The Summer Queen (14 page)

“Why doesn’t Moon get rid of those damned aristos?” she
said, feeling irritable as memory pinched her. “There are plenty of other
Winters who’d be glad to take their places, and they don’t have all the bad
habits Arienrhod taught her favorites.”

Fate smiled, sweeping the street ahead with her cane, a
gesture that let her feel some kind of control over her progress, and maybe her
life. “Yes, but they don’t own most of the land.” The Winter nobility may have
been called “noble” by default, but most of them had held their positions at
Arienrhod’s court because they headed the clans which controlled the most
resources. “And they’re not all jaded fools: some of them are smart and
creative and highly motivated. Those are the ones who will end up as the real
leaders ... I only hope 1 live long enough to see it.” Her mouth twisted with
weary irony.

“Right,” Tor said. She shook her head, thinking privately
that they had more chance of living to see the offworlders’ return than they
did of seeing all Moon Dawntreader’s dreams come true. Looking toward the alley’s
end, she could see the Summer Star now, the sign that had marked the Change for
her people and the offworlders too. As their farewell gesture before leaving,
the offworlders had sent down a beam of high frequency energy that fried the
fragile components in every single piece of equipment they had left behind,
including Fate’s vision sensors. Since they had blocked the development of any
local technological base, nothing could be repaired.

Then they had gone, secure in the knowledge that the technophobic
Summers would move north into the Winters’ territory, as they had done since
the beginning of their days on this world. The Summer Queen would lead Tiamat’s
people back—willingly or not—into the traditional ways that had meant their
survival for centuries before the offworlders ever set foot here; keeping
things stagnant and secure, until the Hegemony could return.

Moon Dawntreader meant to change all that. Tor’s admiration
for the Queen’s goals was matched only by her scepticism about their
achievability.

Tor steered Fate sideways, to avoid a Summer striding obliviously
down the street with a load of kleeskins on his back. The batch of foul-smelling
hides struck her as he passed, and knocked her staggering into Fate. She regained
her balance, and caught Fate, barely in time to keep them both from sprawling
in the gutter. “Watch where you’re going, you crackbrain! You want to knock
down a blind woman?”

The Summer swung around without breaking stride. “Watch
yourself, Motherless! I’ve got better things to do than teach you how to walk.”

“Like teach yourself some manners?” Tor spat.

“Parasite,” He turned his back on them and trudged on down
the alley.

Tor flung an obscene hand gesture at his retreating back.
Fate’s hand reached out, searching for her arm; caught hold of her. Tor forced
herself to relax, muttering under her breath. She turned back again, and they
went on toward Fate’s door. “They should all drown, the fisheaters. Then we
wouldn’t have any trouble.”

“You think not?” Fate said, her voice gently mocking. “Who
would you hate, then?”

Tor took a deep breath. “All right, so I don’t hate them.
They’re our cousins. We all need each other to survive. All our sins went into
the Sea with the Snow Queen, and now we’re all one ....” She repeated the
litany of the Summer Queen’s propaganda, the supposed will of the supposed Sea
Mother. “But by all the gods, I don’t know who ever said fish was brain food.”

Fate laughed, and was silent again, lost in her own
thoughts. Tor led her on down the alleyway. The Winters endured the Summers’
cyclical invasion, knowing there was no real choice. Winters and Summers had
always needed each other to survive, and the ancient rituals they shared gave
them enough common ground to get by. Her people waited out High Summer with the
patience of exiles, secure in the knowledge that the offworlders would return
at the first possible moment, bringing back to their descendants, if not to
them, the sophisticated comforts to which they had grown accustomed.

But even though clan ties and traditional religion had left
them blueprints for peaceful coexistence, the culture-wide shockwave of the
Change still left them with ugly petty confrontations. Winters who had lost all
sense of their heritage over the hundred and fifty years of offworlder rule,
and newly arrived Summers, wary unwanted guests in the territories of their
distant relatives, still cursed each other and had fistfights in the half-empty
streets of Carbuncle, even after eight years.

