The Summer Queen

TIAMAT: Carbuncle

Moon followed the taciturn officer through the blur of motion that was the interior of Police headquarters, staring straight ahead at his uniformed back. All around her she sensed the surprise spreading outward, like the wash from a ship’s prow—the gossip, the speculation, the curious stares: It’s the Queen. She’s come to see Gundhalinu, come to see her lover. Caught them bare-assed together, committing treasonable acts … Gundhalinu the hero, Gundhalinu the traitor: What does the Mother lovers’ Queen want with him now that he’s locked up?...

She had asked the duty sergeant to let her see Chief Justice Gundhalinu. He had shaken his head and said, “No one is permitted to see the prisoner.” The prisoner. No indication of what he had been, until yesterday; what he had meant to his people, all he had done for the Hegemony. She had demanded to see the Chief Inspector. He had handed her over to one of his officers, and sent her through this gauntlet of smirking gossip.

She passed through it, scarcely even registering the unwanted attention, her mind preoccupied with losses and questions of such magnitude that the mockery of the strangers surrounding her was reduced to the meaningless noise that it was; until the voices began to fall silent, as if they realized it too, and she passed beyond them.

“The Queen to see you, ma’am.” Her guide showed her into an office, saluted, and left, shutting the door behind him.

Jerusha PalaThion looked up at her in surprise, over an armload of supplies. Jerusha dropped the supplies unceremoniously into an empty crate.

Moon hesitated, half-frowning. “What are you doing?” she said. There were other boxes piled up beside the desk/terminal, already filled; the shelves and storage units of the office were virtually empty.

Tm clearing out my desk,” Jerusha answered, her voice heavy with irony. “The Commander of Police informed me this morning that he had charged BZ with treason, and declared martial law. And that after today is over I will no longer be serving as Chief Inspector.”

“Lady’s Tits!” Moon struck the closed door with her fist, as the memory of last night filled her. She sagged against the ancient, unyielding surface, suddenly strengthless. “Damn him! May he rot in any hell he chooses.” She looked up again, to find complete agreement in the other woman’s eyes. “Have you seen BZ—have you spoken with him? Is he all right?”

Jerusha shook her head. “Vhanu won’t let anyone near him; particularly not anyone who might be tempted to help him. By the Boatman, I’ve tried.” She sat down in her desk chair, resting her forehead on her hands.

Moon crossed the room. “You said he’s declared martial law? What gives him that right?”

“He’s second in the power structure after the Chief Justice. With BZ stripped of his office, Vhanu’s in charge. He’s calling it a state of emergency, until he receives orders from the Central Committee, or they send a new Chief Justice. It basically empowers him to do anything.” Jerusha’s face turned grim.

“And if I object—?” Moon broke off, turning as the office door opened suddenly behind her.

“Then I have the power to enforce my decisions,” the Commander of Police said evenly. He made a small, correct bow. “Lady.” He looked away from her, toward Jerusha. Jerusha rose from her seat, and saluted stiffly. He returned the salute, expressionless.

Moon felt her face burn. “Are you threatening to attack my people?” she said, shaken by anger.

“Not unless you give me cause.” His eyes were as impenetrable as obsidian.

“And what do you mean by that?” She stood away from the desk, her arms rigidly at her sides.

“I intend to resume hunting the mers. If you or your people give me trouble over it, I will retaliate. Needless to say, your people will be the ones on the losing end of any conflict, not the Hegemony.”

“Is this what ‘autonomy’ means to the Hegemony, then?” Moon said. “That you don’t interfere in our internal affairs, unless you feel like it? Unless we don’t put your right to exploit our world before our culture and beliefs or even the right of the mers—who have more claim to this world than any of us—simply to live and not die?”

“A state of emergency, and martial law, are justified in a situation of extreme civil unrest or strife,” Vhanu said tonelessly. “Our purpose here is to keep the peace.”

“I have Seen told thai your people value honor above everything else. I see that I was misinformed,” Moon murmured. She felt more than heard Jerusha draw a sudden breath; saw Vhanu’s eyes flicker, and knew that she had stung him.

Vhanu’s mouth thinned. “I would walk softly, if I were you, Lady. Your much-prized autonomy is the only thing that protects you from the same charges I brought against the Chief Justice.”

