The Snow Queen (58 page)

The woman
turned to face it instinctively. “That is her mask. Who she will be, herself,
is still a mystery known only to the gods.”

“To the
Lady,” Moon said, without thinking.

“Yes, of
course.” The mask maker smiled a little sadly; Moon realized all the things
this mask would mean to a Winter, and that none of them were the same things
that moved her.

“You’ve
made her so beautiful; when she’s come to take your life away.”

“Thank
you.” The woman smiled again, proudly this time. “But that’s the price any
artist pays—to lose a part of herself each time she creates something she hopes
will live on after her. And perhaps if I make her fair and kind, the Summer
Queen will fulfill the prophecy, and be those things to us.”

“She will,”
Moon murmured.
But she won’t understand
you—so how can she be?

“Now, tell
me, Summer girl”—Moon glanced around in half surprise—”why you’ve come asking
about Sparks Dawntreader.”

“I’m his
cousin, Moon Dawntreader.”

“Moon!” The
mask maker frowned at nothing. “Wait, wait just a minute.” She went surely
through a doorway into another room, and was back in a moment wearing a
peculiar headband. “He told me so much about you, the two of you. Come over by
the door, where I can see you better with my ‘third eye.”“

Moon
obeyed. The woman held her with her face to the light, slowly grew rigid.
“Sparks said that you were like her ... like her ...” She seemed to shiver
suddenly.

“Like who?”
Moon forced the words out through stiff lips.

“Like
Arienrhod, like the Snow Queen. But I’ve seen you, another time, in another
place, somewhere.” She lifted her hand to map ^ Moon’s face with sensitive
fingertips, keeping her from asking another question. Fate led her back inside
to the one round, glue dribbled table with chairs that was all the room’s real
furniture. “Where have I seen you, Moon?” A large gray cat appeared out of
nowhere on the tabletop, came to sniff questioningly at Moon’s hands. Moon
scratched him absently under the chin.

“I—I don’t
think you have.” Moon sat down, following Fate’s motion, unclenched her fist
and laid the single red bead on the table.

Fate’s
breath caught. “Yes. You’re a sibyl.”

Moon’s hands
flew to her throat. “No—”

“Your
cousin told me; it’s all right.” Fate shook her head reassuringly. “Your secret
is safe. And it means I can trust you with mine now.” She pulled down the high
neckline of her sleeping gown, exposing her throat.

Moon felt
her own breath stop. “You’re a sibyl, here? But how? How do you dare?” She
remembered Danaquil Lu, and the scars he wore as a warning.

“I have a
very—select clientele.” Fate turned her face away. “Maybe that’s selfish of me,
maybe I’m not doing all I can with the gift, but ... I feel that there is a
need
for me to be here, somehow. As an
... outlet, if nothing else.” Her hands found a stray feather on the tabletop.
She picked it up, running it between her fingers. The cat watched her, its ears
flickering. “I have strange ideas about sibyls, you see; maybe they’re absurd,
but ...” Her shoulders twitched.

Moon leaned
forward. “You mean, you think there might be sibyls on other worlds than this
one?”

The feather
fluttered down, the cat pounced. “Yes! Oh, by the gods, have you felt it too?”
Fate reached out for reassurance.

“I’ve seen
it.” Moon touched her hand. “I met a sibyl on another world. There are sibyls
everywhere, part of an information network the Old Empire left to help us now.
The Hegemony lies to us.”

“I thought
as much—I knew there was something more! Yes, it makes so much sense.” Her
smile was a candle being lit in darkness. “Is that where I saw you, then? On
another world? Asking about him ...”

“I did ask
about him! That’s why I came back. Then it was you who told me about him ...”
That he loved someone else. “That it wasn’t finished yet, that he needed me,”
raising her voice to drown out doubt’s.,”But how do you know that? Can we
remember what we say, and see? I’ve never been called.”

