The Summer Queen

TIAMAT: Hegemonic Starport

“Did you enjoy your tour of the complex, Lady?” Vhanu asked, behind him.

Gundhalinu turned away from the window wall, abruptly startled out of his reverie. He had managed to lose himself in the spectacular, eye-numbing view of the starport’s landing grids; avoiding conversation, letting the incandescence twenty meters below him burn away all conscious thought for minutes at a time. Vhanu’s question forced his attention back into the crowded reception hall as the Queen and her husband joined them. Jerusha PalaThion, who had accompanied the Queen on the tour, stood with them now, staring out at the grids as if her own mind were somewhere else entirely.

“Yes. It was fascinating,” Moon said, her voice holding just the right amount of awe. Her glance left Vhanu’s face briefly; Gundhalinu saw the wary amusement in her eyes. It was not the first time she had set foot in the complex, although Vhanu did not know that. The last time had also been the night of the Assembly’s arrival on Tiamat; but then it had marked the beginning of the end, the Final Departure of the Hegemony from Tiamat, and not the Return.

She had not been an honored, invited guest then. She had been an exhausted refugee … and so had the young inspector Gundhalinu, missing and presumed dead. Together they had come out of the wilderness, starving, frozen, and wholly unexpected; and although the natives were forbidden to set foot in the complex, the duty sergeant had taken one look into the eyes of Inspector Gundhalinu, who had risen from the grave, and let them pass.

They had arrived in the middle of a celebration exactly like the one taking place tonight, and the pleasure and unspeakable relief he had felt, to find himself back among his own people, alive, safe, and going home, had matched the celebration of all the assembled guests in the hall that night.

He glanced at Jerusha PalaThion again, at her expressionless face, wondering what she was thinking tonight. She had been Commander of Police then; this time she was only a Chief Inspector. But her life had undergone so much change in the years between—almost as much as his own had—that he could not imagine what her reactions were. He remembered suddenly how she had smiled as she came into the infirmary room where he was being treated; how her pleasure at the sight of him had filled his beaten, shivering body with warmth and strength.

And he remembered the looks on the faces of the Assembly members who had followed her—thinking they had come to honor one of their own, a Kharemoughi Technician who had been lost in the barbaric wilderness—as they saw the scars of his failed suicide attempt on his wrists, and listened to him blurt out his forbidden feelings for the Tiamatan woman who had saved his life.

He glanced down at his wrists, as if he would suddenly find the red weals of fresh scar tissue standing out against his skin; although he had had all traces of them removed long ago, and scarcely even thought about them anymore. He felt surprise as he realized that, because once he had been so certain that a day would never pass when he would not think about them, even if they were made invisible; when he would not hate himself simply for being alive….

But now, after so many years, it also surprised him to realize that although he could barely remember what he had eaten for dinner yesterday, he still remembered every stinging word of mockery and censure that had been spoken to him that night in the infirmary; how if he had had the strength left in him to do it, he would have taken the nearest sharp medical instrument and finished what he had so ineffectually started….

He felt himself blinking too much; forced his mind to concentrate on the complexities of an adhani until his emotions were back under control. He glanced at Moon, wondering what she remembered of that night, so long ago for both of them, when his own people’s self-righteous cruelty had driven him to turn renegade, rejecting everything he had ever believed; and by that act, helped Moon Dawntreader achieve her destiny.

She was not looking at him now, but stood listening to Vhanu discuss more details of the starport’s function, with her own face carefully composed. She wore a long, fluid robe that would not have been out of place on Kharemough, although there was something about the subtle dappling of greens in the restless fabric that made him think of leaves moving in the wind, waves on the sea; something wholly Tiamatan. She wore her hair in a simple loose plait down her back, woven with golden thread, and on her head a diadem made of what looked like crystal. He had never seen her wear anything like a crown before; realized that it must be one of Arienrhod’s, and worn for a calculated effect. She held herself like a queen; but that, he realized, was something she had always done.… He looked away from her as the ache in his chest suddenly grew too strong.

Sparks Dawntreader was listening too, his face taking on a rare animation, as if he were honestly interested in the subject Vhanu was discussing. He was dressed in an imported tunic and pants, formally cut, and there was nothing, superficially, that would have marked him as a native.

“… but forgive me,” Vhanu said, “I must be boring you, droning on about such technical matters.” Gundhalinu heard the unconscious dismissal of the Queen and her husband as less than rational, educated human beings.

