The Summer Queen (89 page)

She watched, trying to get a feel for the way it was done,
murmuring observations, gasping and pointing with the others; all of them, all
the while, still trying not to look as though they had never seen anything like
it before. Music filled the air around her with loud, insistent rhythms, the
imported heartbeat of some other world. They moved on after a time, drifting
from one table to another, sipping their drinks, surreptitiously staring at the
astonishing varieties of humanity who filled the space around them—all shapes
and sizes, with hair that came in every conceivable style and texture, with
colors of eyes and skin that she would have laughed at the very idea of, a year
ago. She loved the sight of them, the sense of diversity that they symbolized,
the living proof of life’s endless possibilities.

“Gods.” Tilby’s sister Sulark spoke the offworlder oath
self-consciously behind her. “How does anyone ever get enough points even to
call it a truce? These games are impossible .... Even the offworlders can’t
win.” She pointed as a red-faced player turned and stalked away from the
jumbled ruins of a world shimmering in front of them.

“That one can,” Ariele murmured, nudging Tilby with her
shoulder. She had been watching the man two tables away, who was doing
something that seemed completely incomprehensible to her, but doing it
brilliantly, from the awed cries and laughter that surrounded him. The crowd
followed his every move, as she had done, ever since she glanced his way. “Look
at him, Tilby, oh Lady’s Tits, I’d like to see the rest of that one, wouldn’t
you—?” He was fair enough to pass for Tiamatan; but she was sure he was an
offworlder, by the bizarre swirls of decoration that spiraled up his bare arms
to his shoulders. She could barely take her eyes from the burning beauty of his
face, the intent, perfectly controlled dance of his hands inside the showers of
phantom gold that rained down on him, even to take in what she could glimpse of
his body through the shifting crowd.

“Mmm,” Tilby said, ruffling her hair with a hand. “I sure
would.”

“But I saw him first,” Ariele said peremptorily, pulling
Tilby back when she would have started forward.

Tilby pouted, and Elco Teel said, “You’re depraved, Ariele—how
can you want to do that one? Look at his skin. Do you think he was born mottled
like that, or does he have some kind of disease?”

“It’s tattooing,” she said, impatiently superior. “You know
that. Like a sibyl—”

“Hardly.” He made a face.

Ariele lifted her middle finger, let it droop, significantly,
in front of his face.

“Do you suppose he’s tattooed all over—?” Tilby asked, with
wide eyes.

“Let’s find out.” Ariele pushed between them, making her way
on across the crowded floor. But as she reached the gaming table where the
offworlder was playing, she saw him withdraw his hands from the golden
hallucination, saw it beginning to fade from the air. She squeezed in beside
him before he could back away through the crowd, edging aside a youth with
night-black skin and hair, and a man whose head barely topped the height of the
table. She saw startled surprise on both their faces, and utter boredom in the
piercingly blue eyes of the player himself. Intentionally she brushed up
against him, letting the curve of her body slide along his hip as her hand
grasped his arm. “Teach me,” she murmured, to his face.

He stared at her with what seemed to be incomprehension, for
a moment. She held him pinned against the table with the subtle, suggestive
pressure of her body.

“Boss—?” the short man said, behind her.

The player gestured sharply with his hand, and the short man
fell silent. The offworlder shook his head slightly, but it was not a refusal;
a smile that was nothing but amused pulled up the corners of his mouth. His
eyes remained expressionless. “Sure,” he said. His own hands rose, circled her,
slid down her back to hei metal-jangling hips. He turned her where she stood
until she was facing the gaming table in front of him. She felt his body move
up against hers now, not so subtly; felt the pressure of his sudden erection
against her spine.

He held her hands inside his, slipping filigreed mesh over
them, lifting them as if he were about to play music on an instrument. The
swarming fireflies began to fill her eyes She was only vaguely aware that her
friends had gathered around her, watching her with varying degrees of amusement
and envy as the game began.

