But as she left the stairway, she heard the music beckon unexpectedly, found a tiny, half-hidden alcove overlooking the hall below. She wondered whether it was a watchman’s perch — but there was no one watching from it now. She tiptoed forward to the railing, looked down out of the shadows, her skin crawling with the certainty that all eyes would be on her like searchlights.
But as the hall opened out under her gaze she forgot herself, no more than an insect on the wall to the mass of royal guests below: Pale Winter nobles and dark-skinned Kharemoughis mingled freely, the eye-dazzling spectrum of their dress diminishing the contrast of their origins. They feasted desultorily at buffet tables spread with the last of Winter’s culinary art, the eclectic delights of native and imported cuisines. Moon swallowed, her mouth suddenly full of saliva, remembering the one inadequate meal she had eaten in the casino, hours ago. Mirror-faceted balls suspended in the air above her eye level turned silently, perpetually, sending a snowfall of fractured light down over the crowd.
Moon let her eyes rove, noticing the security force of off world police stationed unobtrusively around the perimeters of the hall. She wondered whether the Police Commander was here tonight, thought a curse at her for what the woman’s untempered justice had done to BZ; what it would have done to her own life, and Sparks’s. Once she thought she glimpsed First Secretary Sirus, but lost the face again as a cluster of guests gathered for a toast.
But nowhere in the vast hall could see a woman who looked like a Queen… or one who looked like her. And nowhere a man in black who masked his face like an executioner… or a red-haired boy whose face she would know anywhere, no matter how it had changed. Wasn’t he here, then? Had he left the hall already; would she find him in his chambers?
She moved back from the balustrade, her heart beating like a caged bird’s wings. I will find you. I will’ So there you are. Can’t you resist spying on your guests, even to night?” A man’s voice directly behind her, slurred and full of teasing hostility.
Moon froze, feeling her face turn crimson with betraying guilt. She pulled her mouth into a line, clenched her teeth to hold it there, hoping her blush would seem to be anger. She turned, picking up her skirts, holding her head high. “How dare you speak to—” Her gown slipped through senseless fingers. “Sparks?” She swayed.
“Who else?” He shrugged, and hiccupped. “Your faithful shadow of a man,” bowing precariously.
“Sparks.” She brought her hands up, locked them together to still them, to keep from reaching out. “It’s me.”
He frowned, like someone hearing a tasteless joke. “I hope to hell so, Arienrhod; or I’m not drunk enough to save me from real-time nightmares…” He peered at her, bleary eyed, rubbing his arms through his slitted shirtsleeves.
“Not Arienrhod.” She struggled to pry words out of her dust-dry mouth. “Moon. It’s Moon, Sparkle—” She touched him at last, felt the contact climb her arm like a shock.
He wrenched free, as if the contract burned him. “Damn you, Arienrhod! Leave me alone. It isn’t funny; it never was.” He turned away down the hall.
“Sparks!” She followed him into the light, struggling with the clasp of her necklace. “Look at me!” It came undone, she caught it in her hands. “Look at me.”
He swung around truculently; she raised her hand to touch her throat, lifted her head higher. He came back to her, squinting — she saw all the color go out of his flushed face at once. “No! Gods, no . she’s dead. You’re dead. I killed you.” He pointed at her, accusing himself.
“No, Sparks. I’m alive.” She seized his hand in both of hers this time, pulled it to her against his resistance, ran it along her shoulder. “I’m alive! Touch me, believe me… You’ve never hurt me.” Or if you have, I can’t remember now.
His muscles stopped fighting her grip; his hand closed slowly over her shoulder, slid down her sleeve to her wrist. His head fell forward. “Oh, my thousand gods… why did you come here, Moon? Why?” fiercely, in anguish.
“To find you. Because you needed me. Because I need you…
Mt.
because I love you. Oh, I love you…” She let her arms go around him, buried her face against his chest.
“Don’t touch me!” He pried at her arms, pushed her roughly back. “Don’t touch me.”
Moon stumbled, shook her head. “Sparks, I…” She rubbed her face, felt the pain of his bruise stir dimly in her cheek. “Because I’m a sibyl? But that doesn’t matter! Sparks, I’ve been off world since then; I learned the truth about sibyls. I won’t contaminate you. You don’t have to be afraid to touch me. We can be together the way we always were.”
He stared at her. “The way we were?” flatly, disbelievingly. “Just two simple Summer folk, stinking of fish, with our nets drying in the sun?” She nodded, faltering, feeling her neck resist the lying motion. “And I don’t have to be afraid of you contaminating me.” A shake, sincere. “Well, what about my contaminating you?” He struck his chest with his open hand, forcing her to see him as he demanded: the shirt of flame-shaded satin tatters showing ribbons of flesh between ribbons of cloth; the heavy jewelry that hung like golden chains of bondage from his neck and wrists; the skintight breeches that left nothing to her imagination.
“You’re… you’re even more beautiful than I remembered.” She told the truth; felt a sudden rush of desire, was frightened by it.
He put his hand up, covering his eyes. “Don’t you know? Why won’t you understand, damn it! That was me you saw on that beach, killing the mers! I’m Starbuck — don’t you know what that means; what that makes me?”
“I know,” catching at the fragments of her breaking voice. A murderer . a liar… a stranger. “I know what it means, Sparks, but I don’t care.” Because the price she had paid for this moment was too high a price for ruins and ashes. “Can’t you see that? It doesn’t matter to me what you’ve seen, or done, or been — now that I’ve found you it doesn’t matter to me any more.” There is no time, or death, or past; unless I let them come between us.
“It doesn’t matter? You don’t care if I’ve been another woman’s lover for five years? You don’t care how many of the Lady’s sacred mers I’ve butchered just so I can stay young with her forever? You won’t care, when you find out where I went today with the take from our last Hunt, or what’s going to happen to your fish-stinking kin y.
and mine in a few more hours because of it?” He grabbed her by the wrist, twisting her arm. “It still doesn’t matter that I’m Starbuck?”
She pulled back, half in revulsion, half in anger, unable to answer or even struggle as he began to lead her down the hall.
He reached a door, hit the lock with his palm and kicked it open, dragging her after him into a room. Light flared, hurting her eyes, as he shut the door again behind her, and sealed them in with his fingerprints. Moon found her own reflection gaping at her in every wall. She looked up at the ceiling to find herself looking down; looked down again too quickly, and staggered sideways into Sparks’s waiting arms. He smiled at her, but it was no smile she had ever seen on his face, and it turned her cold inside. “Sparks… what is this place?”
“What do you think it is, Cuz?” He twisted her in his arms until she saw the wide bed in the center of the room. His arms locked around her as she began to squirm; his hand groped her breast. “It’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it, sweeting? I could tell when you looked at me out there. So you’ve come all this way to be Starbuck’s lover, huh? Well, any way you like it, honey—” He jerked open his shirt front, she saw scars like thin white worms along his ribs. “I can oblige you.”