The Summer Queen (16 page)

“Moon,” Gran interrupted, her eyes filling with a sudden
pain that aged them to match her face, “your mother is dead.”

“What?” Moon said. She felt her knees give. “What? No. How?
When—” She sank down onto the Empire-replica recliner that pressed the back of
her knees as she reached out for support.

“An accident, a fall ... about three years ago. She slipped
on the quay while they were unloading the catch, and struck her head on the
stones. We thought she was all right, but then at dinner in the hall she grew
sleepy .... They knew it was a bad sign, and they tried to keep her awake. But
they couldn’t keep her from going to sleep. And she never woke up.” Gran’s eyes
grew moist with grief, and she held the children closer; they gazed up ai her
with wide eyes, half-comprehending. “And so the Sea Mother has taken both my
children back to Her breast ....”

“A concussion?” Moon said, the harshness of her voice startling
even her. Now three sets of eyes were staring at her without comprehension. “All
she had was a concussion. She could have been saved—”

“It was the Lady’s will.” Gran shook her head.

“It wasn’t!” Her own voice rose, as grief and frustration
triggered her anger. “It we had the technology of the offworlders for
ourselves, neither of your children would have had to die. Sparks’s mother didn’t
have to die in childbirth—”

“Stop it, Moon!” Gran’s frown deepened the lines of her
face. “What are you saying?” Her own voice quavered. She shook her head. “So,
it is true ....” Her face filled with a different kind of grief. “You no longer
follow Her will. But you are the Summer Queen, Moon—the chosen of the Goddess.
It isn’t too late for you to hear Her voice again—”

“You don’t understand.” Moon shook her head; her hands
hardened into fists in the lap of her robes. “Who told you that, Gran? Who
brought you here? How did you make the journey here from Neith, if my mother
didn’t—”

“I brought her to the palace,” a voice said calmly, behind
Moon’s back.

Moon turned, pushing to her feet as she found Capella Goodventure
framed in the scallop-form doorway like a portrait. Her graying braids circled
her head like a crown, her face was drawn up in a witch’s knot of spite and
satisfaction.

“I sent my people out into the islands to find some of your
clan who might still be able to reach you, and remind you of your proper duty
as the Summer Queen.”

“They have been very good to me, Moon,” Gran said, with
gentle firmness, “bringing me here, all this way, to be with you. You should
think about her words.”

Moon pressed her lips together. “That must have put you to a
great deal of effort,” she said to Capella Goodventure. “I’m sure the Lady will
grant you your just reward.” Her gaze was as cold as the sea.

Capella Goodventure’s frown deepened. “Perhaps you have already
been shown the reward for your heresy committed in the Lady’s name.”

Moon stiffened. “What do you mean?”

Capella Goodventure bent her head. “Your mother’s accident.
Perhaps it was a judgment.”

Moon felt herself go dizzy as the blood fell away from her
face. “My mother’s death was not my fault!” Even her grandmother pushed to her
feet, leaving the children tumbled wide-eyed on the settee.

“I didn’t say that.” Capella Goodventure lifted a hand, in
protest, in warning. “I only meant to suggest—”

“That it was my fault! Who are you to push yourself into my
life, where you’re not wanted? Get out! Leave me alone!” Moon’s hand found a
smooth iceform sculpture on the table beside her; her hand closed over it, and
she hurled it at the doorway. It shattered, sending bits of crystal flying. The
children shrieked in surprise and fright. Moon turned back, seeing that they
were all right, before she looked again at the doorway.

Capella Goodventure was gone. Standing in the hall at the
top of the stairs, a Winter servant stood smirking at the Summer woman’s abrupt
departure. “You get away from there!” Moon shouted, her voice breaking. He
turned, his smirk falling away. “Yes, your majesty.” He scuttled out of her
sight.

She stood staring after him. Your majesty ... He had not
been seeing her, but the image of a ghost she wore in her face, felt in her
anger—Sometimes they still called her that, the Winter staff, cringing away
when she snapped at them, as if she were not the Summer Queen but the Snow
Queen, and her anger was as deadly as frost.

But Arienrhod was dead ... like Lelark Dawntreader, the
sandy-haired, sea-smelling woman who had rocked a sleepy child in her arms
beside the fire, so long ago. They were both dead. And she was the Summer Queen.

