The Summer Queen (69 page)

But his father’s prayers were silent, he had never known
what they said ... they didn’t help him now, as he tried to form something like
a coherent thought. He looked up at the walls again, rolling the incense stick
between his palms, the smoke making his eyes sting with artificial grief. This
was the place where you came to feel pride, and tradition, to meditate on your
family’s accomplishments; to worship the perfect order in which everyone knew
their place, and yours had always been on top ... to call it justice.

But he no longer believed that, had not believed it for a
long time now. What was he supposed to do now? Ask forgiveness—? For whom? For
himself, for losing faith, or for seeing the truth? For his father’s failure to
act, for his brothers’ cravenness and venality and greed, for the ultimate
degradation and humiliation of their deaths? His hands dropped the incense,
left it smoldering between his feet. He should weep. He was the last of his
line, and he was living a lie. And he could not weep, could not grieve, could
not feel anything at all. He made himself remember the moment he had learned of
his father’s death—when he had been far away, on Tiamat. Made himself remember
his mother, her face blurred by time, as she kissed him goodbye and abandoned
him in the rose-colored light of dawn. He pictured how his aged father had
stood, leaning against the carven mantel in the main hall, his eyes like garnets
as he urged his youngest son to usurp his brothers’ place, to spit on the ideals
he had been raised to revere .... Forced himself to see his brothers suspended
like meat in an abattoir.

He realized that his face was wet, that there were real
tears on it, this time. Tears of self-pity. He wiped them away, disgusted. Gods
... I’m so tired. Slowly he got to his feet, and slid aside the top of the urn
beside the bench. It was filled with ashes—the ashes of his ancestors, a pinch
added at each death, before their remains were scattered into the wind. He sank
a finger into the surface of the ash, and painted the requisite smudge of grief
on his forehead.

He left the shrine, taking a deep breath to clear his lungs
as he started back along the narrow path. Pandhara Netanyahr was still sitting
alone on the waiting-bench, gazing out across the valley. She did not even look
up as he approached, until he said, softly, “Netanyahrkadda.”

She started, looked up at him with a slight shake of her
head, as if she had been completely lost in the view.

“Yes,” he said, answering the look, “it is beautiful here,
isn’t it?” He sat down on the bench beside her.

She looked at him a little oddly; he realized, embarrassed,
that she was searching for some intentional slight. But it was not there for
her to find, and her expression eased again. “Thank you for letting me have the
pleasure of its company awhile. I feel as if this place and I are like old
lovers, in a way. The parting was painful, but there will always be something
special between us.”

He heard the melancholy in it, and glanced down. “Yes, I
think I know what you mean.” He looked toward the house, where it rose above
the gardens like an extension of the peak itself. “I’ve felt the same way,
since my return home.”

“But you are the head of family now, aren’t you?”

Head of family. He sat down, wondering dismally what he was
going to do, now that he was ... now that everything he saw, every fond detail,
with all the painfully bright memories of his former life they evoked, only rubbed
salt in the wounds of his bitterness. Even if his only memories had been happy
ones, there was no way that he could possibly stay here more than a few days
longer. Then it would be back upstairs—to the shipyards, to the halls of the government
centers and Police headquarters. There could only be brief, stolen visits to
this place, at long intervals if at all, once he was back at work. And then
there would be Tiamat waiting, and the gods only knew when, if ever, he would
return from there .... He pressed his hand to his eyes, resting his arm on the
seatback.

“Gundhalinu-sathra ...” Netanyahr rose from the bench beside
him as though she thought somehow her words had been to blame. She touched his
shoulder briefly “I should not have stayed. I’m sorry—”

“Don’t go.” He caught her hand, when she would have started
away.

She turned back, sat down again, looking at him silently.

“I’m glad for a little companionship that has no deadlines attached
to it,” he said, forcing a smile. “I don’t want to go back up to the house. It’s
full of guests and messages of condolence, all with frantic inquiries about my
return attached to them—”

She raised her eyebrows. “Are you truly so indispensable
that they can’t leave you in peace even to mourn?”

