The Snow Queen Part 12

The second man was a freighter captain, he guessed, or something less official: a heavy man with a scarred face. He stepped back suddenly, jerking the seated man off-balance. Sparks watched the first man sprawl helplessly into the street, realized with a shock of empathy that the man's legs were paralyzed. The scarred officer laughed, the kind of laughter he'd never wanted to hear again. "I don't owe you s.h.i.t, Herne, if you can't collect." Herne's curses followed him down the alley.

The man called Herne rearranged his useless legs laboriously, ignoring the subtle and the not so subtle stares of the pa.s.sersby. Sparks stood staring like the rest, trapped in the voyeurism of pity. He moved forward at last, tentatively, as he watched the man try to drag himself back onto his seat. The man glanced up at him; slid back down onto the pavement.

"You!" Hatred followed recognition like night behind day. "Did she send you here? Did she tell you where to find me? ... Yeah, take a good look, kid! Fill up your eyes, fill up your brain; and then don't ever forget that someday she'll do the same to you." Herne's hand closed on a fistful of dust, flung it away.

"Starbuck." He was not sure he had even spoken it aloud, but he knew it for the truth. "She a" she said you were dead." He had imagined she meant fallen thousands of meters into the sea. But there were platforms and machinery jutting out into the shaft. One of those must have broken his fall ... and broken his back. And now he might as well be dead a" but he was alive. Sparks felt the sudden release of an unconscious pressure somewhere in his chest, a thing he became aware of only in its absence. "I'm glad ..."

Herne twisted in futile rage; his hand leaped out at Sparks's leg. "You son of a Summer s.l.u.t! If I could get my hands on you I'd finish what I started!" He slumped back again, letting his hand drop. "Go ahead, enjoy it, kid. I'm still twice the man you are, and Arienrhod knows it, too."

Sparks stood just beyond reach, his face burning. The memory of what Herne had done to him, and failed to do, there in the Hall of the Winds drowned his compa.s.sion like a gnat in a bowl of bitterness. "You're no man at all, Herne, any more. And Arienrhod is all mine!" He turned and started away down the alley.

"You fool!" Herne's angry laughter beat at his retreating back. "Arienrhod is no man's! You belong to her, and she'll use you until she uses you upa""

Sparks walked on. not looking back, until he reached the corner of the Street. But he did not start uphill toward the palace; he stood while his anger drained away and left him purposeless, before he chose the downhill route. He walked aimlessly for a long time, moving into the heart of the Maze. He pa.s.sed the bars and casinos that had become a second home to him; glanced desultorily at shop windows filled with imported spices and herbs, jewelry, paintings, caftans, terminals ... and a hundred different technological toys: costly, sophisticated baubles spread out for the jostling free port trade and the wondering eyes of the natives. Once every window had stopped him in his tracks, and a walk in the Maze had been like a walk through heaven. Now they barely caught his eyes; and somehow, without his being aware of it, time had coated his awe with a rind of disillusionment, and the wine of wonder had turned to vinegar.

Even the many-colored alleys, the fert'le meeting ground where artisans of this world and seven more let their creativity bloom, had grown strangely dim and separate from his own reality. He was no longer drawn into the sight and fragrance and music as he moved along them; and now the vivid bruise left on his awareness by Herne's living death pressed painfully, acutely, against the walls of yielding gla.s.s that closed him in. Surrounded by the beating heart of the city he had come here to discover, he discovered instead that somehow the thing he had reached out for had slipped through his hands again. Like everything he had ever cared about, or counted on... His hand closed violently over the stem of a kinetic sculpture in the display stall he was pa.s.sing; harsh notes clashed among its spines, leaping like cats. But the jangling isotonic music stopped at his skin, the cool metal stem swayed into another dimension. Or maybe he only imagined their unreality; but still it did not pa.s.s... Why? What's wrong with me? What's wrong?

