The Snow Queen Part 24

A soft trilling intruded on her, expanding her awareness, pulling her back into the stone-walled chamber. She lowered her hands, seeing the cl.u.s.ter of cages across the room, and felt time's flood sweep her into the present. Someone had moved her to a pad of blankets. The animal stench had cleared, as though someone had cleaned the cages out as well, and the air was strong with the smell of herbs. No sounds reached her from beyond the locked gate; she guessed that it must be far into the night. The animals stirred and rustled, tending to their own lives, watching her with only half an eye now. "You know I'm just another pet." She climbed uncertainly to her feet, swayed a moment, seeing stars, before she could cross the room.

The off worlder lay under a half-tent of blanket, wrapped like a swaddled infant in more covers. A pot of pungent herb-brew steamed on a hot plate by his head. She kneeled down by the cot, put her hand against his face. Cooler, not really sure that he was. "Please come back..." Prove I have a right to be alive, and be a sibyl. She bowed her head, pressed her forehead against the hard frame of the cot.

"Have you ... back for me come, then?"

She looked up, saw the off worlder struggling to open his eyes. "I a" I never left you." He frowned, shook his head as though it didn't make sense. "I've never away gone." She repeated it in Sandhi.

"Ah." He watched her through slitted eyes. "Then I'm not afraid. When ... when will we go?"

"When? Soon." She smoothed his wiry hair, and saw him smile. Not knowing what he was asking, she said, "When thou art stronger." She used the familiar form unthinkingly.

"I didn't think you so fair would be. Stay by me ... until then?"

"I will." Glancing down, she saw the untouched mug of thick medicine broth on the floor by her knee. She picked it up. "Thou must this drink." She put her arm under his shoulders, rolled him onto his side. He worked a hand free obediently, but it could not hold the cup; she saw the livid scars along the inside of his wrist again. She held the cup for him, helped him drink it down. Coughing took him as he finished it, rattling in his chest like stones. The plastic mug slipped from her hand and rolled under the cot. She held him tightly in her arms, sharing her own strength with him, until the attack pa.s.sed; and then a little longer.

"Thou feel ... so real." He sighed against her shoulder. "So kind ..."

She let him slip back onto the cot, already asleep. She sat for a long moment watching him, before she settled against the cot frame, resting her head on her arm, and closed her eyes again.

"You are real."

The words greeted her like old friends as she woke again, slowly raised her head from her sleep-deadened arm. She sat back, disconcerted, blinking.

The off worlder slumped against the wall, propped into place by a knot of blankets. "Did I it dream, or ... did you to me in Sandhi speak?"

"I did," in Sandhi. Moon worked her fingers, felt the needles starting as circulation stirred in her arm. "I a" cannot it believe. You were so sick." She felt a shining warmth fill her. But the power came through me, and I healed you.

"I thought you the Child Stealer were. When I was young, my nurse said she as pale as aurora-glow is..." He leaned more heavily on the heaped blankets. "But you're no ghost. Are you a" ?" As though he still half doubted his senses.

"No." She ma.s.saged her twisted neck muscles with her other hand, wincing. "Or I wouldn't so much hurt!"

"You're a prisoner too, then." He leaned forward slightly, squinting his eyes were still inflamed. She nodded. "Your face. They didn't you ... molest?"

She shook her head. "No. They haven't me hurt. They a" fear me; so far."

"Fear you?" He glanced toward the gate, and what lay beyond it. The distant sounds of a new day out in the camp reached them like an echo of another world.

She lifted her chin, saw him grimace at the wound on her throat, before his face went slack: "Sibyl?"

She lowered her head again.

"G.o.ds, this moves too fast." He lay down again, resting on his side through another attack of coughing.

Something out of place caught the corner of her eye. She twisted, found a pile of blue-black cloth trimmed with braid behind her, a jug, and a bowl of dried meat. "Someone brought us food." Her hands were reaching for it even as she spoke. "Fooda"" not even knowing how long it had been since she had eaten anything.

"Blodwed. Hours back. I pretended to sleep."

