The Summer Queen (78 page)

“Like you—?” Tammis said, suddenly and furiously, his dark
eyes burning. “Like you did, at Arienrhod’s court, while you were supposed to
be pledged to my mother—?”

Sparks froze, speechless, feeling the ice-taloned hand of
the past reach into

Joan D, Vin$e his chest and stop his heart. “Who ...”he said
at last, “who told you that about me?”

Tammis’s eyes flickered away from his face, briefly touching
on Kirard Set still watching and listening behind them, and back again. “He
told me you liked it both ways. He said you used to laugh at Summers for being
narrow and stupid, that you did things for Arienrhod that—”

Sparks’s hand shot out, slapping his face, stopping the words.
“Believe that if you want to,” he whispered, his mouth filled with bitterness. “But
don’t ever use it as an excuse. Especially not with me.” He turned away,
turning his back on his son’s anguish. Kirard Set shrugged as Sparks met his
amused gaze. “Like father, like son ... ?” he said softly, and pursed his lips.
He shook his head. Sparks moved past him, pushing him aside with a heedless
elbow.

Heading back down the steps, he barely registered the sight
of Merovy, standing midway up the stairs, or the expression in her eyes as she
watched him pass.

“I can’t believe it.” Moon shook her head, standing
knee-deep in water beside the canted hull of the abandoned boat. “I can’t.” Her
mind refused to accept the obvious truth: that her grandmother was dead, as
suddenly and as irrevocably as a wave broken against the shore. She ran her
hand along the totem-creature on the boat’s prow, touching the third eye carved
on its forehead above the other two in the Summer fashion. The Weather Eye,
they always called it. Selen, her grandmother’s name, was painted on the stern;
a boat was always called after a woman, because it pleased the Sea Mother ....
But this time the Sea Mother had not been pleased, and the name on the stern of
the abandoned craft left no doubt who had been taken away by the sudden,
elemental sweep of Her hand.

Moon turned back again to Sparks, who stood between her and
the small cluster of plantation hands. The workers had been led to the boat by
mers from the colony that sheltered along the plantation’s shore. There had
been no sign of any bodies.

Mers hovered near them in the water even now, or squatted on
the beach a short distance away. Sparks shook his head, meeting her gaze,
before his own gaze moved out across the sea. He squinted into the sun’s light,
mirrored by a million chips of brilliance and thrown back again into his eyes
by the changeable water surface. “Elco Teel said something about there being a
storm down the coast, when we were at the wedding.”

Moon saw the wedding feast suddenly in her mind’s eye; the
happy faces, the pmess she had felt in her own heart—She looked back at the
workers. “Was there i storm, after they set out?”

They glanced at each other, murmuring and shrugging. “No,
Lady, there wasn’t I storm,” a woman said. “The weather’s been clear down this
way, for most of a now.”

Moon looked at Sparks again. “Elco Teel said that? Why would
he say that?” Sparks shook his head again, and she saw his mouth pull down. “To
make uble,” he said sourly, glancing away. “To spoil someone’s moment. It’s
what he es for; like his father.”

“It’s as if he knew something was going to happen.”

“But there wasn’t a storm,” Sparks said.

“No,” she murmured, and fell silent; feeling suspicion like
a sudden spear of , puncturing the stupefaction of her loss. “There wasn’t a
storm.” She looked ay at the mers, their long necks pushed out of the water,
their obsidian eyes fixed _ i her as she waded deeper, running her hand along
the boat’s rail. There was no sign of damage to the craft, no evidence of
anything at all. It was as if her grandmother .and Borah had simply vanished.
She looked at the mers again. “You saw, didn’t lyou?” she said. “If you could
only tell me what you saw—”

Sparks hesitated. He pulled the flute out of his belt pouch
and put it to his lips. The workers looked at him, as she did, nonplussed. But
as the odd run of notes he began to play registered on her ears, she realized
that he was mimicking mer speech. The mers swiveled their heads to listen,
obviously realizing the same thing. The workers murmured in surprise. The mers
looked at each other once more as he ‘, finished, and trilling runs of sound
passed between them.

After a moment, something landed with a sodden thump near
Sparks’s feet. It had come so quickly that Moon had not been able to track its
course; but it had come i from among the mers.

Sparks picked it up, frowning in concentration, as Moon
waded ashore. It was La wad of monofilament netting, the kind of Winters had
taken to using to trawl for |fish. He shook it out, tossing it to the workers.

