The Summer Queen (15 page)

Moon stepped off the far end of the bridge and let her squirming
daughter down to run on ahead. She stayed where she was, turning back to wait
for Jerusha; to stand for a long moment gazing into the Pit, letting the sharp
smell of the sea clear the stink offish from her nostrils. The currents of past
and present collided inside her like a riptide, their undertow sucking at her.
She swayed a moment, closing her eyes, before she turned and started on again
into the palace, her clothes still reeking.

She had defied both Summers and Winters, by crossing that
bridge and taking up residence here. The past was no longer an option, not for
her, or for anyone. It was unreachable in time, like the sea at the bottom of
the Pit. She could only go on, into Summer, changing with the world.

And Gran had come. She tried to recapture the happiness and
excitement the news had filled her with.

Tammis slithered out of Jerusha’s arms as they caught up,
and came to take her hand. She looked down at his hand, so small inside her
own, its golden-brownness in such stark contrast to her paleness. She squeezed
his hand gently, smiling down at him.

“Where’s Da?” he asked. He asked it every day.

“He can’t come home yet,” Moon said. She gave him almost the
same answer, every day.

“Why not?”

“Because there’s so much to do,” she murmured, as she always
did.

“Well, why can’t he do it here?”

“Tammis—”

“Doesn’t he love us? Doesn’t he want to be here?”

“Of course he does.” She looked away, seeing the palace
walls that Sparks had known for far longer than she had, and which he hated now
so much that he spent as little time as possible inside them. She made herself
look back at Tammis, and smile. “He loves you very much. He loves us all. He’ll
be home to play songs for you at bedtime .... Someday you’ll understand why it’s
so important for us to finish our work.” Which will never be finished: not in
our lifetime. “Someday 1 hope you’ll help us finish it.”

“Ariele too?”

“Yes, Ariele too.”

“I want to help.” He gave a small hop, hanging on her hand.

“I know.” She nodded, looking down.

“Are you happy, Mama?”

She looked back at him, realizing with sudden pain that it
was a question which was almost meaningless to her. But it was not meaningless
to him, and so she smiled at him, a real smile, filled with the same
unquestioning love that she found in his eyes. “Yes, 1 am. When I’m with you
and Ariele.”

“And Da?”

“Yes, and Da.” She hugged him against her side, looking away
again. The Winter staff who took care of the palace and its occupants hovered
discreetly at the corners of her vision, waiting for some sign of interest or
some command from her as she moved through one vast, purposeless room after
another. Their presence still made her uncomfortable, after so many years. She
had been born into a world where everyone took care of their own needs, and few
people had more possessions, or space in which to keep them, than they could
easily use.

Arienrhod’s palace—it would never seem like her palace—would
have covered a small island in the Windwards, and every room of it was filled
with strange and exotic gleanings from all over the Hegemony: the furniture,
rugs, and hangings, the exotic playthings and ornaments, glittered everywhere
like bizarre deepwater storm wrack.

She had changed scarcely anything of what she had found
here, telling herself that she wanted everything for study, just as she wanted
whatever other artifacts of the offworlders had survived their leaving. But in
the secret places of her soul she knew that she had not touched them because
she was afraid of them, afraid of violating the memory of Arienrhod ....

Over the years she had grown used to seeing Arienrhod’s possessions,
just as she had grown inured to the uncertain, overeager attentions of the
palace staff; although every time she found herself growing too comfortable
with them she felt as if she were startling awake out of a bad dream.

A man in the uniform of a city constable approached deferentially.
“Lady,” he murmured, bobbing his head. “Commander—” He turned to Jerusha,
addressing her by her old title, which had become her new title by default. “The
daywatch sergeant asked me to report that a person carrying a concealed knife
was arrested trying to enter the palace without—”

“Not here, damn it!” Jerusha whispered sharply, as Moon
froze beside her. She gestured him away, leaving their presence with a brusque,
apologetic nod.

“What was that, Mama?” Tammis asked, his face filling with
concern as he saw. his mother’s worried frown. “Is somebody going to hurt us?”

