The Summer Queen (54 page)

Reede’s head jerked up, as the Source’s obscene laughter ran
its fingers over him. He spat, the only form of defiance left to him.

The Source made a wet kissing sound, and laughed again. “I
even know the one thing you needed more than her. I even have it waiting for
you. I believe you call it the ‘water of death’ ... ?”

Reede stared, his burning eyes filled with darkness.
Something that was not—could not be—relief caught in his chest.

“Oh, yes, Reede ... I know everything about you now. All
your most intimate secrets. You miserable, self-destructive lunatic. You
finally found something to do to yourself that frightened even you .... And I
don’t blame you for being afraid. I had the water of death tested on one of my
own people. The results were truly unspeakable, simply to witness. I cannot
imagine what they must have been like to endure. And incurable—? Oh, you are
brilliant ....” His voice dripped acid. “You forged your own chains—and now you’ve
handed them to me. You’ll have the water of death, Reede; and as long as you
are cooperative, you’ll have it on time. In fact—” the Source paused, and Reede
could feel his smile, feel it like a blade slowly slitting his throat, “I
expect you’ll be needing a fix soon. That is the real reason you were in such a
hurry to get back to Humbaba’s, isn’t it? Because you’d run short, poor
planning, and you were getting desperate. Not even Mundilfoere had that kind of
hold on you .... You’ll find a maintenance dose waiting for you in your new
lab. You’ll be permitted to make more, as long as you do your work.”

Reede said nothing. He swallowed the hard lump of loathing
in his throat and took a deep breath, inhaling until his lungs ached.

“Any questions about your new existence?”

Reede said nothing.

“Any last requests?”

“Go to hell,” Reede said, his voice breaking.

“Didn’t you know—?” the Source murmured gently. “I’m already
there, my pet. And so are you.” The dull-red glow that revealed nothing, worse
than a lie, dropped suddenly, completely, out of Reede’s visible spectrum. The
darkness around him was utter again, as it had been at the beginning.

Kedalion sighed and shifted position on the couch, glancing
at his watch. The couch was not as comfortable as it had looked. He wondered if
the perversity was intentional. Or maybe it was just him. This shouldn’t take
long, Reede had said. Reede had been wrong.

Ananke had actually fallen asleep again, curled up with the
quoll against his belly. Kedalion envied him his exhaustion. He was tired
enough to sleep anywhere, himself ... except in the middle of an enemy citadel,
surrounded by guards. The fact that nobody had been harmed—yet—filled him with
relief, but not reassurance. He listened to water dripping like a dirge,
somewhere in the garden below the window that might or might not be real: to
the distant noises, both strange and familiar, that drifted down the corridors
and into the space around him.

The door that had swallowed Reede dematerialized again,
abruptly, and someone came through it. The guards turned alert; Kedalion
straightened, stanng.

At first his eyes refused to believe that it was actually
Reede Kullervo they saw. The man who came back through that door wore Reede’s
face; but the face was ashen-gray, with red-rimmed eyes that registered nothing
at all. He moved like a stranger, crippled, broken.

“Reede—?” Kedalion said, keeping his eyes on Kullervo as he
reached out to shake Ananke awake. Ananke jerked upright, startled, as Reede
stopped moving and turned to look at them. Nothing showed in his eyes except a
kind of vacant disbelief. Kedalion was not entirely sure he even recognized
them. One fist was clenched tight, as if he held something in it; Kedalion
couldn’t see what. He had never believed before this moment how young Reede
actually was; stripped of his manic arrogance Reede looked like a boy, temfied,
terrifying in his vulnerability. Kedalion felt sick to his stomach, wondering
who or what had reduced a man like Reede to that, in so little time.

The Newhavener who had brought them all here crossed the
room to Reede’s side, showing his teeth in a grin as he assessed the obvious
damage. “Give me your hand,” he said. An order, not a request. Reede obeyed it.
The Newhavener’s hand closed around Reede’s wrist, spread his palm open like a
flower. His other hand pressed something down on it, and Kedalion saw a sudden
flash of light. A tremor ran through Reede’s body, but he made no other
response. “Welcome aboard, Kullervo,” the Newhavener said, still grinning in
cold satisfaction. He turned away from Reede, heading toward the place where
Kedalion and Ananke sat waiting. He reached them at the same moment as the
smell of burned flesh did. He put out his hand.

