The Summer Queen (87 page)

“And how do you think the force is going to tolerate having
a woman—a renegade, a traitor, no less—forced on them as Chief Inspector?”

“Are you a renegade, or are you a retired Police Commander
with years of invaluable foreign service experience? ... Am I a failed suicide,
or a Hero of the Hegemony1’ It all depends on what kind of spin you put on it,
Jerusha.” He smiled slowly, and shrugged. She looked at him, mildly
incredulous. “As far as your being female, Kharemoughis will give you less
grief about that than your own people did. There are several women on the
force, and I hope to recruit more, in time.”

She looked down, biting her lip absently, considering.

“You’ve never been someone who walked away from a challenge.”
He pressed her, driven by the urgency of his need to have her support.

“True enough,” she murmured, with some of the steel he remembered
showing briefly in her grin. And he saw her eyes come alive as she thought
about it. But she looked down again, shaking her head. “I can’t. Thank you for
asking me, BZ. But I can’t do it.”

“Why?” he asked, controlling the sudden frustration that
made him want to shout it. “Why not?”

“Because the Queen needs me. She depends on me .... For all
the same reasons you want me working for you. I can’t be loyal to both of you.
You can’t rely on someone with divided loyalties.”

He leaned forward, his hands twined between his knees, tightening.
“Work for me, Jerusha,” he spoke each word like a solemn pledge, “and you won’t
have to have divided loyalties.”

She stared at him for a long moment; while he realized, suddenly
and gladly, that this was not simply something that he needed ... it was
something that she needed, too. “Gods ...” she murmured. “Let me sleep on it,
BZ. I can’t accept something like this without having time to think it through.”

“Take whatever time you need.” He nodded, feeling the
tension loosen in his shoulders. “Just tell me you won’t reject the idea out of
hand.”

“No,” she said, rising from her seat. “No, I won’t.”

“Will you be speaking to—to the Queen?” He barely kept himself
from calling her by name. He got up from his own seat.

“I expect so.” She nodded, looking at him curiously.

“Tell her for me that I’ve gotten my people to accept a temporary
moratorium on the hunting of mers, while we conduct further studies. I don’t
know how long it’ll hold. The Central Coordinating Committee back on Kharemough
is giving me hell about this; tell her it’s the best I can do for now.”

“She’ll be glad to hear it. I am, too. Thank you. I know the
kind of pressure you mean—gods, it must be worse when there’s hardly any
time-lag on interference from the home office. I know how much they want the
water of life; I know how hard it is to stop them from getting what they want.
I know ... I tried it myself, once.”

He grimaced. “I wish the Queen understood that. She’s been
pushing hard for rapid change, and for a ban on the hunts at the same time, in
every meeting we’ve had at the palace ... too hard. I’ve tried to make her see
that we have to take this a step at a time; Tiamat has to be lifted up to a certain
level of technological competence before it can qualify for full equality among
the Hegemony’s worlds. Change just for the hell of it will only leave everyone
worse off then before. And the Hegemony doesn’t like something-for-nothing
trade, any more than Tiamat does.”

“She understands that,” Jerusha murmured. “But she also understands
that the Hegemony came here thinking of her people as barbarians—and they aren’t.
She’s willing to compromise, and meet the Hegemony halfway with her demands, if
they’ll meet her there. She only wants to make sure the Hegemony understands
that her viewpoint and theirs are not the same one. The Hedge has always had a ‘what’s
mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable’attitude about this world ....”

“I’m doing my damnedest,” he said, a little impatiently. “She’s
got to watch her step. I wish she could just ... If we could only—” He looked
away abruptly “Damn,” he whispered. Damn. Damn.

“I know, BZ,” Jerusha said, with sudden understanding in her
eyes. “She wishes that too.” She smiled. “I suppose we all wish it.”

He looked away; looked back at her finally. “There’s an old
saying on Kharemough: ‘There are two tragedies in life. One is never getting
your heart’s desire. The other is getting it.’”

She laughed softly. “On Newhaven, when you curse someone,
you say, ‘May you get everything you wish for; may you be noticed by people in
high places; and may you live in interesting times.’”

