The Summer Queen (129 page)

She was silent too, watching him watch their child. “I’m so
sorry,” she murmured, at last.

“Don’t,” he whispered, shaking his head. “The—the worst part
of it was—” he forced himself to go on speaking, clearly and evenly, “that I
would have had to make the same choices, even if I hadn’t still been in love with
her. It was true, I was needed there. I had to go back, I had to do what I did.
I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t wrong. Tiamat is far more important to the Hegemony
than anyone knows, and the mers are more vital .... And yet it came to this.”
It was his love for Moon that had driven him to return to Tiamat. It was only
their passion for each other that had revealed the truth of his purpose there
to him. And yet, the only mistake he could see that he had made was to love
her, to consummate that love. It was flouting the restrictions of his position,
and the sensibilities of his people, that had made him vulnerable and brought
him down, leaving Moon there alone to bear the inescapable geas that had been
laid upon them both. “Damn it, I’m ready for this trial! Maybe that’s why I’m back
here, to challenge everyone’s perceptions about the situation, to tell the
truth—”

“BZ,” Pandhara said, in sudden anguish, “there isn’t going
to be a trial.”

“What?” he said.

“They’re not going to give thee a trial, they won’t let thee
be heard.”

“No, they will, Dhara. I’ve been assured—”

“They’re lying to thee!” she said. “KR told me that the Secretariat
is passing judgment on thee itself.”

“That’s impossible—”

“Everyone has been lying to thee, even Pernatte, even thy
own attorneys.” She turned, looking back over her shoulder, as the doors on
both sides of the room burst open, and uniformed guards came in. “They were
watching!” she blurted. “They lied about everything!”

He pushed to his feet. “Go to Aspundh! Tell him no one knows
the real truth but Moon. He has to contact her—” The guards reached him first,
dragged him back away from the barrier.

“BZ!” she cried, but suddenly he couldn’t hear her voice anymore;
the guards reached her, seizing her by the arms. She pulled away as they tried
to force her toward the door. The baby began to wail, soundlessly; she stopped
resisting, and let them lead her out, still looking back.

“Tell him—!” BZ shouted. The guards forced him through the
doorway; the door closed behind him, and that was the last he saw of her.

First light seeped into the restless underworld below Carbuncle,
limning the black-on-gray silhouettes of rigging and hoists, decks and docks,
painting the human forms silently waiting there with a sullen glow. The sky brightened
with every heartbeat as Moon watched it. A road of molten light formed on the
surface of the sea, leading out from the place where she stood on the final
length of pier, toward the shimmering disk of the emerging sun. “Now is the
time,” she said, with the cold wind of dawn blowing through her soul. “Bring
him forward.”

Jerusha PalaThion and the squad of constables led Kirard Set
Wayaways through the taut silence of the small crowd of witnesses, to stand
before her. Below the piei a boat waited, with two more constables aboard, both
Summers. “Kirard Set Wayaways,” Moon said, meeting the empty terror in his eyes
without remorse, “you stand before us accused of acts of violence and betrayal,
both witnessed and suspected, against your own people. I do not have the power
to judge you—” her voice cut him like wire, “for I am not the true Lady, but
only a vessel for Her Will. Therefore, I commend you to the Sea’s judgment,
under the traditional laws of our people.”

“You’re insane!” Kirard Set snarled. “Your rituals have nothing
to do with me I’m a Winter, you can’t do this to me—”

“Tell that to Arienrhod,” Moon said softly, feeling as if
she would strangle on the words, “when you see her—”

She looked away, hearing a murmur of noise ripple through
the crowd behind her. Jerusha touched her arm, pointing.

A squad of Hegemonic Police was making its way toward them
through the maze of docks and moorings. She saw their leader raise a hand,
stopping his men a short distance away.

“Thank the gods—” Kirard Set mumbled. “I knew they’d come. I
knew they wouldn’t let you do this to me, you insane bitch—Help!” he shouted. “Help
me! , t They’re trying to drown me! Stop them!”

Moon saw weapons show among the constables, all of them
Summers, ai |, i Jerusha’s signal.

The officer left his squad and came toward them, his hands
peaceably at his sides. “Lady.” He nodded respectfully in Moon’s direction,
before turning to » Jerusha. “Good morning, uh, Commander PalaThion.” He
saluted, as if in apology for stumbling over her new rank.

