The Summer Queen (152 page)

He heard grunts of interest from some of the men around him;
aware of no warmth, but at least of acceptance, as he tossed the wad of janka
to Piracy. Janka was a mild narcotic some of the men chewed, when they could
get it.

“You take a cut?” Piracy asked.

He shook his head. “No, I ... Yes.” He sat down cross-legged
on the ground, suddenly too weary to go on standing. “Yes, I’ll take a cut.”
Maybe it would help him sleep. The longer he was here, the worse he slept.

Piracy glanced up at him in brief curiosity, looked down
again. “Okay—” he said. “You heard Treason. Anybody else wants a chew, ante up.”

Half a dozen scabbed, filthy hands tossed offerings from
their scant rations onto the ground in front of Piracy. He split up the wad of
janka scrupulously with his knife, passing it around. Solemnly he pushed the
final piece, and the small pile of rations, toward Gundhalinu.

Gundhalinu gathered them in, his battered hands indistinguishable
from anyone else’s. He began to eat without ceremony, not caring what it was
that filled his stomach, barely even tasting it. The sun’s burning face pushed
up over the horizon, making him squint. The other men who weren’t already
sitting sat down now, taking out their own food, as Piracy resealed the lock
box, kicking ash and cinders over it.

They ate in near silence, as they did at the end of every
workshift; having little left to say, and no energy to say it. But they ate
together, still hungry for human contact, although none of them would admit it.
This had come to be the most important moment of his own day, the one thing
that he looked forward to: sitting on the ground in the cold wind among these
men who made his barely tolerated existence possible.

Sometimes Piracy even held up the other end of a
conversation with him. Piracy’s mind possessed an odd, eclectic accumulation of
knowledge, most of it self-taught. They had talked for hours while Gundhalinu
recovered from his beating, sharing the other man’s hut. But even Piracy did
not risk talking to him often now, and sent him out with Bluekiller, not as his
own partner; afraid that getting too friendly with an ex-Blue would undermine
his position with the others.

The ground trembled; Gundhalinu swallowed convulsively, and
coughed.

“We got almost a full cache, Piracy,” someone said, after a
time. “We could make a trek to the post soon.”

Piracy glanced up over the mouth of his canteen. He grinned,
setting it down. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess that’s true. Maybe it’s time we
choose who gets to go.” A charged field seemed to build around him as he groped
in a pocket, drew out the cracked, ancient gaming piece he guarded as if it
were a jewel. “Three closest guesses take it, as usual. Whoever went last two
times is out of the game.”

Gundhalinu had been told the rules of this choosing, but he
had never actually witnessed it. He watched as the exhausted, dull-eyed men
around him suddenly came alive, leaning forward, calling out numbers with an
eagerness he had never seen them show about anything before. The three who won
got a break from the grueling drudgery of their work routine, and the chance to
spend a night in a place that actually resembled civilization, with beds, showers,
and real food, while they traded in the harvest they had brought for the small
rewards that made their lives bearable until the time when they were set free
from this living death.

“Treason?” Piracy said. “You got a number?”

Gundhalinu looked up, startled; realizing that he had not
said anything, as usual. He had not even been sure they would let him play.
Sudden excitement and hope filled him until he shone like the rest. He licked
his cracked lips, and said, “Twenty-three.”

Piracy nodded, and pushed up onto his knees. He held the
game piece cupped between his hands, shaking it, prolonging the ecstatic moment
when anything was possible for the men around him. And in that moment Gundhalinu
understood what had made him their leader. When the game piece fell, three men
would not only have the journey itself as a reward—they would have the days in
between of looking forward to it. Even the losers would win those days of
pleasant anticipation, of deciding what small, precious item not tied to their
own survival that they would put in a request for ....

Piracy held his hands out, bathed in golden light, and let
the game piece drop.

Whoops of triumph and curses of frustration made a deafening
cacophony in Gundhalinu’s ears, which had grown too used to silence. He pushed
forward, seeing the number face up in the sand, seeing that it made him a
loser. The loss caught in his chest like a barb; he swore. The others shrugged
and shook their heads, accepting defeat like they accepted everything else. But
he felt stunned as he realized how much the sudden, real hope of winning had
meant to him, now that it had suddenly been taken away.

