The Summer Queen (84 page)

He had sent Vhanu as his emissary to the palace yesterday—since
that was where the local constabulary said that Moon Dawntreader made her home
now—but Vhanu had not seen the Queen. He had been met by her representatives,
led by a blind woman named Fate Ravenglass, who was a sibyl ... and a Winter.
Vhanu had not remarked on it, still too unfamiliar with the social situation
here to comprehend the significance of that fact. They had formally set the
time of the meeting he was about to attend, and that was all.

He let his eyes shift focus, no longer registering the
gaping natives or the strangely familiar forms of the hive-like buildings behind
them, half as old as time ... seeing instead his own reflection. His tense,
expectant face looked back at him, as insubstantial as some ancestor’s spirit.
But he saw in his mind’s eye the unlined, unremarkable face of
twenty-five-year-old Inspector Gundhalinu, whose memory still haunted this city
that he had not seen in nearly twelve years.

“There seems to be remarkably little change in the city
itself,” Vhanu said beside him, “compared to the data we have, at least.”

“Superficial changes are all anyone, including the Hegemony,
has ever made on Carbuncle,” Gundhalinu murmured. “Carbuncle is ... almost
mythic, in its way. A functioning relic of the Old Empire. That was what made
me choose it for my first duty post, when I joined the Police. I wanted to see
it for myself, before that became impossible.”

“And were you disappointed by the reality?”

Gundhalinu’s mouth twitched. “By its superficial realities,
yes—I suppose I was. But there is a deeper level of reality here, a depth to
this place, and that did not disappoint me at all. I found it unforgettable.”
He smiled self-consciously. “I suppose that sounds like a lot of mystical
drivel, doesn’t it?”

Vhanu laughed. “Well, yes, actually .... But then, I wasn’t
here. You were.”

“Yes ... I was.” Gundhalinu looked out the window again, taking
a deep breath to ease the aching tightness in his chest.

“Tell me,” Echarthe asked, “did you ever meet the previous
Queen?”

Gundhalinu grimaced. “I had that misfortune, on more than
one occasion. Everything the reports said about her is true. She was a
soul-eater.”

“Did you meet the new Queen?”

“I ... Yes. Briefly. But before she had become the Queen.”
He felt Vhanu glance at him in surprise. “She had come to the city looking for
her pledged—her husband. I helped her find him.” He glanced at Echarthe, away
out the window.

“How did she strike you?”

Gundhalinu looked up again, said carefully, “Determined.
Smart. Deserving.”

“She bears an uncanny resemblance to the Snow Queen, in the
holos I’ve seen,” Echarthe said. “There were questions about it in the
departure records. In light of what we’ve seen so far, this push toward
technological development, it raises some serious questions in my mind—”

“Many Tiamatans bear a striking resemblance to one another,”
Gundhalinu said abruptly. “The population is small and isolated; that means a
concentrated gene-P°ol.” He gestured at the window. “Just look out there along
the Street. You’ll see what I mean.”

“Do you think the Queen remembers you favorably?” Vhanu
asked. “It could help us in establishing the new government here, if she does.”

Gundhalinu shrugged; the corners of his mouth turned up
slightly. They were nearly in the Upper City already, almost to Street’s End. “We’re
about to find out,” he said.

They came to Street’s End at last, and the wide, alabaster
courtyard before the palace entrance. Cundhalinu felt a strange sense of deja
vu as he discovered workers there, sweeping, scrubbing, keeping the surface
pristine—just as they had nearly two decades ago, in local time, the last time
he had laid eyes on them. He wondered if any of them were actually the same
people, still at their same task after all these years, their lives that stable
and unchanging. He saw the local constables on guard at either side of the
palace doors. They no longer wore the imitation offworlder uniforms of
Arienrhod’s security force, but plain everyday clothing instead. An armband and
a crested hat were all that set them apart as peacekeepers.

The hovercraft he rode in, and the two craft accompanying
it, settled without noticeable impact onto the alabaster pavement. The high
carven doors of the palace began to open toward him, like outstretched arms,
across the square.

