His face was the picture of resentful surprise. Gods, what I wouldn’t give to just once see one of them put up his hands and say, “I admit it.”!
“I’d like to know on what evidence you’re making the accusation. You’re not going to find—”
“I know we won’t. You didn’t have time to make the deal. But you were seen in the presence of one of the off worlders who escaped us.”
“What are you talking about?”
She could almost believe that he didn’t know. “Female, age roughly seventeen standard years, pale hair and skin.”
“She’s no smuggler!” Ngenet pushed away from his craft, glaring.
“She was with them when we went to make the arrest,” Gundhalinu said. “She struck the inspector, she ran with the rest.”
“She’s a Summer from the Windwards, her name is Moon Dawntreader. I gave her a ride, and I left her at the inn because—” He broke off, Jerusha wondered what he was afraid to say. “She wouldn’t know anything about it.”
“Then why did she help them escape?”
“What the hell would you do, if you were fresh from Summer and two off worlders burst in on you with guns?” He paced two agitated steps between them. “What in the names of a thousand gods would you think, if you were her? You didn’t hurt her—?”
Jerusha grimaced again, twisted it into a smile. “Ask it the other way around.” She wondered with more interest why he was trying to protect the girl. His mistress?
“You said they all escaped?”
Gundhalinu laughed sourly. “For a man who doesn’t know anything, you’re damned concerned about what happened tonight.”
Ngenet ignored him, waiting.
“They all escaped. Their craft cleared Tiamat space without damage.” Jerusha saw the expression on his face turn into something that was not relief.
“All? You mean she went with them?” The words came out as though each one was alien on his tongue.
“That’s right.” She nodded, tightening her good hand over her other elbow, pinching off the nerve paths. “They took her off. You mean to tell me she really was an innocent bystander, a local?”
Ngenet turned away, struck the frost-rimed windshield of the hovercraft with a gloved fist. “My fault—”
And mine. If we’d held onto them she would have been all right. And that’s what happens when you start trying to change the rules.
“What was she to you, Citizen Ngenet?” Gundhalinu asked. “More than a passing stranger.” Not a question.
“She’s a sibyl.” He looked back at them. “It doesn’t matter if you know that now.”
Jerusha raised her eyebrows. “A sibyl?” The wind off the bay clutched her in icy talons. “Why—would that make a difference to us?”
“Come now, Inspector.” His voice turned bitter, like the wind.
“We’re law officers. We enforce the law”—liar—”and the law protects sibyls, even on Tiamat.”
“Like it protects the mers? Like it protects this world from progress?”
She saw Gundhalinu stiffen like a hunter scenting his prey. “How long have you been living in the outback, Citizen Ngenet?”
“All my life,” with a kind of pride. “And my father before me, and his father ... This is my homeworld.”
“And you don’t like the way we’re running it?” Gundhalinu made it a challenge.
“Damn right I don’t! You try to choke the life out of this world’s future, you let a maggot like Starbuck wipe his boots on you while he slaughters innocent beings for the gratification of a few filthy-rich bastards who want to live forever. You make a mockery of ‘law’ and ‘justice’—”
“And so do you, Citizen.” Gundhalinu stepped forward; Jerusha could see everything that had locked into place inside his head. “Inspector, it seems likely to me that this man is involved in more serious criminal activities than just smuggling. I think we ought to take him back to the city—”
“And charge him with what? Behaving like an arrogant fool?” She shook her head. “We have no evidence that would justify that.”
“But he—” Gundhalinu gestured, accidentally struck her arm.
“Damn it, Sergeant, I said we’re letting him go!” She lost his startled face in a burst of pain stars Blinking, she refocused on Ngenet instead. “But that doesn’t mean I’m letting you off completely, Ngenet. Your presence here and your attitude are questionable enough to warrant my revoking your permit to operate this hovercraft. I’m impounding it. We’re taking it back to the city.” A trickle of perspiration crept down the side of her face, burning cold.