He tried to focus on an adhani; unable even to remember one,
as Piracy announced the winners. They were congratulated by the losers, more
roughly than was necessary, but taking it with smug good humor. He felt bodies
begin to move, jarring him as they rose and went their separate ways back to
their huts to sleep. There was more conversation than usual, more animation,
even laughter. He forced his own unwilling body to get up, suddenly aware of
every ache and strained muscle; not understanding why only he felt worse, not
better. Maybe because the rest of them knew this would all end for them
someday; only he had no other hope that he still dared to believe in.

“Hey,” somebody said. “Look at Treason.”

Gundhalinu stiffened, and turned toward Accessory, who was
pointing at him.

“He’s got the green light,” Accessory said. “Look!”

The others began to turn back, staring in curiosity, as Gundhalinu
suddenly lunged at him, knocking him to the ground.

Gundhalinu sat on Accessory’s chest with his hands around
the other man’s neck. “Joke about that again, you bastard, and I’ll stuff your
lying tongue down your throat—”

“I’m not lying!” Accessory squealed, prying at his hands.
More hands were on him, dragging him off of Accessory, holding him back.

“He’s not lying, Treason,” Piracy said. He stepped in front
of Gundhalinu, meeting his furious stare. He held up a fragment of polished
metal, let Gundhalinu see his reflection in a sudden blaze of sunlight, and the
green light on his collar shining like a star.

Gundhalinu stopped struggling, seeing his own mouth fall
open. His hands rose to the collar around his throat, as the men holding him
let him go; as the rest clustered behind Piracy, staring at him.

“You said he was a term,” Accessory muttered, getting to his
feet. “I thought he only got the green light the hard way.”

“I was ... lam,” Gundhalinu whispered, still gazing at his reflection,
seeing a man he barely recognized press grimy fingers to his throat; detecting
the faint warmth given off by the light on his collar.

“Maybe it’s a mistake,” someone said. Gundhalinu spun
around, glaring at him.

Piracy put a hand on Gundhalinu’s shoulder. “They don’t make
mistakes like that around here, Treason,” he said quietly. “I’ll radio the
post. Guess you’re going along this trip after all. One way.” His mouth quirked
slightly. “Congratulations. We might even miss you, a little ....”

Gundhalinu nodded, barely, meeting his eyes. “I won’t forget
you, either. I won’t forget any of this.”

Piracy gave him a long stare, and shrugged. “Better if you
do, Treason,” he said. “It’s better if you do.”

Gundhalinu shook his head, looking down. “I couldn’t if I
wanted to,” he whispered.

“Guess your dream was true, Treason,” Bluekiller said.

Gundhalinu glanced up. “I guess it was,” he murmured, with a
strained laugh.

He took a step, suddenly afraid that he was still moving
through a dream. They parted ranks for him, the way the convicts had parted
ranks for a man with a green light on the day he had arrived. He passed through
them, his shadow walking a golden road through the dawn. He reached his hut and
crawled inside, still followed by the benediction of their stares, as if he had
become a peculiar sort of hero. He lay down on his pallet of rags with a sigh.
And then, against all odds, he went to sleep.

Reede Kullervo stood on the hidden balcony that overlooked
the reception hall, leaning against the rail in voyeuristic fascination,
watching the gathering below as he had watched it for hours, all-seeing but
unseen. This was only one of many hidden rooms and secret observations points
in the palace; he had been shown them all, after the Queen’s arrest, by members
of the Sibyl College. The aging blind woman who was the College’s head had ordered
them to protect him when the Blues arrived to flush him out; and they had, even
the two whose pregnant daughter was Tammis Dawntreader’s widow. He remembered
Merovy Bluestone’s quiet, pragmatic manner as she had treated his illness; he
remembered her eyes ....

He sighed, filling up his vision with the motion and color
of the crowded hall below. He could not remember now whether he had created
these quirks of design when he had dreamed of what Carbuncle would be, or
whether they had been added later, somewhere in the long, lost centuries
between his once-and-future lives.

