The Summer Queen (70 page)

She glanced at her reflection in the mirror that hung
discreetly at the bottom of the stairs: confronted by the present wearing her
face. Her once stolid body had changed, rounding out with the years and Shotwyn’s
rich cooking. But to her surprise she found that she liked the changes. Maybe
it was because Shotwyn, in his better moments, referred to her as voluptuous;
or maybe it was just that the wider, softer curves filled her clothing in a way
that made her feel elegant, and not fraudulent

She forced herself to admit again that while this might not
be all she could ask of a future, at least there had been a future after all,
and at least she was here to see it. And now they were even saying that the
Millennium had come, that the offworlders had gotten their legendary stardrive
and would be back on Tiamat within a matter of years. Never in her wildest
dreams had she expected she’d live to see that day. Life hadn’t turned out to
be nearly as dull and fish-stinking as she had imagined it would be.

In fact it felt, and smelled, extremely good as she drifted
on past the mirror. She took a deep breath. Between her own perfume—which
Shotwyn had concocted from a blend of herbs and flowers on a passionate whim,
too long ago—and whatever he was putting in the sauce and soup tonight, the
warm, heavy air around her smelled like heaven. She looked out into the dimly
lamplit room, at the scattering of early evening guests. The lampglow was not
exactly a high-tech environment, but the light was more flattering to all those
aging faces; and even the offworlders had liked a few rustic touches, that let
them feel like they were experiencing something exotic, here on this strange
backwater world.

She picked up a copy of the evening’s menu and glanced at it
as she started into the kitchen. The florid names riddled with words in barely
pronounceable languages always annoyed her, even though she knew they were necessary;
a part of the ambience, as Shotwyn would say. She had to ask him for a
functional description of each dish every evening, because most of their
clientele could no longer speak any of those languages fluently, if they ever
had. “Ye gods—”

She heard Shotwyn’s slightly nasal voice rising in
exasperation as she let the kitchen doors slip shut behind her. He stood across
the room, oblivious to her arrival, gesturing expressively as he berated one of
the cook’s helpers for some inadequacy or other. The hapless recipient of the
abuse was Brannod, one of the two Winter nomad brothers she had hired to wash
dishes and clean up.

The City was filling up with nomads these days; aimless, ignorant,
and likely to starve to death unless a soft touch like her took pity on them,
and gave them some menial job. The worst part was that they had no idea even of
how ignorant they were, which made them worse than the Summers. Many of them
had become dependent on the offworlders through trade and thievery during the
hundred and fifty years when the Snow Queen and the Hegemony had ruled; but
they were only superficially knowledgeable about technology, unlike Winters
from the city or the coast. The nomads tended to be as insular and superstitious
as the Summers, but unlike the Summers they had let their traditional customs
slide, until they no longer knew how to survive off the land when they had no
choice. And so they wandered down to the shore with the melting snow, and
eventually found their way into the city.

This pair were all right—not too bright but not too
stubborn, and they’d been hungry enough to become loyal, if limited, employees.
She hired city-bred Winters for work that required more skill, or more social
grace.

“What’s the matter, Shotwyn?” She strolled up behind him,
saw him start and turn to look at her; saw the relief in Brannod’s pale blue
eyes at her appearance.

“Everything!” Shotwyn snapped, planting a flour-covered hand
in the middle of Brannod’s chest and shoving him away. “Go, and get me another
one! Then clean up this mess! Imbeciles ...” Brannod wandered away glumly, in
search of another whatever. Showtyn ran the floury hand through his hair,
whitening the gray-shot auburn. “I’m going to disembowel myself if this goes on—”

“Only Kharemoughis disembowel themselves, Shotwyn,” she said
mildly. “Don’t carry nostalgia for the past too far.”

He sniffed. “That’s what’s paying the bills, my dear.”

“Well, we won’t pay many more bills if you kill yourself
over broken crockery. So what are we eating tonight, anyway?”

“Cream of crockery soup.”