He let it go in disgust as the sculptor came indignantly to the door of his shop. He went on, realizing only now what alley he had come into: It was the Citron Alley, and ahead of him he could already see Fate Ravengla.s.s sitting as she always did with her trays and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs on her doorstep. The place he had come to once before for shelter, and been taken in without question or demand. The place that he could always come back to, a haven of calm and creation in a universe of indifference and broken parts.

He saw that Fate was not alone, saw her visitor rise from the step in a cloud of midnight-blue veils embroidered with rainbows. He recognized her friend Tiewe a" by the veils, he had never seen anything more of her than her ebony hands. He heard the sweet song of her hidden necklace of bells. He had asked Fate why she never showed herself, thinking that she must be disfigured; but Fate had said that it was a custom of her homeworld. He had seen only one or two others like her since, carefully protected by chaperones. Tiewe was uneasy in the presence of men, and he felt a jealous gratification as he realized that she was leaving because she had seen him. Fate had many friends a" but there were none who seemed to be anything more than friends to her. He had wondered from time to time about her ceKbacy.

As Tiewe moved away, trailing music, Fate's face turned to his approach: half a smile, half a frown of concentration. "Sparks a" is that you?" Malkin the cat meowed affirmation from his crouching spot in her doorway.

"Yes. h.e.l.lo, Fate." Sparks stopped in front of her, suddenly uncertain.

"Well, what a nice surprise. Sit down, don't be a stranger. You've been too much of a stranger these past months."

He grimaced his guilt as he sat down, carefully, among the trays on the stoop. "I know. I'm sorry, Ia""

"No, no, don't apologize." She waved her hands, absolving him goodnaturedly. "After all, how often have I come to the palace to visit you?"

He laughed. "Never."

"Then I should be grateful you come here at all." She felt for the mask she had laid down. "Tell me gossip about the court a" what they wear, how they play, what marvelous inconsequentialities they brood over. I need some cheering up. Tiewe is inspired with a needle and floss, but such a sad person..." She looked away, frowning at nothing, reached out abruptly for a tray of beads and upset it. "d.a.m.n!"

Malkin leaped up from the doorway and disappeared into the shop.

"Here, let mea"" Sparks leaned out, barely catching a cascade of shimmering green as it poured over the step's edge. He righted the tray and refilled it patiently, soothed by the mindlessness of the task. "There." He handed her three beads at a time, falling back gratefully into the habits and the comfortable feel of his days with her.

"See how I've missed you." She smiled at the beads dropped into her palm. "But not just for your patient hands a" for your lilting Summer songs and the freshness of your wonder."

Sparks let his fingers dig into his knees, said nothing.

"Will you stay and play for me awhile? It's been too long between songs in this alley."

"Ia"" He swallowed the stone in his throat. "I didn't bring my flute."

"No?" More incredulous than if he'd told her he wasn't wearing clothes. "Why not?"

"Ia" don't feel like playing, lately."

She sat leaning forward over the mask form, waiting for something more.

"I've been too busy," defensively.

"I thought that was what you did for the Queen a" played your music."

"Not any more. I do ... uh, other things, now." He shifted on the hard surface of the step. "Other ... things."

She nodded; he had forgotten how disconcerting the gaze of her third eye was. "Like gambling and drinking too much wine at the Parallax View." It was a statement of fact.

"How'd you know a" where I've been?" not quite willing to admit the rest of it.

"I can smell you. Their incense is imported from D'doille. Every place has its own ident.i.ty, and so does every drug. And your voice is just a little slurred."

"Tell me if I won or lost."

"You won. If you'd lost you wouldn't sound so smug about it."

He laughed, but it was not an easy laugh. "You'd make a good Blue."

"No." She shook her head, and searched a bead for its hole with her needle, "To become a Blue a person needs a certain sense of moral superiority; and I refuse to pa.s.s judgment on my fellow sinners Aha"" as the bead slipped into place. "Some green feathers, please."

"I know you don't." He pa.s.sed feathers to her.

"And is that why you've come here today?" She dipped her fingers in glue and dabbed the feather stems. "As long as you quit the tables while you're ahead, the Queen can't object to how you spend your free time and money, can she?"

