The Snow Queen (57 page)

Moon bent
her head. “What does that mean?” blankly.

His smile
grew wryer. “Nothing, I suppose, in this town. Gods, I want to see hot, running
water again! I want to feel clean again.” He turned away and went into the
bathroom; after a moment she heard water running.

Moon ate
her share of the fisherman’s-pie they had panhandled on the street, sitting by
the window with her back to the room’s self conscious schizophrenia—a room like
all of Winter, caught between the Sea and the stars. The rooms were on the
second floor, and she looked down on the Festival from above, watching humanity
course like blood through the arteries of the city. So many ... there were so
many.

Cut off
from the life support of its artificial vitality, she felt her endurance break
down again, lost her confidence that she would ever find that one face in the
thousands. The sibyl machinery had brought her to Carbuncle; but what did it
expect of her now? Aspundh had not been able to tell her anything about the way
in which it acted; only that it was the most unpredictable and least understood
of the things a sibyl might experience. She had believed that it guided her;
but now that she had come to the city there was no blinding revelation to help
her: Had it abandoned her, forgotten her, left her to count grains of sand on
the endless shore? How would she find Sparks without its help?

And what if
she did find him? What had he become—a coldblooded killer, doing the dirty work
of Winter’s Queen, even sharing her bed? What would she say to him if she found
him; what could he say to her? He had rejected her twice already, on Neith, and
on that hideous shore ... how often did he have to tell her that she was no
longer his love? Had she really gone through so much, just to hear him say it
to her face? Her hand rose to her cheek.
Why
can’t I let go? Why can’t I admit it?
The scene below slid out of focus as
her eyes blurred.

The curtain
at the bathroom doorway pushed back and Gundhalinu came out, clean and freshly
shaven, but modestly redressed in the same filthy clothes. He stretched out on
the bed-sofa with a sigh, as though it had taken the last bit of his strength.
Moon shut herself into the tiny washroom in turn, to hide from him the doubts
that she could not speak and could not disguise. She showered; the steaming
water soothed her crippling tension, but it could not wash her guilt away.

She came
out into the larger room again, wearing only her tunic, drying her hair and her
eyes; expecting to find Gundhalinu asleep. But he stood at the window as she
had stood.

She joined
him. They stood side by side, not touching, in silent communion before the
diamond panes, watching the street below, listening as the Festival rattled
against the glass.

“Why did I
come here? Why did it make me come, when there wasn’t any reason?”

Gundhalinu
glanced at her, frowning in surprise.

“What am I
going to do, even if I find him? I’ve already lost him. He doesn’t want me any
more. He has a Queen—” she pressed her hand against her mouth, “and he’s
willing to die for her.”

“Maybe he
only wants Arienrhod because he doesn’t have you.” Again Gundhalinu searched
her face, looking for something she didn’t understand.

“How can
you say that? She’s a Queen.”

“But she’ll
never be you.” Hesitantly he touched her fingers. “And maybe that’s why he
doesn’t want to go on living.”

She caught his
hand in hers, pressed it to her cheek, kissed it. “Thou make st me—valued feel,
when I wind-drift am ... when I lost have been, for so long.” She felt her face
burn.

He freed
his hand. “Don’t speak Sandhi! I never want to hear it again.” He pulled clumsily
at the sleeve of his rough shirt. “I’m not fit to hear it. Wind-drift ...
that’s what I am, not what you are. Spume on the sea, dust in the wind; dirt
under the feet of my peo pie-”

“Stop it!”
She stopped his words, aching with his pain. “Stop it, stop it! I won’t let you
believe that! It’s a lie. You’re the finest, gentlest, kindest man I ever knew.
I won’t let you ... believe ...” as he turned to her, his dark eyes drawing
her, and his hands pressing her back, and his need ...

He bent his
head slowly, almost in disbelief, as her mouth rose to his kiss. Moon shut her
eyes, kissing him again with tremulous hunger, feeling his astonished hands
begin to caress her as she answered his unspoken question at last.