He laughed sharply. “Not as indispensable as I’ve made them
think I am, I’m sure .... Vhanu tells me I have problems delegating authority.
So I suppose I can only blame myself.”

She tucked back a strand of dark hair that the wind had
freed. “Is that why this is your first visit home, then—because of your work?”

He glanced away. “Partly ... You may know that my brothers
and I never got along particularly well.”

She nodded, and he saw her mood shift.

“Did you know my brothers?”

Her hands knotted in her lap; he sensed her sudden embarrassment.
“I met them when I bought the estates. And of course I saw them again after
they returned to Kharemough from Number Four. When I was forced to give everything
up, they ... I ...” She shook her head. “I knew them only slightly.” She folded
her arms, hugging herself as she looked out at the view.

“What did they do to you?” he asked, forcing her with his
voice to look at him again.

Her golden-brown eyes regarded him steadily. “Your brother
SB told me that I could stay on at the estates, live here and do my work—if I
was willing to sleep with them both, and do whatever they asked me to. I
actually tried it ... until I found out what sort of tastes they had.” Her
hands closed over her arms, squeezed.

Gundhalinu looked away, swearing under his breath.

“It wasn’t your fault, Gundhalinu-sathra,” she said quietly.
“Although ... at the time I confess that I thought it was.”

He looked back at her. “Do you remember my reaction when
your pitcher of slops hit my brothers instead of me?”

“You laughed and laughed,” she said, and something like understanding
came into her eyes.

“My brothers tried to kill me, on Number Four.”

She stared at him, blinking.

“Do you know anything about World’s End?”

She nodded. “The place where you found the stardrive plasma.
Yes, information about it was all over the newsnet when you returned. It was
incredible ... terrifying.”

“My brothers got themselves lost out there, trying to strike
it rich.” He looked up at the milky greenblue dome of the sky, wondering
suddenly whatever had inspired his brothers to think of such an insane scheme
in the first place. Wondering whether it had really been chance; as he wondered
about everything, lately. “I went out there to find them. I brought them back.
But the things that had happened to them—to all of us—” his voice roughened, “out
there, changed them. It twisted them. All the things I’d always disliked and
resented about them—being out there made those things worse. My brothers wanted
to hold the stardrive plasma for ransom. I didn’t. They ambushed me and left me
for dead. But I stopped them. That was probably all that kept me alive: needing
to stop them ....”

He was seeing her face again, suddenly, at last. “After I
recovered, I made myself believe it was the trauma of what they’d been through
that had pushed them over the edge. That they’d be all right again, if I gave
them back their old life. I’d been through so much myself ... I thought I’d
learned all the lessons I’d ever need to learn. My mistake.” He shook his head.
“My brothers’ death wasn’t caused by a hovercraft accident. They were murdered,
when they tried to sell restricted data to criminals—data they stole using
filecodes they stole from me.” Suddenly it hurt to breathe. “I hated my
brothers. I’m glad they’re dead. May they rot in hell—!” He shut his eyes. “Gods,
I needed to say that to somebody ... somebody who would understand. May my
sainted ancestors forgive me.”

“They say,” Netanyahr murmured, “that the difference between
friends and family is that one can choose one’s friends ...”He felt her smile
touch him, tentatively.

He made himself look at her again—was startled to see that
her eyes were gleaming, too full. She held herself perfectly still, as if even
an eyeblink would set free emotions she did not want to let go of. She took a
deep breath, finally, and smoothed the folds of her robe. And the world settled
back into place, and he realized again that it was a beautiful day in spring.
He felt the warmth of the sun on his back, watched the feather-light silver
petals of her single simple earring move in the breeze, below the graceful
seaform waves of her hair. The sound of leaves rustling, of birds calling,
filled the air. She looked out again at the view.

“Netanyahr-kadda ...”He pressed his lips together over the
urge to call her by her first name. He looked toward the house above the
gardens, as the seed of an idea that had lam in his mind since their first
meeting took root at last in conviction. Groping for the right words, the right
order in which to speak them, he said, “I have a proposition for you, regarding
the estates—and myself.”

