The Summer Queen (123 page)

“Then what are you doing still here?” Sparks said, frowning.

Niburu looked up again, his eyes bleak. “I don’t know ....
TerFauw just ordered us back there.”

“Why did Kullervo leave without you? I thought you were his
crew?”

“We are.” Niburu nodded. “I don’t know. Something happened ...
we went to meet him one morning, and he was gone from his place. He wasn’t
anywhere. TerFauw beat the crap out of me before I could convince him we weren’t
in on it.” He touched his jaw, wincing. “Nobody’d tell us anything, after that.
And then today, TerFauw calls us in and tells us the Source took Reede back to
Ondinee. We’re to follow. That’s all. I didn’t expect it; he was still working
on his mer research. I figured ...” He shook his head. “From the kind of
questions TerFauw asked me, I think maybe Reede tried to run, and they got him
back. But I can’t figure what could be bad enough to drive him to that. The
Source treats him like shit, but Reede knows there’s no way out.” He pressed
his branded palm flat on the tabletop, like he was squashing a bug.

“Do you know anything about ... my daughter?” Sparks felt
Tor turn to stare at him.

Niburu looked blank for a moment, and then sudden comprehension
showed on his face. “Reede’s been—” He glanced at Sparks. “Uh, they spend a lot
of time together.” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen her for ... since Reede—”
He broke off.

“I was told tonight ...” Sparks took a deep breath, holding
an empty glass in his hands, m fragile balance. “I was told to give a message
to my wife, the Queen, from the Source. To say that ... our daughter has been
taken to Ondinee. That Reede Kullervo has addicted her to a drug he invented,
something called the water of death. I was given a tape of what it does ...
what it will do to Ariele if my wife and the Chief Justice don’t give him
something ....”

“Give him what?” Ananke asked.

“I don’t know!” he said, and the glass fell, clattering on
the table. “Don’t you think I’d give it to him myself, if I knew?”

Ananke grimaced; his pet disappeared under his arm. He
glanced at Niburu, and Sparks saw something unspoken pass between them. “You
think that’s what he’s on?” Ananke asked. Niburu nodded, frowning.

“What is it—the ‘water of death’?” Tor asked. Her own face
constricted as she waited for the answer, as if she were waiting for a blow.

“Kirard Set told me it was a bastard form of the water of
life,” Sparks said

She shook her head slightly. “What does it do to you?”

He reached out and touched the tape player; the image materialized
like a poisonous fog in the space between them. He watched, helplessly, hearing
the others around him suck in their breath, hearing their curses of disbelief.

“Shut if off,” Tor said. “Shut it off, damn you!”

He reached out, extinguishing the image as she tried to
reach past him and do it herself

She hit him in the shoulder with her clenched fist; hit him
again. “Damn it! Damn it!” He said nothing, did nothing, as she pulled back
again, going limp against the dark, mirroring wall of the booth. She struck the
tabletop once, with her open hand. Niburu and Ananke sat like stunned bookends,
staring at each other.

Tor looked at him, finally, with apology in her eyes.”To
Ariele—?” she whispered. “To Ariele?” Suddenly her eyes were empty

Sparks nodded, slumped in the corner. “Yes.”

“And Reede ...” Niburu muttered.

“He gave it to her—” Tor said, her eyes coming alive again
as she turned back to Niburu. “You bastard! You told me he was safe! You said
he wouldn’t hurt her—”

“He wouldn’t—” Niburu began.

“Reede wouldn’t do something like that to her, he’s in love
with her,” Ananke protested, running over the words.

Niburu put a hand on his arm. “He wouldn’t, if he was
getting his fixes on time But we don’t how long he was missing. What would you
do, to stop that—?” He gestured at the empty space between them, the air still
haunted by what they had seen moments before.

Ananke looked away, shaking his head.

Niburu turned back to Sparks. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. He
rested his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, Tor. Gods, I never imagined something
like this would happen ....”He looked up again. “Shit—I don’t want to leave
like this. I don’t want this to be why you remember me ....”

Her faced eased as she let go of her useless anger, “I know,”
she said, and sighed. “Sparks, did you say Kirard Set told you about the water
of death? What’s he got to do with it?”

“He has ... business dealings with the Source.” Sparks
shifted glasses into a new pattern. “And so do I.”