"She wants me to gamble. She gives me the money." The words came out inexorably; he could feel the forbidden secret rise inside him, knowing that it was only a matter of time.

"She does? Are you that good?" Fate said it as though she doubted it.

"No. I do it to learn things, about how the off worlders think, what their plans are, so I can tell her..."

"I thought that's what she has Starbuck for."

"It is." The invisible wall of his anomie seemed to close them into a place of utter silence, and his voice that should have been proud barely carried across it: "I am Starbuck."

The small sigh of her indrawn breath was all the answer she made, at first. "I heard that there was a new Starbuck. Is this true, Sparks? You, a Summer, aa"" A boy, but she didn't say it.

"Half Summer." He nodded. "Yeah. It's true."

"How? Why?" Her hands lay motionless over the mask's gaping mouth.

"Because she's so like Moon. And Moon is gone." Arienrhod was the only thing that had not changed for him. the only thing whole and real, more real to him than his own flesh. "She knew about Moon, knew what she meant to me. She's the only one who could understand..." The wounded words crept out, to tell her what (but not all) had pa.s.sed between Arienrhod and himself after the news of Moon's kidnapping reached them. "... So I had to challenge Starbuck; because I love her. And she let me challenge him, because she loves me. And I won."

"How did you manage to kill a man like that?"

"I killed him with my flute ... in the Hall of the Winds." Only he didn't die.

"And you haven't played it since." Fate shook her head, her thick braid rolled on her shoulder. "Tell me a" has it been v.orth it?" "Yes!" He flinched back in surprise from his own voice.

"Why did I think I heard 'no'?"

His fingers tightened over a tray of beads, his muscles tightened; she didn't see it. "I had to be Starbuck. I had to be the best, or I wouldn't be a" worthy of her. I have to be the one who counts. But I thought once I won the challenge, the rest would be easy; and it's not. I thought it would be everything I ever wanted."

"And it's not."

He shook his own head. "What the h.e.l.l's wrong with me, anyway! Everything always goes wrong for me ... everything I do."

"Then maybe you weren't meant to do it. You could still go back to Summer; nothing's stopping you."

"Back to what?" He spat the words. "No. I can't go back." He had already asked it of himself, and been answered. "n.o.body goes back, I know that now; we just go on and on, and there's never any reason... I won't leave Arienrhod; I can't. But if I can't be what she wants me to be, I'll lose her anyway." Herne knew; Herne knows everything...

"You'll find a way to take the off worlders pulse. If you were smart enough to outwit Starbuck, you're smart enough to take his place. You'll get the feel of being him; you've already begun to."

Something in the words, a sorrow, surprised him. He made a fist, wrapped it in his hand. "I've got to. I've got to believe it a" before the Hunt comes again."

"The Hunt that brings in the water of life? The mer hunt?"

"Yes." He stared down through the pavement, through the heart of the city and the world, toward the s.p.a.ces of the sea controlled by the Winter n.o.bles. In his mind he could see the Hunt again: the necklace of barren rocks strewn over the open sea; the rhythm of the ocean swells singing through the ship timbers, the song of the world he had left behind. Remembering how he had searched the horizon with sudden longing... But if the Lady called him home, he could not hear Her voice any more. Perhaps because he had come to hunt mers; or perhaps because the Sea was only the sea, a body of water, a chemical solution.

He had watched the sh.o.r.e of the nearest island, where the dwindling colony of mers had lain along the black-pebbled beach ... until the Hounds had driven them back into the sea, and into the waiting nets that would entangle and drown them. If they could not resurface twice in an hour to breathe, they died.