The problem would get worse before it got better, if it ever
did, because the new Queen’s unorthodox changes heightened all the old
tensions. The coming of the Summers was a gradual thing, and that was probably
all that saved their world from complete anarchy. In another decade this city
would be teeming—in a completely different way than it had been when the
offworlders filled its streets, but teeming nonetheless, just like the rapidly
thawing countryside beyond its walls ....

“Here we are,” Tor said. She hesitated as Fate found her way
up the single step to her door and unfastened the lock. “Will you be all right
if I leave now?” Usually she stayed, and they shared dinner, although she knew
Fate was perfectly capable of getting around her home and former shop alone.
Sometimes after the meal Fate would play her sithra and Tor would sing, old
songs about the sea, new songs about the stars; songs with long memories that
carried them both back to better days. Neither one of them liked spending
endless evenings alone, although neither one of them had ever spoken of it. But
tonight she felt as restless as the large gray cat that wound around Fate’s
ankles, yowling with impatience. “I think I’ve got to scratch an itch tonight.”

“Yes, I’ll be fine.” Fate nodded. She leaned down to pick up
the cat, stroking its fur. scratching it fondly under the chin. “I think Malkin
and I only want to sleep tonight, anyway. It’s been a long ...” She broke off,
and didn’t say what had been so long.

“You don’t need anything from the markets?”

“No, thank you. Thank you for everything.” Fate smiled, her
sightless eyes finding Tor’s with uncanny accuracy. “Let me know whether he’s
worth losing sleep over.”

Tor laughed, pushing her hands into the frayed pockets of
her aging offworlder coveralls. “It doesn’t matter if he is or not, because I
don’t intend to remember him in the morning.” She stepped down into the street
and strode away, heading for her favorite tavern.

Moon sighed, wearied by the steep climb up the Street, the
steep upward spiral of life. They had reached Street’s End at last; ahead she
saw the wide vortex of alabaster pavement, and beyond it the elaborately carven
double doors of the palace. Two guards stood at the entrance, as they always
did, by Jerusha’s order. Moon blinked her eyes clear of the waking dream that
had suffused her thoughts as she climbed the hill, as insubstantial as fog, as
inescapable as a shadow: the memory of the dark-eyed stranger who had led her
once to these doors ... who had been her spirit guide when she was lost in this
strange city, caught up in destiny’s storm. The man who had been her lover for
one night, before his own destiny had swept him from her life forever ....

Moon glanced at the woman beside her, feeling a pang of
guilt; afraid that Jerusha PalaThion’s shrewd, observant eyes might have looked
in through the open window of her thoughts, and seen too much, But Jerusha was
gazing straight ahead, lost in a reverie of her own. Jerusha had stayed behind
when the offworlders left Tiamat, as much from a sense of betrayal by her own
people as from love of her new home. Moon had never fully understood her motives;
Jerusha was not a woman much given to discussing her thoughts. But she was an
excellent listener, whose friendship Moon had come to treasure as a rare gift.
Jerusha was one of their chief advisors regarding the Hegemony’s castoff
technology—and also her most loyal protector. Jerusha kept the transition
peaceful in the restless city, with a cannily chosen security force of Winters
who had worked for the old Queen and Summers who were loyal to the new one.

The palace doors swung open before them; Moon’s footsteps
quickened, forcing Jerusha to lengthen her stride to keep up. Moon began to
smile, suddenly filled with eagerness, as two small bright forms came hurtling
toward her. She kneeled on the hard pavement, catching the twins, hugging them
close; astonished again, as she was every day, by the power of the emotions
that filled her ... still astonished, after all this time, to find herself the
mother of two children. She kissed their faces, holding tight to their
squirming warmth, absorbing the sweet smell of their hair, the excited clamor
of their voices.

“Mama, Mama, Gran is here!”

“—Gran is here!”

Their voices sang together as they echoed the words, each of
them trying to be the first to tell her the news. “—Really!”

“Wait, wait.” she murmured. “You mean that my mother is here—?”
She had not seen her family in all the years since she had left the Windwards
for Carbuncle. Now, holding her children in her arms, her need to see her own
mother was as sudden and hot as the sun.

“No, Gran—” Anele insisted, her cloud of fair hair moving
across her face as she shook her head. She pushed it back impatiently.

“Gran—” Tammis echoed, pulling on his mother’s sleeve.

“Your grandmother. Moon,” someone said.