Tor stared at him, while her incredulity turned slowly to
understanding, and then to resignation. She glanced at Niburu; back at him. “Kind
of like a disease, isn’t it? ... Gods, what are kind hearts like us doing in a
cesspit like this?” She shook her head. “Is there anybody in the Motherloving
galaxy who doesn’t work for the Source?”

“Moon,” Sparks said bitterly. “And Gundhalinu.”

“Not yet,” Niburu muttered.

“I know something else about Kirard Set,” Ananke said, leaning
forward as his pet wandered across the table, snuffling in glasses. “You
remember that night: Ariele, and Elco Teel—?” Niburu and Tor nodded, with
sudden frowns. Tor pulled the animal back from the edge of the table, and began
to scratch it behind the ears.

“What night?” Sparks said.

“Elco Teel slipped Ariele some kind of sex drug and took her
to a—a—” Ananke broke off, looking down.

“A gang bang,” Niburu said bluntly, for him.

“Reede rescued her—” Tor put her hand on Sparks’s arm,
holding him back until the words registered. “Reede. He risked getting himself
killed to get her out of there in time. She was all right,” Tor insisted
gently. “She was orbiting so high up, I don’t think she even remembered what
happened. But they’ve been lovers, ever since.”

Sparks shook his head, feeling his images of Reede and his
daughter and himself shift and flow like oil in water.

“Reede was like apashayan—a flaming sword,” Ananke said, his
eyes shining suddenly. “There were a dozen men, but he faced them down and they
ran like rats. And then he made that little dungeater Elco Teel sweat blood. I
thought he was going to have a heart attack when Reede took a knife to him—”

“Yeah, I’ve seen Reede like that,” Kedalion said, nodding. “Apashayan.
That night in Ravien’s, when we met him ...”

Ananke smiled, weaving a thin braid between his dark
fingers. A peculiar expression came over his face, half fond and half chagrined.
It faded, as his thoughts slid back into the present.

“What’s this got to do with Kirard Set?” Sparks said impatiently.

They looked back at him, almost jesentful, as if he had interrupted
a private reminiscence between mourners. But Ananke said, “Kirard Set gave Elco
the drug that he gave to Ariele. And the Source gave it to Kirard Set. Reede
said ...”He pressed his forehead, half frowning as he tried to remember the
words. “He said for Elco Teel to tell his father that it was a closed game,
between him and the Source. That if they didn’t stay out of it, he’d kill them
both.” He looked up again.

“You never told me that part of it,” Niburu said.

“I didn’t?” Ananke shrugged.

“Why in seven hells would Kirard Set want to do a thing like
that?” Tor asked. “He was always mouthing it around that Elco Teel was going to
marry Ariele someday, and she was going to be the next Summer Queen. I never
liked him, the vicious motherfucker, he’s got a smile like a skule. But why—?
Was he looking for favors from the Source? Or is he just that much of a human
pustule?”

Sparks glanced at the tape player, and away again. “Yes,” he
murmured. “All of that ... but there’s more. It’s more complicated. The Source
isn’t just a narco, he’s involved in dimensions of corruption you or I can’t
even imagine ....”He broke off, needing to say more; afraid to, for their
sakes, for his own.

Something clattered onto the tabletop in front of him. He
picked it up—a chain, dangling two ornaments. He held them closer, seeing a
ring with two soliis set into a band of white metal. A pendant clinked silverly
against the ring; its form caught in his brain like a fishhook. The
Brotherhood. He looked up again; met Niburu’s gaze waiting for him. “Is this
yours?” he asked.

“It was Reede’s,” Niburu answered. “He always wore it, always.
But I found it in his room, after he disappeared. Reede used to call it his
good luck charm ....” He glanced away. “He lost it once before, a long time
ago. When I went to give it back to him, he was in a meeting with about a dozen
people who would’ve gutted each other if they’d met out on the street. They
would have gutted me, but Reede stopped them. He said get out, and forget I
ever saw them .... It’s some kind of secret society, isn’t it? Something bigger
and more powerful than any cartel. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“Close enough.” Sparks’s hand closed over the metal and jewels,
feeling their coldness bite his flesh. “They’re behind everything that’s
happening here, I’m sure of it. And only somebody with the same kind of
resources and power has even a hope of getting Ariele back from him. Gundhalinu’s
got that kind of power. That must be why the Source took her off world.” He
rubbed his head, his fingers tangled in his hair. “That means he’s not completely
confident, at least.”

“If she’s in the Source’s citadel, nobody can get her out
alive,” Niburu said flatly.