“We’ll charge extra,” she said, and saw him smile,
grudgingly. His long, saturnine face looked ten years younger when he smiled,
which wasn’t often—because, he insisted, he was an artist. “And explain this
menu to me, will you? What’s this?” She gestured at something which contained a
hieroglyphic character.

“It’s Sandhi,” Shotwyn said, with irritating superiority. “The
primary language of Kharemough.”

“I know,” she replied, with exaggerated patience. “But what
is it?”

“‘Fish,’ of course,” he muttered, frowning as he turned
away. “It means ‘fish,’ that’s all. Everything means ‘fish.’ Pronounce it any
way you like.” He waved his hand in despair and dismissal, as Brannod came back
reluctantly into his line of sight, carrying a bowl and a broom.

Tor sighed and went back through the doors into the dining
room. There was no use talking to him when he was in one of those moods; which
was most of the time, she thought irritably. She fixed a serene, welcoming
smile on her face as she moved out into the room beyond, to mingle with the
early diners, most of whom were regulars she knew personally. She had been
forced to develop a reasonably gracious manner as the proprietor of Persipone’s,
had worn it like the bizarre persona its real owner had forced her to wear—the
image of a dead woman, whose holo he kept with him always, in the blackness he
had inhabited like some night demon. Having to play Persipone was the one thing
about her job she had hated. When the Change came, she left behind everything
that even reminded her of that unwholesome imitation of someone else’s life.

But you never really unlearned a skill, even the skill of
smiling graciously when you didn’t feel like it, and speaking empty pleasantries
to empty-headed guests. She made her way among the tables, saying hello, making
certain that the servers were doing their jobs.

She stopped suddenly, as she noticed Sparks Dawntreader sitting
at a table in the far corner of the room, by the diamond-paned windows that
faced on the alley. It was the third night she had seen him here in the past
week. He had been here only one time before this, under duress, she suspected,
at the party they had thrown when they opened the place.

He sat at the same corner table each time, isolating himself
as much as possible from the rest of the crowd eating here, keeping company
with a book or a tape reader. And yet he watched the others, the Winters who
had once been his constant companions, while trying to pretend he wasn’t
watching them; just as she watched him while pretending not to.

She wondered why he was here, since it wasn’t out of
fondness or loyalty. She wondered why he wasn’t home with his family ...
wondered if he and the Queen weren’t getting along. It wouldn’t surprise her—it
surprised her that they’d gotten along at all over the years, after all that
had happened between them.

Moon had believed she loved him more than life itself when
she’d come to the city hunting him. She had dragged everyone she met, including
one Tor Starhiker, into her quest to save him and her confrontation with Arienrhod.
There had been something about her that defied reason—maybe the intensity of
her passion, or maybe just her uncanny resemblance to the Snow Queen—that had
compelled Tor to defy her own better judgment and help a naive girl fresh from
the outback, full of impossible, romantic dreams.

Just because Moon had actually made those dreams come true,
it didn’t mean that in the long run she wouldn’t come to realize that getting
your heart’s desire was sometimes more of a curse than a blessing. Tor wondered
if Sparks Dawntreader had come to the same conclusion; whether he was sitting
there now moodily watching what went on across the room because he felt guilty,
or because he missed the old days ... whether once you began living on the dark
side, you got a taste for it that would never go away. She sighed, turning away
as a crowd of half a dozen new customers entered the restaurant.

She saw Kirard Set Wayaways at the front of the party, and
his wife Tirady Graymount. They ate here almost every night—old friends of
Shotwyn’s, who liked pretentious, nostalgic food.

As she started forward to greet them and show them to a
table she saw them notice Sparks Dawntreader; watching their faces, she read
their amusement and interest. They murmured inaudibly, nudging each other.
Tirady and another woman split off from the group—at Kirard Set’s urging, Tor
noticed—and went to Dawn treader’s table.

He looked up from his reading; startled but not surprised,
Tor was sure. She greeted the rest of Kirard Set’s colorfully dressed party,
still watching from the corner of her eye as she led them to their seats. She
saw the women flank Sparks, putting their hands on him familiarly, kissing him
in a more-than-polite greeting as they gestured toward their own table. Sparks
shook his head, at first noncommittal, and then frowning. He stood up abruptly,
shaking them off, and left the restaurant.