He began to force her hands to move to his rhythms, murmuring
explanations and encouragement in her ear as she struggled to match his artless
grace. “Let go,” he said softly. “Winning means nothing. Only the act, only the
flow, let it carry you like a river—”

She let go, and felt herself swept away by the flow of
motion, the overflow of her senses. The light, the music, the warm pressure of
his body fed the hunger inside her; the proof of his desire was a dizzying
torment against the small of her back. She dissolved into the sensual heat and
flow until she became one with them: her movements were his movements, she saw
with his eyes, and as the gold rained down on them, she felt herself winning,
and winning, the crowd’s awed cries, their applause and laughter, the shining
faces of her friends, the shining gold ....

And then the faultless motion of her hands began to fail;
she missed the capture of one golden trajectory, and then another and another.
The spell that had held her was broken, and all at once she became aware that
the hands which held hers, guiding them through the arcane ritual of control,
were gone as well. Startled, wondering, she watched the light fade; the crowd
began to murmur and drift apart. She peeled the golden filaments from her nerveless
fingers. There were no fantastically decorated arms caging her, no warm
insistent pressure against her back.

Turning, she found that the offworlder was gone; that she
had no idea even of how long he had been gone. He had slipped away and left her
without a word.

Her friends surrounded her, their mindless, taunting envy
and praise raining down on her, as insubstantial as the rain of gold. Elco Teel
was beside her with a smile of knowing mockery as he saw the look on her face. “He’s
too slick for you, my little Motherlover.” It was a term of insult the
offworlders used for Tiamatans, and she frowned. “Caught you in your own trap,
didn’t he?” he murmured, with smug satisfaction. She brought her knee up
sharply, hitting him in the groin—not hard enough to double him over, but hard
enough to make him swear.

“You bitch,” he muttered. But he smiled.

“And don’t you just love it?” She kissed him, then, letting
him into her mouth, closing her eyes so that she could imagine the offworlder
kissing her instead.

They wandered on through the crowd in a group, finding
strength in numbers among the growing press of offworlders; playing at games,
watching and learning, groping after a sophistication that suddenly made their
own behavior seem like childish, provincial pretense. At last, when Tor refused
to let them have anything beyond three drinks, they drifted out of the club and
on down the Street in search of simpler, more familiar pleasures.

As they passed the entrance to Olivine Alley, Ariele
stopped, peering down its throat. For most of her life its strangely baroque
hive of buildings had been the home to the Sibyl College her mother had
founded. But now it was called “Blue Alley” again; it had become what it had
been before—the official home of the offworlders: their government offices,
their ground, not to be casually wandered into, as she had done all her life
since she was a small child. There were still people moving along it, even
though the hour was getting late; most of them wore the uniform of the offworlder
Police. This ground had been hers to walk on, to play on, by right. But now if
she entered it she knew she would be stopped, questioned, driven off—politely,
because she was the Queen’s daughter, but peremptorily, as if she were a nuisance
or a threat.

“Come on, Ari,” Brein said, impatiently, tugging at her arm
when she still did not move.

“Wait.” She shrugged off the hold, watching the three
figures coming toward the alley’s entrance. They were deep in conversation; not
a pleasant one, from the look on their faces. The one in the middle was BZ
Gundhalinu, the Chief Justice; on his right was the Commander of Police. At his
left was Jerusha PalaThion, wearing the same dusty-blue uniform, with the
insignia of a Chief Inspector.

She still had not gotten used to the sight of it, or to the
sight of Jerusha among those strangers with their alien faces ... making her
see with painful clarity the alienness of Jerusha’s own face, a thing she had
never recognized through all the years before. The three of them reached the
corner and started downhill. Only

Vhanu, the Police Commander, glanced her way; he frowned and
looked ahead

“Hello, Aunt Jerusha,” Ariele called out, hearing the
mocking echo of her voice come back at her from the building walls.

Jerusha stopped; she turned back, the others turning with
her. She searched the faces of the cluster of gaudily dressed Tiamatan youths
in wary surprise. Ariele moved forward slightly, waiting through the endless
moment until Jerusha picked her out of the crowd.

“Ariele—?” Jerusha came toward them, her expression half curious
and half incredulous. Ariele leaned close to Elco Teel, murmuring instructions
in his ear. He nodded, and grinned.

“Ariele,” Jerusha said again; Ariele read dismay in the
older woman’s stare. “What have you done to your hair?”

