The Summer Queen (50 page)

“What about Da?” Tammis said again. “Did he think our mother
was dead too?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.” Kirard Set smiled again, with a rueful
sympathy in his voice that was not reflected in his eyes. “Arienrhod made
certain he did. He was almost inconsolable ....”

Ariele half frowned, not sure what he was saying, but only
that something lay between the words that she did not understand.

Elco Teel laughed. “But Arienrhod consoled him, for five
years, right, Da—?”

Ariele saw Tammis and Merovy turn to stare at him; realized
she was staring at him too, with sudden comprehension. She looked back at
Kirard Set. “You mean, my father ... and the Snow Queen ... were lovers?”

Kirard Set’s smile widened with what she almost thought was
approval, as he saw that she understood. “Oh yes, Ariele ... it was inevitable.
That they would both be Queen—that they would both fall in love with the same
man. Arienrhod had fallen in love with him, just as your mother had—he was her
favorite for five years She gave him everything he wanted ... even the water of
life.”

“Da ... drank the water of life?” Ariele whispered. “But I
thought .. ‘ thought ... he was a Summer.” She remembered how the sight of mers
always seemed to trouble her father, wondering suddenly if that was why. “And
he was pledged ... with my mother, for life.”

“But he thought she was gone.” Kirard Set shrugged. “And
Arienrhod was there, and so much like her ... and Arienrhod was very good at
getting what she wanted, just as your mother is. Come now, children—” he
glanced away from the look on her face, to Tammis’s, “surely you can
understand, and forgive him, under the circumstances. Even in Summer a marriage—pledging—rarely
lasts a lifetime. Everyone has the right to choose. Many Summers never pledge
themselves to a single mate at all; they like variety. So do Winters. Arienrhod
liked considerable variety, and your father learned to share her tastes. He
developed quite a sophisticated palate, for a Summer. You have to understand,
it was very difficult not to become intimately acquainted—not only with
Arienrhod, but with her other favorites as well, when you were one of them. We
were all so close—she encouraged it ... But of course she was always his first
love, and he was hers. Perhaps it would even have been ‘only,’ under other
circumstances.”

Ariele took a deep breath, realizing that her mouth had
fallen open. She shut it, trying to hide the foolish, gaping incredulity of her
expression before Kirard Set, or even Elco Teel, began to laugh at her. “What
happened when Mama came back—?” Her voice was almost inaudible; she almost
wished that she had never asked the first question, never heard any of this, at
all, ever. Almost. “When she found out? What did they say?”

“Only she and your father, and perhaps Arienrhod, know that.”
He took another drink, and held the decanter out to her. She took it from him,
and took a large swallow, almost choking. The hot burn of the wine going down
her throat felt punishingly good. “But of course your mother was not really in
a position to pass judgment on your father. She had only just learned herself
that Arienrhod was her real mother ... and her exact double. How could she
blame Sparks for falling in love with her, all over again, when he’d lost her
once ... And besides, they say there was a Kharemoughi Police inspector who
turned renegade to help your mother here in the city. You have to wonder what
there was between him and her, what kind of hold she had over him, to make an
offworlder turn against his own people. Don’t you—?”

Ariele nodded, although she did not want to, biting her lip.
She looked down, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.

“But you haven’t asked me what happened between your mother
and Arienrhod, when they finally met. That’s the best part.”

Ariele looked up at him again. “What happened?” she asked
faintly.

“Arienrhod had made her new plans while Moon was away; she
decided she would live on herself, after all. She’d planned to spread a plague
that would kill all the Summers who’d come to Carbuncle for the last Festival—throw
the world into chaos, so the offworlders would flee and she could keep her
power.” Ariele grimaced, but he only smiled and went on. “She didn’t need your
mother anymore ... but of course she wanted her. How could she not—? She asked
Moon to reign with her, share everything with her ... even Sparks.”

“And my mother said no,” Ariele murmured.

