The Summer Queen

TIAMAT: Carbuncle

Moon arrived at Fate Ravenglass’s doorstep with Clavally Bluestone, and knocked on the closed upper half of the door. She heard footsteps approaching and a familiar voice, heard a cat squawk as it inadvertently got underfoot. The upper door swung open, and Fate’s unseeing eyes looked out at them. She smiled as if she could actually see their faces, because she had been expecting them.

“Come in, come in—” She opened the lower half of the door as they spoke their own greetings, and two spotted cats were suddenly under their feet as they stepped inside. Fate’s old gray torn had finally died, some years back, and Tor had supplied her with not one, but two replacements, when the restaurant’s cat had kittens. “What’s this? You’ve brought lunch?” She sniffed pointedly. “Does this mean you’re for more than simply to discuss College business, then?”

“Well, we all have to eat, and why not gossip a little over lunch, then?” Clavally said cheerfully. She set the covered basket down on the table in the front room, which been a workshop in the days when Fate had been a maskmaker. Now that the College had moved up the long spiraling hill to the palace and the city had begun to fill up with foreigners, Fate got out less and less, and they both knew it. With the years slowing her body and making her less sure on her feet, the accumulation of difficulties had been gradually conspiring to make her housebound.

“Well then, tell me what’s new?” Fate found her way to a seat, moving confidently within the confines of her home. She gestured to them to sit down. “Have either of you been to Tor’s club yet? I hear that it’s thriving. I’m very happy for her, I know it’s what she was meant to do. Although I virtually never see her anymore, and that’s a shame.” Moon heard the vast loneliness and regret inside the resolutely positive words.

“No,” Moon answered, hearing Clavally’s “No” echo her own. They glanced at each other, smiling ruefully. “Too busy,” she said.

“Too much noise,” Clavally said. She opened the basket, passing around meat pies. “It’s for the offworlders, who don’t know what silence means, and for the young ones, who don’t want to know.”

“For shame,” Fate said, clucking, as she accepted a pastry, its wrapper covered with unintelligible offworlder script. She breathed in the smell of the food, took a tentative bite, and sighed, nodding approval. “Well, this is not bad, you know… . You should go to the club. Make the time! You’re young yet, you should enjoy yourself. Try something new. I’d like to hear about it.”

“I’ll send Ariele to give you a complete description,” Moon murmured. “If she ever speaks to me again. She lives there, or would, if Tor would let her.”

“Oh, now,” Clavally said. “It isn’t that bad. She’s still out at the plantation with the mers as much as she is down in the Maze with Elco Teel and that lot. She’ll stablize. All the young ones are gorging themselves on the offworlders’ sweetmeats, because they’ve never had anything like it. Eventually they’ll grow tried of it.”

“How, when there’s something new every week—? They’re lost at sea, with nothing to navigate by, and no anchor.” Moon heard her own voice sharpen; knew that it wasn’t the temptations of the Maze, but Ariele’s response to them that galled her. “At least your Merovy has a sense of purpose; the future isn’t an infinite present to her.”

“How is Merovy?” Fate asked. “Has she finished her medtech internship yet? And how is Tammis? I miss his voice too, and his music, without my days at the College. And Dana—?”

“Dana is doing well. With the new medicine he’s been taking, his back is much improved again; his arthritis is virtually gone. Merovy will be licensed in a fortnight,” Clavally said.

“Wonderful.” Fate smiled. “And Tammis—?” she prompted, when no one said anything more. “They make such a good match, it gives one hope for the future.”

“They’re fine,” Clavally said, but the animation went out of her voice. Moon looked at her in surprise. “Their work keeps them both so occupied … she complains that they don’t spend enough time together anymore.”

Fate’s expression altered. “That will change when her studies are finished, ] imagine.”

“I don’t know.” Clavally glanced down. “Perhaps. I hope so. Maybe it will.”

“I didn’t realize they were having problems,” Moon said softly, selfconsciously. “Tammis hasn’t said anything about it to me….” He said almost nothing at all about what was going on in his life, and she hadn’t even been aware of it. They talked about the mers, or research, when they saw each other these days’ nothing personal. Ariele avoided her as if she had a contagious disease.