The Chief Justice followed Jerusha toward them, as Ariele
had hoped he would; only the Police Commander remained where he was. She saw Gundhalinu’s
belated, barely concealed start as he recognized her. She had not seen him
close up in months. She heard Elco murmur something behind her, and snickers of
laughter: He was the one. The Blue who had slept with her mother, before she
was born. The one who had made the father she loved suddenly look at her as if
she were a stranger, and turn away from her without a word. The one who had
come back to Tiamat to tear her family apart ....

She thought she caught, again, the look she had seen in Gundhalinu’s
eyes before—the strange mix of uncertainty and longing. It was not sexual, but
an emotion that ran equally deep and strong ... the kind of look a man might
give to his long-lost child. The thought made something twist in her stomach. “Hello,
Ariele,” he said, in Tiamatan; his voice was soft and faintly accented.

She looked away from him deliberately. “I wanted it to look
offworld—” She touched her hair, answering Jerusha’s question instead; ignore
Gundhalinu entirely now. “We love everything offworld.” She put her hands on
her hips, flaunting her glittering clothes, the flamboyant circle of friends
all around her.

“Except the offwortders,” Elco Teel said, with perfect
venom, just as she had told him to.

“Yes,” she murmured, leaning her head languorously against
his shoulder, smiling with satisfaction. “Too bad they can’t just all stay home
where they belong.” She let her gaze meet Gundhalinu’s again, raking him with
spite.

He looked down. “Good night, Jerusha,” he murmured, to his
Chief Inspector. He glanced back at Ariele, and she thought he was going to say
something more to her. But he only gazed at her a moment longer, as if he were
taking her picture with his mind. And then he turned away, back to the other
Kharemoughi, who was still pointedly keeping his distance, his dark face closed
and suspicious. They went on down the Street.

Jerusha watched them go, before she looked back at the small
cluster of Tiamatans. Ariele read disapproval and annoyance in her glance.
Jerusha opened her mouth—changed her mind, as Gundhalinu had, before the words
could form. Instead, she said, “You look like a hooker.”

“What’s a hooker?” Ariele said.

“A whore,” Jerusha said flatly. “You look like a whore in
that outfit.”

Ariele frowned, feeling her face redden. She had never heard
the term before the offworlders had come back. “So do you,” she said sullenly.
She jerked her head, the abrupt motion signaling her friends to follow her. She
felt their hands stroking her, their voices in her ear congratulating her,
giggling and muttering like the empty cries of sea birds as she started on down
the Street, leaving behind the woman who had once been her mother’s loyal defender—and
perhaps her own.

Gundhalinu sighed heavily, rubbing his face, as Vhanu fell
into step beside him and they continued on their way. Vhanu glanced at his
expression, and away at the crowd of Tiamatan youths who were already passing
them by, accompanied by rude remarks and catcalls. Vhanu made an audible noise
of disgust. “Delinquents,” he murmured, in Sandhi.

Gundhalinu did not respond, watching the crowd of teenagers,
his eyes following a white-blond crest of hair bobbing in their midst; watching
to see whether Ariele Dawntreader looked back at him. “Sorry, NR—what was that?”
His mind snapped back into focus as he realized that Vhanu was still speaking.

“I said that—” Vhanu pointed at the Tiamatan youths disappearing
into the crowd ahead of them, “is exactly the kind of thing I mean. They
laughed at us! That pack of miserable—”

“In Tiamatan; please, NR—” Gundhalinu said abruptly, in
Tiamatan. “Speak Tiamatan, not Sandhi. We all need the practice.”

Vhanu glanced at him, and controlled his sudden, obvious irritation.
“Very well. Those miserable little—” He broke off, at a loss for a satisfactory
term in a foreign tongue. “They put on our clothes and cut off then—hair, but
that doesn’t make them our equals. They still behave like ... like ...
doshtonu.” He fell back into Sandhi in exasperation. Barbarians. “Damn it,
PalaThion keeps putting all of us through these indoctrination sessions along
with the new recruits—By all the gods, even you and I have been fed the tapes
half a dozen times ourselves. I can recite the information word for word—”