The Summer Queen (153 page)

And when the dance was done, he watched Gundhalinu and the
Queen eat and s,peak and move through the crowd, always together, forcing all
witnesses to recognize and acknowledge their unspoken union.

At last the guests began to depart, disappearing like beads
from a broken string. The Hegemony’s elite left first, as soon as it was
graciously possible to do so; only Gundhalinu showed no signs of restlessness.
Reede shifted position as he watched the last Blue leave the hall, suddenly
restless himself, as if he had been freed of some oppressive weight.

A sound made him start and turn. He looked behind him, his
back pressing the rail. “Ariele?” he said, as she materialized silently in
front of him. She was not wearing the clothes he had last seen her in: she had
changed her strobe-colored, defiantly sensual offworlder clingsuit for a long,
shapeless native robe, its sleeves and neckline covered with smocking. Strings
of heavy beads hung around her neck, made of carbuncles and agates and polished
shell.

She hesitated, uncertain all at once, and he was abruptly
aware of his own reaction, how he stood clutching the railing as if he were
expecting attackers ... or a ghost.

He straightened away, letting go. “Where were you?” he
asked, half frowning in concern, half frowning at himself as he saw her face. “I
saw you in the hall when they started arriving; and then you disappeared.”

She looked down, coming to stand beside him in the alcove as
he put out his hand. She kept her face averted as he slipped his arm around
her; staring at the scene below, as he had done. He felt her hand cover his,
tentative but warm. She had seemed somehow insubstantial since her awakening,
since her mother had brought her back from the dead. “I did what was required
of me,” she murmured. “I greeted the offworlders with the proper hypocritical solicitude.
And then I went to my old playroom, and I looked at all the toys that used to
be mine, and—and Tammis’s ....” Her voice faded. She was silent for a long
moment. “I read some books, and had warm tea and honeycakes, as if I was a
little girl again. It was very peaceful, there in my room.” She looked up at
him. “Did you watch from here the whole evening?”

“I’m an offworlder,” he said, touching her face, and it was
not an answer to her question.

“You’re not like them.” She jerked her head disdainfully, at
the Kharemoughis who were no longer in the room below, but whose shadows
remained, clouding their future.

“Your father is,” he said, making her turn back again in
anger and grief. “Or your father was,” he amended, more gently. He glanced over
the hidden railing, seeing the Queen and Gundhalinu still side by side, bound together
by an invisible cord of need. She followed his gaze, and he saw her frown. “Let
them be happy .... It’s what he wanted them to be. It’s what they deserve.”

She stood motionless, watching them together, her frown
slowly fading until her face held no expression at all. Finally she nodded.

“Here.” Reede took his arm from around her, reaching into
his belt pouch for something he had carried there, forgotten, until now. “He
wanted you to ... have this back.” He passed her Dawntreader’s shell flute, its
fragile, spiral form traced with hairline fractures, anciently mended.

Her mouth opened; nothing came out of it. She took the
flute, held it, pressed it against her cheek, closing her eyes. “I want to go
away from here—from the city—and never come back. Aunt Jerusha said that we can
live at her plantation. We can be alone, with just the mers ....”

“She said that?” His hands tightened over the rail again, as
his body suddenly seemed weightless. “We could do that,” he whispered. “We
could. Yeah, that would be good ... that would be just fine.”

She looked up at him again, with a bloom of color coming
into her ashen cheeks, a smile ripening the full softness of her mouth.

He took her hand, looking at her long, slender fingers, pale
even against his own, and the solii ring that she wore, the mate to his own.
His throat closed over the words that he tried to say, and he took her into his
arms, holding her against his heart, breathing in the sweet, warm scent of her,
and the musty, ancient smell of the walls. After a time he asked, “Why did you
come up here?”

She broke away from him, to look up at him with a smile, as
the music suddenly began again below. It was a completely different kind of
music from what had been played before, the refined measures intended to lull
hypercritical Technician sensibilities. Reede glanced over the rail, proving to
himself that it was really the same group of musicians he heard, suddenly
playing the lilting, whimsical melody of a traditional Summer dance tune. “This
is the real party, beginning now,” Ariele said. “I wanted you to come and be
with me, down there—” She reached for his hand, hesitated; smiled, as he came
with her willingly, almost eagerly.