No Summer would kill a mer; they were the Lady's children, born to Her after stars fell into the sea and became the islands, her consorts, the Land. It was said that the sailor who killed a mer by accident had no luck from that day on ... the sailor who killed one intentionally was drowned by the rest of the crew. He had heard a hundred different stories of mers saving sailors gone overboard, even whole crews of a ship that had foundered; seen the mer that lived in the harbor at Gateway Island, its brindle back st.i.tching a track across the supple cloth of the harbor surface as it guided ships safely through the treacherous Gateway Reef. He remembered the mers that had greeted them at the sibyl island. He had never heard of a mer doing anything evil, or anyone harm.

But for the good they could do humans a" the ultimate good of eternal youth a" they must die. He had always believed that the myth of mers being immortal, and granting immortality to humans, was only an old tale ... until he had come to Carbuncle. And then he had met the Queen, who had reigned for one hundred and fifty years and Arienrhod had placed the vial of viscous silver liquid into his hands, and he had let the spray fall into his throat, and realized that he too could stay young forever.

And so he had stood by, paying for his immortality with his presence, betraying all that he had ever been or believed in, while the Hounds netted and drowned their helpless victims somewhere below.

Then they had hauled the carca.s.ses aboard the ship, and shoving him aside like the useless thing he was, they had squatted down with their knives to rip open the dappled throats. They drained away the precious mer blood while their tentacles reddened and the deck turned slippery under his feet.

And the red leaked back into the sea, and the mutilated bodies followed, their dark eyes still incredulous with death. Wasted ... all wasted! He had turned away, sick at heart, long before the butchery was finished, trying to lose himself in the infinite vista of ocean and sky. But there was no escape from the splash of carca.s.ses plunged back into the sea, too late, too late, or the savage lashing of the water as the scavengers gathered, defiling the green-blue purity with the ecstasy of their feeding. The Sea Mother in her pitiless wisdom wasted nothing, and cursed the wantonness of those who did...

"Sparks?" Fate's voice called him back; the sheltering city closed around him, keeping him from the Lady's curses, denying that they even existed at all.

"It was so ugly a" it was all wasted' I couldn'ta"" He shook his head. "But I'm going to do it right this time. I can gut a dead mer, I'm not some superst.i.tious Mother lover any more." Remembering the disdain of the Hounds, which had been all too plain even without words; remembering Arienrhod's soothing condescension as she set free the devils of doubt and self-disgust he carried back with him to Carbuncle. And then she had handed him the gilded vial of the water of life, without comment.

"No, I suppose you're not, are you?" Again the regret. "Death is never an easy thing to face. That's why we all long to taste the water of life. And we take it for ourselves because our own death is the hardest thing of all... We do what we think we have to." She reached out, searched the air for his arm.

"Uh, not to interrupta"" A stranger's voice came at them over his shoulder. "Got a delivery here."

Sparks turned, looking up with Fate at the two figures standing in the alley, one drab, one inhuman a" "You!"

The faceless face of the servo Pollux regarded him with unchanging nothingness, but Tor's gray eyes registered along a scale from incomprehension to acute chagrin. "Dawntreader?" She shifted from foot to foot. "Hey, uh ... Well, how've you been, kid? Looks like you've done all right for yourself," raising an eyebrow. "I hardly recognized you."

"No thanks to you if I have."

"Yeah, well ..." She glanced away self-consciously. "Hi, Fate. Got your new load of trims together finally. You want Pollux to stack them for you?"

Fate began to push her trays aside, clearing a path to the door. "I'll show him where. I didn't know you were a friend of Sparks's, Tor."

"She isn't." Sparks stood up and stood aside as Pollux moved unconcernedly toward the step, towing the floating platform of containers. He watched Fate disappear inside, moving easily into familiar surroundings, and Pollux after her. But he blocked Tor as she tried to follow, with an arm across the doorway. "Uh-uh." He backed her around and up against the building wall. "Let's talk.

About what you did to me at the starlbaiting. About what you did with everything I owned, after you cleaned me out."