Kedalion held up his own hand silently, his jaw clenched;
knowing what came next. Most of Humbaba’s vassals had worn a brand—although
Reede had not, and he had never marked either of his crew as property. Kedalion
kept his eyes fixed on Reede, who stood staring at his own branded palm. He
told himself fiercely that adoption by the enemy was the best thing that could
have happened to them, when he considered the alternatives; kept telling himself
that until the iron came down on his own exposed flesh. White-hot pain seared
through his hand, went screaming up the nerves of his arm. He cried out,
although he had sworn he would not; tried to jerk his hand free, but the
Newhavener held it in a grip as inescapable as a vise until he was finished.

He released it, and Kedalion pulled it back, cursing under
his breath, dizzy with pain. He forced himself to look at the brand. There was
an eye burned into his flesh, staring back at him. He swore again as he
recognized the mark. He knew at last whose prisoners they were; and he knew the
Source’s reputation. He looked away from the livid burn, at Reede again. He
looked back as the Newhavener reached Ananke.

Ananke held up his hand, held it steady in the air. His free
hand knotted into a fist as the Newhavener spread his palm. He shut his eyes,
and bit his lip. The brander came down on him; Kedalion grimaced as he saw the
flash of light, saw Ananke shudder and the trickle of bright red that leaked
down his lip and chin as the Newhavener let him go again. With his good hand,
Kedalion fished a handkerchief out of his pocket, and passed it silently to
Ananke. Ananke pressed it to his mouth, covering a crooked grin of desperate
pride.

The Newhavener watched them noncommittally, then stepped
back, and jerked his head toward the lift. “Come on. I’ll show you your
quarters.” Kedalion hesitated, looked toward Reede; suddenly more afraid for
Reede than for himself or Ananke, if they were separated. But the Newhavener
moved back to Reede, tried to take him by the arm as if he thought Kullervo was
incapable of obeying on his own. “Come on, Reede.”

Reede came alive as the Newhavener put a hand on him; caught
the man’s wrist with his branded hand and pulled it free. The Newhavener
stiffened; the anger drained out of his face as he looked into Reede’s stare
and found no pain registering there.

“Stay away from me,” Reede whispered, and for a moment
Kedalion saw something he recognized in Reede’s expression; something deadly.

The Newhavener backed off with a shrug. “No problem,” he
muttered, and started toward the lift.

They took another labyrinthine journey through the hive of
the citadel. This time the Newhavener took some pains to point out what they
were seeing. Kedalion tried to ignore his throbbing hand and concentrate on the
view, to get a feel for what he was going to be calling home from now on,
whether he liked it or not. But his attention kept flickering back to Reede’s
vacant face, and every time it did he got queasy again.

At last they reached their destination, deep in the heart of
the laboratory complex. The complex covered fifteen stories, the entire south
quadrant of the fortress, according to the Newhavener—who had finally told them
his name, TerFauw—and it employed close to a thousand workers. By Kedalion’s
estimate, that made it ten times the size of Humbaba’s labs. TerFauw took them
up through the general living quarters, pointing out shops and eateries, but
they didn’t stop until they got to an apartment which seemed to occupy an
entire separate level of the complex.

He took them through its rooms, pointing out things with a
disinterest Kedalion round remarkable, considering the luxurious elegance of
the surroundings. He supposed, a little enviously, that these were Reede’s new
personal quarters. He tried again to make the relative gentleness of their
treatment jibe with whatever had been done to Reede in the three hours that he
had been missing. Reede regarded his surroundings with bleak indifference.

“You’ve got access to your personal laboratories through
that door, Kullervo—” TerFauw pointed. “Somebody’11 take you the rounds of the
whole complex tomorrow. Master’s real eager for you to get to work.”

Reede turned to look, showing real interest in something for
the first time. The door was secured; Kedalion saw the familiar red outline
glow of a Kharemoughi stasis lock. “Open it,” Reede said.

TerFauw shook his head. “Can’t.”

Reede turned back to him. “Cancel the fucking lock—”

“Only the Master can do that,” TerFauw said. “I can’t. You
can’t. He’ll open it when he decides he wants you to have what’s in there ....
It’s not up to you, anymore, Kullervo, you understand me?”