“How did I
come to this place?” he murmured. “Is it real? How can you—”

“I don’t
know. I don’t know, don’t ask me.”
Because there is no answer.
Because I have no right to love you, I never meant to ... and I do.
“BZ ... this may be all there is, this could end tomorrow.”
Because you give me the strength to go on
searching.

“I know.”
His kisses grew more reckless. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not asking forever of
you ... just let me love you now.”

“Starbuck!”
Arienrhod called his name again, when he did not look up from his work table.

He raised
his head slowly, his face elusive and shadowed as he acknowledged her at last.
He pushed aside contraband tools, the half disassembled piece of hardware he
had been peeling down layer upon fragile layer; his workroom was choked with
technological storm wrack some of which he actually claimed to understand. His
native technical ability had always pleased her, until now. Since he had
returned from the final, fateful Hunt, he had lost himself in this sterile
fantasy of machinery, to hide from himself and from her. “What do you want?”
His voice was neither curious nor hostile; it was nothing at all, and nothing
showed on his face as he spoke.

She tried
to curb her irritation, knowing that only patience and time would bring him out
of his despondent brooding. But it had been weeks since he had acted like a
man; since he had tried to make love to her, touched her, even smiled at her.
Her resentment smouldered, leaving her with no stomach for coddling his sullen
bad temper. “I want to know when you’ll be finishing your duty as Hunter.”

“My duty?”
He shifted in the swivel seat, his eyes leaping like a hart, searching for
cover in the wilderness of electronics gear. “I’ve done it all,” bitterly.

“You
haven’t made the payment. The Source is waiting for the water of life. I’m sure
I don’t need to remind you that unless he gets it Winter will end—and so will
our lives.”

“And half
of Summer will die ... Summer will end forever.” His green eyes met hers again,
dull with anguish.

“So I
hope.” She forced her gaze past the barriers and into his unwilling mind. “You
aren’t pretending this is the first time that’s occurred to you, are you?”

“No.” He
shook his head; his red hair brushed the links of silvered chain that caught
the shoulders of his loose-hanging shirt. “I’ve thought about it every day, and
dreamed it—”

“Pleasant
dreams,” she said sardonically.

“No!” She
remembered the nightmares, the ones that he had refused to discuss with her.
“Get someone else to make the delivery. I’ve done my duty, I’m choking on
Winter’s dirty work. I draw the line at giving that rotting off worlder slug
eternal life for destroying my own people.”

“You’re no
Summer! And you’re paying for your own life, and mine.” Arienrhod leaned across
the work table, reaching out. “You can’t crawl back into a Summer shell; you
outgrew that long ago. You’ve killed your sacred mers, you’ve left your Summer
love dead with their corpses. You abandoned your people and your goddess years
ago—for something better! Remember that! You are an off worlder now, and my
lover. And like it or not, you will be until you die.”

Starbuck
pushed to his feet, sweeping the clatter and blink off of the table with his
fist. Arienrhod stepped back as she realized he had only just kept that rage
from striking out at her.

“Then I’d
just as soon die now.” He clenched his hands on the table edge, leaning forward
with his head down. “And finish what I’ve started.”

“Sparks.”
His name rose out of her deepest heart, where the hot pain of his suffering
reached her dimly. But he did not respond. She could not reach him any more; he
had shut her out. “Starbuck!” The suffering became her own, and the pain became
her anger. He did look up this time, with his face hard and clenched. There was
nothing of
Sparks
in the look; only a ghost lying behind it: the ghost of lost Moon, her own lost
other ness Moon, whose death was his fault, and who had taken his love for the
both of them with her into the grave. Arienrhod felt his reality, shrouded by
the ghost of Moon, become the focus for failure’s burning glass:
failure.
The
word left a smoking track across her inner sight. “You will deliver the water
of life, and I want it done soon. Your Queen commands it.”

His mouth
thinned. It was the first time she had ever commanded him; the first time he
had ever forced her to. “And if I refuse?”

“Then I’ll
give you to the off worlders Refusing to let him defy her, she pulled at the
sliding reins of her control. “And you’ll spend the rest of your life in a
penal colony wishing that you had died at the Change.”