“Not at all,” Moon said. Gundhalinu saw the brief glint of anger in her eyes, and knew that she had heard the unthinking judgment too. “This has certainly satisfied a healthy curiosity in me to know what your starport is like. It has been a restricted area for my people for so long, even though it has played such a vital part in the fate of our world…. Although I have to admit it really doesn’t compare with the orbital cities that circle your homeworld, Commander Vhanu.”

Vhanu looked at her blankly. “Have you … seen a tape of the starport hub, then?” he asked.

“No, I’ve seen the starport. I visited there when I was a girl. That was when I learned about the sibyl net.” She smiled, pleasantly, in the face of Vhanu’s suddenly acute discomfort.

“How did you get there and get back again?” he asked. “No one has been able to leave your world for years—and before that, I believe any Tiamatan who did leave was proscribed from returning. Isn’t that right—?”

“I’m afraid I broke the law,” she said simply. “But that was long ago … what I did is no longer illegal, under the terms of our new relationship with the Hegemony. And I am most grateful to you for your wisdom in changing the old, oppressive system. It was an unjust law … there were many of them in those days. Isn’t that true, Justice?” She looked suddenly at Gundhalinu, as if she had felt his eyes on her.

He smiled, his own smile as guarded as the one he saw on her face now. “True justice is what we hope to establish in our relations with your people this time, Lady,” he said softly. He glanced at Vhanu’s face, seeing barely controlled annoyance, and at Sparks Dawntreader. Dawntreader looked at him with a cold speculation that was not the expression he had been expecting to see; one that triggered an unpleasant reaction in his gut.

Dawntreader looked away again, staring out at the landing grids, at the recently arrived ships of the Assembly in the docking bay beyond the windows, with a kind of fierce hunger. Gundhalinu wondered whether he was really wishing that he could fly away, disappear, leave this world and all its sorrows. Or maybe he was only wishing the Hegemony would disappear, instead….

He heard a sudden stirring in the crowd across the room: The Prime Minister and the Assembly members were making their entrance at last. For half a second, he knew exactly the emotion Dawntreader had been feeling.

“Well, the Living Museum of Ancient History has arrived,” Jerusha PalaThion said dryly, and quite clearly.

“PalaThion!” Vhanu snapped, his indignation not simply for appearance’s sake. But Gundhalinu felt his own sudden paralysis disappear. A faint trace of smile pulled up the corners of his mouth as he looked at his Chief Inspector. He gave her an imperceptible nod; a thank-you. Moon smiled openly, behind Vhanu’s back. Sparks turned away from the windows, all his attention suddenly on the doorway. Gundhalinu remembered that Dawntreader was the son of one of the Assembly members, fathered during the same Mask Night when Arienrhod had had herself cloned.

Gundhalinu started forward, a signal to the people around him to follow, knowing that the Assembly members would expect that courtesy as their due. Even though they had functioned as nothing but figureheads through virtually all of Hegemonic history—and had just become even more of an anachronism, as the stardrive transformed the nature of the Eight Worlds’ real power structure—still they remained the living symbol of the Hegemony’s influence. He understood Vhanu’s reflexive anger at Jerusha’s casual remark, even though he had long ago ceased to feel the kind of pride and reverence that the sight of Assembly had once inspired m him.

Because the Assembly members were little more than actors living a perpetual role, their arrival anywhere was generally an excuse for holidays and celebration, for remembering what was good about Kharemough’s dominance as first among equals in the Hegemony.… He hoped suddenly, with all his heart, that it would be that way tonight.

The crowd of expectant offworlders and influential Tiamatans parted as though some word of magic had been spoken, opening a path between him and the waiting Assembly members. They were resplendent in gem-brocaded, perfectly tailored uniforms, crusted with the honors and decorations awarded to them during their endless cycle of returns to the Eight Worlds.

Gundhalinu glanced down at his own clothing, seeing the austere black uniform of a Chief Justice. Tonight its uncompromising plainness was crossed by a band of silver, on which his family crest and his own honors and decorations were displayed. He had felt disagreeably ostentatious when he put it on; but suddenly he was glad he had, as if he had remembered to put on body armor before confronting a mob of rioters.

He stopped before the Prime Minister, flanked by Vhanu and Tilhonne, with the other officials of his government gathered behind them. He made his bow as they were introduced, one by one, by the Prime Minister’s protocol officer.