He shook off the image, as the door of his hovercraft
unsealed and rose, letting in the breath of the city, rich with exotic smells
that were both strange and strangely familiar. He climbed out, flanked by a
phalanx of guards in the dusty-blue uniform that he knew so well, but no longer
wore himself. Any of them could have been his companions, in the former time ...
could have been himself.

He felt the years fall away from him in a sudden, almost
dizzying rush. From a distance, as if from that other world, he heard faintly
echoing voices speaking Tiamatan. The workers had gathered at the far side of
the courtyard, pointing and murmuring. He had recovered his skill with the
language, using the same indoctrination tapes he had made everyone else study.
But here, confined inside the echoing city walls, the words sounded different
in a way he could not define. More real, in this three-dimensional context of
real place and real people.

He turned, forcing his body to move, looking toward the palace.
Its entrance stood open, but no longer empty. As the small crowd around him
began to step aside, making way for him, he saw clearly who it was who waited
for him there. He stared, all other motion suddenly impossible, every other
human being around him ceasing to exist. It was only himself ... and her,
inside a moment where time had stopped. He went on looking at her, sure that he
must be dreaming, because he had dreamed of this moment so many times.

But he did not wake, and still she did not disappear ...
still she looked the same as he remembered, after all these years ... exactly
the same, not a day older. He looked down suddenly, almost expecting to find
himself transformed by the same spell, the dark magic of this haunted city—still
wearing his old uniform, still hardly more than a boy.

But he wore the stark, unadorned black of a Chief Justice.
The fishhook-barbed star of his sibyl trefoil rested in silent affirmation
against his chest. He looked up again, wondering if he had gone half-blind, or
insane.

He felt Vhanu’s hand on his arm, surreptitiously urging him
to make some response. He turned slightly, to Vhanu’s curious glance. “They’re
waiting for us; whenever you’re ready, Justice—”

“Yes, of course.” Gundhalinu ran his hands down his clothes
in a compulsive gesture, looking toward the waiting figures. He looked back at
the guards surrounding him. “You three,” he gestured at the three men closest, “will
come with us.”

“But Justice—” Echarthe protested. “Don’t you think—”

“We’ll be safe enough,” Gundhalinu said impatiently. “Let
the others guard the hovercraft—the vehicles are in more danger from the curiosity
of the locals than we are.” He started forward, walking with even, controlled
strides that seemed to belong to someone else. He watched the woman before him
growing clearer, every detail about her more real—and yet still she did not
age. “She hasn’t changed ...”he murmured incredulously, to Vhanu. He had
counted the years elapsed, his time, her time, knowing that she should be at
least as old as he was now.

“Then she’s using the water of life,” Sandrine said, with sudden,
unpleasant obviousness. “It’s the only way she could have stayed that young.”

“That’s impossible,” he murmured. And yet he could see that
she was unchanged, untouched by time. She was looking back at him, watching him
come—but he saw no flicker of recognition in her strangely colored eyes. She
still wore her hair long and loose, falling nearly to her waist; her clothing
was made of what looked to be bright-colored offworlder cloth, vintage clothes
recut to look more like the Tiamatans’ own shapeless, pragmatic garments. Her
gaze took in his face, his uniform, his trefoil, his companions, all with equal
fascination, and equal lack of emotion.

He stopped before her, wondering at what point this would
cease happening to him; whether if he tried to reach out and touch her she
would disappear. Swallowing to ease his throat, he made a brief, formal bow. “Lady,”
he said, careful to use the proper form of address for the Summers’ Queen.
Hearing his own voice speak Tiamatan was more disorienting than hearing
strangers speak it. “I am the new Hegemonic Chief Justice.”

“I’m not the Lady,” she said, and giggled, abruptly and
disconcertingly.

He blinked, staring at her with an incomprehension so complete
that it made her laugh again.

“I’m Ariele Dawntreader.” She made something that vaguely
resembled a bow in return. “The Queen is my mother. She sent me out to greet
you.”

“Oh,” he said, inadequately. He gazed at her in
astonishment, realizing belatedly that she was not wearing a sibyl trefoil—did
not even have the tattoo at her throat. He was aware that he went on staring at
her, but he was unable to stop. “I didn’t know .... You look so much like her.
I thought—”

“He thought the Queen had been using the water of life,” Sandrine
said bluntly.

