The Summer Queen (146 page)

Merovy started forward, her face contorted with rage and
loss; her mother caught her, holding her back. “Why?” she screamed.

“It was an accident,” Moon said; the words lacerated her
throat. “Tammis saved his life.”

“Why? Who is hel” Merovy cried, and there was no answer that
Moon or anyone could give her. “It isn’t fair, we have a child—”

Her mother held her close, pinioning her struggles. “You
have a child ...” Clavally murmured, holding her tighter. “You have his child,
my heart; take care of the child ....” hushing her as she began to sob. The
sound of Merovy’s grief magnified in the vastness of the room until it seemed
to Moon as if the entire world wept. Clavally and Danaquil Lu looked up at her
over their daughter’s hidden face, in sudden, terrible understanding.

Moon turned away, unable to face their compassion, afraid of
breaking down. She looked toward the Pit. “I saved the world,” she murmured,
with sudden bitterness, “but I lost my children.”

She saw Reede move, out of the corner of her eye; saw him
starting for the Pit’s rim. “Stop him!”

Jerusha caught him in two strides, knocked him aside as he
reached the edge and tried to fling himself over. She subdued him without
effort, forced him away from the rim, back toward the people who stood in
silent judgment of him.

He fell to his knees. Her hands stayed on his shoulders,
holding him there; but Moon could see that she needn’t have bothered. He glared
at them, his face lurid with fresh blood, his eyes wells of despair. “You want
to watch me die?” he spat. “Watch it happen then, damn you!”

Moon moved toward him, feeling as if her own body had become
the body of an old woman, stiff and slow and full of pain. She stopped, looking
down at him. “Who are you?” she asked.

He lifted his head; let it fall again, without speaking,
when she had seen the impossible truth still in his eyes.

“I don’t want you to die,” she said softly. She put her
hands against his face as he tried to turn away, her touch as gentle as if she
held snow. “I want to help you. Tell me how.”

He shook his head slowly, wetting her hands with blood, staring
up at her again in utter confusion. But he only said, “You can’t. I can’t.”

“You said that the Police took all the water of death you
had, when they arrested you?”

“Yes,” he muttered wearily.

She glanced at Jerusha. “Would they still have it?”

Jerusha shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s not likely they’d hand it
over to us.”

“On humanitarian grounds—?”

Jerusha laughed humorlessly. “To save the life of a criminal
you’re sheltering from the Hegemony? Under the circumstances, I’d say it’s
bloody unlikely.”

Moon moved away from Reede’s side. “Send a messenger to
Vhanu, Jerusha. Tell him that if he wants the lights on in this city again, he’ll
send the drug to me, no questions asked.”

Jerusha stared at her. “I thought you had nothing to do with
the city’s power going out.”

“I didn’t,” Moon said.

“But now you can bring it back?”

Moon glanced away, into the dark reaches of the Hall of the
Winds. “Yes,” she said.

Jerusha stared at her. “I’ll send someone right away,” she
murmured, “Lady.” She bowed, and went quickly from the hall.

Moon turned back, to face Merovy and her parents, still waiting
like mourners at a funeral. “Clavally, Dana, will you help me get Reede to a
bed? I want him made as comfortable as possible.” They nodded, with doubt as
plain on their faces as anguish, and their hands still on their daughter’s
quivering shoulders. “Merovy,” Moon said quietly, “you have medical training.
Will you see what you can do to help him? He’s in considerable pain.”

Merovy blinked; the white, dumbstruck emptiness of her face
slowly regained a suffusion of color, and for a moment Moon thought it was
fresh anger, and refusal. But Merovy turned, forcing herself to look at Reede,
and her expression wavered. “Yes,” she said finally, almost inaudibly, her eyes
downcast. She came forward with her parents; still looking down, her hand
pressing her stomach.

Reede lifted his head, watching them warily as they approached.
But he allowed himself to be half-led, half-carried up the curving flight of
stairs, and back into the palace.

Moon made certain that he was settled into a bed, used a
cool cloth to wipe vomit and blood from his face with her own hands. She
watched Merovy tend him as best she could with what medical supplies they had.
Merovy’s face eased, her movements grew calm and sure as she worked, as contact
with his flesh forced her to acknowledge his humanity.