She looked back at him, her expression caught between two utterly
conflicting emotions. She rose from the bench. “Is that why you think I came
here—? To see if you were like your brothers?”

“Why exactly did you come, then?” he asked, hating himself
for asking.

She bit her lip, staring at him. “I thought ...” She broke
off. “I came here because 1 knew you were not like them. I thought I came for
the reason I gave you. But who knows ... ?” She looked away, filling her eyes
with beauty. “Who knows why we do anything, really?”

“Pandhara—1 want you to marry me.”

Her mouth dropped open. She gave a small laugh, a sound of
disbelief.

“Strictly a marriage of convenience,” he went on, before she
could speak. “That’s all I’m asking ... that’s all I require.”

“I don’t understand,” she said weakly. She sat down again. “You’re
head of family now. Why—?”

“Because it’s impossible. I don’t want the responsibility, I
don’t want the—memories.” He shook his head. “Gods ... I still love this place,
in spite of everything. But I don’t have time for it. I can’t live here. My
life is up there.” He glanced at the sky. “When the first ships are ready, I’ll
be going to Tiamat. And I don’t think I’ll ever come back.” He looked down at
her again. “I need someone to take care of things for me: my inheritance, my
heritage ... my name.”

“What about the proscription? I’m ineligible even to marry a
Technician.” A glint of remembered anger shone through the words.

“The charges were false, the evidence was incorrect .... I’ll
have it taken care of.” He glanced away.

“You barely know me,” she said, her voice turning cool. “Surely
you must have friends, someone of your own class—”

He shrugged. “No one to whom this place matters, the way it
matters to me ... or to you. I know more about you than you think, you see. I
had you researched, after I met you, because I was—curious. You are
intelligent, highly educated, creative, and your manners are, for the most part—”
he smiled, “above reproach. You seem to me completely worthy to carry this
family’s name. I long ago stopped believing that class and rank meant anything
at all. I didn’t have to look any further than my own family to see that.”

“You mean that ... ?” She stared at him. “You actually mean
that, this isn’t some ... some ...”

He nodded. “There are absolutely no strings attached.”

She pressed a hand to her mouth, shaking her head; her hands
dropped into her lap and lay motionless. “I don’t believe this is happening.”
Her voice was unsteady.

“That’s because justice is so rare,” he said softly.

Her eyes flickered up, fixed on the trefoil hanging against
his robe, before she met his eyes again. “Gundhaiinu-ken ...” she murmured.

He smiled.

“You said that this would be strictly a marriage of convenience?”

He nodded. “I would ask only the use of a spare room for an
occasional night, if I can find the time to visit the house now and then, until
I leave for Tiamat. Nothing more. You will be free to live your own life.”

She looked at him speculatively. “I would not find it at all—inconvenient
to share a marriage bed with thou,” she said. Her hand settled on his arm. “If
thou would like it.”

He turned away, feeling his face flush. “No. It’s all right.
You—thou honor me, but I can’t.”

“Is it this—?” Her fingers brushed the trefoil. “I thought
there was no dangei of infection, if one is careful—”

He shook his head. “It’s not that.”

She let go of the sibyl sign. “I see,” she whispered,
glancing away; although he knew that she did not.

Seeing her chagrin, still ne could not bring himself to
confess the truth to someone he barely knew. “But I would like very much for us
to be friends,” he said. “Would that be possible?”

She looked back at him, and smiled. “Suddenly I feel as if
anything is possible,” she said.

She took his hand as they rose from the bench, kept it held
tightly in hers, as if she had to prove his reality through the long walk back
to the house.

Tor Starhiker came down the steps from her private
apartment, into the rear of the Stasis Restaurant, which occupied the entire
ground floor of the townhouse. Dressed in a sensuous, sensual jumpsuit—one of
the endless supply of garments from the old days that Shotwyn unearthed so
effortlessly, from gods only knew whose closets—she could almost convince
herself that these were still the old days in reality. The time when she had
run Persipone’s Hell had been the pinnacle of her existence, no question ....