Prime Minister Ashwini touched Gundhalinu’s upraised hand briefly, with a look of benign distraction, and murmured a polite pleasantry which Gundhalinu immediately forgot. The Prime Minister appeared to be in his mid-sixties, but his body was still youthful-looking; he was distinguished and obviously Technician in his bearing. He was only the fourth Prime Minister since the Hegemony’s formation, and Gundhalinu had no idea how long ago, in the realtime history of his homeworld, Ashwini must have been born. He had probably known it once, in school, but he had long since forgotten. Given the access the Prime Minister had to the best available rejuvenating treatments, and frequent use of the water of life, he was certainly much older in actual years than he looked to be. And because he, and the rest of the Assembly, had spent most of their time in sublight travel between Gates and worlds, their memories carried back even further, a patchwork of random moments of history—most of them probably too much like this one.

“Honored, sadhu,” Gundhalinu murmured, speaking Sandhi, as everyone else was now. He stepped aside to give the Prime Minister and the Assembly a clear view of the others who waited behind him. “May I present to you the Summer Queen—”

“Arienrhod!” the Prime Minister said, his face filling with surprise. “I say… .” He touched his nose briefly with his hand, glancing at Gundhalinu again. “Isn’t she supposed to be dead? Didn’t we see them drown her, a few months ago—?” He broke off, before Gundhalinu could make an answer; his eyes glazed over as if he were listening to someone speaking inside his own head, Gundhalinu realized that Ashwini was getting a datafeed from somewhere, possibly from his protocol officer, or else some file of stored information tuned to his own speech. “Oh,” Ashwini said, after a brief moment that had begun to seem interminable; and then, “Of course. This is the Summer Queen. My apologies. Honored, Lady, to be sure.” He stepped forward, holding out his hand like a local. Moon bowed, with equal dignity, and shook it solemnly. “Is this something new, then?” he said to her. “Do you have yourselves altered to match your predecessors, now?”

Gundhalinu saw Moon flush, and winced inwardly. “No,” she said, without using titles, as one equal to another. She spoke Sandhi that was slightly stilted buf perfectly clear. “We do not.”

“Oh,” he said, and the look of consternation filled his face again. “But what are you doing here at all? Your people weren’t even permitted in the starport, the last time I was here.”

“Things have changed, sadhu,” Gundhalinu said, with gentle urgency. “If you recall. Because of the stardrive. Our relationship with Tiamat included.”

Ashwini half frowned, and seemed to listen to his inner voice. “Of course they have,” he said, blinking. “Well, of course, that makes perfect sense.” He nodded to Moon again, as if they had just been introduced, before looking back at Gundhalinu. “And you are the man we have to thank for it all, are you not, Justice?” he said, with a smile that actually seemed genuine and full of appreciation. “You must tell me the whole story of it, in your own words, at dinner—”

“It would be my pleasure, sadhu.” Gundhalinu returned the smile, briefly, before the Prime Minister’s attention wandered. Gundhalinu exchanged glances with Vhanu as Ashwini looked away; seeing his own disconcertion reflected in Vhanu’s eyes. Gods, the man is a shufflebrain, a walking cipher. But he went on making introductions, as if nothing had happened, presenting Sparks Dawntreader, “…the Queen’s consort, the son of First Secretary Sirus …”

A murmur went through the gathered men and women of the Assembly, and he saw someone push forward for a better look—Sirus himself, if he recalled the half-remembered face correctly. The man looked no older than Sparks Dawntreader did now; but he smiled, with pride and feeling, as his eyes found his son. Gundhalinu felt Dawntreader look back at him in brief surprise, before turning to face his father.

The Prime Minister was being guided on into the room with gentle insistence, chaperoned by a handful of advisors and protectors. Gundhalinu felt his neck muscles loosen with relief as other members of the Assembly and their companions came forward to greet him and his staff, by turns blandly congenial, or unthinkingly arrogant, or seeming vaguely disoriented, as the Prime Minister had. They spent the majority of their time in their own hermetically sealed floating world, except when they left their ships to attend functions like these—an endless succession of sparkling soirees and elegant dinners among the ever-changing elite of world after world. Generally they only elected new members when someone died. He supposed it was surprising that their behaviors did not seem even stranger.

He accepted a drink from the assortment of mild drugs offered by a passing servo, as its highly burnished form wove an expert course through the flesh-and blood bodies of the gathered guests. He swallowed down half the drink at once, disgusted at himself for needing it, for letting his memories get on his nerves so much. He had encountered the Assembly only once before, in that brief, bitter meeting at the port hospital. That meeting had been thirteen years ago for him, but these people had scarcely aged, and it seemed to him that some of their faces were familiar, too like the ones burned indelibly into his brain.