Reede lay with his eyes closed, breathing shallowly, as
though he were unconscious. But Moon knew from the rigidness of his muscles,
the stark whiteness of his clenched fists, that he was only trying to ignore
their presence, their unasked-for intrusion into his suffering.

At last, satisfied that she had done everything for him that
she could, she left him in their care and went back through the dimly lit
palace halls, down through the throne room and back to the Hall of the Winds.
She stepped out onto the bridge above the Pit, feeling its siren light call up
to her. She felt only a distant echo now of the many-colored splendor she remembered
in her mind, but still it made her senses sing with yearning. The Lady ...

She breathed in the smell of the sea that rose up the well
to fill the air here; a constant reminder of the presence of an unseen power,
one that she had believed in profoundly in her island youth. Then there had
been a goddess incarnate in the waters of the sea, who spoke through the lips
of every sibyl, granting the special gift of Her wisdom only to the Summers,
Her chosen people.

That belief had been destroyed by her head-on collision with
the ways of the offworlders, their far vaster and more sophisticated web of
knowledge and deception. She had learned what she believed was the real truth
about the sibyl net, and lost her innocence in the same moment. There had been
no Lady any longer, except as the empty source of curses, through all the years
since; only the ache of loss, whenever she had needed the strength of belief.

But now at last she had seen the greater truth hidden within
the lesser one of the offworlders’ cynical self-deception. The intelligence
that guided the sibyl net was not a supernatural force, but it was something
more than human—other than human, although affected by human needs and desires.
It was itself partly created of minds like her own, and it lay at the heart of
Survey, influencing the fate of countless beings on countless worlds she would
never even hear the names of.

And the two separate but uniquely joined peoples of this
world were its chosen ones in a way that was both natural and profound. She had
not been insane, she had not been deluded, obsessed with power, driven by ambition—she
had not been Arienrhod. She had been right. And all that she had believed had,
in some way, been true after all.

She looked down, unafraid, into the green light; and looking
down, felt her mind recoil like a spring as she remembered her son .. ,
remembered suddenly what price she had paid to be Her chosen one, to serve the
needs of the true Lady. A tremor shook her. She went on across the bridge,
moving now by the strength of her own will, her own need and urgency, no longer
controlled by any compulsion. She did not stop until she reached the other
side. And there she stood alone, in the empty silence beyond the Pit’s rim,
with the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes until the only light she saw
was a burning brilliance of phosphenes.

At last she raised her head, picking up her lantern, hearing
the hollow echo of footsteps coming toward her. She saw another light appear
ahead; saw Jerusha leading Vhanu himself into the Hall.

She wiped her face hastily, lowered her hands to her sides.
She read the unease that Vhanu could not entirely disguise at being in the
palace without any escort; saw it turn to surprise as he found her waiting here
for him, equally alone.

“Lady.” Jerusha bowed. “The Commander has what you asked
for.”

“I am surprised to see that you brought it yourself, Commander,”
Moon said, raising her eyebrows, hearing the coldness in her voice answer the
coldness of his eyes.

He made a brief bow in return. “Your offer was—sufficiently
unusual, Lady, that I wanted to know for myself what lay behind it. And see for
myself that you could keep your part of the bargain.”

“I, for my part, never make promises I do not intend to
honor,” she said. She felt Jerusha glance at her.

Vhanu moved forward slowly, flanking her, until he stood beside
her at the rim of the Pit. He stayed within the glow of her light but beyond
her easy reach. Slowly again, he removed a small, silver-metal vial from his
clothing. “I have what you want.” He held it out—suspended over the edge of the
well. “Now tell me why you want it.”

Moon’s breath caught; she saw the faint gleam of
satisfaction come into his eyes. His glance took in her drab native clothing
with a flicker of disgust. She realized that she had forgotten even to change,
that she still wore what she had worn into the Pit, that her clothes were wet
and stained and reeking of Reede’s sickness.