She flushed. “You had no right—”

“I had no right—?” His hand jerked, fisted. “You had no right to seduce him, to use your body to make him give you anything you wanted! He had no right, to turn his back on his own people! He had no right to be so weak. Someone had to stop this madness, before he ruined everything we had here. I was his best friend, damn you—!” A tremor shook him, as if he had to restrain himself from laying hands on her.

“But only for as long as he gave you everything you wanted,” she said, softly, coldly. “He loves me, and I love him. But he made the choices he did not because he is my lover, but because he is an honorable man.”

Vhanu looked at her, his lips twitching, for a long moment. He muttered something in Sandhi, finally, glancing away. She translated the sour words: barbarian whore.

In Sandhi, she said, “Would you prefer to speak your own language, Commander Vhanu? I understand it fairly well.”

He looked back at her; the scattering of pale freckles across his brown face flushed blood-red. He took a deep breath. “I think there is very little left for us to say, in any language, Lady,” he answered, in Tiamatan. He began to turn away.

“I want to see him,” Moon said. “You can’t deny me the right to see him.”

He turned back to her. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. He’s no longer here.”

She froze. “What?”

“He’s gone.” Vhanu shrugged. “Back to Kharemough, to face charges before the High Court. If he remained here, there was too much threat of strife, so I had him deported immediately.”

She felt his satisfaction tighten around her throat, as if it were his hands. “You mean,” she forced the words out, “that there was too much risk that he was right; that his voice would be heard, and everyone who heard it would know.”

“Walk softly, Lady,” he repeated, frowning more deeply. He bowed to her again, with perfect grace. He turned away, opening the door; stopped, turning back. “By the way,” he said. “I know now that your fanatical predictions about our decimating the mer population were not only superstitious rubbish but complete lies. My people tell me that the waters are teeming with mers. Their numbers are far from depleted.”

“No!” She started forward. “That isn’t the truth, there are no more mers— Search further, search all the seas; you have the means. The seas will be empty.”

He shook his head, and his eyes pitied her, as if she were beneath contempt. He went out the door without answering.

Moon stood motionless in the center of the room, until her moment of desperate rage passed. She turned back, then, to face Jerusha.

Jerusha sat down again behind her desk, her dark eyes filled with questions, none of them reassuring. She reached into her pocket for a pack of iestas, put a handful into her mouth, chewing them to quiet her nerves.

Moon moved to a seat and dropped heavily into it. “BZ can’t be gone,” she said, studying her hands, which lay in her lap like dying insects. “How can it have happened? It’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Jerusha murmured tonelessly.

“This is.” Moon raised her head. “He had to be here. He was meant to be. They both were. … We were all in place. And suddenly, just when we were ready—they’re gone.” She shook her head, feeling as if she had been beaten, as if she were bleeding inside.

Jerusha looked at her, and Moon saw an expression on the other woman’s face that she had not seen in years. “Gods,” Jerusha said. “It’s been speaking to you again, hasn’t it—the sibyl mind? The way it did when you told me you were going to become Queen.”

She nodded, mute.

“Who is the third person?”

“Reede … Reede Kullervo.”

Jerusha’s eyes widened; she looked away, frowning. “He works for the Source.

BZ wanted him picked up … wanted it done unofficially. Kitaro was handling it, before she …” Her gaze came back to Moon. “What happened?”

Moon told her how it had begun, pulling her raveled thoughts back together.

“And what were the three of you supposed to do?” Jerusha asked, when she was finished.

“It—has to do with saving the mers.” Moon shook her head. “But that’s all I can tell you. Except that they’re the key to something. If that merkiller Vhanu—” She broke off. “If he only knew what he’s done, not just to the mers, not just to us, but to himself.…”

Jerusha sighed. “So the Hedge has Gundhalinu hostage, and the Source has Reede—”

“And Ariele.” She forced the words out.

“Ariele?” Jerusha paled. “Why, by all the gods?”

“She was involved with Reede. I didn’t even know… . The Source took them both. Because of … what I know that I can’t tell.” She told the rest of it, numbed by the words as she spoke them, until finally her voice held no emotion at all. “They’re all gone… . And I don’t know if any of them will ever come back.”

Jerusha sat back in her chair and dropped a remote into a box; looked up again, bleak-eyed. “Is there anything at all that we can do, right now?”