What was it, he wondered, that gave humiliation such a terrible power over the human soul, making the painful memories of half a lifetime ago more vivid than his memories of last week, let alone of all the good and worthwhile things he had accomplished in the years between? When he had returned to Kharemough with the stardrive, no one had dared mention his disgrace. Years had passed without a single disapproving stare or a cutting remark about his past. His suicide attempt had even begun to seem like ancient history to him.

But for these people, the memory of their last encounter with him was only a few months old. He had been barely twenty-five then, and looking half-dead besides; but even so he found himself praying to the shades of his ancestors that no one would remember, or make the association …

“Justice Gundhalinu,” a voice said, too loudly, from just behind his left ear. “A great pleasure to meet you, sadhu—someone who has come to be a living symbol of what makes Kharemough great, of why we still rule the Hegemony, after so long.”

Gundhalinu turned, backing up a step from the other man’s uncomfortable proximity, and the overpowering scent of cologne. His stomach turned at the odor, one he had never forgotten.

“IP Quarropas,” the man said, “Speaker of the Assembly.”

“Honored,” Gundhalinu murmured automatically, meeting the Speaker’s palm as he looked down into the other man’s fleshy, smiling face. The Speaker had obviously been a handsome man in his youth, but his life of ease and privilege had not worn well on him.

“I feel we’ve met this way before—” A strange expression came over the Speaker’s face as their hands touched. “Have we?”

“No, I don’t think so.…”

“But I remember your name, from before—” Quarropas wagged his finger, and Gundhalinu watched the answer struggling inexorably toward the surface of his mind.

Gundhalinu kept his expression neutral with an effort, as memory doubled his own vision. “Yes, Quarropas-sadhu,” he said quietly, “we have met. On your last visit to Tiamat. I was a Police inspector then.” And Quarropas had refused to touch his hand in greeting, because he had crippled it, in his attempt to slash his wrist.

“Inspector Gundhalinu,” Quarropas murmured. “Sainted ancestors! Are you that one—the one from the wilderness? How is it possible? I’d thought that you would have done the honorable thing years ago, after so debasing your family and your class that night—” Several people near him turned around to stare, in open disbelief or scandalized curiosity. Gundhalinu heard someone whisper, “I said so . …”

Gundhalinu said nothing for a long moment, seeing Vhanu among the onlookers who were suddenly bearing witness to this confrontation. “The ‘honorable thing’?” he repeated, finally, his voice perfectly even. “By that do you mean that I should be dead now?”

“You were a failed suicide,” Quarropas said. The term also meant coward. “And with a filthy native girl for a mistress besides—”

“Do you mean Moon Dawntreader?” Gundhalinu asked, damming the flood of words. “Then you are referring to the Summer Queen—” He nodded toward Moon, who stood motionless in the crowd near them, with her expression caught somewhere between anger and pain. Sparks was with her, and there was only bleak disgust on his face. “In that case,” Gundhalinu continued, with deadly calm, “you are mistaken. She was, and is, married, to First Secretary Sirus’s son. Their children are here among the guests tonight. She helped me in a time of need; I did as much for her, a long time ago. That was all. There is nothing more to be said about the matter ” He took a deep breath. “Except that I came to realize that to throw away my life was the real act of cowardice. The truly honorable choice was to go on living, and by my actions earn the right to forget the past.”

“Well said, Gundhalinu-ken.” Sirus, the First Secretary, was standing now behind Sparks Dawntreader. His dark, shrewd eyes met Gundhalinu’s. “And well done, too. I daresay, Quarropas,” he murmured, lowering his voice as he moved forward to stand between the Speaker and Gundhalinu, “I would sooner commit suicide myself than speak such words to this man here. We both committed an unworthy act during our last visit, to have questioned his honor even once, under circumstances we could not fully understand. To insult the honorable Gundhalinu-eshkrad twice is unforgivable.” Quarropas bristled, glaring at Sirus with the shoe of attention suddenly on his own foot, and pinching.

