The Summer Queen (88 page)

“Yes, I did—”

He looked up, surprised. “How ... ?”

“There were people who would seek me out, sometimes, to ask
me questions. I’m not sure how they found me. They were always offworlders, but
they never betrayed my secret. I always knew them because they said that they
were ‘strangers far from home,’ and by their handshake.”

“Handshake—?” Gundhalinu stiffened. “Do you mean ... like
this?” He reached out, taking her hand, his fingers forming the hidden Survey
sign against her palm.

Her hand jerked from his grasp. “Yes! How did you know that?”

“There is a secret order which works to change things for
the better in the Hegemony, and in other parts of the Old Empire, as well ... “

“And you belong to this group?”

“Yes.”

“And they work for the greater good—?”

“Yes,” he said again, more uncertainly.

“By infecting unsuspecting and unwilling people with the
sibyl virus?”

“No.” He grimaced. “There must have been an extraordinarily
important reason for a sibyl to have done that to you .... I’m sorry,” he said,
inadequately.

“Is that what was done to you, too?” she asked, after a long
silence.

“No.” He took a deep breath, exhaled it in a sigh. “There
was no reason at all for what happened to me.” And yet, if it hadn’t been done
to him, he would never have learned the secret of Fire Lake, or brought back
the stardrive .... Song was mad, had been driven insane by the virus. But her
mother Hahn, who had asked him to find her, had been a member of Survey. Had
she been at a much higher level than he ever suspected? Had there actually been
a hidden pattern inside the seeming randomness of his fate, all of it destined
to pull him back here to Tiamat? Gods—he could go crazy with suspicion, once he
started to let himself think about the possibilities .... “It was a random act.”

Her brow furrowed slightly, as if she heard doubt in his
voice. But she only said, “I’m glad you told me this. I always wanted to
believe that there was some meaning to what had happened to me. I only knew
what the Summers claimed about their sibyls, and what the Winters claimed about
the Summers, for so long. But still the offworlders would come to me. And
sometimes I would be called away into Transfer from the other side; I was the
only one, for years, who could answer questions about Carbuncle through the
Transfer link. I always wanted to believe that what I had become mattered,
somehow; that it was important ....”

“It was,” Gundhalinu said. “More than you’ll ever know.” He
glanced down, and up again at the eyes like darkened windows in her lined,
patient face. “So you never saw the people who came to ask you questions?” He
wondered if that had been intentional on Survey’s part.

“Oh, I saw them—after a fashion. I wasn’t completely blind
then—I had a vision sensor band from offworld. It gave me enough vision to ply
my trade. I was a maskmaker; I made the mask of the Summer Queen, for the last
Festival.”

“I remember it,” he said; remembering it like a dream. Moon
had come to him where he lay, delirious with fever in a hospital bed. She had
carried the mask of Summer in her arms, to let him know that she had won ....
He blinked the present back into focus. “You lost your vision when we
deactivated all the tech equipment we were leaving behind at the Departure,
then.”

She nodded.

“I’ll make it a point to see that you receive new vision
sensors as soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, surprised.

He nodded in turn; realized that she couldn’t see the
gesture. He touched her band, making a certain sign with his fingers.

She smiled; her own hand closed over his as he would have
withdrawn it. “May I touch your face?” she asked.

Comprehension overtook his surprise, and he lifted his hand,
guiding her fingers until they touched his cheek.

Moon watched the two figures sitting side by side in the
room beyond the hidden window. She saw Fate’s fingers trace the face-map of the
man who sat perfectly still beneath her touch, sensing a portrait of him for
her mind with her artist’s hands.

Moon closed her own hands, when they would have begun to
tell her the feel of his skin, the gentle, insistent touch of his mouth against
her palm, her lips .... She began to turn away, feeling her face flush; angry
at her body’s tingling betrayal, the arousal that played like silver music
through her nerves—at the fact that she had come here to stand, behind this
one-way window in this hidden hall, waiting, watching for the first glimpse of
that face ....

