The Summer Queen

TIAMAT: Carbuncle

Tor Starhiker came down the steps from her private apartment, into the rear of the Stasis Restaurant, which occupied the entire ground floor of the townhouse. Dressed in a sensuous, sensual jumpsuit—one of the endless supply of garments from the old days that Shotwyn unearthed so effortlessly, from gods only knew whose closets— she could almost convince herself that these were still the old days in reality. The time when she had run Persipone’s Hell had been the pinnacle of her existence, no question….

She glanced at her reflection in the mirror that hung discreetly at the bottom of the stairs: confronted by the present wearing her face. Her once stolid body had changed, rounding out with the years and Shotwyn’s rich cooking. But to her surprise she found that she liked the changes. Maybe it was because Shotwyn, in his better moments, referred to her as voluptuous; or maybe it was just that the wider, softer curves filled her clothing in a way that made her feel elegant, and not fraudulent

She forced herself to admit again that while this might not be all she could ask of a future, at least there had been a future after all, and at least she was here to see it. And now they were even saying that the Millennium had come, that the offworlders had gotten their legendary stardrive and would be back on Tiamat within a matter of years. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected she’d live to see that day. Life hadn’t turned out to be nearly as dull and fish-stinking as she had imagined it would be.

In fact it felt, and smelled, extremely good as she drifted on past the mirror. She took a deep breath. Between her own perfume—which Shotwyn had concocted from a blend of herbs and flowers on a passionate whim, too long ago—and whatever he was putting in the sauce and soup tonight, the warm, heavy air around her smelled like heaven. She looked out into the dimly lamplit room, at the scattering of early evening guests. The lampglow was not exactly a high-tech environment, but the light was more flattering to all those aging faces; and even the offworlders had liked a few rustic touches, that let them feel like they were experiencing something exotic, here on this strange backwater world.

She picked up a copy of the evening’s menu and glanced at it as she started into the kitchen. The florid names riddled with words in barely pronounceable languages always annoyed her, even though she knew they were necessary; a part of the ambience, as Shotwyn would say. She had to ask him for a functional description of each dish every evening, because most of their clientele could no longer speak any of those languages fluently, if they ever had.

“Ye gods—”

She heard Shotwyn’s slightly nasal voice rising in exasperation as she let the kitchen doors slip shut behind her. He stood across the room, oblivious to her arrival, gesturing expressively as he berated one of the cook’s helpers for some inadequacy or other. The hapless recipient of the abuse was Brannod, one of the two Winter nomad brothers she had hired to wash dishes and clean up.

The City was filling up with nomads these days; aimless, ignorant, and likely to starve to death unless a soft touch like her took pity on them, and gave them some menial job. The worst part was that they had no idea even of how ignorant they were, which made them worse than the Summers. Many of them had become dependent on the offworlders through trade and thievery during the hundred and fifty years when the Snow Queen and the Hegemony had ruled; but they were only superficially knowledgeable about technology, unlike Winters from the city or the coast. The nomads tended to be as insular and superstitious as the Summers, but unlike the Summers they had let their traditional customs slide, until they no longer knew how to survive off the land when they had no choice. And so they wandered down to the shore with the melting snow, and eventually found their way into the city.

This pair were all right—not too bright but not too stubborn, and they’d been hungry enough to become loyal, if limited, employees. She hired city-bred Winters for work that required more skill, or more social grace.

“What’s the matter, Shotwyn?” She strolled up behind him, saw him start and turn to look at her; saw the relief in Brannod’s pale blue eyes at her appearance.

“Everything!” Shotwyn snapped, planting a flour-covered hand in the middle of Brannod’s chest and shoving him away. “Go, and get me another one! Then clean up this mess! Imbeciles …” Brannod wandered away glumly, in search of another whatever. Showtyn ran the floury hand through his hair, whitening the gray-shot auburn. “I’m going to disembowel myself if this goes on—”

“Only Kharemoughis disembowel themselves, Shotwyn,” she said mildly. “Don’t carry nostalgia for the past too far.”