“If it were not for the Chief Justice,” Sirus went on, “I would not have the great pleasure of seeing my son again tonight, or meeting his family. His wife would not be Queen of this world … we would not be here at all, with a new future before us, and the water of life back in our hands, if he had not given us the stardrive. I salute you, sadhu.” He looked toward Gundhalinu, and raised his enameled goblet. The crowd began to murmur again around him; but this time there was nothing hostile or mocking in the sound. Gundhalinu saw other glasses raised, and palms held up in solemn acknowledgment to him.

Gundhalinu nodded, letting Sirus read the gratitude in his eyes. Sirus smiled and turned away, and time began to flow again.

“By the Boatman, you skewered that kortch neatly.” Jerusha PalaThion was suddenly standing beside him. She touched his arm, and he saw their shared past mirrored in her eyes.

His mouth pinched. “I’ve had enough years, lying awake nights, to think about what I would say this time….” He shook his head, and smiled faintly. “Maybe I’m really not a coward.” He looked back at her. “How are you doing?”

She shrugged. “I’ll live. I’ve had worse receptions. But I think I need more fortification.” She moved away, following the track of a servo.

Gundhalinu sipped his own drink, searching the crowd until he spotted Vhanu. Vhanu met his gaze briefly, then glanced away, his eyes filled with uncertainty.

Gundhalinu started forward, wanting to speak to him. But the Prime Minister was suddenly in front of him, between them, smiling at him with benign dignity. “A toast to Chief Justice Gundhalinu? Nothing could be more appropriate, or give me more pleasure. Few people in our history have deserved our tribute more, for their contributions to the prominence of Kharemough and the prosperity of the Hegemony.

Gundhalinu bowed his head, with the gesture avoiding having to look anyone in the eye. He wondered, in that moment, why it had to be that such an honor, which once would have meant more to him than life itself, was given to him now, when it scarcely meant anything at all.

When he raised his head again, Vhanu was nowhere in sight. Someone spoke his name, behind him, and he turned around. Moon came toward him, with Sirus, and her family around her. “Thank you, Justice Gundhalinu, for your defense of my reputation and my family,” she said.

He nodded, hiding the surge of emotion he felt as he saw her face. “It was no more than what was due… to any of us, to set the record straight, Lady.” He avoided Sparks Dawntreader’s gaze, the silent watching eyes of Ariele and Tammis; turning to Sims, instead: “My gratitude, sadhu.”

Sirus’s mouth quirked up in a slightly embarrassed smile. He was a tall man, large-boned for a Kharemoughi Technician; Gundhalinu remembered vaguely having been told that he was in fact half Samathan—a son of the Prime Minister’s from some distant visit to Sirus’s homeworld. The accident of Sirus’s birth had helped him to become an important political leader on Samathe; he had been invited to fill a vacancy in the Assembly, on their next visit. “I would be grateful, Gundhalinu-sadhu, if you would consider the scales equal between us, after what must be, for you, so long.”

Sirus glanced away, at Sparks and at Ariele and Tammis. Tammis stood behind his mother, beside Merovy, his own young wife. “We in the Assembly have been unstuck in time, due to our travels, for all these centuries. But now you have given me the chance to see what great things my son and his wife have accomplished … to see my grandchildren. It was something we put much store by, among my mother’s people—something I have regretted about my choice in joining the Assembly.” He put an arm around Sparks’s shoulders, turning to him. “I know I have not had the chance to be any kind of father to you, Son; and perhaps my pride is presumptuous. But it is heartfelt, nonetheless. And it seems you have done extremely well with your life, in spite of my absence.”

Sparks smiled briefly, looking back at his father. But the smile disappeared as quickly as it had come. Gundhalinu wondered what doubts and regrets and secrets hid behind the expression that replaced it; suddenly sure, somehow, that Dawntreader’s expression hid as many secrets as his own had a few minutes past.

He stood with them, making desultory polite conversation as an excuse to go on watching them speak and interact among themselves. He knew that he should be mingling with the crowd, doing his duty, however unpleasant; and yet he was somehow unable to make himself leave Moon’s side, unable to take his eyes off her, to stop watching her surrounded by her family.

Her family. He glanced at Ariele, whose face was still so much like he remembered her mother’s, except for the chronic mocking smile, the restless impatience in her eyes. She had pasted a stim patch from the passing tray in the middle of her forehead like a third eye. Her cropped, cream-white hair was caught up in a cascade on top of her head; she wore a clinging dawn-colored bodysuit and loose soft trousers knotted around her slender waist, relentlessly expensive and sophisticated, as usual.