“No. treasure.” she murmured, stroking his head, hugging him
against her. “No, of course not ....” She led him on across the hall to the
wide, curving stairs, where Anele was waiting to hurry them upward to Gran.

Jerusha watched the Queen and her children go with a rush of
sudden emotion that was almost a physical pain. She turned back to the constable,
her own expression settling into anger. “By all the gods, Shellwaters—don’t you
have sense enough to keep your mouth shut in front of a child, even if you don’t
have the sense to keep it shut in front of the Queen’?”

He grimaced and looked down. “I’m sorry. Commander, I—”

“Forget it.” She shook her head, getting herself under
control. “Just remember it next time “

“Yes, Commander.” He looked up again, relieved; she felt an
odd relief of her own as his neutral gaze met hers. He was Tiamatan, which
meant that he didn’t mind serving a woman; and he was a Winter, which meant
that he didn’t mind serving an offworlder. At least when she was doing her job
she felt less like an alien here than she had in her old life. “You say they
got the man—or was it a woman?”

“Yes. Commander. A woman ... a Summer. She claims she heard
the Sea Mother’s voice telling her to drive out the impostor pretending to be
Queen.” He made a disgusted face; something in his voice said that it was no
more than could be expected of a Summer. “We have her in detention.”

“All right. Good. Give me a full report tomorrow. And for
gods’ sakes, try to keep the gossip down.”

He nodded, and made what passed for a salute among the locals.

She watched him go out of the room. A handful of the palace
staff watched him go as well; she knew they were already spreading rumors among
themselves. It was an irony that was no more lost on her than it was on the
Queen that the Winters of Carbuncle were more loyal than the Summer clans were
to Moon Dawntreader. Jerusha tried to spare Moon and her family the awareness
of just how many rigid, narrow-minded religious fanatics there were among her
people; but she knew in her heart that the task was futile. Moon knew it as
well as she did. She hears voices telling her the Sea Mother wants her to kill
the Queen .... Jerusha shook her head. What the hell was the matter with some
people—? But then, she remembered that Moon Dawntreader claimed to hear voices
that told her to defy her own traditions and change her world ....

Jerusha sighed, looking back at the stairway, where Moon and
her two children had disappeared into the shadowed upper levels. She felt the
mixed emotions hit her again, as she thought of something happening to those
children. The sudden, gut-wrenching fear of loss stabbed like an assassin’s
knife. She loved those children as if they were her own; and if her latest
pregnancy ended like the others, they might be as close to her own children as
she would ever come .... But no, she would not let herself think about that.
This time everything would go all right—

If she had left Tiamat at the Change, she could have gotten
help; but then, she would not have had Miroe, would not have had any reason to
want a child. She would not even have had any reason to go on fighting a system
that had never shown her anything but contempt when she tried to lead a full
life, the kind any man of her people was free to lead. On Newhaven she had been
expected to act like a woman—marry and raise children, but live subservient to
her husband forever. Here, on Tiamat. she had thought that at last she’d found
her chance to live as a complete human being. But when it was too late to
change her mind, fate had played its final tnck on her. She had not even told
anyone that she was pregnant, this time—afraid that making it real would make
her vulnerable.

She started toward the door, trying to shake off the
creeping melancholy of her thoughts; knowing they would follow her home, to the
empty apartment waiting for her down in Carbuncle’s Maze. She would call Miroe,
and for a while his voice would fill the silence and drown out her fears. He
spent most of his time away from the city, overseeing the plantation,
experimenting with the new technology the sibyls and the Winters were creating
daily ... avoiding Carbuncle, Not avoiding her She repeated it to herself
again, less and less sure that she believed it, any more than she still
believed that remaining on Tiamat had been anything but an act of desperation.

Moon entered the room, at first seeing only the unexpected
brightness of the sunset sky through the oval window that filled most of the
far wall. Blinking, she found the silhouette of her grandmother’s face;
blinking again, she filled in its features as her grandmother turned toward
her. “Gran—” she murmured, and stopped. How did you get so old?

