The Summer Queen (12 page)

She looked up at the sky, remembering another sky—how she
had been certain that any moment it would crack and fall in on them, that day
nearly eight years ago at Winter’s end, when they stood on the blood-soaked
beach together, witnesses to Arienrhod’s revenge. They had interfered,
unwittingly, with her plans for the Change ... and so she had sent her hunters
to slaughter the mer colony that made its home on the shores of Miroe’s
plantation; the colony he had always believed was safe under his protection.

But her hunters had killed them all. led by a man who bore a
ritual name, who wore a ritual mask and dressed in black to protect his real
identity; Starbuck, he was called, her henchman, her lover .... And at Winter’s
end, the man wearing the ritual mask had been Sparks Dawntreader. Jerusha had
never seen a mer before that day. That day she saw nearly a hundred of them,
lying on the beach, their throats cut, drained of their precious blood—and then,
by a final bitter twist of fate, stripped of their skins by a passing band of
Winter nomads. She saw a hundred corpses, mutilated, violated; soulless mounds
of flesh left to rot on the beach and be picked bare by scavengers. But she had
not really seen a mer that day either, or understood the true impact of the
tragedy, the depth of grief felt by the man who stood beside her. It was not
until she had seen living mers, in motion, in the sea; until she had heard the
siren call of the mersong, or discovered depths of peace in their eyes ....
Then she had finally understood the hideous reality of the Hunt, the obscenity
of the water of life.

And then she had understood why Miroe would not, could not,
forgive Sparks Dawntreader—a Summer, a child of the Sea—for becoming Arienrhod’s
creature ... Arienrhod’s Starbuck. She glanced away from the mers on the beach,
facing the emptiness in her husband’s eyes. She released her hands from their
unconscious deathgrip on the rail; pressed them against her stomach, which was
as barren and empty as the look he gave her. She turned away, starting back
toward the cabin’s shadowed womb; feeling suddenly as if Anenrhod’s curse still
followed them all, even here, even after so long. She hesitated in the doorway,
glancing toward him one last time. He stood motionless at the rail, staring
down at the water. She stepped into the cabin’s darkness, listening for his
footsteps behind her; feeling only relief when she heard no sound.

“Well, Cousin, what a beautiful day it’s going to be!”

Danaquil Lu Wayaways glanced up, startled, as hands settled
familiarly on his shoulders. The pressure sent pain down through his arthritic
back, making him clench his teeth. His kinsman Kirard Set, the elder of the
Wayaways clan, smiled in sublime anticipation, oblivious to his discomfort;
Danaquil Lu frowned. “Are you talking about the weather?” he said.

Kirard Set laughed. “The weather. You’re priceless, Dana.”
He peered at his cousin. “I can’t tell whether you’re tweaking me, or whether
you’ve simply been so long among the fisheaters that you mean that. But either
way you’re delightful.”

Danaquil Lu, who had not meant it, said nothing.

“I’m speaking of the upcoming decision about the new foundry,
of course.”

“Then you shouldn’t be talking to me about it,” Danaquil Lu
said flatly. There were plenty of the Winter nobility who were willing to
accuse him of favoritism because he was one of only two Winters in the Sibyl
College, and a Wayaways; even though the ultimate decision would be the Queen’s.
He leaned heavily on the tabletop, trying to find a position that would make
him comfortable. He could not straighten up fully anymore, either sitting or
standing.

Kirard Set grunted. “You not only look old, Cousin—you act
old. You should never have left the city.” He stopped midway through the motion
of sitting down beside Danaquil Lu, and instead moved on around the large,
tactfully circular table to find a more congenial seatmate.

“What choice did I have?” Danaquil Lu murmured, to the air.
His hand rose. fingering the ridges of scarring down his cheek and jaw. The
memory of his casting out from Carbuncle burned behind his eyes, as vivid
suddenly as if it had happened yesterday. It was hard to realize now that it
had happened half a lifetime ago, to a dumbstruck boy, someone who might as
well be a complete stranger to the person he had become in Summer, and almost
as hard to believe that he had been back in Carbuncle now for nearly eight
years. He shook off the sense of disorientation with a motion that caused him
more pain.