“Nothing.” Moon shook her head. “Nothing even makes sense to me, right now.” Her body seemed to have turned to stone as she sat there, until now it was too heavy, too inert, ever to rise from her seat again. “Nothing will make any difference.”

Jerusha leaned forward abruptly, and switched on her comm. “Prawer! In my office. Immediately.”

Inspector Prawer appeared in the doorway bare seconds later. He saluted. “Ma’am?” He made a brief bow in Moon’s direction; she looked away from his glance.

“You’re in charge here, until the Commander names a new Chief Inspector. Have my belongings sent to my …” she glanced at Moon, “to the local constabulary headquarters.” Moon looked up, suddenly feeling something stir inside her that was not another tentacle of despair. “I want my old job back,” Jerusha said.

“It’s yours.” Moon pushed to her feet, glancing at Prawer, and back at Jerusha.

Jerusha came around the corner of her desk, tossing Prawer a packet of keycards. “Here. Tell Commander Vhanu …” She paused, and spat an iesta pod into the trash basket. Moon saw Prawer’s mouth twitch. “Tell him … he’s mekrittu. Like all his ancestors before him, back to the first.”

Prawer looked disbelief at her. “Gods, I can’t say that to the Commander—”

“Quote me,” she said. “That’s a direct order.” She hesitated. “And tell the force that Gundhalinu’s gone.”

“He’s gone?” Prawer repeated, his face going slack. She nodded. “Yes, Ma’am.” He drew himself up and saluted again. “Consider it done.”

She returned his salute; he passed them, heading toward her desk, as she walked with Moon toward the door.

Jerusha took a deep breath as they stood outside Police Headquarters at last. “It feels good to get the stink of that place out of my head.” She looked behind her at the building entrance, at the sign above it in both Tiamatan script and Sandhi hieroglyphics.

“What is mekrittu?” Moon asked finally.

t Jerusha smiled, the line of her mouth sweet-and-sour. “It’s the lowest of the lower classes, on Kharemough. It’s like calling a Summer ‘merkiller,’ raised to the tenth.” Her face hardened again. “The only real mistake Gundhalinu ever made was thinking that tunnel-visioned bigot Vhanu was his equal.” She looked down, spat out another seed pod, and followed Moon, who was already moving on toward the alley’s entrance. “Moon, do you want to know what I think?”

“Yes.” Moon kept her own eyes fixed on the way ahead, knowing that it was her only choice: to keep moving, to keep ahead of the fate that was closing in on her, trying to bring her down. “Tell me. I need a parallax view. Every way out I see is blocked by a wall of fire—” She looked up, remembering Vhanu’s threat, and the fire in the sky that could destroy her world if she pushed the Hegemony too far.

“Then slow down.” Jerusha’s hand fell on her arm, holding her back. “Slow down.” Moon slowed, looking at her. “Wait, until we learn more,” Jerusha said. “BZ has friends—not just here, but also on Kharemough. He could come back to us on his own. …” But her voice doubted it. Moon remembered the levels of Survey, the schisms hidden within its seeming unity. “Or if Sparks comes back with Kullervo and Ariele, Kullervo may be the key … the fire to fight fire with.”

“I need water, to put it out forever.” Moon rubbed her arms. She began to walk again toward the brightness of the Street, feeling her mind slowly beginning to unlock and function. “Either way, it will be weeks—it could be months, before we’ll know. And all the while mers will die.” And with every mer’s death, the sibyl mind would die by inches… . She shook her head. “I know you’re right; I can only wait and see. But I’m not an empty shell. BZ was going to run an analysis of data Sparks had developed on the mersong. I can analyze that data myself.”

“Your systems are interfaced with the Hegemony’s governmental computer net, aren’t they?” Jerusha asked.

“Yes.” Moon looked over at her. “Why?”

“Martial law. I don’t know what that’s going to do to your access. Vhanu could restrict your usage, if he wants to make your life difficult. He can probably monitor anything you do with it, in any case.”

Moon looked away; touched the spines of the trefoil she wore with wary fingers. “I have access to a far better system than the one in this city; Vhanu doesn’t control my use of the sibyl net. And I think that I know now what questions I have to ask it, to get the answers I need. I’m going to call a session of the Sibyl College, and explain what I can to them about this … situation.” Her throat closed over the word. “Jerusha, what will they do to BZ, if—”

Jerusha glanced at her. “The Hegemony doesn’t have a death penalty,” she said, looking straight ahead again. “But they have some prisons that make their occupants wish there was one… . But it won’t be one of those, for him,” she went on hastily. “He has a lot of influence.”