He was grateful for them, whether it had been foresight or
not; because they had saved his life, and because now they let him observe the
closing of a circle which he had helped to bring about. The party below, where
offworlder officials and Tiamatans mingled in a fragile dance of diplomacy,
celebrated the return of Chief Justice BZ Gundhalinu.

He did not dare show himself down there while a single
Kharemoughi lingered, afraid that his face, or some random response, might
reveal the Smith to the unwanted attention of the Golden Mean. And so he had
watched from here as the hall slowly filled, studying the variegated colors of
skin and hair and clothing, the varieties of ostentation, sophistication, and
simplicity; savoring the sensuous pleasure of the patterns they inscribed on
his mind.

The Queen had moved among them, her movements seemingly
random except to his observation. His eyes told him that she drifted near the
entrance to the hall too often, looked toward it too much, smoothed back her
hair and checked the time repeatedly, with restless impatience.

Until the moment they had both been waiting for, without entirely
realizing it, had come at last—Gundhalinu had arrived. The music, and all
motion, had stopped in the hall: dancing, eating, gossiping, politicking, all
suddenly frozen into a magnificent tableau.

Gundhalinu had entered the room, accompanied by Jerusha
PalaThion, who wore the uniform and insignia of her position as the new
Commander of Police, and the endless silence was broken by applause. Gundhalinu
had stopped moving, in the small space left open to him inside the entrance, as
if the noise of sudden adulation had taken him aback. He stood, his head up,
not acknowledging the welcome, seeming after a moment hardly even to hear it,
as his eyes searched the crowd around him.

And then he had found what he was searching for—the Queen,
coming toward him as the crowd parted to let her pass through, her hair like
snow, her robes made of whispering moss greens, the diaphanous flowing blues of
the summer sky. She glittered with crystal beads like stars, like tears of the
sea. She wore no crown, but only a simple garland of flowers, as she approached
him with her hands held out in welcome.

Gundhalinu moved at last, stepping forward to take her outstretched
hands. They stood face to face, daring to embrace only with their fingertips;
but in the moment of contact, the unbearably ultimate entwining, there was an
ecstasy as pure as if the crowd’s witnessing eyes were a sacrament, and not an
intrusion.

Their hands released and fell away at last, as slowly as if
gravity had ceased to function in the space around them. Gundhalinu turned
briefly and said something to Jerusha PalaThion, gesturing toward the far side
of the room. PalaThion nodded, moving away through the crowd as the Queen led
Gundhalinu into the tide of congratulations and well-wishers, former enemies
and friends who were now indistinguishable, at least for the next few hours. Pematte
and the other members of the Hegemonic tribunal were the first to greet him;
Vhanu, the former Commander, was conspicuous by his absence.

All at once the hired musicians, who had held their silence
since his arrival, began to play again, an exquisite song Reede did not know,
but Gundhalinu seemed to have been waiting for. Gundhalinu’s face, which except
for his eyes had shown no readable expression until now, suddenly smiled. He
leaned over, murmuring something in the Queen’s ear. She turned toward him, her
surprise plain. He took the gesture as acceptance, taking her hand again,
drawing her toward him, leading her into the motions of a dance.

The crowd fell away around them, watching and murmuring as
they moved gracefully to the music through a widening gyre across the floor.
Reede watched too, thinking that the most hidebound Kharemoughi Tech in the
hall below could not possibly feel an astonishment any more profound than his
own as he watched Gundhalinu dance openly with the woman he loved. One by one,
other dancers began to take to the floor, until they were adrift in a sea of
bright motion.

Reede watched them dance together, with eyes for no one else
in the room: seeing in their faces the poignant contrasts, the painful
dichotomies that separated their two worlds ... seeing in their eyes the only
truth he knew.

And he remembered Mundilfoere, letting the midnight beauty
of her face fill his mind ... remembering all that she had been to him, and
done to him, and sacrificed for him. And he remembered Ilmarinen, whom he had
loved ... And he wept, in his solitary space, alone.