The Summer Queen (7 page)

Moon was holding up a piece of jewelry, as he looked at her:
a silver pendant on a silver chain, with a jewel catching the light in its
center. “That’s a solii,” he said, in surprise. He had never seen Arienrhod
wear the pendant, although it must have been expensive; he wondered if she hadn’t
liked it. He wondered what the necklace was doing in her private study, instead
of with the rest of her jewelry. Moon glanced up at him, and laid the pendant
back on the desktop.

Sparks drifted on across the room toward the solitary,
ornately framed mirror sitting on another table. It could have been a vanity
table, where Arienrhod had studied her reflection to make certain it was still
unchanged after a hundred years and more of taking the water of life. But he
saw the telltale touchplate in the mirror’s base—the offworld electronics that
had transformed its silvery surface into something else entirely. He realized,
with a shock of recognition, that this silent room was the heart of the spy
system that Arienrhod had used to keep her informed of what went on in her
city, to keep herself one step ahead of the offworlders who would have taken advantage
of her ... to amuse herself, spying on the private lives of her enemies, of her
own nobles, even of the people closest to her, who were the most vulnerable ...
as she had spied on him while he made love to Moon, in the mirrored room down below
....

He turned away from his own suddenly grief-stricken reflection.
“Moon,” he said hoarsely, “we’ll never be able to forget, to begin again here.
We have to get away from all this—memory. It’ll never give us peace. I know we
can’t go back to Neith, but why do we have to stay here? Let’s find somewhere
else ... before the babies come.”

Moon looked up at him. Her mouth opened, but she made no
sound. She held something out to him in her hands, and from the look in her
eyes he knew that she had not even heard him.

He took the cube, saw a hologram of a child inside it, a
small girl with milk-white hair, bundled in the rough woolens and slickers of
an islander ... a girl he knew. The child moved through a moment’s joyful
laughter over and over again, held captive forever, never changing.

“It’s me,” Moon whispered, her voice breaking. “How did she
get this? How did it get here?”

He shook his head, staring at the image of the girl he had
loved even as a child in Summer.

He looked up again at her sudden sharp cry—not a sound of
grief, but of pain. “Moon—’?” He reached out to her as she clutched her
stomach, doubling over; her face whitened with another spasm. He moved toward
her, catching her in his arms, supporting her as he pulled her onto the bench
beside the mirror table. Fluid spilled down her legs, wetting her nightgown and
the rug beneath her feet.

“Moon, what’s happening—?” he cried “Are you all right?
Moon?”

She looked up at him, biting her lips, her eyes glassy. “Find
Miroe ... Sparks—it’s time ....”

“Damme, it’s Kedalion!” Ravien leaned across the bar, his
heavy blue-black hand catching the back of Kedalion’s collar and hauling him
the rest of the way up onto a seat. “Has it been a round trip already, then?”

Kedalion Niburu straightened up on the high stool,
rearranging his coat. “Thank you, Ravien, I think—” he murmured. He leaned on
the bar, his legs dangling like a child’s over the edge of a seat that was
nearly his own height. Being not much over a meter tall in a universe where
most humans were nearly twice that height had its drawbacks; among its mixed
blessings was the fact that very few people ever forgot him, even after six
years. “You’ve got a memory like a servo. And a grip to match.”

Ravien snorted, and poured him a drink. “See if I remembered
that right.”

Kedalion took a sip of the greenish-black liquid, and made a
face. “Ye gods, right again,” he said sourly. “You mean to tell me this is
still the best thing you have to drink?”

Ravien rubbed his several chins. “Well, you know, we’re
lucky to get anything at all, what with the stinking breath of the Church
Police down my neck all the time. I can get the sacramental wine on the black
market, because it profits the Church .... But for a certain price, I could
maybe find you something special.”

“Bring it out.” Kedalion pushed the cup back across the bar.
“I made all my deliveries on Samathe. I’m feeling worth it.”

“Good man!” Ravien nodded happily, wiping his hands down the
front of his elaborately formal and extremely unbecoming shirt as he started
away toward the back room.

