The Snow Queen (35 page)

Whistles
and protests followed her in a crowd; she had been gambling with the patrons,
as ordered, losing just enough, winning back just enough more to convince them
that the games were honestly run. Suckers. The games were honestly run, for the
most part-much to her surprise. They were simply so complicated that the
ordinary human being couldn’t hope to outwit them. When she thought about the
hours and the money she had thrown away, as wantonly and stupidly as any of
these drugged-up boobs, she shook her ebony-frizzed head in disgust. Still, it
wasn’t so bad now; now that she knew the codes that let her secretly control
the outcome of the plays.

No, it
wasn’t so bad at all, not any of it: running a casino, taking care of business
as the front woman for the Source’s own on-planet interests. She was the
Hostess, the titular owner, of Persipone’s Hell, unquestionably the finest
gambling hell in Carbuncle. And on the side she tended to whatever other
discreet dealings the Source—the head man of the off world criminal subculture
on Tiamat—told her to tend to. It was a part of the Queen’s policy to provide
capable Winters to act as a screen for off worlder illegalities, so the vice
lords themselves could operate with virtual impunity, free of harassment by the
Hedge’s police. She had been picked up four times by the Blues as she was
working her way into the Source’s favor; but they had had to turn her over to
the Queen’s guard, who had simply let her go.

“Hey—” She
squinted through the dance of shifting bodies, saw more clearly the off worlder
who had just come through the curtain of tiny, shimmering mirrors with a zombie
in tow. “Pollux!” She pressed the caller on her bracelet as a secondary summons
as she shouted into the throbbing music around her. Pollux appeared at her
shoulder with the reassuring solidness of steel. “That pervert who just came in
the door; show him out again. We don’t need his business.” She pointed, trying
not to see whether the zombie was male or female, or any detail of its form.
The very sight sickened her, and the sight of a man or woman who enjoyed using
a living body that way.

“Whatever
you say, Tor.” Pollux moved away with single-minded inevitability. He made a
better bouncer than any of the humans who worked in this place; she had bought
out his rental contract for the duration.

It had all
worked out so perfectly ... funny how it had. Even
Herne
... She turned back, leaning an elbow
on one end of the coal-black, curving bar. The strange light-absorbing material
sucked the warmth out through her skin; she shivered and straightened up.
Farther down the way
Herne
sat in command of the banks of automated drink and drug dispensers, an
outrageously popular anachronism. Putting him in charge of the bar, where
customers gathered to lose their inhibitions along with their good credit, had
been her most inspired move. They spilled their guts to each other, and better
yet to him; and she fed what he learned to Dawntreader, who still lapped it up
like an addict after all these years.

Who would
ever have dreamed, that day in Fate’s alley when Dawntreader had nearly
strangled her, that his bad temper would lead her to this? But between
Herne
’s savvy and
Dawntreader’s contacts with somebody up the line, she had risen higher and
faster than she had ever dreamed of doing.

“Hey,
Persipone, baby, the Source wants you.” Oyarzabal, one of the Source’s
lieutenants, was abruptly behind her. His hands settled on her waist, got
dangerously personal under the bib of her sensuous evening suit.

She
controlled the unsubtle urge to dig an elbow into his ribs. She had learned
tact and sophistication of a sort, painfully, since leaving the loading docks;
getting mauled came with the territory. “Careful. You’ll set off my burglar
alarm.” She pushed his hands away, but not too far. Oyarzabal was a jerk,
proven by the fact that he seemed to prefer her to his choice of the easy, chic
women who flowed through this place; but she didn’t work too hard at
discouraging him. He was a onetime farmboy from somewhere on Big Blue, and
attractive in a loutish, overgrown sort of way. She had gone to bed with him a
few times, and hadn’t been too disappointed. She’d even toyed with the idea of
getting him to marry her before the final departure, and getting off Tiamat for
good.

“Hey,
sweeting, how about later on you and me—”

“Tonight’s
taken.” She started away before he could get his hands on her again; glanced
back, relenting a little, enough for a smile. “Ask me tomorrow.”

He grinned.
His teeth were inlaid with rhinestones. She turned away again, shaking her
head.

She made
her way through the crowd, through the forbidden door that led her to the
Source’s private suite of offices and guarded meeting rooms—guarded not only by
hidden human eyes, but also by the most elaborate anti snoop devices money
could buy. When she had learned that
Herne
was a Kharemoughi, she had asked him about the possibility of using his
legendary technical prowess to let her eavesdrop on the Source’s private dealings.
But he was no match for the electronic guards, and she had finally realized
that all Kharemoughis weren’t born knowing how a turn ore into computer
terminals. So she had had to be content with noticing who called on the Source,
and when, and only suspecting why.

She didn’t
much like being the caller herself. The door to his office opened as she
reached it, with the prescience she had learned to expect, and let her in to
her audience. She blinked compulsively and slowed as she entered; the room was
dark to the point of blindness for her, as it always was. Incense clogged the
air with an overwhelming sweetness. She lifted a hand to rub her eyes, stopped
it just short of ruining the perfect flowers painted over her lids. She let her
hand drop again, resigned, as a dark form began to coalesce against a dimly
reddening background: the Source, in silhouette, the only way she had ever seen
him.

She had
been told by Oyarzabal that the Source had some disease that made his eyes
unable to stand the light. She didn’t know whether to believe it, or just to
figure that he liked to keep his face hidden. Sometimes, as she adjusted slowly
to the dull wash of red from the wall behind him, she thought there might be a
distortion about his face. But she could never be sure.

“Persipone.”
His voice was a rasping whisper, and again she didn’t know whether it was the
real one. He spoke with an accent she couldn’t identify.