Moon took a long drink from the pitcher, a creamy blue-white liquid that slid down her parched throat into her shriveled stomach like ambrosia, "Oha"" Suddenly ashamed, she lowered the pitcher, pushed up onto her knees. "Here." She filled the plastic mug, held it up to him.

"No." He put an arm across his eyes. "I don't it want."

"You must. To heal, you need strength."

"No. I don'ta"" The arm came down from his eyes, he lifted his head to look at her. "Yes ... I guess I do." He took the drink in his good hand; she saw scars on that wrist, too. He caught her looking at him, raised the mug to his mouth without comment and sipped slowly.

Moon chewed a mouthful from a strip of dried meat, swallowed it whole before she asked, "Who are you? How did you here get?"

"Who am I..." He looked down at his uniform coat, touched it; his face changed with a kind of wonder, like a man coming out of a coma. "Gundhalinu, sibyl. Police Inspector BZ Gundhalinua"" he grimaced, "from Kharemough. They shot down my patroller, and took me."

"How long have you here been?"

"Forever." He opened his eyes again. "And you? Did they you from the star port kidnap? Where are you from a" Big Blue, or Samathe?"

"No, Tiamat."

"Here? But you're a sibyl." He lowered the cup from his lips. "The Winters don'ta""

"I'm a Summer. Moon Dawntreader Summer."

"Where did you Sandhi learn?" Something darker than curiosity shadowed it.

Moon frowned uncertainly. "On Kharemough."

"You're proscribed, then! How did you back here get?" His voice broke, too feeble to support the weight of an authoritarian demand.

"The same way I left a" with tech runners She slipped into her own speech without realizing it; taken by surprise, indignant at his indignation. "What are you going to do about it, Blue? Arrest me? Deport me?" She put her hands on her hips, clenched with resentment.

"I'd do both ... if I were in any position to." He followed her doggedly from language to language. But the righteousness drained out of him and left him limp on the cot. He laughed, a hoa.r.s.e, hating sound. "But don't worry. Flat on my face ... with the cosmic crud, and living in a kennel ... I'm not in any position." He finished the liquid hi the mug, let it hang empty from a finger over the cot's edge.

Moon refilled the mug and put it into his hand again.

"A smuggling sibyl." He sipped carefully, watching her. "I thought you were supposed to be serving humanity, not yourself. Or did you have that tattoo ... put on purely for business reasons?"

Moon flushed with fresh anger. "That isn't allowed!"

"Neither is smuggling. But it's done." He sneezed violently, spilling his drink on himself, on her.

"I'm not a smuggler." She flinched, brushed droplets from her parka. "But not because I think it's wrong. You're the ones who are wrong, Gundhalinu, you Blues a" letting your people come here and take what they want, and give us nothing hi return."

He smiled mirthlessly. "So you've swallowed that simplistic line bait and hook, have you? If you wanted ... to see real greed and exploitation, try a world that didn't have our police force to keep the peace. Or to keep ... people like you from coming back to make trouble, once you've been off world Moon settled back on her heels, saying nothing, holding the words prisoner. Gundhalinu matched her silence; she sat listening to the breath wheeze in his throat. "This is my world, I have the right to be here. I am a sibyl, Gundhalinu, and I'll serve Tiamat any way I can." Something harsher than pride filled her voice. "I can prove my claim any time you ask. Ask, and I will answer."

"No need, sibyl." A whisper of apology. "You already have. I ought to hate you, for curing mea"" He rolled onto his stomach, looking down at her; she blinked at his expression, her hands closed over her own wrists. "But knowing I'm alive and not alone, seeing your face ... hearing you speak a civilized language, my own language: G.o.ds, I never thought I'd ever hear it again! I thank youa"" his voice broke. "How long ... how long were you on Kharemough?" "Almost a month." She put another piece of dried meat into her mouth, let the juices begin to dissolve, easing a throat closed by sudden empathy. "But a" I might have stayed longer, maybe all my life. If things had been different."

"Then you liked it there?" There was no sarcasm now, only a hunger. "Where were you? What did you see?"