“Did this come off the Sclent” Moon asked; suddenly, presciently
sure that it I had not.

The Winters passed the piece of net among themselves, fingering
it, tugging on it. “No, Lady,” a man said. “Borah Clearwater wouldn’t let a
piece of this stuff on his property.” He shook his head, with a rueful grimace.
“The old man was stuck in his ways, gods rest him. He always says—said, he’d
hang himself with monofilament before he’d use it on fish.”

Moon felt her own mouth twitch with wry acknowledgment. “Yes,”
she murmured, “that sounds like what he would always say ....” Her smile fell
away. “Then it means there was another boat—probably crewed by other Winters.”

Sparks shrugged, coming back to her side. He put his hand on
her arm. “Maybe. Maybe it’s only something the mers found drifting. I asked
them where the people in the boat are ... but only the Sea knows if that’s what
they heard.”

“It could mean that someone used nets to drown them, too,”
she said, her voice thickening. “You know that Kirard Set Wayaways has been
after the Clearwater holdings since before Gran came to the city. Borah
Clearwater would never sell them to him while he was alive—”

“Moon,” he said gently. “You have no proof. I know what you
think of Kirard Set. It’s no better than what I think. But murder—?”

She looked toward the boat. “I never had a chance to say goodbye.
I never even told Gran how much I ...” Her voice broke. She shrugged his hand
away, feeling her helpless grief hardening into anger, feeling its focus
crystallize, as the memory of her grandmother’s face was overlain by the image
of Kirard Set Wayaways. “No, I can’t prove that he bears the blame for
anything, except the ill will to wish it would happen. But simply for that, I’ll
keep my promise to Borah Clearwater, to protect his lands for as long as I
live.” She turned away, starting back along the beach to the place where their
own craft waited to carry them north to the city.

“Pandhara!” Gundhalinu called, striding into the front hall,
hearing his voice echo through the house. He draped his uniform jacket over the
servo that had come to meet him at the door, settled his helmet onto its
faceless head, grinning as it informed him lugubriously that it was not a
hatrack. “Well,/wd one!” he said, laughing. He went on into the room, shouting
his wife’s name again.

“Gundhalinu-bhai is in the cutting garden, sir—” the servo
droned behind him.

He turned right at the dining room, went down through the
study and the sun room and out onto the south wall patio. Pandhara climbed the
steps from the cutting garden with an armload of flowers and stopped, her face
filling with astonished delight. “BZ! Are thou here already? I wasn’t expecting
thee until tomorrow.”

He stopped too as he saw her expression, surprised and bemused
by its bright eagerness. He was secretly relieved that the look on her face was
not dismay; and that he had not interrupted her with a lover. “I wasn’t
expecting to make the shuttle, but I did—by the skin of my teeth.” He started
forward again, smiling. “The thought of two peaceful nights of uninterrupted
sleep instead of one was enough to make me push it.”

She lifted a hand to meet his upraised one, dropping flowers
as they touched. He leaned down, picking them up and piling them carefully back
onto her armload.

“I picked them because thou were coming home,” she said,
breathing in their fragrance. “I know how thou love them.”

His smile widened; he held the doors for her as she carried
them inside. She handed them over to a servo, sent it away with a “You know
what to do—” She stood before him in baggy coveralls, smoothing back the dark
strands of hair that had escaped from under her scarf with color-stained hands.
“Oh, damn it all, BZ, nothing is ready! I have it all planned; everything was
to be the way thou like it when thou arrived .... But I’ve been setting
biosculpture all day. I haven’t even cleaned myself up.”

He caught one of her gesturing hands, turned it over,
studying the rough palms and the pattern of stains. “I like real hands ...”he
said, and looked up at her, to see if she still remembered their first meeting.

Her look of blank surprise blossomed into sudden comprehension,
and she grinned back at him, tilting her head.

“It doesn’t matter. There’s always tomorrow. All I want
tonight is normal conversation, and maybe a game of chama.” He let go of her
hand, turned away to survey the room as he felt himself beginning to look at
her for too long. “What’s new? Thou’ve done something to this room; it’s
brighter.”

“The walls are yellow, instead of gray, over there, and
there ... I bought some new settees and restored that reclining couch. I hung
some of my statics ....”

“I like it.”