“Here,
master.” His chosen form of address took on new and sinister meanings here in
the blackness. She pushed uneasily at her wig, her scalp itching with sudden
tension. He saw perfectly well in the darkness, she knew, and at each visit she
was forced to endure his scrutiny.

“Turn
around.”

She circled
on the deep carpet pile, wondering pointlessly what color it really was, or
whether it was simply black.

“Better ...
yes, I like it better. You’ll never be beautiful, you know; but you’re learning
to disguise the fact. You’ve come a long way. I didn’t think you would come
such a long way.”

“Yes,
master. Thank you, master.” You’re telling me. She didn’t tell him that she had
begun to let Pollux pick her clothes for her. His totally impartial judgment
topped her own uncertain taste in choosing the styles that made the most of her
flawed body; with the wig and the paint she could, as the Source said, disguise
her unrelenting plainness.

“But then,
how could anyone be compared to the ideal, and not suffer by the comparison ...
?” His voice sighed away, he was silent again through seconds that hung on like
hours. Once, when she had been allowed a small red-tipped pencil of light to
read a list of directions, she had glimpsed a picture-square on the desk, a
woman’s face. A woman of striking off world beauty, with a fog of ebony hair
netted in gold. And she had understood with abrupt discomfort why she was
wearing the same hair, and why her predecessors had worn it too; and why this
place was Persipones, and why they all were, too. It had surprised her that a
man like the Source might have loved or even hated one woman enough to be
obsessed by her; and it gave her the creeps to be window dressing to the
obsession. But the rewards had been enough to keep her from saying so.

“How is
business tonight?”

“Real good,
master. It’s payday over at the star port we’ve got a big crowd.”

“Was the
latest deal successful? Have you got sufficient—variety on hand to satisfy
certain private customers?”

“Yeah,
Coonabarabran was right where you said he’d be, and everything on him. We can
handle any pleasure tonight.” She was sure he already knew the answer to the
questions, and so she always answered honestly. He did not ask her to handle
all his requests—she didn’t mind fronting on drug transactions, because she
could keep herself mentally clear of the consequences. The Source oversaw, and
dabbled in, numerous other illegal transactions, and there were some she
couldn’t stomach. But there was always someone else around who could.

“Good ...
I’m expecting a particularly important visitor tonight. Make certain the inner
meeting room is secure, and prepared appropriately. She will be at the side
entrance at midnight. See that she isn’t kept waiting.”

“Yes,
master.”
She?
There were not too many women in the underworld society who rated such
solicitude in an audience with the Source.

“That’s
all, Persipone. Go back to your guests.”

“Thank you,
master,” meekly. The door opened and she escaped, blinking again, into the
white glare of the hall beyond. She sighed as the door clicked securely behind
her; not offended, as she walked away, that he found her unattractive—only
relieved. He was completely off her scale of ambition, and in her private heart
she was very much afraid of him, for all the rational reasons—and for all the
reasons a child fears the dark.

Arienrhod
followed the lurid figure of Persipone through the private passageways to the
Source’s inner meeting room. The sounds of the casino reached her distantly
through the barrier of separating walls, a deep throbbing that was more
vibration than true sound, that reached into her chest like death’s hand. It
was more than appropriate she thought, that the heartless merriment of the
gaming crowds should show its real nature here in the shadowy halls of the
Source’s hidden power. Persipone stopped ahead of her, before a sealed doorway
that looked like any other they had passed, and beckoned to her. She moved
forward, and Persipone pressed her hand against a panel in the door—the arrival
signal, as though they were not already being observed. She nodded to Arienrhod
with self-conscious deference, and went away down the hall. Arienrhod was
certain that the woman recognized her; wondered what she would think if she
realized that Tor Starhiker/Persipone was equally well-known to her Queen as
Sparks Dawntreader’s pawn.

But the
door was opening before her, opening on darkness, and she put all other
thoughts out of her mind. She pushed back the hood of her shadow-colored cloak
and walked boldly forward, without waiting to be summoned. But as she crossed
over the threshold the door sealed again behind her, sealing her into utter
lightlessness. Panic seized her with heavy hands, as it always did. Suddenly it
was hard not to believe that she had stepped into another plane, into the
merciless unknown of an interstellar vice network—out of the world she knew and
controlled. That she was lost ... Her mechanical spies peered into every corner
of this city, but they could not penetrate this place: It was guarded by even
more powerful and sophisticated technology ... this all-pervasive darkness that
tried to smother her will and swallow her self-control. She stood rigidly
still, until the moment passed and she recaptured her perspective.
Darkness .
it’s
a damn good
trick. I wish I’d thought of it.

“
Your
Majesty. You honor my humble establishment.” The
Source’s ruined voice (like the voice of a corpse; or was that just an effect,
too?) hissed the welcome, oddly accented. “Please take a seat, make yourself
comfortable. I would hate to keep the Lady standing.”

Arienrhod
noted the intentional play on words, the reference to her barbarian heritage.
She made no response, but moved forward confidently to take the deeply
cushioned seat across the empty table from him. Ever since their first meeting,
where she had been forced to grope humiliatingly through the dark, she had been
certain to wear light-enhancing contact lenses when she came to call on him. As
her visual purple built up she could actually make out the general form of the
room’s contents, and the uncertain outline of the Source himself. Try as she
would, she could not fill in the features of his face.

“What is
your pleasure, Your Majesty? I have a full store of sensory delights, if you
care to indulge.” A broad hand gestured, vaguely misshapen.

“Not
tonight.” She gave him no title, refusing to acknowledge the one he demanded of
his other clients. “I never combine business with pleasure, unless it’s
absolutely necessary.” She felt the heightened intensity of her other senses in
the darkened room, and how her crippled sight still struggled to dominate them.