He felt himself smile, relieved to find that at least he had
not lost his sense of the absurd. “Then there’s no hope for me, clearly.” He
held out his hand to her. She shook it, gripping his wrist like a native. “Let
me know what you decide. Give my regards to the Queen. And ...”He broke off,
seeing the faces of Moon’s children in his mind. “And to her family.”

She nodded. “I will,” she said gravely. “I will, BZ.”

He watched her go out of the office. His intercom began to
buzz as soon as the door closed. He ignored it; listening to something else
entirely.

“Jerusha, I’m glad you’re here—”

Jerusha felt her face quirk as the Queen turned to smile at
her with uplifted hands. She nodded, attempting a smile in return, as Moon
gestured at the data-filled screen lying like a magic pool in the surface of
the desk/terminal behind her. “I’ve been working on this all afternoon, and now
suddenly it’s refusing all my commands.  I told it I was the Queen, but it wasn’t
impressed.” She laughed, half amused and half exasperated. “And all the help
files are in Sandhi.”

Jerusha leaned past her shoulder to study the screen. “I don’t
remember enough written Sandhi to find my way to the bathroom, let alone pick a
computer’s brains.” The written language was ideographic, and bore no
resemblance to the spoken tongue. “I never did know it well .... Is your data
safe?” Moon nodded. “Then just shut it down, and start it up again. It’s a
nuisance, but it always works for me.”

Moon looked mildly aghast, but she shrugged, and nodded. Jerusha
watched her doit.

“Ah. Better! Thank you ....” Moon swiveled her chair around,
leaning back in her seat. “Was that simply your uncanny sense of timing, or is
there something you wanted to talk about?” The look in her eyes suddenly made Jerusha
wonder about the Queen’s own uncanny sense of things.

“Well ... yes, there’s something.” She sat down in the
corner chair next to the desk, studying her hands—the lines, the thickening
knuckles, the calluses that seemed to have become a part of her being after so
many years.

“How is it for you these days?” Moon asked softly. “Has it
gotten any easier without Miroe, now that the Hegemony has come back? Or has
that made it harder?”

Jerusha looked up at her again, realizing that they had not
had even a few moments to spend like this, a stolen space of private time to
speak to each other as human beings, in weeks. “Both, I think,” she said.

“Yes.” Moon’s eyes turned distant, as if her thoughts were
blown smoke. “That’s about right .... Both.” She twisted a strand of pale hair
between her fingers, absently knotting and unknotting it. “The Hegemony’s
presence here has given everything double strength.” She glanced at the
terminal, part of a system that had lain useless and inert through her entire
reign, until now. She had been computer-literate in a meaningful way for only a
few weeks, a fact that Jerusha still found almost unbelievable. “And double
meanings ...”

Jerusha saw BZ Gundhalinu inside the words, like an image in
a mirror. “You should talk to BZ, Moon,” she said.

“I have,” Moon said. “I see him several times a week ....”
Her gaze broke. “But not alone. I can’t, Jerusha.”

“What do you expect he’d do?” Jerusha asked, raising her eyebrows.

“It’s what I might do.” Moon’s face reddened. “When I watch
him, whenever he speaks—Over the years I thought I’d become immune to those
feelings ... numb. That after all Sparks and I have—lost, of what we had, all I
really hoped for from life anymore was to finally, someday, be left alone.
Peace.” She shook her head. “I hardly knew BZ, Jerusha ... all those years ago.
And yet now, when I watch him I want him—” Her hands clenched. “I don’t
understand this. I don’t even know if it’s him, or me. But I can’t trust myself
....” Her voice faded.

“That’s the most unbelievable thing I’ve heard you say in
nearly twenty years.” Jerusha shook her own head. “You owe it to him to see him
alone. You have to talk, about the children.” Moon’s face pinched with denial. “You
think he doesn’t know? He knows ....”

Moon looked back at her suddenly. “You’ve talked to him, haven’t
you?”

Jerusha nodded.

“How is he ... ?”

“Up to his ass in bureaucracy. But I don’t think he regrets
it. Yet.”

“What were you talking to him about?” Moon’s expression
changed abruptly “Jerusha, are you thinking of leaving Tiamat?”

“No.” Jerusha almost laughed, the question was so far from
what was in her mind. “No .... He asked to see me.” She took a deep breath. “He
offered me a job, Moon. Chief Inspector.”

Moon stared at her in silent speculation. “You’d be working
for the Hegemony, then—?”