Tammis did seem moodier than usual, she realized, just as Ariele seemed even more willful. But until now she had not thought about why—any more than she had thought about why neither of them had asked her the question she had been anticipating for months: The question of who their real father was. They had nevei asked … and her only emotion had been relief.

It had been her responsibility to bring it up, not theirs. But she had been too preoccupied with the Hegemony… with her own troubled feelings for the two men who had equal claim to the title “father.” Too self-obsessed… too much like Arienrhod. Guilt writhed like eels in her stomach. She picked at her food, suddenly without appetite. “I’ll try to speak to him,” she said. Try. She had been trying for weeks, months now, without success.

“And how is Sparks?” Fate pressed on, with determined good-naturedness through their awkward silence. “He hasn’t been by in some time. Is he still working on that program to recreate segments of a damaged fugue structure? What was it he said: ‘It was like mending mathematical lace.’ His mind amazes me. …”

Moon traced the rough, random patterns of ancient glue-lines on the table surface, as she considered the fact that she had no idea Sparks had even been working on such a project. “I don’t know. He isn’t at the palace much these days He’s … he’s involved in some … business venture, with some of the Winters he used to be … close to, when he was with Arienrhod.” Her voice faded until it was barely audible.

“Ah,” Fate said, and that was all. She glanced away, her eyes moving randomly around the room. Moon wondered what she was seeing, inside her thoughts.

“But we didn’t come to spoil your day with dreary moments of our lives that probably mean nothing,” Clavally said, forcing a smile. “Everything changes, today’s tears are tomorrow’s absurdities, after all.”

“And speaking of change—” Moon matched Clavally’s tone with resolute lightness. “I’ve been informed by the offworld government that the Prime Minister and the Assembly will be paying one of their traditional visits to Tiamat, in only a few months.”

“A few months?” Fate said, her disbelief showing. “Isn’t that early? They used to come every … twenty-two years, wasn’t it—?”

“It would have been a hundred years, if they hadn’t got the stardrive back, remember.” Moon smiled. “They are so pleased to have us as a new jewel in their crown that they are breaking with their own tradition, and visiting us out of sequence.” Hei smile, and her voice, turned faintly ironic.

“Is that so?” Fate said, her own voice still full of incredulity.

“So they say,” Moon answered. “What they mean may be another matter. But the offworlders are encouraging us to put on our traditional Festival for the arrival, to celebrate ‘the new union of our cultures,’ as they put it. I’ve said we’ll cooperate…. Why not, after all?” She felt something stir inside her, like spring. “We might as well embrace change gladly, as we’ve always done, in our way; because it will have its way with us whether we like it or not. That’s what the Festivals mean; that’s what they’ve always been there to symbolize: to greet change with rejoicing and celebration, make something beautiful and alive of the moment, to hold in our memories.”

“Will there be a Mask Night?” Fate asked, leaning forward on the table. “How could there not be?” Moon touched her hand, remembering the mask of the Summer Queen. “We need to cast off our old lives with the proper ritual, because we’ve been handed our new ones already.”

“But it takes years—decades—to make enough masks for everyone. We used to work from one Festival to the next, whole families of maskmakers, to make them all.…” Moon saw the sudden realization and loss that filled Fate’s face. She would not be among them, this time.

“We have manufactories now,” Moon said; her hand tightened over Fate’s. ? “They can do a great deal of the repetitive work…. The masks may not be such works of art this time; but they can be ready. And by the next Festival, they can be both. Tor has recommended a man named Coldwater to me; she thinks he would be willing, and his production complex is suitable, with some minor alterations. She also said it would be a way to reuse some of the vast quantities of trash the offworlders have been making us such a present of.…” She flicked the plass wrapper from her meat pie. “The rubbish can be turned into raw material to produce mask forms. She thought that if you were willing, you might advise Coldwater about supplies, and designs.…”

Fate’s face eased as she listened, as she adjusted her expectations and considered the possibilities that change had set before her. “Yes… yes, I could do that, I suppose. I—”

There was a knock at her door. They all turned, startled by the sound. “This day is full of surprises,” Fate said.