“You can’t do that!” Ngenet straightened away from the hovercraft’s door, towering over her. “I’m a citizen of the Hegemony—”
“And required to obey me.” She lifted her head to glare back at him. “You’re a citizen of Tiamat, by your own choice. If that’s what you want, then you can live like one.”
“How am I supposed to run my plantation?”
“Just like any other Winter. Use a ship, deal with traders. You’ll get along fine, if that’s all you really need it for .... Or would you rather take the trip to Carbuncle with us, and have your plantation electronically searched for contraband?” She watched him struggle against speech, and was gratified.
“All right. Take the vehicle. Just let me get my things.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
He looked back at her.
“I’ll drop you off at your plantation before I take the craft to Carbuncle.. BZ, you’ll pilot the patroller home.”
Gundhalinu nodded; she saw some of his disappointment shaken loose in the motion. “You want me to tandem you, Inspector?”
“No. I don’t think Citizen Ngenet is going to do anything stupid. He doesn’t strike me as a stupid man.”
Ngenet made a sound that was not really a laugh.
“We might as well get started.” She bent her head grimly at the patrolcraft. It’s going to be a long trip.
“Yes, ma’am. See you in Carbuncle, Inspector.” Gundhalinu saluted and walked away.
She watched him get into the patrolcraft watched it rise from the stone terrace of the quay. The sky was clouding over again; she shivered more violently. At least Carbuncle has central heating ... suddenly longing for the touch of a warm wind fragrant with sillipha, the endless summer afternoon of her childhood on Newhaven. “Well, Citizen Ngenet—”
Ngenet reached out, his hand closed gently but firmly over her aching arm. She gasped, stiffening with surprise and sudden alarm.
“Ah,” as he held up his other hand in a cautionary gesture. He let her go. “I just wanted to be sure. The Summer girl hurt you, Inspector. Maybe you better let me see how badly.”
“It’s nothing. Get in.” She looked away from him, jaw tight.
He shrugged. “Feel free to be a martyr if you like. But it doesn’t impress me. As you say, I’m not a stupid man.”
She looked back. “I prefer to wait until I can see a medic at the star port
“I am a qualified medic.” He turned, pressed his hand against a seal on the side of the hovercraft. A storage compartment opened, but in the poor light she could not see what was inside. He removed a dark satchel, set it on the ground and pulled it open. “Of course,” he glanced up with a sardonic smile, “you’d probably consider me to be a vet. But the diagnostic tools are the same.”
She frowned slightly, not understanding, but let him take her hand and run the scanner along her arm.
“Hm.” He released her hand again. “Fractured radius. I’ll splint it temporarily, and give you something for the pain.”
She stood silently while he tightened and sealed the rigid tube of the splint around her arm. He pressed a small, spongy pad into the palm of her ungloved hand; she felt blissful nothingness begin to extinguish the fires up her arm, and sighed. “Thank you.” She watched him put the bag away, wondered suddenly whether he saw her as a gullible female. “You know this isn’t going to c
hange my mind about anything, Ngenet.”
He reseated the compartment, said brusquely. “I didn’t expect it to. I was indirectly responsible for your getting hurt; I don’t like that. Besides”—he faced her again—”I expect I owe you something.”
“What do you mean?”
“For offering me a choice of the lesser of two evils. If that overeager sergeant of yours had his way, I expect I’d end up a deportee.”
She smiled faintly. “Not if you have nothing to hide.”
“Who among us really has nothing to hide, Inspector PalaThion?” He unsealed the hovercraft’s door, watching her with a faint smile of his own. “Do you?”
She circled the craft, waited until he unlatched the far door and settled in carefully. “You’ll be the last to know, Ngenet, either way.” She fastened the straps one-handed.
He said nothing, but went on smiling as he started the power unit. And all at once she was not so certain that he would be the last one.
- 13 -
“... So his presence there gives us reason to think the man may be involved in the interference with the mer hunts. I personally confiscated his hovercraft, though; I don’t think he’ll give your hunters much trouble without it.”