She searched his face as he looked back at her. “Truly? I’ve
been very careful: I haven’t touched the things that are timeless.” She
gestured at the ornately carved mantel, which had been a part of the original
house. He knew it was at least a millennium old. “I would never do that—”

“I know,” he said. “I’ve seen everything else thou’ve done
here. I trust thy judgment implicitly.”

“But it is thy home—”

“It’s thy home.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Thou live
in it; I’m only a visitor. The gods know, my father kept it like a museum; he
never allowed a damn thing to change in this entire place, for as long as I
could remember. And HK and SB ran it into the ground ....” His mouth twitched. “Make
it thine, Dhara. It is thine.”

She shook her head, putting her hands on her hips; her smile
struggled with something that looked like exasperation. “Gods! Must thou always
be so insufferably good-natured and kind?”

He laughed. “Thou think so? Ask my programmers and crew
chiefs, when they glitch on me or fall behind .... Ask Vhanu, when his staff
double-schedules me with the High Command and half the Coordinating Committee—”

“Well, all I know is, thou make me want to—”

His remote began to beep. He looked down and swore, clapping
his hand over the noise. He crossed the room in half a dozen strides, ordering
the side-table terminal below his wife’s newly hung painting to take the call.

Vhanu’s face materialized, looking urgent. “Goddammit,
Vhanu,” Gundhalinu snapped. “It can wait—I said I’m off-line. No exceptions!”

Vhanu’s imagine said evenly, “We’ve got the departure date,
Commander. It’s been approved.”

“Tiamat—?” Gundhalinu breathed.

“Yes, Commander. I thought you’d want to hear that.” Vhanu
hazarded a wary smile.

Gundhalinu nodded. “Yes ... thanks, NR.”

“My regards to Gundhalinu-bhai. Have a good visit, BZ.”
Vhanu cut contact, the table top went opaque. Gundhalinu stood a moment longer,
gazing at the painting, at its cascading golds and shadow-greens, a distant
haze of blue. He turned away at last, facing his wife.

“Thou’re leaving,” she said. “For Tiamat. Soon.”

“Yes,” he said.

She looked down, folding her arms, hugging her chest. “Ah,
well.” She looked up again, smiling at him. “Congratulations, BZ ... I know
what this must mean to thee, after thou’ve waited so many years; after all that
thou’ve done to cause it to happen—”

“I make thee want to—what?” he said.

“What?” she repeated.

“Thou started to say, that when I’m insufferably kind, I
makes thee want to ... ?”

“‘Rip thy clothes off,’” she said, expressionless. “Thou
make me want to rip thy clothes off and make love to thee right here on the
floor.” She turned on her heel and went out of the room.

He stood motionless, staring after her, for a very long
time.

Gundhalinu sat on the warm, solid wall of the western wing
balcony, sipping a drink that seemed to be completely tasteless. He looked at
it, looked at the pitcher on the low, random-edged table made from a slab of
polished gnarlstone, and remembered that he had told the servo to bring him
water. He sighed, and looked out across the dusk-blue valley again; feeling the
wind ruffle his hair with a casual hand, listening to the screel of
white-winged sikhas circling high in the air overhead. The western edge of the
house sat closest to the rim of the pinnacle on which it had been built; from
here his view was unobstructed, and he could actually see the ocean when the
weather was clear. It was clear today, as it had been yesterday, so clear that
he could count the offshore islands.

He had called KR Aspundh and asked him to come to dinner,
after he received the message—from Vhanu. Aspundh would be arriving from
somewhere across that sea very soon. It would be doubly good to see him now,
considering the news. Because it would probably be the last time they would
ever meet ... and the last chance he would have to contact Moon, before he
arrived on her doorstep with the sword of the Hegemony’s might hanging above
him in Tiamat’s sky.

He heard someone come out of the house, and turned where he
sat. His breath caught as he saw Pandhara crossing the balcony, formally
dressed for dinner. Suddenly he could not take his eyes off her; he felt as if
he had never really looked at her before. Her hair was elaborately styled with
carven combs and glittering pins; a loose, fluid robe of red moved around her
as she walked, covering her conservatively from neck to foot, and yet clinging
to her body everywhere, changing what it revealed from moment to moment .... He
looked away, finally, before she reached his side; struggling against
frustration and sudden arousal, wondering if she had done this to him deliberately.
But he remembered her on the night they had met; remembered that she was simply
a beautiful woman, with the sensibilities of an artist.