She returned the salute, with a faint smile of
acknowledgement. “Good morning, Lieutenant Devu. What’s a patrol doing down
here on the docks, at this early hour? Not standard procedure, is it?”

“No, Commander,” he said, giving Moon, and the crowd surrounding
her, a slightly uncertain glance. “Commander Vhanu ordered us to hunt mers. We’re
about to board our ship and do that.” He gestured behind him at the waiting
Blues. Moon realized that they were carrying different equipment than she had
ever seen on them before; realized suddenly what the equipment was intended
for. She saw Jerusha stiffen; felt her own body go rigid. “But first, Ma’am,
maybe you’d explain to me what’s happening here? You know that under the rules
of martial law assemblies of more than ten people are restricted.” He jerked
his head at the crowd. “What are you doing to this citizen?”

“It’s a trial,” Jerusha said. “He’s being tried on charges
including kidnapping and drug dealing.”

Devu frowned. “Here? Now?” he said. “Like this?”

“According to the laws of Summer, Lieutenant,” Moon said. “He
is going to be judged by the Sea.”

“They’re going to drown me!” Kirard Set shouted. “Help me—”

“You’re going to drown him?” Devu asked, his frown deepening.

“He will be taken out into the open sea, until the shoreline
is no longer visible,” Moon said evenly, “and left there to swim ashore.
Whether he drowns or not depends on him. The Sea Mother will judge him. That
has been the law of our people, for centuries.”

“It’s obscene!” Kirard Set said. “You can’t let them do this
to me—you’re a Kharemoughi, a civilized man, for gods’ sakes!”

“And I am the autonomous ruler of my people.” Moon lifted
her head. “He is one of us, and he has broken our laws, not yours, Lieutenant.”

“What’s his name?” Devu asked, glancing at Jerusha.

“Kirard Set Wayaways Winter,” Jerusha said, shifting her
weight from foot to foot, with her stun rifle cradled casually in the crook of
her arm. “A Tiamatan native.”

“Wayaways?” The lieutenant rubbed his chin. “Hm,” he said,
and nodded, with an odd, random smile. “Not our jurisdiction.” He began to turn
away.

“Stay if you want to,” Moon said. “Watch our system of laws
in action. Watch how the Sea deals with those people who offend Her sense of
justice—”

Lieutenant Devu looked abruptly uncomfortable again. “Some
other time, perhaps. We have to get going.”

“Give the Commander my greetings,” she said, fixing him with
a stare. He bowed, nodded to Jerusha, and was gone, walking rapidly.

“No—!” Kirard Set wailed, but he did not look back.

Moon waited, watching the offworlders until they disappeared
into the geometry of masts and machinery. Finally she turned back to Kirard
Set, who stood silent now, glowering at her. “The Mother of Us All is waiting,”
she said. She nodded toward the ladder behind him, that led down to the boat
riding at low tide beside the floating pier.

“I’ll be back—” he said, with defiance and desperation.

“If the Sea wills it,” Moon answered steadily. “But if you
live, don’t return to the city. She may forgive you, but I never will.”

He turned away from her, his face livid with impotent rage;
he glanced out into I the crowd, as if he were searching for someone. Whoever
it was, he did not find sthem. He turned back again, and moved slowly to where
the ladder waited; went |slowly down it. “The hell with all of you,” he said,
before his face disappeared.

Moon moved to stand at the rail as the small boat with its
Summer crew and ^Winter prisoner unfurled its crab-claw sail and started
outward along the golden road. “Arienrhod!” Kirard Set screamed suddenly,
looking back at her with eyes like coals, ^,and she did not know what he meant
by it.

As she watched the boat grow smaller in the distance, she
realized that someone else had come to stand beside her at the rail. She turned
her head, wondering whether Danaquil Lu Wayaways had decided at the last moment
to attend, and witness his cousin’s ordeal. But it was Tirady Graymount, Kirard
Set’s wife, who stood beside her, and their son Elco Teel. Moon realized that
she had not seen them in the crowd, before this moment, either. The woman’s
face was pale and hollow-eyed—with anguish, Moon thought. But her mouth, as if
it had a life of its own, was smiling. She held an empty liquor bottle in her
clenched fist; her other arm was around her son, holding on to him possessively
as she watched her husband sail out toward the horizon. She raised her fist
with the empty bottle in it suddenly hurled the bottle with all her strength
out into the sea. “I hope you drown!” she shouted.