Arienrhod rested her head against the flower-fragrant pillow that protected her from the cold back of the throne; listened to the inspector give her tight-lipped report with much more interest than she allowed herself to show. She read the look the woman gave Starbuck as she finished speaking, and sensed more than saw his reaction to it. He had driven off the arrogant boot who was PalaThion’s assistant some time back, much to his amusement; she had enjoyed his graphic fantasies of what he would do to the woman if he had the chance. She had no particular interest in Starbuck’s past, but it intruded into the present in ways that sometimes surprised her ... though he rarely surprised her in any way at all any more. “Who is this man, Inspector? Why didn’t you arrest him, if you knew he was guilty?” Her voice was sharp with the need to uncover a deeper mystery that shrouded Shotover Bay.
“I didn’t have sufficient evidence,” PalaThion said ritually, as though it was something she had repeated over and over. “Since he is an off worlder he’s under Hegemony jurisdiction in any case, Your Majesty, so his identity wouldn’t be of use to you.” Her expression became a shade more stubborn.
“Of course, Inspector.” And I can find it out easily enough, offworlder. She glanced down at the foot of the dais, at the bright, burnished head of Sparks Dawntreader where he sat uneasily on the steps. She had sent the crowd of jabbering nobles away on the inspector’s arrival, and for the same private reasons had ordered the boy to stay. PalaThion had stared at him with astonishment showing. And Arienrhod had seen Sparks’s body stiffen with what might have been pride as PalaThion bent her head in a brief acknowledgement of his new station. “Did you also see the Summer girl to whom this off worlder of yours gave a ride?”
PalaThion started visibly; she had not mentioned the girl. “Yes I did, Your Majesty.” Her left hand moved unconsciously to press the thin sheath of cast on her right arm. “But she didn’t stay to be questioned. She ran off with the smugglers when they made their break. They—got away from us, as you know,” she glanced down, “and they took her off-planet with them.”
“No!” Arienrhod pushed forward, the one word escaped between her teeth before she could trap it. Gone, gone ... ? She loosened her fists, sat back again fluidly as she felt three sets of eyes move to her face. The inspector’s brown, deep-set ones narrowed with calculation; Arienrhod realized that she must have noticed the remarkable resemblance. But PalaThion only looked down again, as though she were unable to follow the suspicions through to any logical end.
“Do you know the girl’s name? I have reason to believe that she may have been a—kinswoman.” Let PalaThion make of that what she wished.
“Her name was Moon Dawntreader, Your Majesty.”
Expecting it, she kept her reaction under control this time, felt the surge of emotion sing inside her body. But below her the boy, hearing the name and understanding at last, dropped his flute. It rolled down from the step onto the carpet at PalaThion’s feet, soundlessly, leaving the silence of the hall perfect. PalaThion looked at the boy for a long moment before she looked up.
“I’m sorry this happened, Your Majesty.” She glanced at the boy again as she said it, as though she had realized there was some tie between them. “I—don’t think anybody meant it to happen that way.”
Not half as sorry as I am. Arienrhod twisted a ring with her thumb. And not half as sorry as you will be, offworlder. “You are dismissed, Inspector.”
PalaThion saluted and walked quickly away toward the Hall of the Winds, her red cape flaring behind her. Arienrhod’s hands tightened again, trembling. Sparks stood, picked up his flute, struggling with grief and bewilderment. “Your Majesty, I—may I go ... ?” He kept his leaf-green eyes downcast; his voice was barely a whisper.
“Yes, go. I’ll call you when I want you.” She lifted a hand. He left the dais without making the proper bow. She watched him leave, forgetting her, with his hah—like new blood against the snow-white carpet: a wounded thing needing a hole to hide in, hurt, abandoned, vulnerable ... beautiful.