Her gaze settled momentarily on Sirus as he spoke to her mother; glanced away again, and Gundhalinu suddenly found himself being stared at. She half frowned, glancing at Sirus and back at him, and then at Sparks, the man she had always known as her father. Just for a moment Gundhalinu saw her mocking mask slip, saw the confusion of a lost child in her eyes. She turned away as she caught him still watching her, and disappeared into the crowd. He wondered if she had gone looking for that miserable little snot Elco Teel. Kirard Set Wayaways and his family were here tonight, being too influential to snub, although so far he had managed to avoid even the sight of them by some good fortune.

“It is quite remarkable, isn’t it?” Sirus said to him, gesturing at Ariele’s disappearing back. Gundhalinu looked over at him. only then realizing that he had been staring, and the others had noticed it. “The resemblance between her and her mother, I mean.”

“Yes,” he said, glad to take that as an excuse for his behavior. “I actually mistook her for the Queen, the first time I saw her.” He smiled, glancing at Moon, seeing her surprise.

“Tammis here takes after his father more.” Sirus’s smile widened, as he turned to the young couple still standing beside him. “He has the look of a Kharemoughi about him; don’t you think, Gundhalinu-sadhu?”

Gundhalinu hesitated, feeling five sets of eyes suddenly fixed on his own face. “Yes,” he said softly, “he does.” Tammis glanced down; Gundhalinu thought the boy was simply avoiding his gaze, until he realized that Tammis was staring at his trefoil. Tammis’s hand rose, touching his own sibyl sign; dropped away again, to take and hold his wife’s hand. Gundhalinu saw her try surreptitiously to avoid his touch, and then give in. He had heard that they were having marital problems.

He looked back at Sirus. The First Secretary seemed mercifully oblivious to the undercurrents of tension, caught up in the pleasure of his illusory fantasy about his son’s family life. He would not have to be here for long enough to see it shattered, if he was fortunate … any more than he ever had to be anywhere for long enough to experience more than an illusion of life in the real world, with all its pain and pitiless imperfection.

Gundhalinu had wondered from time to time what could make someone like Sirus choose to join the Assembly, to sever his ties so completely with the life he had always known. Now, tonight, he thought that perhaps he finally understood. He was suddenly aware of the music that was playing—a limpid fuguetheme work from his homeworld. Somehow the music he had always known had never seemed as beautiful to him, or as poignantly sad.

Sirus turned back to Moon, as she spoke his name. “Please, call me Temmon—”

“Temmon,” she said, nodding, with a brief smile, “you said that we might discuss the mers.”

“Yes, of course; it’s obviously a question that needs to be addressed. Sit with me at dinner, and we’ll—” He broke off, as guests began to stir and mutter across the room.

Gundhalinu strained to see past the random motion of half a hundred heads turning toward the doorway. He made out Tilhonne, standing at the focus of a small open space, holding up something vaguely familiar. He froze as recognition hit him, hearing Moon’s audible gasp: Tilhonne held a vial of the water of life.

“Sadhanu, bhai,” Tilhonne announced, raising his voice to be heard above the crowd’s. “Dinner waits for us. But first, thanks to the diligence of our new Hegemonic government, and the cooperation of our Tiamatan friends—” he gestured, and suddenly Kirard Set Wayaways was standing beside him, smiling and bowing, “we have a special gift for our honored visitors tonight. The first fruits of a renewed harvest. The water of life.”

A murmur of surprise and eager anticipation spread through the crowd; ripples of motion followed, as the Assembly members began to press forward toward Tilhonne.

Gundhalinu stood motionless, feeling the people around him suddenly staring at him again. He looked at Moon, seeing disbelief and betrayal in her eyes.

“Well done, Gundhalinu-sadhu!” Sirus said, his face beaming. “No mere speech could have silenced the arrogant bigotry of certain fools so neatly.” He clapped Gundhalinu on the shoulder. “You have given them their dream—you and the Lady.” He turned to Moon, but she had looked away, watching in anguished fascination as the Assembly members passed the vial from hand to hand, lifting it to their mouths, inhaling, swallowing the spray of heavy silver droplets with an eagerness approaching lust.

“Well, come then,” Sirus said, his expression turning to surprise as everyone around him remained motionless. “Surely we are all entitled to our share of this blessing? Unless of course you’ve already sampled it?”

“No,” Moon said, her voice filled with desolation. “I don’t drink blood. Mers die for every drop of the water of life you take. The Hegemony has broken our laws to slaughter them—”

He stared at her for a moment, as if it had never actually occurred to him before how the water of life was obtained.