Kirard Set tsked audibly. He looked up at Tor looking back
at him. “I guess poor Sparks didn’t like what was on the menu,” he murmured,
with a smile she didn’t know how to read. “Please give my compliments to the
chef.”

“I’ll lell him you’re here,” Tor said, keeping her own expression
neutral. She had never liked Kirard Set much, particularly because she sensed
that he didn’t like her. When he watched her, listened to her, she knew he
never forgot for a moment that even if he was no longer a noble at the Queen’s
court, he was still a rich, highly educated landowner, and she was and would
always be an ignorant deckhand, no matter how many restaurants she owned, or
expensive jumpsuits she wore. She turned away, trying not to listen to the
tittering laughter behind her, or to wonder whether any of it was at her
expense.

Shotwyn came out of the kitchen at her call, looking like a
reprieved prisoner, his hands red and his face despairing. He might be an
elitist, but at least he wasn’t a snob. She smiled at him almost fondly.

She visited the tables of other new arrivals, exchanging
gossip about the offworlders’ pending return with Sewa Stormprince, her old
boss from the docks. Stormprince had built herself a whole new career too; like
a lot of other Winters, and even Summers, who hadn’t started out with land or
money, but had sufficient guts and brains to make up for it. And like all of
them, she found the sudden change in their future to be a subject of obsessive
interest.

Sewa Stormprince came here to eat not because of the food so
much as the old acquaintance, and Tor appreciated the distinction. But she
forced herself to end their conversation and head back toward the table where
Shotwyn was still standing with Wayaways and his friends. If he didn’t get back
into the kitchen soon, they weren’t going to have enough food prepared to feed
themselves dinner, let alone several dozen other people who were all ready to
spend a ridiculous number of imitation offworlder-style credit markers on it.

“Well, you know, I don’t have anything against Worm’s parents,
and neither does he, but I just wish they’d hurry up and die, so that we can
add the coastal rights to our own plantation before the offworlders want to
start hunting mers again—”

Tor managed somehow not to wince as she heard Kima Tartree’s
high-pitched, strident voice announcing to the entire room something that
anyone with half a brain would never even whisper in someone else’s ear. She
saw the others around the table snigger in a combination of empathy and barely
concealed disdain.

“Well, that’s calling it as you see it,” Shotwyn drawled, as
she came up beside him and put a hand on his arm in an unobtrusive signal.

“I’m sure we’ve all felt equally frustrated by something
that stood in our way, at some point,” Kirard Set said, dryly but with a
peculiar vehemence. “In fact, my kinsman Borah Clearwater has been refusing to
sell his plantation to me for years, although I’ve quadrupled the price of my
offer and done everything but clean out his cesspool to try to change his mind.”

“Then why not forget about it?” Tor said.

He looked at her, looked away again. “I begin to think he
has no mind to make up,” he said, with a heavy sarcasm that was not lost on
her. “And he’s living out there with the Queen’s grandmother, so I get no help
from her. It wouldn’t break my heart if the Summers’ beloved Sea Mother decided
to take both of them to her watery bosom ....” His mouth curled. “In fact, I
make a little offering to Her every night. If She doesn’t hurry up and do
something for me, I may have to turn my credit to some more responsive god,
like Arienrhod did.”

The laughter that answered him made Tor’s skin crawl. Kirard
Set glanced up at her again, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t you agree?” She
jerked more urgently on Shotwyn’s arm, until this time he responded, following
her away, back toward the anonymity that waited beyond the double doors.

Anele Dawntreader burst through the surface of the bay into
the open air, inhaling deeply, with a gasp of relief. Her dripping hair clung
to her face like seaweed. She pushed it back, blinking her eyes clear until she
could locate the plantation house high on the hill, above the distant docks.
Treading water, she made no move to start swimming toward shore. Her lungs
ached, her body was numb with cold, but all she could feel that mattered was
the transcendent joy of her stolen existence in the sea.