling
her weariness burn away. She kissed his lips, letting her hands slide down his
chest, moving with exquisite care past the bandages on his side; moving lower,
feeling him come alive at her touch.

“Then let morning wait for us,” he murmured, sighing. “Let
it wait.”

Reede Kullervo lay awake in his bed, staring up into the
cage of darkness that was his room, his world. He had lain awake half the
night, every night, for as long as he could remember; but not like this. Not
knowing the name of the other he held prisoner inside his brain—who held him
prisoner, in a shellshocked nightmare landscape, taking revenge on him for a
crime he had not even been to blame for .... He was Vanamoinen. He knew it was
true, everything Gundhalinu had told him, even though he couldn’t remember ....
Vanamoinen knew it.

Reede swore, rolling onto his stomach, burying his face in
the pillow. What am I doing here? What do / want—? “This is your reason for
existence,” Gundhalinu had shouted at him. The mers. Tiamat. But not the water
of life. If he helped them, he would understand, the Queen had said. And he
wanted to help them, needed to understand; the need was like a fire burning in
his gut ....

But they couldn’t help him. They couldn’t give him the water
of death; only the Source could do that. Even if Gundhalinu gave him lab space
and all the equipment he asked for, he couldn’t recreate the water of death in
time; he had to have his steady supply. He was already feeling the effects of
his missed fix, because being waylaid by Gundhalinu tonight had made him too
late to meet with TerFauw.

Somehow he would have to get TerFauw to give him another
chance, make up some lie in the morning .... If he didn’t get what he needed he
wouldn’t be able to work. He had to have it, and the next one, and the next one
.... If he didn’t get it he would die, and then he would be no use to anybody.
But what use was living anyway, when everything was impossible? Even he was
impossible: a man with two brains. Maybe he’d liked it better when he’d only
thought he was insane ....

“Reede.” A voice like corroded iron spoke his name in the
darkness.

Reede stopped breathing.

“Reede—”

He pushed himself up. “Who’s there?” There was nothing in
front of him but darkness, subtle layerings of deep gray on black, the vague,
familiar presences of the furniture in his room. Was something really there, at
the foot of his bed, a shadow-form darker than the night, an impossible glimmer
of red—?

“You know who it is, Reede,” the insinuating voice
whispered.

A hologram. A projection, he told himself futilely. A
nightmare ... but he wasn’t dreaming. The Source had never done this to him
before, invading the sanctuary of his own room, violating the one final place
where he could pretend to himself that he was still a free man—

“Say it,” the Source murmured. “Tell me who I am.”

“Master,” Reede mumbled, spitting out the word. He clutched
the blankets against his chest as every muscle in his body knotted with
impotent fury. “What do you want—?” He cursed himself, helplessly, hearing his
voice tremble.

“You had a midnight audience tonight, I understand, Reede—?
With the Chief Justice, and the Queen?”

Oh, gods. Reede swallowed his heart. “It wasn’t my idea.”

“When were you planning to inform me about this?”

“Nothing happened,” he said hoarsely.

“Nothing,” the Source echoed, with heavy sarcasm. “The Great
Enemy sweeps you away to a secret meeting, where nothing happens. They tell you
that you really are the new Vanamoinen. They ask you to betray the Brotherhood,
and work with them ... but nothing happens.”

Reede’s mouth twisted. “You know I’m not going anywhere.
Where could I go? I’d be a rotting corpse inside a couple of days.”

“You told them it was impossible to create a stable form of
the water of life,” the Source chided. “But nothing happened—”

“It was a lie! I just said it to throw them off. That’s all.”
He felt cold sweat crawl down his back as he stared into the darkness. He
prayed that the Source couldn’t sense it, couldn’t really read his every
thought and feeling—

“Then you could be lying to me.”

“I’m not lying to you!” Reede shouted. “What would it get
me?”

“What, indeed? If you fail me, you’ll be a rotting corpse anyway,
and Vanamoinen’s brain will die with you, no matter what you do, no matter what
you say.”

Reede licked his lips. “It’s going to take time to recreate
the water of life. I told you. You don’t want any mistakes—” his voice
hardened, “like I made before.”

“No.” The Source made a disgusted noise. “You’ll have time
enough .... But in the meantime, there is another thing the Brotherhood
requires from you. Evidently the Queen’s obsession with the mers is not just
that of a religious fanatic. Gundhalinu and the Queen know something important
about the mers, something so secret that apparently no one else even suspects
it—not even the Golden Mean. You’re going to help us find out what it is.”

“How?” Reede said irritably. “They wouldn’t tell me tonight
... it was almost like they couldn’t tell me—” He broke off. “What do you want
me to do?” he asked, shielding the sudden flicker of hope inside him. “You want
me to pretend to go along with them, until I find out—?”

The Source laughed, and Reede’s hope guttered out. “You’d
like that, wouldn’t you9 But no. You belong to me; Vanamoinen’s brain belongs
to the Brotherhood ... I see that your love affair with Ariele Dawntreader has
flowered and borne sweet fruit, despite your thorns, Kullervo—”

Reede shut his eyes; his fists strangled the bedclothes. “I
did what you wanted me to,” he said.

“And you’ve done it with all your heart, it seems. The
foolish young thing is besotted with you. She tells her friends that you make
her feel she will die of ecstasy. I think she would even take you home to
mother, if you asked.”

Reede’s eyes came open. “You want me to marry her?” he asked
incredulously.

“No ...” the blackness hissed. “I want you to give her the
water of death.”

A strangled sound of disbelief caught in Reede’s throat. “Why?”

“To complete our hold on her. The Queen is her mother ...
Gundhalinu is her father. When they see what begins to happen to her when the
water of death is withheld, they’ll share their secrets with us.”