She shook her head, pressed nerveless fingers against her
mouth, as she became aware of Ariele and Tammis clinging to her, their faces
buried in the homespun cloth of her robes—their voices crying at her like the
voices of seabirds that it was all right. Comforting her, needing her comfort.
She let her hands fall to their slender shoulders, felt the tension begin to
loosen in their small bodies and her own, as she gently rubbed their backs. “It’s
all right, treasures,” she murmured, hearing her voice falter as she spoke the
words. “Why don’t you take Gran down to dinner. She’s come such a long way ....”

“You come too!”

“I don’t want to go without you—” The children clung to her hands
more tightly than before, their eyes still filled with need, until she nodded. “Yes,
all right ... we’ll all go.” She looked back at her grandmother; away again from
the look in her eyes, her outstretched hand. Seeing her grandmother’s sympathy,
sorrow, apology, concern, she felt her own tears rise. If she let herself take that
hand she would become a child again too; and she could not afford to do that. She
turned away, keeping her eyes downcast, watching her footsteps lead her one at a
time out of the room and down the hallway, down the echoing stairs.

Sparks Dawntreader Summer—cousin, husband, consort of the
Summer Queen—stepped silently out into the night-lit familiarity of Olivine
Alley. It had been called “Blue Alley” when Winter ruled, and the
blue-uniformed offworlder Police had made its ancient buildings their
headquarters. He had avoided this place then; now, he almost made it his home.
He began his nightly walk toward the alley’s mouth, to meet the long steep
spiral of the Street, which would carry him inevitably to the palace no matter
how slow he made his steps.

After eight years he still hated the palace, and so he spent
as much time as possible outside it. But always he returned there at the end of
each day, because Moon was waiting for him and he loved her, as he had always
loved her, and always would. She was as much a part of him as his music, as
much a part of him as his soul—the things Arienrhod had stolen from him, and
Moon had given back to him. Life went on, whether he deserved it or not. And
his children, living proof of their love, waited for him there, among the
relics and the memories.

“Hallo, Sparks!”

Sparks stopped, glancing toward the brightly lit doorway and
the figure limned by its glow.

“We’re celebrating! Come, be my guest. I owe you, for your
support with the College—”

He recognized the voice now; his eyes filled in the
old/young features of Kirard Set Way away s. Kirard Set stood in the entrance
to a tavern called the Old Days, formerly one of the most flamboyant and
expensive gaming hells on the Street. Now its equipment lay cold and silent,
while the surviving nobility of the Snow Queen’s reign sat among its ghosts,
drinking to their memories and tossing bone dice—almost the only pleasures left
to them now, aside from conspicuous consumption and sex

“What are you celebrating?” he asked, cunous but wary, as he
stepped into the light. The old Queen’s favorites knew him too well, for better
or worse. He became aware of the rich smell of fried meal-cakes, heard other
voices calling his name. Talk and laughter spilled past him into the street; he
heard someone plucking a mindle with virtuoso skill, and drumming, whistling,
voices singing.

He touched the pouch at his belt. He always carried his
flute with him; telling himself that he never knew when he would find time to
practice or a chance to play .... But he wore it more as a talisman now, the
way a sibyl wore a trefoil; because it had come to symbolize a higher order
which music had first revealed to him—a greater truth which music never
betrayed. His work with the Sibyl College had shown him the beauty of
mathematics and physics; how they lay at the secret heart of everything,
including music itself. Every day new facets of that universal order revealed
themselves to him. He had begun to study mathematics in every free moment,
experiencing a purity of pleasure he had never found in anything before, except
his playing ....

The music pulled at him, suddenly irresistible. He stepped
into the tavern’s brightly lit interior, and Kirard Set pressed a crystal
goblet of wine into his hand. “We’re celebrating the choice of Wayaways land
for the site of the new foundry,” Kirard Set said, and he shook his head,
smiling. “She’s really incredible, you know, the Queen—” He put an arm around
Sparks’s shoulders. Sparks resisted the urge to shrug it off. “But of course you
know that, better than anyone .... How did she do it, anyway? How did she—But
never mind, of course your lips are sealed with a kiss.” Kirard Set made a moue
with his lips, and nudged Sparks’s shoulder.