Starbuck’s
mouth dropped open. His eyes felt her face like a blind man’s hands, until at
last he knew that she meant every word. He bowed his head in surrender,
helpless under the weight of his own self-hatred.

She knew then
that she could make him do anything ... and that in winning this victory she
had lost him forever.

Moon woke
suddenly with a sigh in the warm embrace of someone’s arms.
Sparkle, I had such a strange dream ...
She opened her eyes, jerked at the unexpectedness of the room opening out
before her. And remembering, she looked down along her side to find a warm
brown arm freckled with pink secure beneath her own. For just a moment pain
caught inside her; but then she smiled, without guilt or regret, twining her
fingers in his. She shifted carefully on the narrow bed-sofa to study BZ’s
sleeping face, remembering how he had watched over her in the silent dawns.
Remembering the poems of his heart that he spoke to her wondering ears, as he
gave himself to her at last,
my star,
white bird, wildflower garden ...
until she had cried out the words that
she had no right to say, and no power to deny,
I love you, I love you ...

She stroked
his cheek, but he did not stir; rested her head on his shoulder. Here in this room,
this space apart from their separate lives, they had shared love, and they had
given each other something else as precious—an affirmation of their own value.

The sounds
of the Festival still reached her, muted but unchanging; the level of light
flowing in through the window had not changed either. (“I’ve never done this in
the light,” he had murmured. “We’re so beautiful ... Why was I ashamed?”) She
had no feel for whether it was night or day, or how long they had slept. Her tj
body was sluggish and unwilling, telling her it had not been long enough. But
she couldn’t afford any more time. BZ still slept like the dead, and she moved
out from under his arm as quietly as she could, without trying to wake him;
certain that she could find her way as far as the mask maker alley alone. She
dressed and slipped out the door.

The crowds
seemed as vibrant, as endless, as before, as though one shift of revelers
merged imperceptibly into the next, an infinite wheel. She kept as close to the
building walls as she could, forcing her way through the eddying backwaters
around vendors’ booths and outdoor cafes. She grabbed a piece of spiced meat
from a table as she passed, choked it down, her throat tight and her mind
sparking with the feedback of sheer energy from every side.

At last she
broke through into the Citron Alley, where the crowd current slowed and grew
less deep. She found her way to the go tanery entrance, went one more shop to
the mask maker Its yellow green double door was firmly shut; she beat on the
upper half with her fist, throwing all her frustration and urgency into it.
“Open up! Open up!”

The top
half of the door opened, catching her in mid-cry; she ended with a laugh of
triumph. A middle-aged woman with dark hair in a heavy plait looked out at her,
through her, with eyes sleep reddened ... with eyes that did not see her. “Yes,
who is it?” wearily, a little impatiently.

“Are
you—are you Fate Ravenglass, the mask maker She wondered what she had been
expecting, relieved that this woman wasn’t it.

“Yes.” The
woman rubbed her face. “But all my masks are gone. You’ll have to go to one of
the displays to look at them. There are warehouses and vacant stores full of
them all over the city.”

“No, I
don’t want a mask. I want to ask you about—Sparks.
Sparks
Dawntreader.”

“Sparks?”
The reaction she had waited for, prayed for, filled the woman’s face. She
opened the bottom of the door. “Come in then! Come in.”

Moon
entered the shop, blinked with the dimming of light. As her eyes readjusted,
she saw boxes and baskets piled in precisely ordered confusion in the room’s
four quarters—remnants of cloth, face forms, feathers, bangles, beads. Her foot
skidded on a bead as she moved forward; she picked it up carefully and held it
in her hand. The walls of the room were empty now, but they bristled with hooks
where a hundred masks must have hung like rare flowers until only two or three
days ago ... The last wall space was not empty. On it hung one mask all alone,
and she stood staring, transfixed by the shimmering vision of a summer’s day:
mist-rainbows reflecting in pied pools, emerald-velvet moss underfoot and the
green-gold silk of new grasses springing up on the hillsides; hoards of
wildflowers, frag ant with life, berries and birds’ wings dappled with shadow;
and in their midst a face of radiant innocence captive to wonder, crowned by
the rays of the twin suns. “Is that—the Summer Queen?” she whispered, awed.