Miroe Ngenet, the Queen’s physician, was working with
Clavally, consulting the sibyl net, trying to recreate some medicine or
.surgical technique that would help him. In the meantime there was nothing he
could do but live with it. He moved like an old man, he felt like an old man;
some days it was hard not to believe that he was an old man, especially when he
looked at Kirard Set. Kirard Set was old enough to be his great-grandfather, but
looked more like his son. Kirard Set had been a favorite of the Snow Queen—and
she had given him access to the water of life.

But the Snow Queen was gone, and faint age lines were beginning
to appear at the corners of Kirard Set’s eyes. Danaquil Lu meditated on that
thought, and did not feel so old. At least the physical hardships of life were
less severe here in the city. And if they had not come to Carbuncle, Clavally
would never have let herself become pregnant, and they would not have their
beautiful daughter to delight them, and distract him—and Clavally—from an
obsession with his health. Summer had come to the city, and to their lives, at
last. It was good to be home.

He glanced up again, noticing with some surprise that Kirard
Set had taken the one empty seat next to Sparks Dawntreader, the Queen’s
consort—a seat he would have expected the Queen herself to occupy. But Sparks
had apparently made no protest, and Kirard Set smiled in satisfaction, folding
his hands on the tabletop.

“Damnation!”

Danaquil Lu glanced up again as someone else dropped into
the seat beside him. Borah Clearwater sat snorting like a klee through the
thick white brush of his mustache, rumbling ominously. Danaquil Lu pressed his
lips together, controlling his smile as the older man slowly got himself under
control.

Borah Clearwater was some kind of uncle to him, on his
mother’s side, if he recalled rightly; a cantankerous old stone who owned
plantation lands far south of the city, and came to Carbuncle only under
duress. The duress this time had to do with the Wayaways clan; Kirard Set had
been agitating for an access across Clearwater’s lands, a shortcut to the sea,
as part of his push to get the Queen to grant him the right to have the new
foundry built on a landlocked piece of his own holdings. The fact that Clearwater
was here suggested he was afraid Kirard Set would be successful.

Danaquil Lu glanced on around the table. There were still a
few empty seats. It was some kind of comment on his status that Clearwater
chose to sit next to him. and that everyone else apparently chose not to—his
status as a sibyl, or his status as an outsider among his own kind. He supposed
they were really the same thing.

He fingered the trefoil hanging against his shirt as he
glanced to his left, seeing that the seat on the other side of him was still unoccupied.
The Greenside headwoman sitting across the gap looked back at him, her
expression guarded. The Summer Queen had made the Winters accept what he had
never believed they would accept, after centuries of being lied to by the
Hegemony: the truth, that sibyls were human computer ports tied to an
interstellar information network. She had shown the people of the city that
sibyls could give them back the technology they hungered for; that sibyls were
not simply diseased lunatics, as the offworlders had always claimed in order to
keep Tiamat ignorant and backward in their absence. But a lifetime of suspicion
did not fade overnight ... or even over eight years ....

“Well, at least you don’t smell like a sugarbath, like most
of my kin, Danaquil Lu Wayaways,” Borah Clearwater said abruptly, as if he had
been reading Danaquil Lu’s mind. “And you don’t look like a motherlom
offworlder in plastic clothes. Drown me if I wouldn’t rather sit with lunatics
and Summers than with these city-soft pissants, with their bogbrained ideas
about raising the dead.” He looked at Danaquil Lu as if he expected agreement,
his gray eyes as piercing as a predator’s, and about as congenial.

Danaquil felt his mouth inch up into another smile. “Me too,”
he said sincerely.

Clearwater grunted, not requiring even that much encouragement.
“The offworlders are gone, the technology’s gone with them; what’s gone is
gone. I spent my whole life getting used to the idea. Let it go, and good riddance.”
Danaquil Lu said nothing, this time, thinking privately that if he and everyone
else at this meeting table were as old as Clearwater, they might all find it
easy to let go of the past and make peace with the inevitable. But they weren’t
ready to stop living yet, and that was the difference .... Although there were
days, trying to get up in the morning, when he could almost see Borah
Clearwater’s point of view. “Goddamn nuisance—this damn woman, this Summer
Queen; Kirard Set dragging me halfway up the coast for this—” Danaquil Lu
raised a hand, silencing him abruptly, unthinkingly. “The Queen,” he murmured.
Clearwater turned, following his gaze as he looked across the room.