He sniffed. “That’s what’s paying the bills, my dear.”

“Well, we won’t pay many more bills if you kill yourself over broken crockery. So what are we eating tonight, anyway?”

“Cream of crockery soup.”

“We’ll charge extra,” she said, and saw him smile, grudgingly. His long, saturnine face looked ten years younger when he smiled, which wasn’t often— because, he insisted, he was an artist. “And explain this menu to me, will you? What’s this?” She gestured at something which contained a hieroglyphic character.

“It’s Sandhi,” Shotwyn said, with irritating superiority. “The primary language of Kharemough.”

“I know,” she replied, with exaggerated patience. “But what is it?”

“ ‘Fish,’ of course,” he muttered, frowning as he turned away. “It means ‘fish,’ that’s all. Everything means ‘fish.’ Pronounce it any way you like.” He waved his hand in despair and dismissal, as Brannod came back reluctantly into his line of sight, carrying a bowl and a broom.

Tor sighed and went back through the doors into the dining room. There was no use talking to him when he was in one of those moods; which was most of the time, she thought irritably. She fixed a serene, welcoming smile on her face as she moved out into the room beyond, to mingle with the early diners, most of whom were regulars she knew personally. She had been forced to develop a reasonably gracious manner as the proprietor of Persipone’s, had worn it like the bizarre persona its real owner had forced her to wear—the image of a dead woman, whose holo he kept with him always, in the blackness he had inhabited like some night demon. Having to play Persiponë was the one thing about her job she had hated. When the Change came, she left behind everything that even reminded her of that unwholesome imitation of someone else’s life.

But you never really unlearned a skill, even the skill of smiling graciously when you didn’t feel like it, and speaking empty pleasantries to empty-headed guests. She made her way among the tables, saying hello, making certain that the servers were doing their jobs.

She stopped suddenly, as she noticed Sparks Dawntreader sitting at a table in the far corner of the room, by the diamond-paned windows that faced on the alley. It was the third night she had seen him here in the past week. He had been here only one time before this, under duress, she suspected, at the party they had thrown when they opened the place.

He sat at the same corner table each time, isolating himself as much as possible from the rest of the crowd eating here, keeping company with a book or a tape reader. And yet he watched the others, the Winters who had once been his constant companions, while trying to pretend he wasn’t watching them; just as she watched him while pretending not to.

She wondered why he was here, since it wasn’t out of fondness or loyalty. She wondered why he wasn’t home with his family … wondered if he and the Queen weren’t getting along. It wouldn’t surprise her—it surprised her that they’d gotten along at all over the years, after all that had happened between them.

Moon had believed she loved him more than life itself when she’d come to the city hunting him. She had dragged everyone she met, including one Tor Starhiker, into her quest to save him and her confrontation with Arienrhod. There had been something about her that defied reason—maybe the intensity of her passion, or maybe just her uncanny resemblance to the Snow Queen—that had compelled Tor to defy her own better judgment and help a naïve girl fresh from the outback, full of impossible, romantic dreams.

Just because Moon had actually made those dreams come true, it didn’t mean that in the long run she wouldn’t come to realize that getting your heart’s desire was sometimes more of a curse than a blessing. Tor wondered if Sparks Dawntreader had come to the same conclusion; whether he was sitting there now moodily watching what went on across the room because he felt guilty, or because he missed the old days… whether once you began living on the dark side, you got a taste for it that would never go away. She sighed, turning away as a crowd of half a dozen new customers entered the restaurant.

She saw Kirard Set Wayaways at the front of the party, and his wife Tirady Graymount. They ate here almost every night—old friends of Shotwyn’s, who liked pretentious, nostalgic food.

As she started forward to greet them and show them to a table she saw them notice Sparks Dawntreader; watching their faces, she read their amusement and interest. They murmured inaudibly, nudging each other. Tirady and another woman split off from the group—at Kirard Set’s urging, Tor noticed—and went to Dawn treader’s table.