Kedalion leaned on the bar. looking out into the room,
absently scratching the astrogation implants hidden in his hair. First a drink,
then a room and a shower and some companionship .... He felt a pleasant twinge
of nostalgia, brought on by the completion of another successful run. Though
maybe nostalgia was the wrong word for it. Relief was probably more accurate.
He was a legal trader, but the people he did business with and for usually were
not. It was an interesting life ... and half his time was spent wishing he’d chosen
some other line of work. He wondered, not for the first time, if he was trying
to prove something to somebody. Well, what the hell—As far as he could see,
that was what motivated the entire human race.

He let his gaze wander the subterranean room, taking in the
reflective ceiling that hid the naked structural forms of someone else’s
basement. Up above them was the Survey Hall, where offworlders who belonged to
that ancient, conservative social group talked politics, gave each other
self-important secret handshakes, and generally spent their evenings far more
tediously than he planned to. He had wandered through a display of the latest
Kharemoughi tech imports in one of their meeting rooms before arriving at the
club’s hidden entrance; what he had seen of the Hall was severe and
stuffy-looking.

The decor here, on the other hand, set his teeth on edge
with its gleaming excess. He focused on the dancer performing incredible
contortions as effortlessly as he would breathe, to the rhythmic, haunting
accompaniment of a flute and drum, and the wild trills of a woman singer. This
was the best private club he knew of in Razuma, and that wasn’t a compliment.
There were no public clubs. The theocracy that was Ondinee’s dominant onworld
government forbade even thinking about most of the things that went on here,
and in other places like this. He had heard that all those things, and worse,
went on all the time in the Men’s Orders that most privileged Ondinean males
belonged to. But places where offworlders were welcome, and permitted to enjoy
themselves, were as rare as jewels, and about as hard to find, even in a major
port like Razuma.

The irony was that while it persecuted vice among its own
people with a fervor that verged on the perverse, the Church also harbored—and
let itself be intimidated by—the largest enclave of offworld vice cartels in
the Hegemony. A large part of the local population made its living harvesting
drug crops and doing whatever else the cartels needed done. The offworlder
underworld made an enormous contribution to the Church’s economic and political
stability.

The relationship was not without its complications, however,
like most long-term relationships. Retribution was as much a part of the
symbiosis as contribution. A politician or churchman who made too much noise
about reform got a single warning—if he was lucky—and then a lethal sample of
the offworlders’ wares. It was a system which made the cartels’
strange-bedfellowship with the Church lords work very well. He should know. He
worked for them too.

Ravien came back with a bottle full of something that looked
to be a decent shade of amber. He poured it into an ornate silver metal cup,
and passed it across the bar.

Kedalion took a sip, didn’t gag, and nodded. Whatever it
was, it was drinkable. “Better. How’s business been?”

Ravien made a noise like clearing out phlegm. “Wonderful,”
he said sourly. “I could do ten times the business, if I didn’t have to be so
careful. The bribes I pay would astound you, and still they raid me! But they’d
close me down completely if I didn’t pay them. At least they’ve left me alone
these past few weeks ....” He threw up his hands and stumped away, still
muttering.

Kedalion shook his head, even though Ravian was no longer
there to see the gesture, and went on drinking, searching the crowd for a
familiar face. He’d take a few days off and then it would be time to start
hustling for another job. It wasn’t that he’d need the money that soon; more
that he’d need to get away from here. This world depressed him too much,
reminding him more acutely than even Kharemough of how uncomfortable human
beings invariably made one another.

The sound of tinkling bells and the heavy fragrance of
perfume made him turn in his seat, as one of the entertainers insinuated herself
against the bar beside him. “Ah,” she said, running slender ebony fingers
through his close-cropped brown hair. “Hello, Kedalion. Have you missed me’.’ I’ve
missed you.” She let the fingers trickle like water down the side of his jaw.

“Then it’s certainly mutual,” he said, feeling a grin spread
across his face. She laughed. “I love you iightskms, the way you blush,” she
said. Her name was Shalfaz, which was the name of the desert wind in the local
dialect. She wasn’t young anymore, but she could still haunt a man’s dreams
like the wind. Her body made music with every slightest movement, from the
necklaces, bracelets, anklets she wore, heavy with the traditional clattering
bangles and silver bells. She did not go veiled, since her occupation, though
traditional, was hardly respectable, and her robes were of thinnest gauze, in
brilliant layers like petals on a flower. “My room is empty—” she said. Her
indigo eyes gazed meaningfully into his own light blue ones.