“Damnation ...” Clearwater breathed. It sounded more like
wonder than a curse; Danaquil Lu wondered what emotion lay behind it. His own
eyes stayed on the Queen as she entered the hall, crossed it under the waiting
gaze of a hundred eyes; he found it hard, as he always did, to look away from
her. He could not say what it was about her that affected him so. The paleness
of her hair made a startling contrast to the muted greens of her traditional
robes, which billowed behind her like the sea. Her eyes, he knew, were the
color of the agates that washed up along Tiamat’s shores; their changeable
depths held the earth, the sea, the sky. She was not a tall woman, not
extraordinarily beautiful, and still as slender as the girl she had been when
he and Clavally had initiated her into the calling of a sibyl. But there was
something about her, an intensity of belief, the urgent grace of a drawn bow,
that showed even in her movement as she crossed the room; that compelled him to
watch her every move, listen to her every word. He knew he was not the only one
who felt that way.

He had seen her almost every day in the years since he and
Clavally had come to the city. They had been among the first to join the Sibyl
College that Moon had established as part of her effort to recreate technology
from the ground up. He had watched her grow in confidence and experience from
an awkward island girl into a shrewd, determined woman who won her battles more
and more through skill, depending less and less on the Lady’s Luck for her
survival as Queen. If the rumors were true—and he thought they were—she came by
her leadership abilities naturally. But where she had gotten the vision that
drove her to forge a totally new future for this world, after growing up among
the tradition-minded, tech-hating Summer islanders, he could not imagine. That
was a part of her mystery ... which was perhaps part of her power.

Danaquil Lu refocused on the room, on the present, as Moon
Dawntreader chose the empty seat beside his own at the table. Stil! standing,
with her hands cupping the totem-creatures carved on the chair’s back, she
called the gathered men and women to order. Silence fell as she took her seat.
Danaquil Lu glanced down at his notepad, seeing the trefoil symbols he had been
absentmindedly doodling there. His back was killing him, and the meeting had
not yet even begun. Days were long when the College met with the Council. He
sighed, wishing that he had the Queen’s single-minded resolve; wishing that it
had been his turn today to be the stay-at-home parent, and not Clavally’s. He
covered the symbols with his hand as the Queen began to speak, and Borah
Clear-water began to mutter in counterpoint beside him.

There were several members of the Sibyl College here today,
including blind Fate Ravenglass, who was its head and still the only other
Winter among the sibyls. Jerusha PalaThion and her husband Miroe Ngenet were
here too, along with a few Winters who had managed to absorb some technical
knowledge from their contact with the offworlders. They were struggling to
become the researchers, the engineers of Tiamat’s future; asking the questions
and working with the sibyls to turn the net’s data into measurable progress.

Elders of the various Winter and Summer clans or their representatives
filled most of the other seats, and filled the air with give-and-take. They had
become the first members of the Council the Queen had established at the same
time she had established the Sibyl College. They were already the leaders of
their extended-family groups; the Council gave them a forum where they could
speak for and vote to protect their clans’ interests and holdings.

There had been a Council during the Snow Queen’s reign, imitating
the offworlders’ judiciate government, but it had been strictly for Winters,
and dominated by the self-proclaimed nobility who were Arienrhod’s favorites.
There had never been a Council with Summers on it too, and usually the Summers
and Winters mixed like oil and water. He was relieved to see that Capella
Goodventure was not here today; he did not recognize the woman whom she had
sent as her replacement. It surprised him that she was not here herself. She
rarely missed the opportunity to object to any new project the Sibyl College or
the Queen proposed.

Making use of the sibyl network and its vast resources of
knowledge, the Queen had begun planting the seeds of progress everywhere—and
already they were sprouting, like spring grass pushing up through the snow. New
resources, new methods of production, new tools and new comforts had already
rewarded the hard work of Tiamat’s people. It was only the beginning, but already
the promise of what the next century could hold was a more tangible incentive
to most people than the Queen’s constant insistence that they would—must—make
themselves technologically independent, so that when the offworlders returned
Tiamat could meet them as an equal.