He looked up from his reading; startled but not surprised, Tor was sure. She greeted the rest of Kirard Set’s colorfully dressed party, still watching from the corner of her eye as she led them to their seats. She saw the women flank Sparks, putting their hands on him familiarly, kissing him in a more-than-polite greeting as they gestured toward their own table. Sparks shook his head, at first noncommittal, and then frowning. He stood up abruptly, shaking them off, and left the restaurant.

Kirard Set tsked audibly. He looked up at Tor looking back at him. “I guess poor Sparks didn’t like what was on the menu,” he murmured, with a smile she didn’t know how to read. “Please give my compliments to the chef.”

“I’ll lell him you’re here,” Tor said, keeping her own expression neutral. She had never liked Kirard Set much, particularly because she sensed that he didn’t like her. When he watched her, listened to her, she knew he never forgot for a moment that even if he was no longer a noble at the Queen’s court, he was still a rich, highly educated landowner, and she was and would always be an ignorant deckhand, no matter how many restaurants she owned, or expensive jumpsuits she wore. She turned away, trying not to listen to the tittering laughter behind her, or to wonder whether any of it was at her expense.

Shotwyn came out of the kitchen at her call, looking like a reprieved prisoner, his hands red and his face despairing. He might be an elitist, but at least he wasn’t a snob. She smiled at him almost fondly.

She visited the tables of other new arrivals, exchanging gossip about the offworlders’ pending return with Sewa Stormprince, her old boss from the docks. Stormprince had built herself a whole new career too; like a lot of other Winters, and even Summers, who hadn’t started out with land or money, but had sufficient guts and brains to make up for it. And like all of them, she found the sudden change in their future to be a subject of obsessive interest.

Sewa Stormprince came here to eat not because of the food so much as the old acquaintance, and Tor appreciated the distinction. But she forced herself to end their conversation and head back toward the table where Shotwyn was still standing with Wayaways and his friends. If he didn’t get back into the kitchen soon, they weren’t going to have enough food prepared to feed themselves dinner, let alone several dozen other people who were all ready to spend a ridiculous number of imitation offworlder-style credit markers on it.

“Well, you know, I don’t have anything against Worm’s parents, and neither does he, but I just wish they’d hurry up and die, so that we can add the coastal rights to our own plantation before the offworlders want to start hunting mers again—”

Tor managed somehow not to wince as she heard Kima Tartree’s high-pitched, strident voice announcing to the entire room something that anyone with half a brain would never even whisper in someone else’s ear. She saw the others around the table snigger in a combination of empathy and barely concealed disdain.

“Well, that’s calling it as you see it,” Shotwyn drawled, as she came up beside him and put a hand on his arm in an unobtrusive signal.

“I’m sure we’ve all felt equally frustrated by something that stood in our way, at some point,” Kirard Set said, dryly but with a peculiar vehemence. “In fact, my kinsman Borah Clearwater has been refusing to sell his plantation to me for years, although I’ve quadrupled the price of my offer and done everything but clean out his cesspool to try to change his mind.”

“Then why not forget about it?” Tor said.

He looked at her, looked away again. “I begin to think he has no mind to make up,” he said, with a heavy sarcasm that was not lost on her. “And he’s living out there with the Queen’s grandmother, so I get no help from her. It wouldn’t break my heart if the Summers’ beloved Sea Mother decided to take both of them to her watery bosom.…” His mouth curled. “In fact, I make a little offering to Her every night. If She doesn’t hurry up and do something for me, I may have to turn my credit to some more responsive god, like Arienrhod did.”

The laughter that answered him made Tor’s skin crawl. Kirard Set glanced up at her again, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t you agree?” She jerked more urgently on Shotwyn’s arm, until this time he responded, following her away, back toward the anonymity that waited beyond the double doors.