The Snow Queen (19 page)

“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 her 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 ...

“And the
boy?” resentfully.

“Forget
about him, too, if it makes you feel better.” She saw him frown.
The more one withdraws, the more eagerly one
is pursued.
She thought of Sparks Dawntreader. “Concentrate on LiouxSked,
and you’ll make me feel much, much better.” She reached out, touched his arm
lightly.

He nodded,
easing under her touch. “What about PalaThion? It was her fault the smugglers
got off-planet at all. You want me to-arrange something for her, too?”

“No.” She
glanced away toward the Hall of the Winds. “I have other plans for her. She’ll
pay her debt ... believe me, she will. Now go. I want it to happen soon.”

He bowed,
and left the hall. She sat alone in the vast white silence.

Sparks lay
spread-eagled across the bed in his private suite of rooms, his fingers tracing
the tendrils of an alien vine across the elaborately carven headboard, and
retracing them.
Gone.
She’s gone ...
repeating the words as
he repeated the pattern, over and over. But he had no strength to believe—no
strength to react, to move, to feel. No tears. How could she be gone—gone from
his world as irretrievably as if she had died? Not Moon, who had been a part of
his life from the day he was born. Not Moon, who had pledged herself to be a
part of him forever ...

Moon who
had broken her pledge, and become a sibyl. Why? Why had she done that to him?
Why had she done this to him now? Because shed believed he was never coming
back? Then why hadn’t he gone back to Neith long ago! If he’d been there when
she came home, this wouldn’t have happened.

But he
hadn’t gone back. First because of all that had gone wrong, and then, after the
Queen had come to find him, because of everything that had gone right. And
always, because of Carbuncle. Neith and the whole of Summer’s world seemed as
distant and gray as a bank of fog now; the only reality was the kaleidoscope of
city images that had expanded his senses and his awareness until he would never
be content in that narrow world of islands and sea again. The Sea ... the sea
was no more than a film of water on a ball of stone to the people of the city.
They swore by a thousand gods, and prayed to them rarely—and the answers they
really wanted they got from their machines.

He had an
outlet for one of those machines here on a table in the next room. He had
filled up the absurd amount of space the Queen had set aside for him with
instruments that talked and sang and even listened, that took pictures and
showed pictures, that told him the time or the distance to the nearest stars.
Sometimes he had tried to take them apart, only to find that their workings
crumbled to dust in his hand, or that they were empty, except for flakes of
metal painted with insect tracks and furred with filaments. But the Queen had
encouraged him to do it, let him explore the tech devices of the palace; even
sent him out into the labyrinth of shops in the Maze to choose more.

He still
wondered why she had chosen him, and why she had rewarded him so greatly for
the little he had to offer. Although he no longer wondered about it as much as
he had in the beginning. He had first grown aware of the way the Queen watched
him while he played for her—the intensity that had nothing to do with his
music, that made his fingers begin to stumble, and left him feeling as though
he stood before her naked. And later there had been a touch, a whispered word,
a kiss, a chance encounter in a private place ... And she was so like Moon that
he had found it hard to keep his own eyes off her, hard not to meet her gaze,
hard not to match the emotion and answer the demand he found there.

But she was
not Moon, she was the ageless Queen of Winter, and as he watched her deal with
the off worlders and nobles who came before her at court that truth was made
plain to him over and over. There were things she was that Moon lacked the
years for—the wisdom, the calculating judgment, the depths of experience that
lay behind her knowing smile. And there were things she was that Moon would
never be, things he found harder to name ... like the nameless things that were
Moon which he never saw in her. And she could never become the memories, never
be the one he had shared everything with.

Yet they
were so alike, and it had been so long ... until sometimes, like the city,
Arienrhod became the reality, Moon only an afterimage. And that made him
afraid; the fear of losing his own reality stopped his tongue when he would
have taken her invitation.

But now the
string had been cut that kept him bound to the Summer half of his life. Moon
was gone. She was gone. There was no

Ill reason
now for him ever to go home ... they would never unravel the tangle they had
made of their future now. He would never see her again; he would never lie
beside her again, as he had lain beside her for the first time on the braided
rug before the hearth, while the wind rattled and wailed through a midnight
blackness beyond the walls and Gran slept peacefully in the next room ... The
tears came at last, he rolled onto his side and buried them in the soft
darkness of his pillow.

He did not
hear so much as feel someone enter the room, a chill draft as the door opened
and closed again silently. He sat up, wiping at his face, started to rise as he
recognized the Queen.

But
Arienrhod put a hand on his shoulder, forced him gently back down onto the bed.
“No. Tonight we aren’t subject and queen, but only two people who have both
lost someone they loved.” She sat down beside him, the pleated fluidness of the
robe she wore baring one shoulder. She was dressed almost plainly, with no
jewels but a necklace of beaten metal leaves on a knotted silk cord.

He wiped
his face again, wiping away his embarrassment but not his confusion. “I—I don’t
understand ... Your Majesty.” Seeing her beside him here, it occurred to him at
last to wonder ... “How did you know? About Moon. About Moon and me?”

“You’re
still asking me how I know things, after all the time you’ve been here?” She
smiled.

He looked
down, pressed his hands over his knees. “But ... why us? Out of everyone in the
world—we were just Summers.”

“Haven’t
you guessed even a little of it by now,
Sparks
?
Look at me.” He looked up again. “I reminded you of someone ... I remind you of
Moon, don’t I?” He nodded. “You thought I didn’t understand,” she touched his arm.
“But I did; I know it—bothered you. She is my kin, my flesh and blood, closer
to me than even you are to her.”

“Are you
... ?” He tried to imagine what relation they could be, who were so alike in
every feature. “Moon’s aunt? Her father’s—”

She shook her
head; a creamy strand of hair came loose and uncoiled along her neck. “Moon has
no father ... any more. And we don’t have her any more, you and I. I never even
had the chance to meet her, but she was as important, as precious to me as she
was to you. Perhaps even more so. I had hoped, in time, that we could have her
with us here in the city.” Her eyes left him, moving restlessly over the
ornate, cluttered table along the wall.

“She
wouldn’t have come.” His voice went flat. “Not after she was a sibyl.”

“You think
not? Not even for you?” The hand still rested sympathetically on his arm.

He sighed.
“I wasn’t ever as important to her as being a sibyl was. But why didn’t you
tell me about—her, and you, and—and us?” Somehow he was no longer speaking to
the Queen, but to the one person who understood his own loss.

“I would
have told you. I am telling you now. But I wanted to know what sort of lover my
... kinswoman would choose over all the rest. 1 wanted to know you for myself
first. And I approve of her choice, very much.” The hand squeezed lightly, left
his arm again; she brushed irritably at the loose strand of her hair, only
setting more free. He had never seen her like this, weary and distraught and
disappointed. So very human, so much like he was ... so much like Moon.

“I’ll never
know Moon now,
Sparks
.
I only have you to tell me about her, to remind me of her. Tell me what you
remember most clearly, and feel the most deeply about her. What things did she
love—what things about her did you love more than all the rest? Tell me how
much you loved her ...”