“He has a lot of enemies, then,” Moon said softly. She glanced over her shoulder, down Blue Alley. “I’ll get him back. By the Lady and all their gods … I’ll make them pay, if it takes me the rest of my life.” She looked ahead again. “And if I fail, everyone will pay. …”

Jerusha looked at her, and said nothing more.

They reached the alley’s end, where her escort of constables waited. She informed them of Jerusha’s return; they greeted the news with smiling nods. “Gives us somebody to talk to the Blues in their own tongue again, eh?” the constable named Clearwater murmured. “It’s all Sandhi to me, Commander,” he said to Jerusha, and laughed.

Her own mouth pulled up in a wry smile. She .turned to Moon, her eyes intent. “Is there anything I can do for you, now that I’m back in your service, Lady” Anything at all—”

Moon hesitated, searching through the images that filled her mind, searching for one that she could alter. “Yes,” she said finally. “I want you to arrest Kirard Set Way away s.”

Jerusha started, and then nodded. “I’ll see to it,” she said. “Immediately. I’ll take Clearwater with me, if that’s all right with you.”

Moon nodded. She held out her hand, and Jerusha shook it, in the traditional way. “Welcome home.” Moon smiled, at last.

Jerusha made her way to Kirard Set Wayaways’ townhouse, followed by Clearwater, who didn’t ask any questions although she could see that he wanted to. She was sure Wayaways was in the city; she had seen him just yesterday, window-shopping in the Maze.

She knocked on his front door, waited, suddenly seeing in her mind an unexpected image from the time when Arienrhod had ruled—seeing Kirard Set Wayaways, as he stood waiting by the Pit, when the winds had still moaned hungrily; waiting for Police Inspector PalaThion and Sergeant Gundhalinu with a wind-taming bone whistle in his hand. She still remembered, after all these years, the smile on his youthful, perfect face as he saw the anxiety on their own faces; how he had laughed at them behind his eyes, letting the wind nip their heels as he led them across the span to their audience with the Snow Queen. She realized suddenly that she wanted to see their positions reversed; still wanted it, needed it, after all these years.

The door opened. But it was not Kirard Set who greeted her, it was his wife, Tirady Graymount. Jerusha felt surprise at the depth of her own disappointment.

“Chief Inspector PalaThion …” Tirady Graymount murmured, leaning against the jamb of the open door a little unsteadily. Her pupils seemed abnormally dilated; Jerusha wondered what kind of drugs she had been taking. She glanced past Jerusha’s shoulder at the constable, and her sour expression turned quizzical. “What do you want?”

“I’ve come to arrest your husband, Tirady Graymount,” Jerusha said.

The woman blinked, as if she were having a hard time processing the information. “The Hegemony is arresting him?”

“Not the Hegemony.” Jerusha glanced down at the blue uniform she still wore. She looked up again, and shrugged. “I work for the Queen now.”

“Oh,” Tirady Graymount said, as if that explained everything. “Well, my husband isn’t home. I’m sorry you missed him….” She smiled oddly.

“I don’t suppose you’d have any idea where I can find him?” Jerusha asked, already anticipating the predictable response.

But Tirady Graymount pushed away from the doorframe, in a motion like windblown grass. “Why, yes, I do.” She smoothed back her fair, gray-salted hair. “He’s gone down to Persiponë’s—the club. On business,” she added, and her smile this time was one of surpassing cruelty. “You know where it is. If you hurry, you’ll catch him there.”

“Thank you for your cooperation.” Jerusha kept the irony and surprise out of her voice.

“It’s my pleasure,” Tirady Graymount murmured, as they turned away. “Good day to you.” Her door closed sharply behind them.

Jerusha wasted no time getting to Persiponë’s, and few thoughts along the way on the state of Wayaways’ marriage. She held more than enough reasons in her own mind why Kirard Set could drive someone to drugs, or acts of petty revenge.