Again. Jerusha heard the real question she was being asked,
had been expecting When she had worked for the Hegemony before, she had been
the enemy of this world, although she had not seen it that way. “I’d be working
for BZ,” she answered

“What about your position as my Chief of Constables?”

“If I accepted the Chief Inspectorship, there would be
several people I’d trust to take over my position. I’ll make sure it’s taken
care of.”

“Have you made your decision, then?”

Jerusha almost shook her head. She hesitated, realizing that
she had. “I think I can do more good there,” she said slowly, “for all of us. I
know both sides. BZ needs people behind him who have that kind of experience ....
He needs someone to watch his back.”

“And who’ll watch my back, then?” Moon murmured, a little
sadly.

“BZ will.” Jerusha smiled. “We both will.” She looked down
at her hands again, and stopped smiling. “Moon, ever since Miroe’s death, I’ve
felt as if my life has been sinking into a rut, deeper and deeper. Everything I
am, and have, and do, isn’t enough .... I think I need this. I need the challenge,
the headaches, the confrontations, the problems—I need a good heavy jolt of
culture shock to get my life started again.” She glanced away at the terminal,
still waiting behind the Queen like an unblinking eye. “And after nearly twenty
years, I still miss the action.”

Moon nodded, with her lips pressed together. Jerusha saw understanding
in her eyes; and depths of disappointment and loss.

“Only the surface of it will be different,” she said; not
certain who she was really trying to reassure. “We’re all on the same side,
working toward the same goals. We always will be.”

Moon turned to look at the desk/terminal’s deceptively warm,
bright eye. “The only thing that ever really remains the same,” she said, “is
change.”

“You’re early, Justice Gundhalinu,” the blind woman said.

Gundhalmu stopped just inside the shellform doorway of the
palace meeting hall, nonplussed. Fate Ravenglass, the blind woman who was the
head of the Sibyl College, sat alone at the large circular table in the center
of the room. Her shuttered gaze was fixed on him, on his general presence, not
meeting his eyes. There was no one else present to have told her he was the one
who had come into the room. “How did you know it was me?” he asked, curious, as
he started toward her.

“You have a very distinctive walk,” she said, smiling, and
did not elaborate.

“Oh.” He smiled wryly, hoping she could hear the smile in
his voice. He stopped in front of her, not sitting down, folding his arms as he
leaned against the high, hard back of a chair. “You seem to have come early,
too, Fate Ravenglass.” He did not know where to look when he looked at her
face; he was not used to speaking to someone who was sightless. It made him
self-conscious. She nodded. “So I did. Tor dropped me off before she went to a
business association meeting.” She cocked her head. “But you didn’t come here
early, and alone, because you expected to meet me,” she said, with an odd
gentleness.

“No,” he murmured, glancing away, at the empty room with its
several empty doorways. “Tell me,” he said, changing the subject, “how did you
come to be a sibyl, in the heart of Carbuncle, all those years ago? And how did
you keep it hidden?”

“Someone infected me on Mask Night, during a Festival, many
years ago.” Her fingers moved restlessly over the tabletop beside her.

Gods. He considered the implications. “Was it an accident?”

“No.” Her sightless eyes rose, finding his own this time
with unnerving accuracy. “It wasn’t. Why do you ask, Justice Gundhalinu?”

He sat down, slowly, in the seat next to hers. “Something
very like it ... happened to me,” he said, not really answering the question.

“Then you are a sibyl too—?”

“Yes,” he said, surprised, until he remembered that she had
no way of seeing his trefoil, or his tattoo; surprised again to realize that no
one had even thought to tell her that.

“Did it terrify you when it happened?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said again. “I thought I’d lost my mind.”

She made a small, sympathetic noise, bowing her head.

“Was it an offworlder who infected you?” he asked.

She nodded. “I believe that it was. But he claimed he was a
Summer .. [ kept what had happened to me a secret, for years, because I was
afraid of what would happen to me if I was discovered, and cast out of the
city.”

Gundhalinu pressed his mouth together, wondering what motivation
a sibyl could possibly have had for knowingly infecting a blind woman with the
virus, and then abandoning her, in a city where sibyls were hated and feared. “And
so you never used the Transfer until M—the new Queen told you the truth?”