Sparks looked up at him. “Did you say TerFauw ordered you
back to Ondinee9”

Niburu nodded, looking uneasy.

“You’re being sent back to join Reede, at the citadel?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Take me with you.”

Niburu shook his head. “No way. That’s impossible. We can’t
smuggle you in.”

“If I have this, it’s possible.” Sparks held up the pendant,
let it dangle in the air before them.

“You don’t have this.” Niburu held his hand up, palm out,
showing Sparks the same brand that Kullervo wore. “Even that pendant won’t
protect you. It didn’t protect Reede. Nobody much looks at brands, as long as
they’ve got the Source’s mark on them. But you haven’t got it.”

Sparks studied the eye-shaped scar, imprinting it on his memory.
“I can take care of that,” he said.

Niburu grimaced, and was silent for a long moment. “No,” he
said finally. The fingers of his hand closed over the eye in his palm. “I’m
sorry. I can’t. The rule I live by is ‘Keep your head down, and hope the Dark
Ones overlook you.’”

“The Dark Ones have already noticed you,” Sparks said. He
gestured at Niburu’s battered face. “Do you like being the Source’s property?”

Niburu frowned, glancing at his partner. “No,” he muttered. “But
I like it better than being a corpse. I think I speak for both of us.” Ananke
nodded, unsmiling.

“What about Reede?”

“What about him?”

“I’ve seen how the Source treats him. Do you care anything
about what happens to him?” Sparks asked, remembering what he’d seen pass
between them, when he showed them what the water of death could do.

The moment stretched like an impossibly sustained note, before
Niburu said roughly, “Yeah. I guess we do,” and Ananke nodded again. “I guess
it matters a lot ....” Niburu looked surprised.

Sparks took a deep breath. “When the Source gets what he
wants—or even if he doesn’t—he’ll probably kill them both.”

“He won’t kill Reede,” Niburu protested. “Reede’s too valuable.”

“Maybe,” Sparks said, with relentless logic. “Maybe you’ll
all live to a ripe old age, and you’ll spend the rest of your lives in slavery,
watching the Source break your friend’s spirit and destroy his soul. Or maybe
not—If the Source decides to kill Reede, what do you think he’ll want to do
with both of you?”

They looked at him.

“Reede wants out of there, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah ....” Niburu nodded. “We all do. But it’s
like you said: the Source is too powerful.”

“They’ll be expecting Gundhalinu to try something. They won’t
be expecting this. If Reede loves my daughter the way you say he does, I think
he’ll help us once we’re in, even if he wouldn’t try it on his own.”

Niburu rubbed his face. “By the Holy Hands,” he said. “You
know you’d be committing suicide—? And you’re asking me to do it too.”

“It’s my daughter,” he said. “And it’s your choice.”

Niburu and Ananke put their heads together, muttering, while
Tor stroked the Ondmean’s pet, staring at the tabletop. Life went on, entirely
meaningless, in the room beyond her half-frowning profile. “Sparks,” Tor said,
glancing at him suddenly, “even if you get them out and survive, what’ll you do
then?”

“Bring them back here.”

“But they weren’t safe here, in the first place—” She broke
off.

“They will be if Gundhalinu has enough warning. Will you go
to him—go to Moon? Give them the message Kirard Set gave me ... tell them
everything you know about him, while you’re at it,” Sparks said sourly. “Then
tell them the rest of it: where I’ve gone. Tell him they have to be ready to
protect us all, when we get back. Gundhalinu will understand what he has to do.
Give him this—” He handed her Reede’s pendant.

“And the tape?” she murmured, taking the pendant.

He looked down. “Use your judgment,” he said finally. “She’s
their daughter too.”

“What?” She stared at him; he watched her disbelief fade. “Oh,”
she said.

He looked back at Niburu and Ananke.

“What about the water of death?” Niburu said. “What about
when it runs out?”

“We’ll get a sample. We’ll make more. There must be a way to
keep them alive until we can; we’ll find it. If we can get in and get them out,
we’ll have all the backup we need to stay free, and stay alive. Are you willing
to try it?”

They glanced at each other again. At last Niburu nodded, and
then Ananke did. “We’ll take you to Ondinee,” Niburu said. “After that ...”He
shrugged. “We’ll see. We leave tomorrow.” He glanced at Tor, with sudden melancholy
coming into his eyes. He sighed.