This was one of Arienrhod’s secrets, hidden from the room beyond
behind what appeared to be an imported mural. Arienrhod had had observation
points all through the palace, so that she could watch anyone she chose, whenever
she wanted to. That had been one of her tricks, to hide like this, living a
lie, betraying herself and whatever unsuspecting person she observed.

But—She turned back again, unable to help herself. She
needed to see him, she needed this time .... She could not keep her public mask
of calm indifference perfectly in place, unless she first took this secret
moment alone to gaze at him. He had come early to this meeting, not waiting for
any of his own people; arriving even before any of hers should have been here.
He had come early; she was sure that he had done it for one reason, and that it
was not Fate Ravenglass he had been looking for ....

Three other people entered the room—all members of her
Council. Fate and BZ turned away, and she could no longer see his face. She
pressed her hand against the window, wondering how long it would be before she
no longer felt this piercing urgency, this desperate need for even the sight of
him. She had never expected to feel this way; not after so many years. But when
she had seen him again—and realized that she had seen his face every day
through the long years of their separation, in the face of her son ... his son
...

She bit her lips. Had that been the reason he had been in
her thoughts so often, for so long? Or had it really been the memory of the one
night they had spent together? Perhaps it was only because she could never
resolve them that her feelings for him obsessed her so, now that he had come
back. For the sake of her marriage, her children, her world’s future ...
herself, she must not weaken; must never meet with him unless they were not
alone, until she was certain that she could control her emotions completely ....

She turned away from the window, the spell broken as more
people, offworlders now, arrived for the meeting in the room beyond. She
started back toward the hidden doorway; stopped suddenly, as her husband
blocked her path. “Sparks—”

His gaze flicked past her, to what lay beyond the windows;
lingered there, for an endless moment, before it came back to her face. She
felt her face redden under his stare; unable to speak, to answer the accusation
in his eyes, because there was no possible excuse she could make for what she
had been doing here, when the truth was so obvious.

“Why bother with this?” he said, in disgust. “Have him for a
lover, if after twenty years you still find him so irresistible.”

“I don’t want him—”

“Then what do you want? You don’t seem to want me.” His hand
struck his chest, hard. “For twenty years I’ve been trying to win you back,
your love, your respect; running after you, begging you for every touch, every
bit of proof that you still cared. And all the time you just kept getting
further and further away from me ....”He shook his head. “All that time, you
were still in love with a memory. I always suspected it. But I could live with
it, as long as that was all he was—” His hand jerked at the window. “I can’t
live with this. Seeing him. Seeing how you look at him ... Seeing the truth:
Even Ariele and Tammis aren’t mine. They’re his!”

He turned away from her, and she felt her face convulse with
pain. “That’s not true. They’ve always been your children! I’ve always been
your wife. I love you—”

He turned back, his eyes burning. “Do you think I’m blind?
Stupid? They’re not my children! And you’re not my wife—not in any way that
means anything.” His anger turned to ashes. “I can’t take it. Do whatever you
want ... just don’t lie to me about it anymore.” He turned and left her without
a backward glance.

She stood alone, unable to move, as if she had been turned
to stone, until she could no longer hear his footsteps.

She moved again at last, taking in a long, tremulous breath.
She looked away from the empty corridor toward the hidden window; saw the faces
beyond it looking toward her as if they could see her. She realized that the
sound of arguing voices had carried into the meeting hall. But they were
already turning away again, their expressions uncertain. She wondered how much
they had actually heard.

She clenched her fists until her hands spasmed; released
them again, her fingers white and cold, as she made her way back out of the
hidden space. She entered the large chamber beyond, where a dozen people waited
for her now, waiting to begin a meeting that would shape the future of her
world. She saw BZ’s eyes on her; resisted meeting them. She wondered how she
would get through this next hour, this next day; where she would find the
strength she needed to be the Queen, and not a woman. In her mind she pictured
the mask of the Summer Queen that Fate Ravenglass had placed on her head one
fateful day, half a lifetime ago. She built an image of its serenity and calm,
superimposing them on her own features as she walked toward the expectant
representatives of the old and new.