Tor pressed back against the peeling paint, her eyes looking everywhere but at his face. "Listen, Sparks, I'm really sorry about that, you know? I really hated sticking you like that, I mean, you were so trusting ... and so stupid... But I owed my life to Hardknot over at the Sea and Stars; I lost part of the casino's daily take I was delivering up the line. If I didn't pay it back shed've had it taken out of my hide, you know what I mean? It was either you or me, rfrankly. And I figured it'd teach you a lesson you needed, anyway." She shrugged, beginning to recover her nerve.

"What did you do with my stuff?"

"p.a.w.ned it, what do you think?"

He laughed once. "How much did you get for it?" almost casualy.

"Birdseed, what do you tha"" Her voice choked off as his arm came up and across her throat, pinning her against the wall again. "Ye G.o.ds!" She squirmed, trying to look away from something in his eyes. "What's gotten into you, kid?"

"I learned your lesson." He put more pressure against the arm, enjoying the expression on her face. "And now you owe me, Tor, and I coulu take it out of your hide right now."

"You a" you wouldn't do that?" He felt her swallow in sudden fright; her hands came up, tightened over his arm. "What are youa""

"Sparks, what are you doing!" Fate's astonished voice.

He blinked as the haze of his wounded pride cleared, and let Tor go. "You aren't worth the trouble."

Tor sighed noisily, feeling her throat with her hands. "Just a" just a misunderstanding, Fate. I'll get you the money, kid. I mean, come paydaya""

"Forget it." He turned away, feeling his face hot with anger and embarra.s.sment, wondering how much of it Fate could see. But something Tor had blurted in the diarrhea of her excuses caught in his mind, at the root of his bad humor, and he turned back again with calculated vengeance showing. "On the other hand a" no, don't forget about it. You owe me. and I'm going to tell you how you can pay me back. And there might even be something in it for you, if you play it right." He pulled out his credit card, and held it up to her face.

Tor looked at it blankly, "Huh?" She reached for it, hesitant; he pulled it away.

"You're a runner for the Sea and Stars, you said. You must know plenty about who controls what here in the Maze, you must hear a lot of interesting gossip around ... ?"

"Oh, no a" I don't know anything, kid. I keep my ears closed." She shook her head, shutting her eyes against temptation. "I just run a few errands on the side, for a little extra credit at the tables, that's all."

"Don't give me that." He frowned. "But maybe you don't know enough to find out the things I want to know." Inspiration struck him, blinding. "I know somebody who does, so it doesn't matter! You can get the information out of him. and I can't. You're going to take care of it for me, take care of him. understand?"

"No." She shook her head cguin. "What the h.e.l.l have you gotten into, anyway? What're you trying to get me into?"

"I work for somebody too. somebody a" up the line. Somebody who wants to know what the opposition's doing. And there's a man named Herne who knows it all. only he's down on his luck. You're going to pick him up and help him oat; and he's going to be so grateful he's going to tell you anything you want to know."

"Ha! I know a Herne, a big spender, and if he's down on his luck now he can rot. Him and some of his buddies were drug ugly, and he tried toa"" The word wouldn't come out; her hands tightened over the seal of her coveralls. "I had bruises in places I wouldn't show my own mother before Pollux pulled him of! me and changed his mind." She glanced past Fate's silent witnessing at the phlegmatic metal being in the doorway. "He may be a dumb machine, but he's a d.a.m.n sight more of a man than the ones who program him."

Sparks grinned at the borrowed vision of Herne's discomfiture. "He really must have been drugged out of his mind to pick on aa""

Tor's face reddened, her fists came up. "Listen. Summer, you don't joke about a thing like that with a Winter woman!"

His grin fell away abruptly. "Bya" by the G.o.ds, that's not what I meant! If it's the same Herne. You've got nothing to worry about. He won't give you any trouble this time. You'll find him near the Parallax View. I'll pay the expenses, and make it worth your while; just make sure that he never knows why you're doing it. Don't ever mention me." He lowered his voice, turning away from Fate. "If I don't get what I want, you'll regret it, and even Pollux won't be enough to keep you safe."

Tor's pallid face turned paler; he felt a brief surprise as he realized that she believed him. "Meet me back here at the same time in a" one week."