“Obviously.” Kirard Set nodded. “And then Arienrhod ordered
her thrown into the Pit.” Ariele gasped, in spite of herself. “That was when
your mother performed her first ‘miracle.’ She stopped the winds in the Hall of
Winds. I was there, I saw it myself ... though to this day I still don’t know
how she managed it. I don’t suppose she’s ever told you how .... But no, of
course not ... Anyway, then  the renegade Blue came into the hall and rescued
her from the mob .... And the rest, as they say, is history. Your mother won
the mask of the Summer Queen. Arienrhod went into the sea as planned. Your
parents were reunited, you were born ... and you know all the rest.” He lifted
his hands in a graceful shrug of denouement.

“What happened ... what happened to the Blue?” Tammis asked
uncertainly.

“The gods only know.” Kirard Set shook his head. “He left
with the rest of the offworlders, I suppose. Jerusha PalaThion might be able to
tell you; he must have been one of her officers .... I wouldn’t pay any mind to
the rumors, though.”

“What rumors?” Tammis said.

“Oh, well. More complications ...” Kirard Set waved a dismissing
hand. “Almost no one repeats that scurrilous garbage anymore, anyway. But some
people used to point out that ... well, that Sparks had been taking the water
of life at the time of your conception during the last Festival—and of course
it does make the user temporarily sterile.”

They both looked at him, stricken, through a silence that
seemed endless.

He laughed gently, at last. “Ye gods, it’s only idle gossip.
After all, the water of life was getting hard to come by, by the end of
Anenrhod’s reign. She’d begun cutting back on how much she allowed us to have—sometimes
once a week, not once a day anymore, even for old friends like myself and
Tirady. That’s how we were blessed with our only son, over there.” He gestured
at Elco Teel. “He was a complete surprise, unexpected ... not unwelcome, don’t
misunderstand me ... but still an accident. It’s quite reasonable to think that
your father had become unexpectedly fertile again too.”

Ariele nodded dumbly. Kirard Set raised his eyebrows, and offered
her the decanter once more. She shook her head this time, and got up from the
couch. “I have to go now.”

“Us, too,” Tammis said, getting up from the floor, holding
Merovy’s hand with painful tightness. Elco Teel rolled onto his back, his hands
folded on his chest, gazing at them with a pale, inscrutable stare as they
passed by him.

“Safe home, children,” Kirard Set called after them, and
Ariele thought she heard laughter as she reached the front door. She frowned,
in the darkened hallway ahead of Tammis and Merovy, where no one could see her.

The three of them went out together, gathering in the street
as the door of the Wayaways townhouse closed with finality behind them.

“Why do you think he told us that?” Ariele said, her voice
sounding thinner and more miserable than she wanted it to.

“Because you asked him to,” Tammis said, his own voice heavy
with accusation.

“Well, he was the one who said I looked like Arienrhod!”
Ariele snapped. “He said she was my real grandmother!”

“Mine too,” Tammis said irritably. “Like it or not.”

“My father ...” Merovy broke in, her voice barely more than
an insistent whisper, “says that Kirard Set would cut off his own ear, if he
thought it would make someone else feel worse than he did.”

Ariele stared at her, looked away again. “Are you coming
home? Are you going with me now?” she asked her brother, looking uphill toward
the palace; trying not to make it a demand, trying not to acknowledge that
suddenly she didn’t want to go back there, like this, alone.

But Tammis shook his head, his mahogany-colored curls moving
against his neck. “I want to make sure Merovy gets home all right.” He glanced
away, over his shoulder, as if Carbuncle’s still-busy Street, with its
unchanging artificial day, was suddenly empty and shadow-haunted. He looked
back at her. “You can come with us .

She frowned, tossing her head. “No, thanks. Don’t let me get
in your way—” she said sullenly, even though she had heard nothing but awkward
concern in her brother’s voice. She turned her back on them, and started on up
the street. She didn’t look back until she had reached the alabaster-white
courtyard before the palace.

Safe home ... Kirard Set’s farewell echoed in her memory
like his mocking laughter She stopped, standing at the Street’s beginning—or
was it the end?—looking toward the palace entrance that had let pass so much of
her world’s history; that had opened on the Snow Queen’s domain, long before
she was born.