“This was the matter concerning the mers that I wanted to talk with you about,” she said, looking at him now, with pain-shadowed eyes.

“Ye gods,” he murmured, chagrined. “I never imagined the two things would be related… . But yes, I still wish to discuss it, more than before. Dinner will run long, if I recall, and we can—”

“No.” She shook her head, her face stiff and unyielding. “To attend your dinner as if nothing had happened would mean that I accept what was done here tonight, and that would make me a complete hypocrite.” She looked at Gundhalinu, away from him again, before he could speak.

“Moon—” Sparks said, catching at her arm as she started to turn away.

“Stay if you want to,” she answered, with both understanding and anger in her glance. She started away, with Tammis and Merovy following her wordlessly.

Sparks hesitated, looking at his father. But then he shook his head, murmuring something that Gundhalinu could not make out, before he went after them. As he passed, Sparks met Gundhalinu’s eyes briefly, with a look that raked his conscience like claws. Surprised and disturbed, Gundhalinu watched until the other man disappeared through the doorway across the room.

Sirus shook his head, caught between concern and embarrassment, as they found themselves standing abruptly alone in the crowd. “Will you join me, then, at least, Gundhalinusadhu?” he asked, gesturing toward the water of life.

“No, sadhu,” Gundhalinu said. “I’m afraid I would find it undrinkable.”

Sirus stared at him a moment longer, and then looked away again at the silver vial still circulating through the crowd. He sighed. “Well, perhaps I am beginning to lose my interest in it—at least until I’ve heard more about this. You are staying for dinner, I hope?”

Gundhalinu smiled faintly. “Yes, Sirus-sadhu. I have no choice in that matter, unlike the Queen.” He glanced toward the doorway that she had disappeared through, watching the counter-ripple of comment her abrupt departure had caused collide with the spreading excitement of the water of life. As he watched, he saw to his surprise that Ariele Dawntreader was arguing angrily with someone. He saw her turn and leave, as if she was offended like her mother by the water of life and all that it stood for.

As she disappeared from his sight, his gaze fell on Vhanu, standing near the door. “Excuse me. I have someone I have to speak with first.” He left Sirus and made his way through the gossiping crowd, trying to hear as little as possible of what was said along the way.

He reached the place where Vhanu stood waiting. “Damn it, NR,” he said furiously, “how the hell did this happen? This is a diplomatic slap in the face. The Queen was so angry she’s left the complex. I never authorized this—”

“It was Tilhonne’s idea, to have the water of life here and present it to the Assembly—”

“With Wayaways’ eager cooperation, no doubt.” Gundhalinu said sourly.

Vhanu shrugged, and nodded.

“How did they perform a hunt, without the Queen’s cooperation? Arienrhod used her Starbuck, and dillyp hunters from Tsieh-pun to—”

“I authorized any supplies and operators they might need to get the job done.”

“Gods! And it was thy doing—?” Gundhalinu repeated, feeling himself flush. “By what authority? Goddammit, NR, how could thou not bring this to me?”

“Because I knew thou would reject it out of hand.” Vhanu frowned, his hands twitching at his sides. “In the name of a thousand gods, BZ, we have to make a good impression if we want the continued support of the ones who count, back on Kharemough. We have to prove we’re getting the job done. That we’re in control here, and not some enclave of superstitious natives. And damn it, thou were letting this obsession with ‘enlightened government’ get in the way of that.” Gundhalinu saw his own troubled image reflected in the other man’s eyes, and looked away. “Thou were cutting thy own throat. I did this thing for thee.”

“You did it for yourself,” Gundhalinu snapped, suddenly both angry and defensive. “Don’t confuse the two things.”

Vhanu’s mouth tightened, at his use of the formal you. “Very well then. I did it for both of us—for all of us, just as Tilhonne did.” His expression changed; he put his hands on Gundhalinu’s shoulders with gentle insistence. “BZ, thou know I have always had the highest regard for thee. Thou are my friend. There is no one I admire more. But whatever thy reasons are for wanting to be here, I promise thee, once thou have taken the time to think it through thou will be grateful for what we did tonight.”

Gundhalinu said nothing more, watching the last of the water of life disappear down the last eager Assembly member’s throat. “They’re going in to dinner,” he said finally, turning back, meeting Vhanu’s gaze. “Shall we join them?”

Vhanu nodded, and they went in together without further conversation.