"The Thieves' Market, mostly. And the star port city." She sat cross legged, pulling her feet into place, and let her mind see only the days that had feasted her eyes; see Elsevier and Silky and Cress alive and sharing her feast; the journey down to the planet surface, and KR Aspundh's ornamental gardens... "And we drank lith and ate sugared fruits... Oh, and on the screen we saw Singalu raised to Tech."

"What?" Gundhalinu sat against the wall, gasping with incredulous delight. She noticed that he was missing a tooth. "Ye G.o.ds, I don't believe it! Old Singalu? You're making that up, aren't you?" Laughter was the best medicine.

She shook her head. "No, really! It was an accident. But even KR was glad." And she remembered tears welling in Elsevier's eyes, hi her own... Tears rose again suddenly; tears of grief this time.

"Dropped in on KR Aspundh." He shook his head, wiped his own eyes, still grinning. "Even my father didn't just drop in on KR Aspundh! Well, go on, what next?"

Moon swallowed. "We ... we talked. He asked me to stay a few days. He's a sibyl, you knowa"" She broke off.

"And I know there are a lot.. of things you're not telling me,"

Gundhalinu said quietly. He shook his head. "No. I don't want to know. I don't even want to know why the h.e.l.l KR Aspundh has tech runners to tea. But you could have had anything you wanted there a" the life, all the things you couldn't have here. Why? Why did you leave all that, and risk everything to come back here? I can see it in your eyes, you wish you hadn't."

"I thought I had to." She felt her broken nails dig into her palms. "I never wanted to go off world in the first place. I was going to Carbuncle to find my cousin... But when I got to Shotover Bay I met Elsevier, and then the Blues tried to arrest usa""

"Shotover Bay?" A peculiarly chagrined expression settled over his face. "It's a small universe. No wonder I keep thinking ... I've seen your face somewhere."

She leaned forward with a smile starting, studied his face in turn. "No a" I guess I was too busy running."

He twitched his mouth. "No one's ever called it memorable. So you were going to Carbuncle. But after five years, you aren't still going there? Whatever happened to your kinsman is ancient history, by now."

"It's not." She shook her head. "While I was on Kharemough I asked, and the Transfer told me I had to return, that it wasn't finished yet." The cold silence of the void grew loud inside her, squeezed her breath away. "But ever since I've come, everyone I've cared about I've destroyed, or hurt ..." She hunched over, pulled herself into a hiding place.

"You? I don't a" understand."

"Because I came back!" She let the words come, making him see her for what she was, every act and every retribution that had brought her relentlessly to this place... "I made it happen! I made them do it, it was all for me. I'm a curse a" none of it would have happened without me, none of it!"

"You wouldn't have seen it happen; that's all. n.o.body rules anyone else's fate a" we don't even control our own." She felt his hand hesitantly on her shoulder. "We wouldn't be prisoners here; I wouldn't be alive now to say ... you're wrong to blame yourself, if we did. Would I?"

She raised her head. "But the mers, Lady, even the mers ... they were safe on Ngenet's land, until I came!"

"If Starbuck and the Hounds were poaching, it was no fault of yours. It was n.o.body's doing but the Queen's. I'd say you must be thrice blessed, not cursed, if all you got ... out of an encounter with Starbuck was a sore throat." He began to cough, pressing his own throat.

"Starbuck?" Slowly she uncoiled, stretching her legs, gathering the courage to ask: "Was he a" the man in black? What is he?" Not asking, Who is he?

Gundhalinu raised his eyebrows, took his hand away from her softening shoulder. "You've never heard of Starbuck? He's the Queen's consort: her Hunter, her henchman, her chief advisor when she deals with us ." .. her lover."

"He saved my life." She traced the scab of the healing wound across her neck, finding the strength to ask, "Who is he, Gundhalinu?"

"No one knows. His ident.i.ty is kept secret."

He loved you once, but he loves her now. The words of the Transfer reverberated. "Now I understand. I understand everything! It's true." She looked away, and away; but the emerald eyes behind the black executioner's mask followed her, followed' What is?"

"My cousin is Starbuck," whispered.