She imagined her mother passing through those doors for the
first time, in search of her father ... imagined her father going through those
doors for the first time, into the arms of the Snow Queen. Arienrhod’s home.
Her mind tried to imagine her father in Anenrhod’s arms, in Arienrhod’s bed ...
the two of them doing things to each other she barely understood ... doing
things to each other she couldn’t even imagine. Why had her mother wanted to
live here, after Arienrhod had died?

Suddenly she didn’t want to live here anymore. Suddenly she
wished that she had somewhere else to go, that she didn’t have to go in through
those doors, ever again. But if she went somewhere else there would be
questions and explanations to face, and she couldn’t bear that, even the
thought of it. She looked down at the shimmering red-golds and blue-greens of
her soft overshirt and pants, that had once been Anenrhod’s own ... her
grandmother’s, her other/mother’s. “You have her spirit,” Kirard Set had said.
She lifted her head, straightening her back.

She crossed the courtyard to the palace doors. The two constables
who were always there on duty smiled at her and let her pass inside, her own
face empty and unresponsive.

She went on into the Hall of the Winds; stopped midway
across the bridge that spanned the deep, green-glowing access shaft. They tried
to throw her into the Pit ... and she stopped the winds. She looked over the
edge, cautious but unafraid, into the green depths that smelled of the sea;
looked up again at the curtains hanging high overhead. / don’t suppose she ever
told you how—? Ariele looked back the way she had come. The renegade Blue came
in and saved her .... Who knows what there was between them—? She hurried on,
her face pinched with doubt.

She made her way through the palace, oblivious to the servants’
greetings; climbed the wide, curving stairs to the upper levels, searched the
echoing halls until she found her father, in his study. She stood a moment
looking in at him as he worked, stretched out on the segmented couch, humming
faintly—an old folk song, she realized—and making notes on a noteboard.

“Da—?” she said softly, at last, from the doorway.

Sparks looked up, startled, and sucked in his breath. He
stared at her for a long moment with an expression on his face that she had
never seen before.

“Da—?” she said again, uncertainly.

“Ariele,” he murmured, “what are you ... doing here?” He
shook his head slightly, as if he were shaking something loose, and sat up on
the couch.

She shrugged, looking down, suddenly not knowing what to
say.

“Are you all right?” He leaned forward, with concern on his
face, putting aside the note board.

She shrugged again, and came into the room. She sat down beside
him on the sofa with her hands twined between her knees.

“What is it?” he asked, touching her shoulder gently.

She felt tears start suddenly in her eyes; fought them back.
“Da ...” She looked up at him, finally. “Is Mama really Arienrhod ... Arienrhod’s
clone?”

He stiffened; his hand dropped away, giving her all the
answer she needed. But he took a deep breath, and nodded. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t she ever tell me?” The words burst out with more
force than she had intended. “Why did she lie to me, why did she pretend that
she had a different mother, and Gran, and—”

“She didn’t lie,” Sparks answered, with quiet insistence. “Everything
she s always told you was true. She just didn’t tell you all of it, the whole
truth.” He sighed, his eyes growing distant. “She didn’t even know it herself,
all those years She couldn’t have explained it to you, when you were little.
But you shouldn’t have had to hear it from someone else.” He lifted her chin
gently with his fingertips “What else do you need to know, An? I’ll tell you anything
I can.”

“Were you Arienrhod’s lover?” She flung the question at him,
before she lost her nerve.

He flinched, and forced himself to keep looking at her. “Yes,”
he whispered His hands clenched silently on the silver leather surface of the
couch. Ariele stared at his whitened knuckles, feeling her own hands tighten
like two creatures locked in a death struggle.

“And you drank the water of life with her.”

“Yes.” The word was barely audible.

“Is that why ... why seeing the mers always makes you unhappy?”

He nodded; but he looked away, as if there was something in
his eyes that he didn’t want her to see. “Who’s been telling you all this—” His
voice was rough

“Elco’s father.”

“Kirard Set?” His head came up again; his gray-green eyes
were suddenly as bright as emeralds, and as hard. “What ... what else did he
say?”

“That—” Ariele nearly broke off, seeing the stark pain in
her father’s face “That Mama loved another man too. An offworlder. And maybe ...
maybe you’re not really even our Da.”