The rose-colored light of dawn was showing through the storm walls at the end of Azure Alley as Gundhalinu reached his townhouse door at last, weary and alone. He glanced toward the dawn, the proof that a world, and a universe, still existed beyond the changeless walls and undimming light of Carbuncle. He looked away from the brightening sky again, without emotion, too drained to feel anything at the sight of it, to find any false symbolism in the simple light of day.

His memory of the night just past, after the appearance of the water of life and the disappearance of the Queen, was a blur: an endless meal that he had barely touched, punctuated by endless questions from the First Secretary. He had answered the questions to the best of his ability, unable to focus on anything but the knowledge that Sirus was a powerless figurehead, which Sirus knew as well as he did; that no protest anyone made, no matter how influential, would be enough … that Moon had left the starport without giving him a chance to explain. All that he knew clearly now, standing on his own doorstep, was that he had a headache three times the size of his head, and even the complexities of his door lock were barely within the capacity of his problem-solving.

He tripped over something that lay in the shadows of his entryway, swore as he lost his balance and banged his shoulder against the wall. He bent down, to discover a wide, flat bundle sitting on his step. He explored it cautiously with his hands. It was large but very light, and rustled faintly when he shook it. There was no note attached to it, not even his name; but for a reason he could not explain he sensed no threat about it. He picked it up, holding it under his arm as he deactivated the security lock and let himself inside. He dropped the lidded basket on a table in his living room, and went in search of a pain patch for his aching head.

He came back through the wide, arched doorway, loosening his collar, and collapsed on the earth-colored native couch. He breathed in the faint ocean-smell of the dried seahair that had been used to stuff its cushions. He sighed, realizing that he had actually begun to find the peculiar odor soothing. He put his feet up and closed his eyes, calling on music from the entertainment system across the room. The familiar strains of a Kharemoughi art song filled the silence of the house as he let the analgesic patch do its work; feeling it dull the pain until there was only a bearable heaviness behind his eyes, and he could think again.

But the thoughts that seeped back into his consciousness as his mind cleared only seemed to him to be a different kind of pain: the nagging ache of his growing frustration, of futility, isolation and regret. He sat up, telling himself angrily that this was no more than he could have expected. Had he really become such a fool that he believed his own press—believed that the Hegemony would grant his every whim because of what he had done for them? Or that Moon Dawntreader had been secretly longing for him to return, thinking only of him all these years, as he had thought only of her—that they would fall into each other’s arms like the lovers in the wretched Old Empire historical he had been addicted to in his youth?

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Gods … he was exhausted, he should go to bed before he sank any deeper into this trackless bog of self-pity. He had always known what the reality of the situation here would be; he had just never wanted to believe it. He let his eyes take in the timeless, vaguely alien contours of the room, picturing the layout of the townhouse, one of the best in the city: ten rooms, their walls covered with beautiful murals of sea and mountains, in which he lived all alone, in rattling emptiness—as he would likely go on doing for years, unless he … unless he …

He stood up abruptly, and spoke the music off again. This had been his own choice. He had made his bed; he might as well lie in it.

As he started across the room, his eyes caught on the package he had brought inside, still waiting on the stolid, square-legged table beside the couch. He sat down again, taking the lidded basket into his hands, breaking the seals that held it together. He lifted off the lid and set it aside; sat staring in amazement at the thing which lay in a nest of sea grass inside.

It was a mask—a traditional Festival mask, handmade, exquisitely crafted; like the masks he remembered from his last Festival on Tiamat, and not the hurried, uninspired things he had seen cluttering shops in the Maze as this Mask Night approached. He had not bought one; had not even looked at them twice.

And yet this mask was new, not some relic that had been stored for a generation in someone’s closet. … He touched it tentatively, wonderingly, seeing the glittering pinpoint diamonds of the stars, fragile veils of nebulosity spread across the dark silken reaches of space; the wings of midnight; the utter blackness of a Black Gate’s heart, of the Transfer, of eyes without sight … and at its heart, a face made of light, reflecting, mirroring the world and all its variety … showing him his own face, looking back at him. And suddenly he knew whose hands had made this thing for him; who had sent it to him, and why.

He smiled, taking the mask in his hands, lifting it carefully out of the basket and holding it up to study it. He laid it back in its resting place again after a long moment, and got to his feet, stretching. “Tomorrow,” he murmured to it, feeling his perspective restored; feeling an odd sense of peace settle over him as he climbed the stairs, in search of a resting place of his own.