The Snow Queen

6

“What do you mean, you don’t know what happened to the boy?” Arienrhod leaned out of her seat, glaring at the bald dome of the trader’s bent head. Her fingers sank into the soft arms of the lounging chair like talons.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty!” The trader glanced up at her with the eyes of a terrified rodent. “I didn’t think you were interested in him, only in the girl. I told him to go to Gadderfy’s in the Periwinkle Alley, but he didn’t go there. If you want me to search the city” His voice wavered.

“No, that won’t be necessary.” She managed to produce a placating tone of voice, not wanting the old man to keel over dead at the thought of it. “My methods are much more efficient than yours. I’ll find him myself if I decide that I need him.” And I think that perhaps I was meant to find him. “You said that he decided to come here because… Moon… has become a sibyl, while he was rejected?” How hard it is to call yourself by another name. “What does he expect to find in Carbuncle?”

“I don’t know, Your Majesty.” The trader wrung his tooled leather belt-end between his hands. “But like I told you, they were pledged to each other; they were always together. I guess it hurt his pride, that he couldn’t join her in the hocus-pocus. And his father’s an off worlder he always wears that medal… I guess he’s curious.”

She nodded, not looking at him. Over the years he had brought her stories of the two children growing up together, childhood sweethearts bound by some invisible cord of loyalty… which perhaps could be used to draw the girl here to Carbuncle, and get her away from her superstitious sibyl-fixation. She couldn’t blame the girl for aspiring to the highest honor in her limited world; that only proved how surely they were the same woman. But Moon’s obsession had kept her unreceptive when the trader had tried to interest her in Winter technology, though it had caught the boy’s interest, perhaps because of his off worlder father. At least Moon had never rejected her cousin for being a tech lover, as any true Summer would have. That had prompted Arienrhod to tolerate their relationship, in the hope that even such diluted contact with technology would help make Moon ready for her destiny. At least she hadn’t gotten pregnant by him — even the Summers grew child bane and knew how to use it. If he were here in the palace, waiting for her…

“You’re sure that Moon is ‘studying’ with these sibyls on their island now? Will she be safe there?”

“As safe as anywhere in Summer, Your Majesty. Probably safer. She may even be back on Neith by the time I put in there again.”

“And you say the sibyls you’ve seen aren’t actually deranged—?” Her voice tightened. She had hoped to bring the girl here before she had the chance to contract the sibyl disease; but now it was too late.

“No, Your Majesty.” He shook his head. “They control their fits completely; I’ve never seen one who couldn’t.” His own lack of fear reassured her.

Arienrhod studied the mural on the wall behind his head. As long as the girl was sane, that was all that really mattered; the disease could even be an asset, a protection, if it made the Summers trust her. She looked back at the trader. “Then you’ll bring her a message from her cousin, which I will supply. I want her to come to Carbuncle.” Moon would have to come of her own free will; the Summers would never stand by and let someone kidnap a sibyl.

The trader kept his head bowed; she could not tell what his expression was, although he twitched slightly. “But, Your Majesty — if she’s become a sibyl, she may be afraid to come to the city.”

“She’ll come.” Arienrhod smiled. “I know her; she’ll come.” If she thinks her lover is in danger, she’ll come. “You’ve served me well—” she realized that she had forgotten the man’s name, and did not use it, “trader. You deserve to be well rewarded.” Gods, I must be getting old. The smile altered slightly. She pressed a sequence of lighted keys on the chair arm. “I think you will find that the debts for your new cargo of trade goods have all been canceled.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty!” She watched his sagging face jiggle as he made obeisance, hating the sight of the ugliness that age inflicted, even while she took pleasure in the awareness of her own invulnerability.

She dismissed him, not even cautioning him to keep this meeting to himself. He was a distant but loyal kinsman; no matter what he might wonder about his strange guardianship or the stranger object of it, she knew that he would never ask, or betray. Particularly not when he was paid so well.

She rose from her seat in the small private room when he had gone, and went to the doorway, drawing the white inlaid panels aside. She found Starbuck waiting there, not quite expected, in the wider hall beyond it. With him were his Hounds — the amphibian hunters from Tsieh-pun, ideally suited to the work of outwitting mers. The Hounds stood in a cluster at the far side of the chamber, tentacled arms waving as they grunted at each other in desultory conversation.

But Starbuck stood leaning with his usual public insolence against a massive Samathan side table very close on her left… very close to the door. She wondered whether he had been listening; decided that he probably had, decided that it probably didn’t matter.

He was hooded and still in black, but instead of his court costume it was a utilitarian thermal suit hung with equipment for the hunt. Light caught on his sheathed killing knife as he straightened up. He bowed to her with rigid propriety, but not before she saw the searching look and the questions in his dark eyes.

“Are you leaving already?” She gave him nothing but the coldness of her voice.

“Yes, Your Majesty. If it pleases you.” She detected the faint assumption of a ritual between equals.

“It pleases me very much.” Yes, flinch, my overconfident hunter. You are not the first by many, and you may not be the last. “The sooner you go, the better. You hunt the Wayaways preserve this time?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. The weather is clear there and should hold.” He hesitated, came toward her. “Give me luck in the hunt—?” His hand caressed her arm through the film of cloth.

He lifted his mask, and she drew his face toward hers with her hands, giving him a kiss that was a promise of greater rewards. “Hunt well.”

He nodded and turned away. She watched him gather the Hounds and go looking for life and death.