Moon looked up, to see Clavally Bluestone’s short, solid
figure framed in the high arch of the double doors, the sibyl sign gleaming
against her shirtfront, her own daughter Merovy clinging to her side while she
watched the twins greet their mother. Clavally and Danaquil Lu had begun to
spend less time at the Sibyl College after their child was born, and they had
taken on the task of watching Tammis and Anele as well.

“Not my mother?” Moon repeated, her own voice suddenly thin
with disappointment. She wondered why—how—her grandmother had come alone to
Carbuncle.

“We’ll show you!” Ariele cried, bounding impatiently back
toward the palace entrance. “Come on, Mama!”

Tammis stayed by his mother’s side, always the quiet one,
his brown eyes gazing up at her somberly as he hung on her arm.

“Tammis, I’m too tired—” she murmured, trying to take his
hand instead. She broke off, as Jerusha swept Tammis off his feet and up into
her arms. “I’ll take him,” Jerusha said, tickling him until he forgot the
protesting squawk he had been about to make.

Moon bit off the protest that came half-formed to her lips,
drew back her hands, which had instinctively reached for him. She watched,
resigned, as Jerusha strode on ahead, carrying Tammis on her hip, grinning back
at him with tender whimsy.

Clavally passed them, leading Merovy by the hand, nodding
her head in a formal gesture of respect and farewell as she reached Moon’s side.
Moon saw unspoken concern in Clavally’s glance, and wondered what she knew that
she could not bring herself to say. “Danaquil Lu sent word that there is a
party being given tonight by his cousin Kirard Set.” Clavally’s round face
pinched slightly. “Dana asked if we would come, to help him get through it. But
if you would like me to stay ...”

Moon smiled, her smile quirking slightly. She could guess, after
this afternoon’s negotiations among the nobles, what Kirard Set was
celebrating. “Go and keep him company. He’s like a man who’s been in a swarm of
bloodflies after he’s been with his relatives. He does need you.”

Clavally smiled wryly, and nodded.

“Enjoy it,” Moon said. “It’s in a good cause.” She looked
down at Merovy, at the little girl’s shy, wide-eyed gaze fixed on Tammis. “You
have fun too,” she added gently.

Merovy nodded soberly as her mother led her on past. She
looked back over her shoulder, still watching Tammis. “Bye, Tammis,” she
called.

He waved, his own expression equally somber, from where he
sat perched on Jerusha’s hip.

Moon entered the palace, looking up at the frescoed walls as
she walked the echoing hallway that led into its heart. The first time she had
come into this place, the walls had been haunted by stark scenes of winter. Those
murals had long since been painted over at her order with scenes of bright
sunlight, green fields, the blues of sea and sky. But still the images of
Winter seeped through into her memory, imprinted indelibly on her mind’s eye,
making her remember all that had happened here at Winter’s end ... making her
remember Arienrhod, who haunted the very air here, who haunted every mirror.
She forced herself to look down, fixing her vision on her children and the way
ahead.

“Mama!” Ariele cried impatiently.

Moon saw her daughter dancing from foot to foot at the edge
of the Pit, and her breath caught. “Ariele!” she called sharply, quickening her
steps, as Ariele knew she would.

“Hurry up,” Ariele shouted, and darted out onto the
railingless ribbon of bridge that arced across the shaft. Anele laughed, fearless,
shaking her tumbled, milk-white hair at their dismay.

Moon stepped onto the bridge, her feet soundless in their
soft city shoes, and caught her daughter up in her arms. “How many times—” she
began, angrily.

“You’re too slow! I want to see Gran!” Ariele insisted. She
wrapped long, slender legs around her mother’s waist, drumming her feet. “You
smell like fish—euw .... Come on, Mama.”

Moon sighed and carried her across the bridge, leaving
Jerusha to make her way as slowly as she chose with Tammis. The bridge was wide
enough that, even railingless, it allowed people to walk its span with no more
than a quickened heartbeat, ever since she had stopped the wind. Moon glanced
up, resolutely not looking down, letting her eyes find the pale curtains that
hung like fog in the vaulting space overhead. A glowing mass of stars was beginning
to show through the fading light of day in the tall, starkly silhouetted
windows.