She felt her sudden fear catalyze into anger at the touch of
his eyes. “What I want to do with it is not your concern, Commander,” she said.

“Your constables took a prisoner away from my Police yesterday:
the man this drug belongs to. What you intend to do with it—and him—very much
concerns me.”

Moon took a deep breath. “He is an addict. So is my daughter.
They need that drug to stay alive.”

He glanced at the vial. “There isn’t that much of it.” He
looked back at her without compassion, and her brief impulse to ask him for
help in synthesizing it died unspoken.

“That is my problem to solve, Commander,” she said, perversely
glad that he had given her a reason not to beg him. “Your problem is getting
the city’s power back. 1 can do that for you, if you give me what I want.”

He arched his neck in an odd, craning gesture, as if he were
trying to look behind her words somehow, and see if they were true. “What about
the Smith?” he asked warily.

“Who?” she said, before she could realize who he meant. “You
mean Reede Kullervo.”

He nodded, half frowning. “I want him back.”

“He addicted my daughter. He caused my husband’s death,” she
said flatly. “He—he drowned my son. He’s mine to deal with.” She felt Jerusha’s
eyes on her again, their uncertainty unchanged.

Vhanu’s frown deepened, but this time a fleeting, reluctant
comprehension showed in his gaze. Finally he lowered the hand that held the
vial out over the Pit. “I want him back,” he said, “and I want him back alive.
He’s too important to us—” He broke off. “His apprehension is important to the
Hegemony.” To Survey. She felt the hidden reach, the relentless hold of the
secret order he served more faithfully than he served his government. She saw
Reede, who had been the pawn of the Brotherhood, becoming the pawn of the
Golden Mean; knew they must want possession of him, want to exploit his
brilliant, stolen mind, as much as their rivals had.

“You can keep him until the tribunal arrives, Lady.” Vhanu’s
expression altered subtly. “Punish him in whatever way you choose. Just see
that he lives ....” Barbarian, his eyes said, filled with contempt. “Will that
satisfy you?” He held the vial out again, toward her this time, but still
beyond her reach. “Bearing in mind that we could come and take him any time we
wanted to, if we chose. So far I have tried to respect your sovereignty to the
extent you allow me to—since I expect to be named the new Chief Justice soon.”
His mouth imitated a smile.

She folded her arms, clutching her elbows with her hands
until the pressure was greater than that of the anger inside her. “I would be
ungrateful to refuse your offer, since you show such consideration of our
traditions,” she said, her voice toneless. “I will keep him, until there is a
new Chief Justice. And then—” She shrugged.

A fleeting unease touched him. He shook it off. “Restore the
city’s power, Lady. Then you get this.” He gestured with the vial.

She hesitated, seeing how close he stood to the rim of the
Pit. She shook her head. “Give it to me first.” She held out her hand, saw him
stiffen with refusal. “Give it to me. Or you get nothing.” Her hand fisted.

His own hand tightened around the vial; his eyes were as
black as obsidian. She held his gaze, unmoving, unyielding.

He looked toward the Pit. After an endless moment he looked
back at her, and nodded. But his expression held something more unexpected, and
more disturbing, than simple capitulation. “All right, then,” he murmured. “But
I want to watch; I want to see you do it.”

She nodded slowly, surprised and uncertain. She held out her
hand again, and he put the vial into it. She closed her hand and turned her
back on him, stepping out onto the bridge. She moved without hesitation now,
with no space left inside her for grief or doubt. Turning back to face him,
suspended above what to him was darkness but to her was light, she saw his
skepticism and barely concealed scorn ... his dark, obsessive fascination. She
closed her eyes, murmuring, “Input.” And although the only request was spoken
inside her own silence, she felt the sibyl mind stir in answer, as she had left
it waiting to do. For a moment she glimpsed infinity rolling like an endless sea
....

She fell back into the present, swaying, catching her
breath. She looked down, into the Pit; saw far below in the darkness a rising
pattern of light—real light, not the secret radiance that she had moved
through. The swell of energy spiraled upward like a licking flame, bringing the
machinery alive, until it reached the rim and overflowed, filling the dark hall
with incandescent light.