Ever since he had come here she had felt something asleep within her stir. A freshening, a renewal, a desire ... But not desire in the way she knew it for Starbuck, or any of a hundred other lovers past or present—for that soulless flesh hungry to answer power’s insatiable needs. When she looked at Sparks Dawntreader, yes, she ached to have that slender, supple body beside her on the bed, longed to touch it and feel it against her own. But when she looked at him she also saw his face, the freshness of his wonder, the innocence of his gratitude ... those things that she had learned to despise in others and deny in herself through her long Winter’s reign. He was the beloved of Moon—her other ness the daughter of her mind—and half man, half-boy, his presence breathed on the dim embers of her own long-forgotten girlhood and stirred a warmth in the cold halls of her soul.
But he had not responded when she had let him know subtly, and then not so subtly, that she wanted him. He had retreated, mumbling and seeming half-afraid, behind the shield of his pledge to her other self. There he had remained, unyielding as stone against all temptation, while the heat of her unexpected frustration fed the fires inside her. But now, now that they had both lost their future ... She willed him to turn back, to look at her once.
He stopped, a lonely figure on a field of snow, and looked back. A kind of haunted realization filled his face as she held him there with her eyes, thinking, We have both lost her ...
He turned away again at last, went on to the spiraling stair that led to the upper levels.
“Now that you’ve lost the fish, maybe you’ll throw the bait back.”
She twisted to look at Starbuck, feeling the razor edge of envy that was always on his voice when he was talking about the boy.
“Get rid of that Summer weakling and his damned whistle, Arienrhod. The sight and sound of him makes me want to puke. Throw him back on the Street where you found him, before I—”
“Before you what, Starbuck? Are you commanding me now?” She leaned toward him, lifting her scepter.
He drew back slightly, dropped his eyes. “No. Just asking, Arienrhod. Just asking you—get rid of him. You don’t need him, now that the girl’s—”
She brought the scepter down sharply on the hand that rested on the throne arm; he gave a yelp of startled pain. “I told you never to speak of it.” She pressed a hand against her eyes, shutting him out of her view. She had lost the gamble; she had lost it! Her plan, her future, all were gone, on this one final miscasting of fate. Nine seeds that she had succeeded in planting, one flawless blossom that had grown up from them ... and now that one was gone. Because of the interfering incompetence of those same off worlders whose cycle of tyranny she had hoped to break. If they had known what she was planning they could not have ruined he
r plans more neatly. And now—what was she going to do now? She would have to begin again, with a new plan, and one that would have to be less subtle, less fragile ... and so potentially more dangerous to her own position. But it would take time to search out the possibilities ...
And in the meantime she could have her revenge on the ones responsible. Yes, she could. “LiouxSked. I want him to pay for this, I want the Blues to suffer. I want him taken care of, gotten rid of.”
“You want the Commander of Police killed, over this?” Star buck’s voice betrayed a small astonishment.
“No.” She shook her head, shifting her rings on her fingers. “That’s too easy. I want him ruined, I want him utterly humiliated, I want him to lose everything: his position, the respect of his friends, his respect for himself. I want the police degraded. You know the kind of people who can make it happen to him ... go into the Maze and arrange it.”
Starbuck’s dark eyes filled the slots in the blackness of his mask with darker curiosity. “Why, Arienrhod? Why all this over a Summer brat you’ve never even seen? First the boy to get her here; now this, because she’s gone—What in seven layers of hell could she possibly be to you?”
“She is something to me—” she took a breath, held it, “was something to me, and I could not begin to explain to you, even if I wanted to.” She had given him only the skeleton of the matter, no flesh on the bones, when his jealousy of the boy’s presence had begun to make him unmanageable. As long as he was certain her interest in other lovers was superficial, he was content; but Sparks was something more, and she was not the only one who realized it. She disliked Starbuck’s possessiveness, but like his other weaknesses it had its uses. And so she had told him of the girl’s existence, but not the reason behind it .... “Since she’s gone now, there’s no reason for you to know what she was, in any case. Forget about her.” As I must ...
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