Clavally started to rise from her seat; Moon stopped her, getting up in her place. The other women let her go to the door, their surprise unspoken but palpable. She reached for the handle, somehow certain that it was Sparks who had come here to see Fate, to share with her all the things he had not shared with his wife. Suddenly eager to tell him that another Change was coming, that there would be another chance for them to cast off old lives and try again…. She opened the door.

She sucked in her breath, staring at the face she found there, so unexpectedly. “BZ,” she whispered. She saw his stunned disbelief, as plain as her own.

“Moon—?” He glanced away, at the house-front; past her into its interior, and finally back at her face. “Is this the home of Fate Ravenglass?”

She nodded and moved aside, opening the bottom half of the door to let him in. He was alone, without bodyguards, and not in uniform. He wore a loose-sleeved tunic and pants, a dark cloak and a wide-brimmed hat; everyday clothing for a Kharemoughi businessman or trader. She would not have glanced at him twice, in the street. He looked at her in equal wonder, seeing her wearing the native clothing that she still preferred, when the requirements of politics and ritual did not force her to dress to meet the expectations of others.

He stepped into the room, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light, and to sharing the room with her. He looked away from her finally, taking in the presence of Clavally and Fate.

“Justice Gundhalinu,” Fate said, her own voice remarkably calm.

He smiled wryly. “You recognized my footsteps.”

“You aren’t in uniform. You’re wearing different boots,” she said. “But I knew you. Welcome. What brings you here to my home?”

“A special delivery, Fate Ravenglass.” He started on across the room. Moon followed mm, avoiding cats. She watched silently as he produced something from inside his cloak, and set it on the glue-scarred tabletop. He opened the container and took something out of it, very gently—a glittering mesh web that resembled headsets Moon had seen the offworlders use. But she had never seen one like this. “Here… .” BZ laid it against Fate’s forehead, spreading its tendrils with infinite care; Moon watched in fascination as the spreading filaments seemed to take on a life of their own, conforming to the shape of Fate’s head.

Fate, who had sat motionless even while he touched her, gasped suddenly and stiffened, her hand rising—not to pull the thing away, or even touch it; but instead reaching out, to touch Gundhalinu’s chest. She rose slowly from her chair as he took hold of her hand, steadying her until she stood before him, staring up at his face. Her own face filled with wonder. “Justice Gundhalinu …” she murmured, “I can see you!” And now her hand rose to his face, touching its features, verifying its reality.

“Good,” he said softly, in his faintly accented Tiamatan. “That’s good . . that’s as it should be.” He smiled.

Fate turned away from him, moving uncertainly as she matched the sudden input of her eyes to the feedback of her other senses. She faced Moon, gazing at her for a long moment, and although her eyes were still like shuttered windows, Moon knew by the expression on her face that she saw. Fate’s tentative smile widened, growing strong with her belief. “Lady … Moon … I remember you,” she murmured “Oh, yes, I do, my dear. … I remember the moment when you came to my door, like a lost child. … I remember the moment when I placed the mask of the Summer Queen on your head.” She moved forward to touch Moon’s face in turn, almost caressingly, and Clavally’s, which she had never seen. “You are much as I imagined you, Clavally Bluestone,” she said contentedly. Clavally’s hand squeezed hers.

Fate turned back to Gundhalinu again, and this time her hands rose to touch the shining filaments that lay against her skin. “I see so much more clearly, this time. I never saw this clearly, when I had my sight before the Departure. Even my dreams of how clearly I saw are not like this—” Her hands trembled faintly.

“This is the best sensor system available that doesn’t require surgery.”

“Thank you,” Fate murmured. Her restless eyes held his for a long moment. “I had forgotten. …”

“My promise?” he asked. “I didn’t. But it took some time to get a special request through the maze of bureaucratic red tape, I’m afraid.”

“Justice Gundhalinu,” Clavally said, asking the question Moon’s lips refused to form, “why did you do this?”

He looked at her, as if for a moment he couldn’t imagine why she would even ask such a thing. And then he glanced at Fate again, at her gaze moving everywhere with glad distraction. “To right an old wrong.”