“Yes, you remember
it. Clearly.” Fate smiled at the memory of clear sight. “It happens to me
rather often, and that’s why I feel I’m needed here. I may be the only answer
there is to questions about Carbuncle. And that’s why I began to suspect there
was more to us than anyone pretended to know. How could the Hedge not know what
we did was real?”

“There are
a lot of things they lie about.”
The mers
... is that the real reason they don’t want us in Carbuncle—so no one can prove
that they’ve lied about the mers?
And about how many other
things?
“But we could change that, now that we know the truth. When
the off worlders go—”

“Then
Summer will reign, and they won’t listen.”

“I
listened.” Moon felt her gaze drawn away to the mask on the wall.
Would they listen to a sibyl Queen?
A
tingling excitement ran along her nerves from spine to fingertips. “Fate, in
Transfer you said . you said I could be the Queen. What did it mean?”

“That was
years ago ...” Fate pressed a hand over her sensor eye. “I suppose I meant that
you looked like Arienrhod.” She took her hand away, looking toward the mask on
the wall. “But—maybe not. I called you back; it seemed important. If you ran
the race with the others on the day of choosing, who can say? You could be
chosen Queen.”

“How long
is it until they choose?”

“It’s the
day that leads into the Mask Night—the day after tomorrow.”

Moon wove
her tingling hands together, completing the circuit, felt the current of
terrifying certainty surge through her.
This
is the reason. This is why I’ve come. To make this a real Change, to open the
circle ...
“Yes, I can; I know I can! I was meant to!” Possibilities
exploded inside her eyes.

But it won’t save
Sparks
. The fire of revelation drowned in the cold
waters of truth. There would be no rebirth without death; she would have no
power until the Snow Queen died ... “But that’s why I came!” She shook her head
angrily; Fate’s face turned quizzical, listening. “Fate, I came to find Sparks,
I want to help him, if I can. If he still needs me, if he even wants me ...” She
faltered.

“You
know—what he’s become?”

“Yes. I
know. I know everything.” She pulled on a braid, hurting herself. “Starbuck.”

Fate
nodded, her face drawing down. She pulled the cat into her lap. “He isn’t the
boy you knew any more. But you aren’t the girl he left in Summer either. And he
does need you, Moon, he needs you desperately; he always has, or he would never
have turned to Arienrhod. Find him, and save him if you can. It matters very
much to me.”

“And to me.”
Moon jarred the table. “But I don’t know how to find him. That’s why I
came to you. Can you help me find him, can you bring him here? There’s hardly
any time.”
Today and
two more days, until he dies—three days to search a whole city.

“I know.”
Fate shook her head, looking down. “But he comes here at his whim, not mine. A.
d I don’t know ... Wait.” Searching, she found the red bead, picked it up.
“There is someone else who sees him more than I do. Her name is Tor Starhiker,
and she runs the casino called Persipone’s. She calls herself Persipone; ask
for her by that name. Are you here alone?”

“No.” Moon
smiled. “I have someone,” realizing that she had been away from him far longer
than she had meant to be. “I’d better get back and tell him what I’ve learned.”
She stood up, hesitated. “Thank you for helping me. And thank you for being
Sparks’s friend when I couldn’t be.” She longed for the time to hear all that
had passed between them through that long brief gap of years. “May the Lady
smile on you,” shyly.

“May She
smile on us all. But especially on you, now.” Fate smiled.

Moon looked
a last time at the mask of the Summer Queen before she went out the door.

She reached
the rooming house where she had left BZ at last, burst in through the windowed
door, breathless with elation and relief.

“Moon!” BZ
stood in the narrow hallway, the tail of his ragged shirt half tucked in. His
landlady stood beside him, overpowering his frail official presence with her
own, midway through a shrug of denial. BZ pushed past her, ran to catch Moon in
his arms, lifting her off her feet. “Gods! Where the hell have you been? I
thought—”

“I went to
the mask maker She laughed her surprise as he set her down again. “Stop, you
shouldn’t—”

“The mask
maker Alone? Why?” He frowned disapproval, but his face showed her only concern.

