The Summer Queen (68 page)

“Hey, just having a laugh, that’s all,” the worker said,
raising his hands, dancing backwards away from them. “Welcome to Kharemough,
you miserable assholes. Hope you like it here. Foreigners—” He spat. The rest
of his group was already moving on, getting out of range.

Gundhalinu watched them go with his hand casually deep in
his pocket, feeling the comforting solidness of his own stun weapon. Their
voices already seemed to reach him from some unimaginable distance; their
laughter drifted on down the tube, always echoing, and was gone.

Donne started on again. The others followed, silent now.
Vhanu stared at the faces of the people they passed, as if he were looking for
something he didn’t find. Gundhalinu realized he was still expecting the
strangers to somehow perceive an indefinable difference in Gundhalinu’s
appearance, or his own. Something which set them apart. None of the workers
glanced at him twice.

“How much farther, Donne?” Gundhalinu asked, his unease increasing
with every stranger who passed.

“That warehouse section right up there, Commander.” Donne
pointed.

Gundhalinu pushed off from the building wall beside her, taking
the risk of a faster, longer move. He pushed off again, not looking back to see
how well the others managed to follow; focusing on two small pinpoints of red
that still had not changed, on the motion of his own body closing the distance
to them.

He could not believe it had come to this, that he was about
to confront them in a place like this about an act of such obscene stupidity.
He felt his anger come back, a blind, murderous, fever heat that seared
everything from his mind but the need to find them, confront them, give them
what they deserved. This time nothing would stop him, nothing would change his
mind. He had warned them over and over again, those ingrates, those
shitbrained, honorless fools—

He reached the base of the warehouse. There were no workers
anywhere near it, no sign that anyone had made any regular use of this place in
months. He looked up the looming face of the building, seeing the designation
codes, most of them meaningless to him, glowing red and yellow on its grimed,
metallic skin. Before him was the five-story door of the cargo entrance,
solidly sealed shut; but like a rat hole in its base there was a narrow door
sized for human access. He took out the stunner, checked its charge again with
compulsive care.

He felt more than saw Donne and the others come up beside
him. Donne made a move to stop him as he started forward; suggesting with a
look that he should let someone else go in first. He shook his head. The
control panel beside the door said that it was unlocked. He pushed the
black-painted metal inward; the door gave with a grating screech, opening on
shadows. He stepped inside, wary but unhesitating now, aware that his heart was
beating too hard, his brain singing with adrenaline; and that the emotion
causing the reactions had nothing to do with fear. His own slow, drifting
footsteps echoed hollowly, overlapping the sounds his companions made like ripple
rings on dark water.

“HK!” he shouted, seeing no one, hearing nothing else. “SB!”
The others followed him, through a cavernous storage area half full of cryptically
labeled bins, and then another, half full of house-sized crates. The green
lights that marked their presence on his map closed inexorably with two stable
points of red. He shouted his brothers’ names again, still getting no response.
He wondered what in the name of a thousand ancestors they thought they were
doing. Why didn’t they answer ... why didn’t they run—? Instead they were just
standing there: silent, waiting; caught red-handed but still humiliating him,
forcing him to come to them.

He pushed off, too hard, trying to reach the access to the
next storage area. He collided painfully with the metal doorframe; steadied
himself, blinking his vision clear. His hand was slippery on the butt of his
gun as he pushed through into the next room, and the pinpoints of light on the
map converged.

In front of him the floor of the room was red: a lake of
red, wet, shining, as if someone had spilled a vat of paint. He wrenched his
body with his sudden attempt to stop moving; still landing with both feet in the
spillage. A drop of red hit the sea of redness in front of him, from somewhere
above; and then another. The gun slipped from his nerveless fingers, hit the
floor, splattering his pantslegs with red. He raised his head, moving in slow
motion, as time itself seemed to redshift around him, as compulsion closed its
inexorable fingers around his throat, forcing him to look up.

His brothers were up there. Hanging from the ceiling, suspended
high out of his reach. They hung from a chain like meat, the spine of a
grappling hook driven clear through each of their chests, stone dead. He
watched as two more drops fell, watched them hit the sea of blood in front of
him like silent tears.