“Do you mean the Departure?” Moon asked; thinking he meant all the things that they had lost, that had been taken away from them like Fate’s sight when the Hegemony abandoned them.

“Oh, you beauties!” Fate leaned down to stroke the cats that were winding around her legs. “Look at you, I never dreamed you were so many colors… .”

BZ shook his head, his own eyes holding Moon’s, but filled with a secret he did not share with her. “An older wrong than that—and a more personal one.”

Fate straightened up again, with a squirming cat under each arm. “You are a sibyl, Justice Gundhalinu,” she said, gazing at him, at the trefoil hanging against his shirt. It was not a question. But he said, “Yes,” his voice oddly strained.

Moon’s fingers touched her own sibyl sign, as she realized all at once that everyone in this room was a sibyl. She watched BZ’s eyes flicker from face to face, as if he had suddenly realized the same thing. His gaze came back to her again, touching her face, her pale, plaited hair; glancing down at her pragmatic native clothing. His hands tightened unobtrusively over the deep-blue fabric of his simple, ordinary shirt. She saw in his eyes then no Queen, no Chief Justice.

She remembered with sudden clarity a moment half a lifetime ago, when she had been a stranger lost in this strange city-world at Festival time. How his eyes had gazed at her then, and pierced her heart like light through windowglass….

He looked away abruptly. “I have to be getting back,” he murmured. “My staff thinks I’m on my lunch break.”

Fate smiled at him, letting go of her cats. She held out her hands in wordless farewell. He touched them briefly, as Moon watched in silent envy. “Bless you,” Fate said.

He smiled back at her. “Fate’s blessing is what I’ll need, to accomplish my work here,” he said. He nodded to them all, not meeting Moon’s eyes again as he started toward the door.

“Wait—” Moon said. He turned back, waiting as she picked up her untouched meat pie from the table. “Don’t leave without something to eat on the way … Justice Gundhalinu.” She put the food selfconsciously into his hands, an excuse to reach out and touch him, for even a moment, across the impossible distance that separated them. His fingers closed over hers briefly, warmly, as he took the food from her hands. He smiled at her, this time looking directly into her eyes. She saw the hunger there, before he turned away again. He looked back at her once more as he went out; he was still looking at her as the door closed between them, cutting off her view.

She turned back again, slowly, to find both Clavally and Fate watching her. She felt her face redden; looked down, away from their unspoken curiosity.

“He is a good man,” Clavally said at last, with what sounded like surprise. “I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, especially in an offworlder who has so much power.”

“They really aren’t so different from us,” Moon murmured. She pushed at her sleeves, raising her head again. “They’re only human. They want the same things we want.…”

Fate shook her head, her face caught in a strange expression as she looked at Moon. But then she looked down at her own hands, turning them over and back, over again. She moved away, going cautiously across the room to the painted wooden storage chest below the diamond-paned window. She raised the lid and began to search through its contents. With a soft exclamation she pulled something out, and held it up. Light flashed, the random beam spearing Moon’s eye. She realized that it was a mirror Fate was holding.

As she watched, Fate turned toward the light to look at her own reflection, which she had not seen even dimly in almost twenty years. Her hand rose slowly, visibly trembling, to touch the deep lines of age on her face, the whiteness of her hair, that had not been that way when she had last looked into a mirror. Her hand fell away again. Still slowly, carefully, she placed the mirror back in the chest and closed the lid. Turning to face them, she found in their eyes the affirmation of what she had seen with her own. “I still feel like the same person I was before. Where did this body come from…?” She spread her hands helplessly.

Moon glanced down; felt Clavally do the same beside her. She made herself look up again, seeing the woman she had always known, standing suddenly in a different light. “Fate,” she said, as realization struck her. “Mask Night—”

Fate straightened, her face brightening as her thoughts left the last Festival, coming back into the present, and reaching toward the future. “Yes, of course—” she said, starting back toward them across the room, holding up her hands. “I can work again, on my own. Only a few masks, but very special… My dear, you shall have one fit for a Queen.”