Sparks took a long drink of the wine, imported offworlder
wine, leftover stock. The nobles had hoarded it the way they had hoarded
technology, before the offworlders’ departure. At least the Hegemony had not
been able to spoil its wine the way it had killed its abandoned hardware.
Sparks sat down at a table, following Kirard Set’s lead without comment. What
had once been a hologramic gaming array was covered now by a slab of wood, and
a tapestry cloth that had originally draped the window of some offworlder
official’s exclusive townhouse.

Sparks studied Kirard Set’s smiling face, and wondered what
actually went on in his mind. Not much, he supposed. He had always found Kirard
Set’s behavior either unpleasant or unfathomable. But one thing was obvious;
Kirard Set, and a number of the other former nobles, actually believed the
Summer Queen was the same flesh and blood woman who had ruled Winter; that
somehow Arienrhod had cheated the Summers, the Hegemony, and Death itself to go
on ruling her world. pursuing the goal she had sworn to achieve: independence
from offworlder control

Sparks glanced away again, with a sigh. Across the room he
noticed Danaquil Lu Wayaways with his wife and child, standing apart, looking
uncomfortable. Merovy was asleep, held in her father’s arms. Sparks felt a
twinge of guilt, remembering his own family waiting for him at the palace. He
had stayed at the College far too long, later even than usual, caught up in his
studies. His own children would be asleep, by now. He shook his head, putting
down the wine-filled goblet. “I can’t stay.” He began to get up.

“Sparks!” A woman’s voice called his name, a hand caught his
arm as he rose. “Darling, you can’t leave us already. We never see enough of
you anymore.”

Shelachie Fainsie tweaked the laces of his shirt, half
pulling it open. He took hold of her jewel-decorated hand and plucked it from
his shirtfront like an insect.

She twitched her hand free from his grasp. “Aren’t we
hard-to-get,” she said, matching his frown. He noticed the lines in her face
that deepened with her frown.

“You know I don’t do that anymore,” he said, trying to keep
his voice neutral, reminding himself that in the New Tiamat, Shelachie Fairisle
controlled ore reserves that would be needed soon for another foundry. He could
not afford to insult her casually.

“Yes, sweeting, hut I keep hoping. We all used to have so
much fun, with her .... I don’t understand—that’s one thing I don’t understand.
Why she doesn’t share you with us anymore?” She turned to glance at Kirard Set,
spreading her fingers in a shrug. “Do you have a clue, Kiri?” He shook his
head, his mouth puckering with suppressed laughter. “She just isn’t the same
woman, since the Change.” She giggled at her own wine-sodden whimsy, at the
titillation of not knowing where the truth lay beneath the shimmering water of
her fantasies. “Is she, darling?”

“You said it yourself,” Sparks snapped, losing patience. “She
isn’t the same woman. She’s my pledged—my wife. And I was on my way home to my
wife and my children.” He turned away from her, starting for the door.

“Whose children, precious—?” The words stabbed him from
behind.

He swung back, saw Clavally and Danaquil Lu turn and stare,
across the room; saw Kirard Set rise from the table, catching hold of Shelachie
with a muttered, “Not now, for gods’ sakes—”

“Well, whose are they, anyway?” she called out, weaving
where she stood, absurdly dressed in the clothes of another world and age. “Where
did she get them? They don’t look like you! And why didn’t she give them
special names, ritual names, if she got them during Mask Night? Even the
Summers say—”

He didn’t stay to hear what even his own people said. His
own people ... He reached inside his shirt as he strode on up the nearly empty
Street, feeling for the Hegemonic medal he wore, a gift to his mother from the
stranger who had been her chosen on the Festival night when he was merry
begotten .... His father was an offworlder, and he had never felt at home in
Summer, among its superstitious, tech-hating people. When Moon had forsaken her
pledge to him to become a sibyl, he had run away to Carbuncle. He had believed
that among the Winters and offworlders he would find out where he truly
belonged. He had found Arienrhod ....

But Moon was his again, in spite of everything, because of
it; and his children were proof of it .... Why did she give them those names?
They should have had special names. Festival names—His own mother and Moon’s
had come to the previous Festival, when the ships of the Hegemonic Assembly
paid one of their periodic visits to this world and Carbuncle became a place where
all boundaries broke down and everyone lived their fantasies for a night.
Children born of the Festival nights were counted lucky, blessed; given
special, symbolic names to mark their unique status. He and Moon both bore the
names that marked them as merrybegots; so did Fate Ravenglass.