Gundhalinu frowned and gestured him silent as he saw sudden
anger come into the girl’s eyes, and disgust.

“We don’t kill the mers anymore,” she said, looking back at
Gundhalinu, and he heard the defiance in it. This time it was one of the people
behind her who put a restraining hand on her shoulder. He realized—for the
first time in a meaningful way—that there were others waiting with the girl,
observing him; left unacknowledged by his disbelief at finding so much of a
lifetime had passed in a heartbeat, that the woman he had been expecting to see
had a daughter who was as old as she had been when he had left her—maybe older.
A daughter. A husband ...

He nodded in belated acknowledgment to the others in the welcoming
committee—three older Tiamatan women, two of them wearing sibyl signs, one of them
quite obviously blind, probably the woman Vhanu had spoken to. The third woman
stared back at him as though she seemed to recognize him, although her face did
not look at all familiar to him. The dichotomy between the group in front of him
and his own group struck him suddenly—one all female, the other all male. He wondered
whether Moon had done it intentionally, wondered what reactions the others
around him were having to the situation.

“Please come with us,” the girl said, turning her back on
him with unconscious arrogance. The other women stood aside for her, more
tolerant than obedient, and followed her inside.

He followed too, flanked by his own people, like night following
day. He wondered what Moon’s motive had been in sending her daughter to greet
him; if she had meant to remind him of all the things that it had reminded him
of ... time, mortality, all that had passed in their separate lives since the
day of his departure. Or whether she had simply meant it as an honor to her
daughter, as an answer to a child’s curiosity. Her child ...

He glanced from side to side as they moved along the entry
hall, seeing the scenes of Summer’s bounty that had replaced the Winter murals
of storms and snow. He remembered walking this hall before, more than once; the
details came back to him with startling vividness. He realized suddenly that
there was another face he had not seen yet, one he had been expecting to see
among the greeters at the gate; Jerusha PalaThion, who had saved his career
when he had broken Hegemonic law to help Moon—and then given up her own career
to stay on Tiamat.

He had walked these halls with her, more times than he had
liked, during his years on Tiamat. He had been stunned by her abrupt decision
to remain here, even though he had thought he understood her disillusionment
well enough, by then. And now, remembering the treatment she had received from
the Hegemony she had served bravely and loyally, perhaps he shouldn’t be
surprised that she was not eager to see an offworlder’s face at her door again ...
even his.

He realized that a part of his mind had been listening as he
walked for the sound of the Pit—the hungry moaning that had filled the Hall of
the Winds, and filled his heart with secret terror. Crossing the bridge that
spanned the Pit had been an ordeal that had never gotten easier for him ...
that probably never did for anyone with a shred of imagination.

But this time there was no sound except the clatter of
bootheels and the softer shuffling of leather-soled city shoes on the dark, polished
floor, even as the corridor opened out suddenly, revealing the Hall.

Still there was only silence. Gundhalinu almost stopped
short, looking up to find the wind-curtains hanging slack. He forced himself to
continue on, crossing the bridge in the Tiamatans’ wake, listening to the
incredulous mutterings of Vhanu and Echarthe as they followed him across that
perfect, railless span above the glowing green-blackness. He wanted to tell
them about the wind, how much more terrifying it had been before ... that by
comparison what they saw now was completely harmless. He didn’t.

He remembered the last time he had stood in this hall, a dumbstruck
witness as Moon Dawntreader stopped the winds. He wondered if she had been
responsible for stopping the winds for good. How, and what it meant if she had,
he could not even imagine. So many questions ... He forced himself to keep his
gaze fixed on the way ahead; seeing the milk-white of Ariele Dawntreader’s
hair, his mind unable to stop seeing someone else in her place. He had imagined
this day of reunion so often ... there had barely been a day since he left
Tiamat when he had not imagined it. But he had never imagined it would be like
this. He realized it would have been impossible to picture the reality, to
imagine the absurd ordinariness of it all.