They entered Persiponë’s calculated mouth of darkness, stood blinking on the threshold, as everyone else did. She felt another odd frisson as the past whispered through her present like a fever-spirit. Persiponë’s Hell looked exactly as it had looked during Arienrhod’s reign. It was like something that existed outside of time; appearing, disappearing, reappearing again. Then, as now, it had been a front for the Source, the drug boss Arienrhod had turned to when she had tried to commit genocide on the Summers. The Blues had stopped it—Jerusha had stopped the Source, herself. But somehow the Source had slipped through their grasp, folded himself up into his own persona] singularity and disappeared.

And now he was back in business on Tiamat, and he was holding Moon’s child, for a ransom nobody could even name. If she had stopped him then, for good, this wouldn’t be happening. But she had failed, and she was powerless, this time, to do anything at all about it. But there was still Kirard Set.

A woman in a slit-backed black gown was coming toward them, wearing a black wig netted with silver, her face so ornately painted that it was impossible to tell who she actually was. She was called Persiponë, and she looked the same as she had twenty years ago—except that twenty years ago it had been Tor Starhiker beneath the paint, fronting for the club’s real owner. But the Summer Queen did not offer them protection from the Blues, and this was not Tor Starhiker, only some anonymous hireling playing at hostess.

“Welcome, Chief Inspector. How may I serve you?” Persiponë smiled, her face glowing with eerie phosphorescence.

“Bring me Kirard Set Wayaways,” Jerusha said flatly.

Persiponë nodded, pressing her hands together like a gesture of worship, and disappeared into the depths of the club. Jerusha waited, unmoving and unmoved; at her side, Clearwater whistled in awe as he watched the action unfold around them. “I’ve been wasting my pay in the wrong places,” he said.

After a few moments Jerusha saw someone coming purposefully toward them; not Persiponë, and not Wayaways. TerFauw. Her brain put a name to him. He was the one who actually oversaw the club’s functions; one of the Source’s lieutenants. He was Newhavenese, from her homework), though from the look of him he hadn’t been back there in a long time either.

“What do you want here?” he said, without even the pretense of civility.

“I want Kirard Set Wayaways,” she answered, looking up at him. She was tall enough that she didn’t look up to meet a man’s eyes often, but he was considerably taller, and massive. It made her feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, especially when she considered that this was how most women were forced to feel whenever they confronted a man.

“What makes you think I know where he is? He could be anywhere on the Street,” TerFauw said, in thickly accented Tiamatan. He gestured away into the crowd.

“His wife said he was here. On business.” She pointed back the way TerFauw had come, toward the hidden rooms and secret activities she knew lay behind him.

“He could be gone already.”

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “If he was, you’d say so. Bring him out.”

TerFauw grunted. “Tell me why the Hedge wants him,” he said.

“Not the Hedge. The Queen. His own people.”

He pushed his twisted lip into an unpleasant smile. “Then what does she want him for?”

“Take a guess,” Jerusha said.

He nodded, thoughtful. “That’s good enough.” He glanced over his shoulder, lifting his hand. “Bring him out,” he said, speaking to the air.

As she watched, three men appeared out of a shadow-black opening in the wall; the one in the middle was Wayaways, and he didn’t look happy to be there. The others were armed; she couldn’t see their weapons, but she read it in the way they moved.

“The Summer Queen wants to see you,” TerFauw said tonelessly, as Wayaways and his escort joined them.

“The Queen—?” Wayaways broke off, and Jerusha saw the look she had waited to see slowly forming on his face.

“Let’s go,” she said, smiling the smile she remembered.

“No—” He turned to TerFauw, grabbing him by the front of his jerkin. “You can’t let them take me away! I’m one of you, for gods’ sakes! I’m a stranger far from home, I’m a Brother, the Source promised me the Brotherhoo—”

TerFauw drove his fist into Wayaways’ stomach, as casually as another man might have shaken hands, doubling him up. He gestured again, and his two men dragged Wayaways upright. “You go to your Queen, Motherlover,” he whispered, into the face of Wayaways’ stricken betrayal. “And you better beg her not to let you come back here again. Ever.” His finger flicked Wayaways suddenly, excruciatingly, in the eye; Wayaways shrieked, covering it with his hands.

Jerusha took a deep breath. She forced her hand to move away from her own weapon and hang loose at her side, as TerFauw turned his back on them and strode away. Wayaways’ guards followed him, wordlessly.

Jerusha waited until Wayaways’ screaming had subsided, until his hands had dropped away from his streaming eye. “Come on,” she said, to his colorless face and vacant stare. “Let’s go.”

He went with her, without protest.