Gundhalinu said calmly, "He can't be. Starbuck is an off worlder "Sparks is one too. His father was one. He always wanted to be like them, like the Winters... And now he is." A monster. How could he do this to me?

"You're jumping to conclusions. Just because Starbuck was afraid to kill a sibyla""

"He knew I was a sibyl before he ever saw my sign!" She struck back at his insufferable conviction. "He knew me; I know he did. And he was wearing the medal that was Sparks's." And he was killing mers. She pressed her knotted fist against her mouth. "How could he? How could he change into that?"

Gundhalinu lay down again, uncomfortably silent. "Carbuncle does that to people. But if it's true, at least he had enough humanity left to spare your life. Now you can forget about him; forget about one problem, at least." He sighed, staring up into shadows.

"No." She pushed herself to her feet, moving in a stiff circle be side the cot. "I want to get to Carbuncle more than ever. There has to be a reason for what he's done; if he's changed, there's a way to change him back." Win him back. I won't lose ... not after I've come so far! "I love him, Gundhalinu. No matter what he's done, no matter how he's changed, I can't just stop loving him." Or needing him, or wanting him back. He's mine, he's always been mine! I won't give him up a" no matter whose he is, or what she's made him into ... appalled by the truth, made helpless by it. "We pledged our lives to each other; and if he doesn't want that any more, he's going to have to prove it to me." One hand made a fist, the other clung to it.

"I see." He smiled, but there was uncertainty behind it. "And I always thought you natives led dull, uncomplicated lives," unwitting condescension crept back, making him comfortable. "At least on Kharemough love has the courtesy to know its place, and not tear our hearts out of us."

"Then you've never been in love," resentfully. She crouched down by the pile of bright-and-dark cloth Blodwed had left them; picked up a piece distractedly. It was a tunic, sewn with wide bands of woven braid.

"If you mean all-consuming, sense-clouding, lightning-struck love a" no. I've read about it..." His voice softened at the edges. "But I've never seen it. I don't think it exists in the real universe."

"Kharemoughis don't exist in the real universe." She took off her parka, pulled open the seal of her dry suit and climbed out of it, rubbing her skin-sore, abraded arms, scratching her back. Letting him watch, aware that he tried not to; taking perverse pleasure in his discomfiture. She pulled the soft, heavy tunic on over her skimpy un dersuit, struggled into the leggings and fur-lined boots, buckled the wide painted-leather belt around her hips. She touched the hand woven braid that ran down the tunic front, along the hem a" all the colors of sunset against the night-blue wool. "This is beautiful. ." Astonishment pushed up through her darker preoccupation. She realized suddenly that the braid, the garment, were very old.

"Yes." Gundhalinu's expression was not the one she had expected. But she saw the embarra.s.sment lying below it, and felt a pinp.r.i.c.k shame at his shame.

"Gundhalinua""

"Make it BZ." He shrugged away his self-consciousness. "We're all on a first-name basis here." He gestured at the animals.

She nodded. "BZ. We've got to finda"" She broke off again, hearing someone enter the pa.s.sageway. The lock rattled and the gate swung back. Blodwed came through it, trailed by a small, rosy cheeked child and carrying a box. She pulled the gate shut with her foot. The animals stirred and peered out at her all along the walls; tension made their movements furtive. The toddler wandered toward the cages, sat down unexpectedly on the floor in front of one. Blodwed ignored him, coming on across the room.

Moon glanced at Gundhalinu, saw the life go out of his eyes and the animation out of his face, leaving bleak resignation. But Blodwed beamed as she dropped the box, stood before him, inspecting him like an inquisitor. "I don't believe it, he's all right! Seea"" She caught his sleeve, tugged on his arm. "I got a real sibyl just to keep you alive, Blue-boy." He pulled free, sitting up. "Now you can finish reading to me."

"Leave me alone." He put his feet over the cot's edge, propped his head on his hands. He began to cough, sullenly.

Blodwed shrugged; looked back at Moon, scratching her beaky nose. "You okay too? I thought you were both dead this morning." A bare hint of deference crept into her voice.