They went down the stairs side by side, entering the sea of
bodies and faces, their arrival barely making a ripple. Most of the people
around him looked completely unfamiliar; here and there among them he saw
someone he had met before. He saw Merovy Bluestone; their eyes locked, before
he could look away again. He had lost track of Gundhalinu and the Queen as he
reached the level of the ballroom.

Ariele brought him to an open space where people were dancing
now in a way that was as spontaneous as the music was. She pulled him into the
motion of the dance, making him dance with her. The steps were simple and he
obeyed; feeling clumsy and frustrated, because he still had not completely
accepted that his body was no longer the perfect machine the water of death had
made of it. He kept on, gamely, and he began to discover that his body liked to
dance—had always liked to dance, he realized, although he could not clearly
remember ever having done it. They danced together, not simply with each other
but within the embracing motion of all the other dancers, to music that was
alternately lively and plangent, until Ariele’s face was flushed and laughing,
like his own.

But his once-tireless body forced them to the sidelines, to
eat pickled fish and drink strangely flavored wine until his senses began to
buzz. “I remember this ...” he murmured, with unsteady laughter, as the wine
went to his head.

Ariele looked up at him. “What?” she asked.

Someone calling his name saved him from having to answer. He
looked away through the crowd, seeing three figures moving toward them, in an
unexpected juxtaposition of forms: The Tiamatan woman who ran Starhiker’s, and
with her his pilot and crew.

“Hey, boss,” Niburu said, and his sudden grin told Reede
that he’d probably been drinking too much too.

“Gods,” Reede said, looking from one of them to the other,
feeling his face doing odd things. “Where the hell have you been?”

They had been in jail, until PalaThion had finally been
named Police Commander and set them free. Since then he had scarcely seen them;
something which, he could only admit now, drunk with wine and fatigue, had
bothered him considerably.

Niburu looked at him, with a wry glance past his shoulder at
Ariele. “Around the city, helping clean up the storm wreckage,” he said. He put
an arm familiarly around Tor Starhiker’s waist. Her own arm snaked across his shoulders,
rubbing his chest.

Reede raised his eyebrows. “I guess virtue has its rewards.”

Niburu shrugged, and grinned. “She likes my cooking.”

Tor smiled. “It’s plain,” she said, “but it’s very filling
....” Niburu turned red. Ananke stood behind them, wearing the quoll in its
sling, smiling and silent; always the cryptic shadow. “You haven’t had much
need for a ferryman lately,” Niburu said.

“That’s true,” Reede murmured, glancing at Ariele. “Guess
not.” His hand touched hers.

“So,” Niburu said, finally, “what do we do now?”

Reede looked back at him. “Eat. Dance. Have a good time,” he
said.

Niburu shook his head. “I mean, after that. Tomorrow. Next
week. A couple months from now?”

Reede hesitated, staring at the three of them, at the
variety of expressions on their faces, that were somehow all the same expression.
“We—Ariele and I,” he glanced down, “are going down south, along the coast. We’re
going to try ...”He broke off. To find forgiveness. “To find ... something we
lost.”

Niburu nodded—as if he was satisfied, Reede thought. “Then
you still won’t be needing a pilot,” he said.

“Guess not,” Reede repeated, looking away again. “You like
boats?” He looked back.

“I don’t like boats,” Niburu said. “They sink. I didn’t like
them on Samathe. I still don’t like them. He doesn’t like them either.” He
gestured to Ananke.

Reede looked at them oddly. “You want to go,” he said. “You’re
leaving.”

“You’ve got somebody to take care of you now, boss.” Niburu
smiled. “You don’t need us anymore.” He hesitated. “It’s been a long time.
Maybe we all miss something.”

Tor looked down at him. “You sound like you’re never coming
back,” she said.

“Well, love, I didn’t say that.” He looked up at her, with
his faint smile widening. “I never say never. If I learned one thing from him—”
he gestured at Reede, and his smile turned sweet-sour, “it’s never say ‘never.’
...” She kissed the top of his head. He kissed her exposed navel. Ananke rolled
his eyes.

And Reede felt a sourceless pain strike his gut. He put his
drink down on the table behind him, blaming it. “So when are you leaving?” he
asked, without looking up again.