He scratched his stubbled jaw, still smiling. “Yes,” he
said, and nodded, answering her unspoken question. “But have a drink with me
first; it’s the first time Ravien has given me liquor I minded leaving. Let me
savor the anticipation a little.”

She nodded and smiled too, bobbing her head in what was almost
an obeisance. She sat down. “You honor me,” she murmured, as she saw what he
was drinking.

“On the contrary,” he said, feeling uncomfortable as he realized
she meant that.

She sipped the amber liquor and sighed, closing her eyes.
She opened them again, looking out across the room. “What a strange night it
has been,” she said, almost as if she were thinking aloud. “It must be a mooncrossing
night. See that boy there—” She lifted her hand. “He was with me just since.
But all he did was talk. He didn’t even take oft his clothes. He asked me to
show him how I did some of my moves in the dance, but it didn’t arouse him. He
was very polite. But he just talked.” She shook her head. “He always comes in
alone, not with friends. I think maybe he’s some kind of pervert, but he doesn’t
know which.”

“Maybe he misses his mother,” Kedalion said, following her
gaze. “He’s only a kid.”

She shrugged, jingling. “He said he wants to leave Ondinee.
That’s why he comes in here, he said, to look for someone who would take him on
for crew. He’s been here every night for a week.”

“Oh?” Kedalion kept watching the boy, not certain why he
did, at first. He saw a youth with Shalfaz’s midnight coloring, dressed in a
loose robe and pantaloons of dark, bulky cloth. The boy’s long, straight,
jet-black hair was pulled back in a ponytail; thin braids dangled in front of
his ears. There was nothing about him that marked him as different from any of
the dozen or so other local men scattered around the room—probably all
hirelings of some drug boss, from their easy mingling with offworlders.

Unease. That was what made the boy different; he looked uncomfortable.
It was as if he was uncomfortable inside his skin, uncertain whether it was
showing the right face to the universe, or about to betray him. It was a
feeling Kedalion recognized instinctively.

“Shalfaz,” Kedalion said, leaning back against the bar, “would
you ask him to join us?”

She turned to him, her eyebrows rising. “You wish to hire
him?”

“I wish to speak to him, anyway.” Kedalion shrugged, a
little surprised himself. He was not impulsive by nature. “Maybe I wish to hire
him. We’ll see.” He had had a partner when he started out, but they had gone
their separate ways a while ago. Smuggling was a business that took its toll on
the nerves, and after a while they had gotten on each other’s too much of the
time. He had worked alone since then, but that had its own drawbacks,
especially for a small man in a big man’s universe. He suddenly realized that
he was tired; and he had never been a loner by nature.

Shalfaz left his side in a soft cloud of silver music. He
watched her make her way across the room to where the boy was sitting and speak
to him, gesturing at Kedalion. The boy’s head came up, and he rose from his
chair almost in one motion to follow her back to the bar.

They had almost reached it when a hand shot out from a table
full of local youths and caught Shalfaz’s clothing, jerking her up short. She
tried to pull away without seeming to. and Kedalion could almost make out her
murmured half-protests as she explained that her time was taken. The man’s
answer was slurred and crude. The boy hesitated, looking toward Kedalion, and
then turned back, speaking brusquely to the other Ondineans as he tried to take
her hand. One of the men pushed him away. Kedalion watched the boy recover his
balance with surprising grace, saw his fists tighten with anger. But he didn’t
reach for the knife at his belt, only stood with his hands flexing in indecision
as the drunken youth at the table pulled his own blade.

Kedalion slid down from his stool and crossed the space between
them. “My guests would like to join me at the bar,” he said flatly. “I’d
appreciate it if you would let them do that.” He hooked his hands over his
weapon belt ... realized with a sudden unpleasant shock that it was empty,
because noncitizens were not allowed to carry weapons in the city. He kept his
face expressionless, needing all his trader’s skill to ignore the gleaming
knifeblade almost exactly at eye level in front of him. “Shalfaz—?” he said,
with a calm he did not feel.