“Oh, Tor, this is off the scale! I can’t believe it—” Ariele
Dawntreader draped her sinuous, slender form across the transparent table
surface, looking down into the depths below her. She clattered as she moved,
wearing a bodystocking covered with tiny, glittering silver plates. “Is this
exactly what your club was like before the Change—?” Around her, the voices of
her friends made a song of delight. It was opening night at Starhiker’s, the
first offworlder-style gaming club to open, or reopen, in the Maze.

Tor had bought up the remnants of club technology wherever
she could find it, used or abused, buried in storage around the city; had
everything refitted and all their burned-out entrails repaired with suddenly
available microprocessor replacement parts. With the Queen’s blessing, she had
gotten in ahead of all the offworlder entrepreneurs who had been clamoring at
the palace gates, and down in Blue Alley, petitioning the onworld and offworld
governments for permission to start filling half-empty buildings of the Maze
with stores and places of entertainment. The new Chief Justice had kept a
chokehold on the influx of offworlders and their technotoys, the changes that
her own people awaited with what seemed to be equal parts eagerness and dread.
So far, tradespeople and technicians were given heavy preference over those in
less functional occupations.

Ariele felt only the eagerness and awe, not understanding
why anyone, including her mother, could feel any other way about the dazzling
possibilities of their changing city. She had lived all her life with a hunger
for these wonders, never realizing until they actually began to appear what it
was she had been hungry for.

“Glad you like it, sweeting.” Tor reached across the table
top, patted her cheek fondly with a jewel-gloved hand. “Enjoy yourself, it’s on
the house tonight for you and your friends. But this is only a pale imitation
of what my old place was like. The difference is that it’s my place, this time
.... Wait till the technology really begins to flow—this place will turn your
eyeballs inside out. The Maze ... gods, I never thought I’d live to see it come
alive again!” She shook her head, her gray-shot hair scintillating, netted in
silver.

Ariele looked at her, feeling another kind of wonder;
feeling as if she had never really seen Tor Starhiker before, although she had
known her forever ... that she was seeing Tor now in her element, where she had
always belonged. She hoped she would have that kind of light in her own eyes
when, after some inconceivable length of time, she was as old as Tor was now.

“Ye gods, Ariele—” Tor straightened suddenly, peering back
at her as she passed a round of drinks and gaming pieces into the waiting hands
of her friends. “What happened to your hair—?”

“I got it cut like the offworlders.” Ariele shook her head,
feeling the giddy lightness of the motion, as if a weight had been lifted from
her soul, along with the weight of her waist-length hair, which she had left on
the floor of an offworlder’s shop only this afternoon. What was left was bare
inches long, and stood out all over her head like cat’s fur. Elco Teel had
dared her to do it; but once she had gone ahead, none of the others had dared
not to follow her lead. Most of the crowd of bobbing heads behind her sported
newly shorn hair, one cut more bizarre than the next. “Don’t you love it—?”

Tor raised her eyebrows, and then nodded, smiling. “I think
it’s perfect. Your mother will hate it.”

Ariele grinned. “I hope so,” she said, feeling her own smile
pinch. “At least I don’t look like her anymore.” She shook her head again,
pushing back off the table surface, taking a drink with her. She sipped it,
pleased and a little surprised to find that Tor had actually given her a drink
with alcohol in it. “Thanks, Tor.”

Tor lifted her hand in good-natured dismissal, moving away
from the table, which suddenly came alive with a hologramic vision of an alien
city.

Ariele’s gasp of astonishment was lost in the murmurs of
amazement around her. She stood between Elco Teel and Tilby Atwater, watching
as eager offworlders materialized out of the crowd, elbowing her friends aside,
flocking to the display to try their hand at a new game which was probably long
since an old game to them.