“I knew the
way. You needed the rest.” She smiled until he smiled with her. “I found her.
And BZ, you won’t believe this—” She broke off, remembering the landlady still
listening intently behind his back. BZ glanced over his shoulder, cleared his throat.

“Ah” right,
all right, Inspector.” The woman raised her hands in good-natured surrender. “I
can take a hint.” She eased past them toward her own apartment door. “You had
him worried.” She winked unsubtly. “Keep him worried and he won’t go off world
without you, child!” She opened her door and went in; it closed behind her.

BZ glanced
ceiling ward away from Moon’s embarrassment and his own. He moved them further
down the hall. “Now tell me. You found her?”

“Yes! And
BZ—when KR Aspundh went into Transfer, she was the one who told me to come
back.”

It took a
moment to register. “She’s a sibyl? Here?”

Moon
nodded, missing the undertones of his incredulity. “The only one, for the whole
galaxy—”

“What did
you tell her?” He was suddenly angry.

This time
she understood; old resentment and fresh disappointment darkened her eyes. She
stepped back, away from him. “I told her I wanted to find Sparks.”
And that’s all you have the right to know.

“I didn’t
mean that.” He muffled a cough, muzzling his bad temper. “I—I was afraid you’d
left me,” ashamed and awkward, “without even saying goodbye.”

Knowing
that he knew it wasn’t the whole truth, she accepted it; because she knew that
he wished it were. “BZ, how could I ever ... not to you. Not to you.” She took
his hands in hers, in promise, and kissed him with gentle grief. He let her go
reluctantly, suddenly obsessed with the disorder of his shut. “So what did you
find out? Has she seen him?”

“Fate
doesn’t know how to reach him.” Moon saw his head come up. “But she told me
about somebody who might: Her name is—; Persipone; she runs a casino.”

She thought
he was disappointed. But he nodded. “Right. I know the place. Uptown, one of
the biggest. We’ll try it next.” He glanced toward the spidery stairway that
helixed to the upper floors, and to the room that had been theirs for a night.
“Just let me ... get my coat.”

“Hi there
... hello, sexy ... welcome to hell, big spender ...”

Tor leaned
languidly against a pillar, greeting the faceless mob that poured through the
wall of tinkling mirrors with soulless monotony. She bit down on a yawn, her
mouth crinkling with the effort, trying to keep her makeup intact. They had
just reopened after being closed for a few hours of rest and recovery, and they
would not be closed again until the night of masks was over and the day of
Change had come. She had been gulping uppers until they barely gave her a jolt,
and her flower-lidded eyes were ready to sink into her skull. Like somebody
about to begin a life of unwilling asceticism, the Festival crowd was
insatiable in all its appetites, and the Source wanted them squeezed to the
last drop.

And
whatever the Source wanted, she meant to give him. He had touched the
bureaucratic mountain of permission forms with his omnipotent, distorted finger,
and it had melted into an unobstructed plain: He had given his blessing for her
marriage to Oyarzabal, her escape from this world before the off worlders
slammed the lid on Winter’s coffin and nailed it down tight. In just a few more
interminable hours, this casino would close forever—well, forever as far as she
was concerned. It struck her that she was going to miss this place, and that
surprised her. But this casino had been filled with people who lived, people
who weren’t afraid to take chances, people from a collection of worlds so
diverse she could barely begin to fathom them; worlds she wanted to get her
hands on, and would, thanks to Oyarzabal and the Source.

She
experienced a moment of fleeting doubt at the thought that she would actually
be Oyarzabal’s wife. The off worlders legal marriage seemed as heavy and ugly
as a length of chain. To be chained to Oyarzabal forever ... Oyarzabal, who was
in lust with Per sip one not Tor Starhiker. Would she have to wear this damned
wig, this painted, phony shell, forever, until it became the reality?
Oh, the hell with it.
If she got sick of
Oyarzabal she could lose him fast enough: Chains were made to be broken. “...
You look like a real winner ... hello there—” She stopped in mid-drone, her
mouth hanging. “Your Majesty?”