Niburu didn’t answer, for a moment; as if he were waiting
for something else, or had expected a different response. “Soon as I can get
our cargo set. A few days.”

“A few nights?” Tor asked, running her fingers through his
hair.

“That too,” he said, glancing up. “Well,” he murmured, as
Reede finally faced him again. “I guess we’ll stop off before we go, and say
goodbye ....”

“I hate long goodbyes,” Reede said, blinking. “Don’t do
that.” He realized that his nose was running, and wiped it on his sleeve. “Got
a cold,” he muttered, and coughed.

“Better take care of that,” Niburu said, his eyes filled
with both disbelief and a kind of wonder.

“Take care of yourselves.” Reede offered his hand, and
Niburu took it, covering the identical brands on their palms.

Niburu’s smile spread to his mouth again. “That’ll be easy,
now that we don’t work for you.”

Reede laughed. “Thanks ...”he muttered, and knew that Niburu
understood what he was really being thanked for. He reached past Niburu to
Ananke; touched the quoll where it lay, contented as usual in its sling. He
stroked it for the first time since the day he had fished it out of the well,
back on Ondinee. The quoll burbled in congenial surprise, watching him with a
black, bead-bright eye. “Take care of that thing, too. You saved its life, you’re
responsible for its life, forever; you know the rules.”

Ananke looked up at nun, stroking the quoll, so that their
fingers touched briefly. “I know, boss,” he said, his voice soft but strained. “Goodbye,”
he said, and there was something in his face that Reede might have taken for
longing, except that that wouldn’t have made any sense.

The music changed again, making them all look up. Another
song was beginning, and floating above the blend of native and offworld
instruments was a new sound, high and haunting, unlike anything he had heard
before, but reminding him suddenly, achingly, of the mersong.

He turned, looking for Ariele as he realized that she was no
longer standing beside him.

Tor touched his arm, pointing toward the music. He lifted
his head, following her gesture, to find Ariele among the musicians; realized
then that it was the sound of her father’s flute he heard. He had known she had
a gift for music and mimicry, but he had not known that she played.

The music, and his own surprise, held him captive for a long
moment. When he turned back, he found the others were already drifting away,
out of his reach, across the dance floor. Ananke lifted a hand in farewell,
looking back, and then they were gone.

Reede started on through the crowd, trying to make his way
closer to the place where Ariele and the musicians were playing. He saw Merovy
Bluestone again, standing beside the Queen. Moon’s arm was around her; the two
women were motionless, listening, with the same astonishment and grief filling
their faces. He remembered that Tanunis had carried a flute; that probably he
had played it, just as his sister had ... just as Sparks Dawntreader had. He
considered the strange patterns woven by heredity and environment, by love and
grief; and he wished that he were drunker, or not so much so.

“Kullervo,” a voice said. He looked up, and saw Gundhalinu,
who had been standing at the Queen’s other side. Gundhalinu moved away from
her, coming toward him.

“Welcome back,” Reede said, without a smile. “To the land of
the living.”

Gundhalinu looked surprised at him, as if he had said something
completely incomprehensible. But then he nodded, not smiling either. “Yes ...”
he said quietly. “Thank you. Thank you for your part in it.”

Reede shrugged slightly. Seeing Gundhalinu up close at last,
he was startled by the drawn weariness of the other man’s face, the way its
lines had deepened—the marks that Gundhalinu’s ordeal in the Camps had left on
him, that his sudden reprieve had not begun to erase. The stark black and
silver uniform, the reflected light of badges and medals, the cruel curved
spines of a trefoil among them, only echoed the hard disillusionment in Gundhalinu’s
eyes. “Maybe it makes us even,” Reede said.

Gundhalinu smiled then, barely; as if his mouth had almost
forgotten how to form the expression.

The Queen turned, hearing their voices behind her. Merovy
had disappeared; Reede suspected that his presence was the reason. As the Queen
moved toward him, stopping beside Gundhalinu, Reede was struck by the sight of
them: They were like mirrors, each reflecting the other’s suffering, their
separate ordeals that had only been manifestations of the same ordeal. He
realized that he had not even been aware of how the Queen had changed, until
this moment; he had been too preoccupied with his own sea-change. He wondered
what they saw in his face.