Reede glared at him; and then the sudden fury in his eyes
turned to ashes, as if TerFauw had said something more than Kedalion had
actually heard him say. TerFauw smiled; his twisted lip made a sneer of it.
Reede turned his back on them, and went into the next room.

TerFauw turned back to Kedalion and Ananke. Kedalion held
his breath, wondering what kind of hellhole TerFauw had in mind to drop them
down; sure that they were not going to rate the kind of consideration someone
like Reede did. “You two are staying here with him, until we figure out what to
do with you.”

Kedalion nodded wordlessly, surprised and relieved.

“I’m putting it on you both to watch him till he settles in.
He’s still a little out of phase right now.” The sneer pulled TerFauw’s lips up
again.

Kedalion glanced at the doorway to the next room, thinking
the man had a gift for understatement.

“See that he doesn’t do anything to himself.” TerFauw met
Kedalion’s questioning stare. “Anything that happens to him, happens to you.
Both of you.” He bent his head at Ananke. “I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” Kedalion muttered. He was suddenly, painfully
aware of the throbbing burn on his palm.

TerFauw went out, leaving them alone. Ananke put the quoll
on the floor, one-handed, and headed for the bathroom. The quoll snuffled the
deep green carpet, decided that it wasn’t edible, and began to wander across
the floor. It scuttled under a table as Reede came silently back into the room.

Reede’s gaze went straight to the locked laboratory door.
The seals were still red. He raked the room with his eyes, as if he was
reassuring himself that they were finally alone. He sat down on a couch covered
with brilliant, flame-patterned cloth, looking like a refugee, saying nothing.
Staring at the door. One fist was still clenched over something.

Ananke came back into the room, carrying a can of skingraft
in his good hand. “I found this, Kedalion—” he said, and tossed it out.

Kedalion caught it, awkwardly, shook his head as he looked
at it. “You put some on already?”

“Yeah.”

“Wash it off, or you won’t have a scar. The whole point of
it is that they want you marked. Unless you want to go through that again—”

Ananke looked sick, and shook his head. He started away down
the hall toward the bathroom. “You did good,” Kedalion said. Ananke glanced
back, and smiled feebly. Kedalion followed him; he took a leak while Ananke gingerly
rubbed the bandage off his hand, keeping his eyes averted. Kedalion checked
through the supplies in the well-stocked medical cabinet, wondering morbidly if
someone had put them there as a precautionary measure, in case Reede tried
something drastic. He pushed the thought out of his mind, and took out a tube
of ointment. “Here,” he said to Ananke. “This’ll kill the pain.”

Ananke smeared some of it across his palm, wincing; handed
the tube back to Kedalion. Kedalion took it with him into the other room, where
Reede still sat staring at the door. Kedalion spread ointment on his own palm
in full view of Reede, sighed as the pain went out like a smothered fire. Then
he approached Reede, offering him the ointment at arm’s length. “Boss—?”

Reede looked up at him, down again at his own blistered
palm. He closed his fingers over the burn deliberately, and tightened them into
a fist. “No,” he whispered.

Kedalion moved away from him, swallowing. “Come on,” he said
quietly to Ananke. “Let’s eat.” He went into the kitchen, where they could be
private enough to talk and still see Reede. Ananke sat on the counter, looking
out the doorway, while Kedalion queried the food systems and put in an order.

“What happened, Kedalion?” Ananke said at last. “Gods, I’ve
never seen him like that. What do you think they did to him—?” He touched his
own bitten lip, and flinched.

Kedalion shook his head. “I don’t know,” he murmured, feeling
fear knot up his stomach again. “I don’t think I want to. But TerFauw’s right ...
we’ve got to watch him like cats.”

“He needs more than that,” Ananke said, meeting his eyes.

Kedalion nodded, feeling a frown settle between his brows. “I
know,” he muttered. “I know that. But, damn it, I don’t know what to do—” He
grimaced, filled with a sense of helplessness as he admitted the truth ...
admitted to himself how much he wanted to help the human shadow huddled on the
couch in the next room. The sight of Reede’s suffering and vulnerability had
gotten to him, in a way Reede’s anger and moods never had. It made him feel responsible.
He hated the feeling. But he realized, suddenly, that he didn’t hate the man.
He rubbed his aching eyes, remembering again just how tired he was, how long it
had been since he’d had any sleep. He turned back as platters of food appeared
on the shelf above him.