Her memory of her grandmother had not prepared her for this
stooped, wrinkled woman, this old woman with snow-white hair and skin so
transparent that every vein seemed visible. The woman she remembered had gray
hair, her face had been lined by time and weather; but she had been strong and
vital and full of life, as she watched over two growing children—who had once
been Moon herself and Sparks, her orphaned cousin—while Moon’s mother went out
with the fishing fleet .... It had only been eight years.

But no. It had been eight years for her; but she had been
offworld, and lost five more years in the lives of everyone she loved to the
effects of time-dilation during her transit. For Gran it had been almost
fourteen years since Moon had left the islands, following Sparks into the
unknown.

Joy filled her grandmother’s face now, as she saw her granddaughter
again, as her great-grandchildren ran to hug and kiss her. “Moon—” She raised
her arms, struggling up from the cushioned bench. But as she rose her
expression suddenly changed, and she bowed her head. “I mean. Lady—”

“Gran,” Moon said again, finding her voice, moving forward
quickly to take her grandmother’s arms and straighten her trembling body
upright again. “Oh, Gran ....” Moon held her tightly, feeling the fragility of
bird bones, not the remembered solidness of her grandmother’s body; the proof
of what her eyes had shown her. “It’s me. You don’t have to bow to me.”
Suddenly she felt seventeen again, no older than she had been on the day she
left home ... feeling twelve again, or five .... Gran’s arms took hold of her
with a firm strength that the old woman’s body belied, and held her at arm’s
length. “You are the chosen one of the Lady, you speak for Her,” she said,
meeting Moon’s gaze with eyes that had lost none of the clear intentness that
Moon remembered. “And I raised you myself, child. I am proud to have been so
honored. You will certainly give me the honor of allowing me to show you proper
respect.”

Moon nodded silently, still caught in the void of time and
distance that had separated them tor so long. “I’m so glad to see you,” she
whispered, feeling the room slide back into focus, hearing the squeals and
chatter of her children. She hushed them absently, ineffectively.

Gran hugged them close again, beaming but unsteady under
their eager assault. “What a wonderful surprise you and Sparks have given me,
to warm my old age, to ease the Change for an old woman.”

“Gran, you aren’t old,” Moon said; hearing the worjs ring
false, wishing she had said nothing, as she guided her grandmother back to the
settee. “Are you hungry? How long have you been here? Have they been taking
care of you—?” Hurrying on, stumbling through the awkward moment of her
grandmother’s painful smile.

“Yes, yes,” Gran said. “A good Summer woman, a sibyl—”

“Clavally—”

“Yes, she was very kind, bringing the children in. And the—what
do you call them, the hands—?”

“The servants,” Moon said, glancing down.

Gran’s eyebrows arched. “Yes, well, they were very thoughtful,
for Winters. Are they all Winters here? Why are you here, surrounded by these
people, instead of our own?”

“Winters are just like Summers, Gran,” she answered, feeling
the prick of impatience. “They’re just as human as we are. They’re sweet and
sour together, just like islanders. They’re even sibyls—”

“So Clavally said to me,” Gran said, shaking her head. “Her
own pledged is a Winter sibyl, she said! I’ll believe that when I see it.” She
folded her knob-knuckled hands in her lap, worrying the folds of her heavy
sweater.

“Yes, Gran.” Moon smiled again, in surrender, watching her
children climb onto her grandmother’s lap, giggling and shoving, struggling for
position. Seeing herself and Sparks there ... feeling the memory start an ache
inside her. “Gran ... how is Mama? Where is she? Why didn’t she come here with
you?” She forced the question out, afraid of the answer, as she had been afraid
of it for the past eight years. She had come to hope that her family believed
she was dead, and Sparks too; so that they would never know the real cost of
this new life, this place of honor she had achieved. But in her darkest nights,
she had been sure that somehow her mother did know.

“Moon,” Gran murmured, looking up from the two small, contented
faces pressed against her, “I don’t know how to say this, but badly—”

“She knows, doesn’t she?” Moon said, unable to stop the
words. “She knows everything, and that’s why she wouldn’t come here, even to
see my children—” Her children looked up at her in surprise, at the sudden
change in her voice.