He turned, stumbling, collided with the mass of bodies
directly behind him. He saw then—faces—the stunned disbelief of Donne and
Zarkada and Tilhen, the horror in Vhanu’s eyes. Vhanu turned and bolted back
through the doorway.

“Get them down,” Gundhalinu muttered, forcing his eyes to
stay on Donne. “Find somebody ... get them down.”

Donne nodded, gesturing to Tilhen and Zarkada. They went
out. Her eyes left his face fleetingly, glanced upward, fell again. Gundhalinu
pushed past her. She followed him out; following the blood-red tracks his boots
made every time his feet came down.

They were outside. He stopped moving, staring in surprise at
the unchanged light, the unchanged view his eyes found in front of him. Vhanu
stood against the building wall, wiping his mouth, his eyes red-rimmed.
Gundhalinu looked away from him. His own eyes felt as dry as sand. He couldn’t
blink. “Why—?” he murmured to Donne.

Donne pressed her hand against her mouth, shook her head
once, before she could meet his gaze. “Don’t know, Commander ....” Her voice
was matter-of fact, when she answered. “My best guess would be, they did it to
make a point.”

He frowned. “Because the codes my brothers had were useless?”

“Or because they were your brothers,” she said. “Maybe the
whole thing was a setup. To prove that even if the Brotherhood doesn’t dare lay
a hand on you, they can still ... hurt you. I’m sorry, Commander ....” Her
voice faded to a whisper.

Gundhalinu took an unsteady breath, watching his own hands
become fists. The sound of process and progress boomed and reverberated and
clattered and whined, nearby, far away, echoing echoing hollowly all around
him, through him, inside his head where no meaningful thought would form.

“BZ—” Vhanu said hoarsely, and came back to his side; he was
aware of Vhanu’s hand laid hesitantly on his shoulder, although there seemed to
be no feeling at all anywhere in his body. “I’m going to call for help. I’m
going to—”

“No,” Donne said. “We’ll take care of it, Vhanu. No Police involvement.
No scandal. No one wants that for the Commander. It will all be taken care of.
You understand?”

Vhanu stared at her for a long moment, his jaw set. At last
he nodded. “Understood,” he murmured.

Gundhalinu turned back to Donne, trying to find words adequate
to thank her, and failing. He put a hand on her arm, meeting the gaze of her
clear, dark eyes. “In your debt ...”

Donne smiled briefly. “Let’s go, Commander. We’d better go.”

He turned away from them, from the warehouse door still gaping
like an open wound, and started back toward the streets.

Gundhalinu watched the last of the mourners depart, moving
away through the passionate colors of the gardens dressed in somber gray. He
stood where he had stood all through the memorial service, motionless,
emotionless, the perfect model of gracious, civilized inhumanity. Waiting ... he
wasn’t sure for what. Waiting for it to be over. Waiting to feel something.
Waiting.

He knew what he must do now: what he had avoided doing
during the entire week that he had been home, keeping himself too busy with
details and arrangements that could have been handled by others, too busy
communicating with the people he had left in charge of the shipyards up in
orbit, to do this one thing ....

He glanced back at the manor house rising behind him, as servos
began to move among the clustered seats, clearing them away. The vine-traced
wall, fitted together out of blocks of native stone, still stood as solid as he
had always believed his family’s reputation to be. Its windows gleamed with the
sun’s reflected light, making him squint, the brightness making his eyes burn
until the colors of the gardens swam, like colors in an oil slick.

He turned back again, starting across the smooth stones of
the patio with a lump in his throat ... stopped.

One final guest stood limned by garden colors at the far
side of the open space: a woman, in a characterless gray robe, her hair swept
up and back, twisted and pinned in deft, fluid folds that made him think of
wings. He changed his trajectory to intersect her. She did not move, making him
come to her—although he sensed that it was not arrogance but uncertainty that
held her there.

His footsteps slowed again as he saw her face clearly. “Netanyahr-kadda,”
he murmured, in surprise, as he recognized the woman who had once owned his
estates.

She bowed, lifted her head again as he crossed the final distance
between them. “Gundhalinu-sathra,” she said, and for a moment he could not
think why there was such sorrow in her voice, such compassion in her gaze. “I imposed
upon an invited guest to bring me with her ... I hope you will forgive me, for
committing trespass upon your goodwill again. I did not wish to embarrass you,
but I wanted to—to see you again. To offer my condolences—” she went on
hastily, as he felt his own expression change. “I was so terribly sorry to hear
about your brothers’ accident.”