Moon nodded, controlling her own voice, picking the words cautiously. "I'm all right... Thank you for bringing me clothes to wear." She touched the front of the tunic. "This is very beautiful." She couldn't keep the incredulity out of it.

Blodwed's sky-blue eyes were full of pride for an instant; she glanced down. "They're just old stuff. They belonged to my great grandmother. n.o.body wears those things any more; n.o.body here even knows how to make them." She tugged at the hem of her dirty white parka, as though she really preferred it. She rummaged in the carton, pulled out a fist-sized cube of plastic. Unintelligible noise filled the air like ram. Blodwed began to hum a tune, and Moon realized that she was picking it out of the radio static. "Reception really stinks back in this cave. Of course it didn't help that old Blue boy here tried to take this apart and make a transmitter." She made a face at him. "Here's your dinner," tossing a can onto the cot. A sudden shriek behind them jerked Moon around. The toddler stood wailing, waving his hands by the cages. "Well, don't stick your fingers in there, d.a.m.n it! Here's yours."

Moon caught the can as it arced into her hands, sat down and pulled the lid up. It vaguely resembled stew. She watched Gundhalinu open his own can, with a twinge of relief. "Is ... he your brother?" to Blodwed.

"No." Blodwed moved away, carrying handfuls of meat and a box with an animal's picture on it. She made the circuit from tethered creature to caged one, giving them each their evening meal. Moon watched them nutter up or cringe away from her rough movements, slink forward again after she pa.s.sed.

Blodwed came back, scowling, sat down with her own can. The little boy appeared beside her, pulling at her jacket and whining. "Not now!" She pushed a spoonful of stew into his mouth. "You know anything about animals?" She glanced at Moon, looked back over her shoulder at the cages.

"Not these." Moon looked away from the boy, whose face was as perfectly pink and white as a porcelain figurine.

"Then you're going to do what you did yesterday again a" only this time tell me about the animals." She glared, expecting a refusal. "I think some of them are sick too. I a" I don't know how to take care of them either." Her gaze broke. "I want to know how."

Moon nodded, swallowing the last of her stew, and got slowly to her feet. "Where did you get all these animals?"

"Stole them from the s.p.a.ceport. Or got them from traders, or out trapping ... the elf fox and the gray birds there, and the conics. But I don't even know the names of the rest."

Moon felt Gundhalinu's eyes trail her with dark accusation, ignored it as she walked toward the closest of the animals, the hardest one to face a" the shivering pouch of wrinkles that squatted on a nest of dried gra.s.s. It blubbered obscenely, showing her a wide sucker mouth as she opened the cage door. Biting back her disgust, she crouched before it, offered it a handful of food pellets at arm's length, holding very still.

Its burbling hysteria gradually died away, and after another endless moment it floundered forward, inch by inch, to touch her hand tentatively with its mouth. She shuddered; it scuttled back, worked its way forward again. It took the pellets one by one from her palm with great delicacy. She dared to stroke it with her free hand; its brain like convolutions were smooth and cool to her touch, like the surface of a smocked satin pillow. It settled contentedly under her hand, making a sound like bubbles popping.

She left it slowly, went on to the pair of lithe, pacing carnivores in the next cage. Their ears flattened, their tusks showed white against the black-on-black patterning of their fur. There was something feline about them, and so she began to whistle softly, creating the overtones that had made cats come purring into her lap at home. The long, tufted ears flicked, swiveled, tuned like radar ... the animals came toward her almost reluctantly, drawn by the sound. She offered them her fingers to sniff, felt a thrill of pleasure when an ebony cheek brushed her hand in a gesture of acceptance. The cat creatures sidled along the bars, demanding her touch with guttural cries.

She moved on more confidently to the leather-winged reptile with a head like a pickax; the feather-soft oblongs with no heads at all; the bird with emerald plumage and ruby crest that lay listlessly in the bottom of its cage. She lost track of time or any purpose beyond the need to communicate even to the smallest degree with every creature, and earn for herself the reward of its embryonic trust... Until she reached the end of the circuit at last, found the little boy lying asleep on Blodwed's knee, and Blodwed staring up at her in silent envy.