Elco Teel put his arm around her shoulders, turning her away
from the rail again. There was no expression at all on his face, as he led her
back through the crowd.

Moon watched them go, feeling neither surprise nor compassion.
She saw the astonishment on some of the faces around her; saw Jerusha shake her
head. Standing alone, she looked out to sea again, watching the boat grow
smaller. On its stem she could still read the name she had painted there with
her own hand: Ariele. Behind her the crowd began to separate and drift away.
She did not leave the rail until she had watched the boat out of sight.

Moon took her place at the head of the meeting table in what
had once been yel another of the palace’s echoing, unused chambers. When she
first came to live in the palace had reminded her of the countless ornaments it
held: a jeweled shell, empty and without purpose. She had been afraid of it,
frightened by its immensity and the power of all it represented—Arienrhod’s
past, a kind of desire that seemed completely alien to her, yet which must
exist somewhere inside her, too.

But the secret sentience that had compelled her to succeed
its Queen had compelled her to remain here, within reach. In time she had come
to accept the palace and all it held as simply a part of the greater pattern of
her life. The palace itself was neither good nor evil, no more a matter of her
choice or lack of choice than anything else, in a world that had seemed more
and more random and beyond her control.

And as more time passed, adversity had freed her to see everything
she looked at in new ways. The offworlders had forced her to house the Sibyl
College within the palace’s walls, and the College had filled the rattling
emptiness of its chambers with activity and purpose.

Now, when she looked around her at the beauty of the
sculpted detail along the ancient ceiling line, the newly painted murals, even
the graceful forms of the aging, imported furniture, she saw the artistry of
the human minds and hands that had created them. They nad become a symbol of
the potential that existed in her, around her, within the women and men—Summers,
Winters, and offworlders—who had helped her to build the future that she had
been driven to seek. She realized that seeing longtime friends and trusted
companions against the setting of this place had become one of the few things
in her life that brought her pleasure.

And now, she thought, as the image of the Ariele
disappearing into the sunrise overlaid her vision, they were her only hope. She
glanced down at the recorder in front of her and the pile of printout data that
she had had laboriously hand-copied, after Vhanu had shut down her computer
system. She looked up again, at Tammis beside her, his eyes filled with concern—seeing
in his eyes three lives: his own, his father’s, the life of the unborn child
that Merovy carried. By right there should have been nothing but joy in her as
she looked at him, seeing the future and the past; but she could not feel
anything, not even grief. A clear, impenetrable wall seemed to nse between her
and all emotion, allowing her to see what remained that was right and good in
her life, but not to take any comfort in it.

She looked on around the circle, seeing the intent, worried
faces of Clavally and Danaquil Lu, Fate Ravenglass with her vision sensor like
a shining crown, the two dozen other sibyls who were waiting expectantly. She
could not tell them everything; but she knew that at least she could trust them
to give her the data she needed without a full explanation.

She called the recorder on, and the eerie chorale of the
mersong filled the air. She watched their expressions change: the peace,
pleasure, surprise and incomprehension that overtook them as they listened.

And then she told them all she could, explaining the part
they must play to complete the fragmented mathematical sequences hidden inside
the songs. She passed them the copies of the data she had collected from Sparks’s
files—thinking of him suddenly and painfully, thinking about the strangeness of
the parallel lives they had come to lead. She described his work to the
assembled sibyls, wondering as she spoke what would come of the journey he had
taken alone; whether he would bring their daughter back from the place the
Ondineans called the Land of Death, or be lost there forever with her. There
were few questions from the people listening around her; none that she could
not answer.

With a few final words about urgency and secrecy, she left
them to their work. She made her way back through the halls into the upper
levels of the palace; offices, libraries, studies passed in a pale blur of
exhaustion. She had not slept at all last night, lying rigid and alone in her
bed through the interminable hours before the ritual at dawn. Now that she had
done all she could, about everything over which she had any control, the last
of the momentum that her fury had given her had spent itself.