Don’t be, he almost said, didn’t.

“I wanted you to know that after all this time I hadn’t
forgotten you—your extreme kindness to me. Simply to send you a meaningless
message of sympathy, among thousands of others, was not enough. But I was
unlikely to meet you by chance. So I came, to tell you that.” He nodded
acknowledgment, saying nothing. “And now I will leave you alone.” She bowed
again, and after a moment’s further hesitation, turned away.

He watched her begin to disappear among the flowers; she was
almost lost from his sight before he could free his body from its paralysis and
call her name.

He entered the path between rows of shrubbery massed with
golden blossoms, walking quickly; found her waiting for him beside the
octagonal, blue-and-gold tiled fountain. “Thank you for coming,” he said,
before he even reached her. He stopped, meeting her gaze, and suddenly was
struck speechless again.

She looked at him expectantly; he looked away. “Netanyahr-kadda
...” he said at last. “I was about to go down to the family shrine and pray.”
Try to. “I would be pleased if you would care to accompany me.”

Her face registered surprise, but she nodded. They walked together
through the gardens, making meaningless, innocuous conversation about the
plants and the weather. Surreptitiously he watched her face as she took in the
view, saw the longing she could not quite conceal. He could never keep his own
eyes off the view for long. The manor house sat at the peak of a narrow pinnacle
of limestone, one of dozens scattered across the ancient, eroded terrain. He
could see many of the others from here, rising like gnarled chimneys from the
lush green of the plain, most of them bearing estates like his own. My own—He
looked back suddenly, at the house on the rising slope behind him, and out at
the view again; feeling a rush of vertigo.

The family shrine lay ahead of him, gleaming whitely on an
outcrop at the edge of the sheer drop. There was no maze of shrubbery
concealing it; the promontory itself offered a privacy that most estates did
not have. Pandhara Netanyahr stopped as they reached the waiting-bench beside
the path. She glanced at him, her fingers brushing the filigreed seatback;
uncertain whether he wanted her to wait, or to stay at all.

“This is the first time I’ve seen the estates since I
returned to Kharemough ... the first time I’ve set foot on this path since I
left home to join the Police, years ago,” he said. He turned back to her; she
settled onto the bench, looking up at him. “When you ... when you came here to
pray, what did you say? I don’t know what to say, anymore.”

She shook her head, glancing at the shrine. “I didn’t know
what to say, either, Gundhalinu-sathra.”

He nodded, and went on along the path alone. He went in
through the always open door, into the cool, echoing interior. He paused,
startled by the quality of the light. He had forgotten how the light ...
forgotten so much. There were no windows at all, but daylight shone through the
translucent ceramic of the walls, silhouetting the countless barely visible
names inscribed along their luminously glowing planes: the actual names of
members of his family for every generation, for as far back as anyone had ever
been able to remember and record, in a record that began well over a millennium
and a half ago. He noticed, with a sense of dim surprise, something that he had
never realized before—that his family actually claimed to be descended from
Ilmarinen. He touched the name, feeling an odd electricity run up his fingers,
wondering whether it was true.

He moved on along the walls, running his hands over the
names, following them up through time into the present ... stopping at last by
the names of his parents,  his brothers, himself. His own name was the only one
with a red stain, coloring rubbed into the letters ... he was the only one left
alive. He stared at his own name for a long time.

At last he turned away, facing the small bench in the center
of the room—a simple surface of gleaming white, mottled now with the dust of
neglect. Still beside it were the cylindrical covered urn of the same perfect
whiteness, and a container holding incense. He moved to the bench, sat down,
with a peculiar reluctance. He took a stick of incense and held it between his
hands like a flower, before he struck it sharply with his thumbnail, kindling
it. He blew out the sudden flame, left it smoldering, watched as it perfumed
the air with its bittersweet smoke. The old familiar scent brought the past
flooding into his mind: memories from his childhood of sitting silently on this
same bench while his father, his First Ancestor, head of the Gundhalinu family,
prayed.