“I suppose you did it for Tiamat! That’s what she always said, too.” He stood away from her.
“I’m a sibyl, Sparks, and that’s why I won! And yes, I care about Tiamat — and Arienrhod does too. She’s seen more of what this world was, and became, and will stop being again, than anyone else has… And she cared about you; you can’t deny that.”
Sparks looked down abruptly; Moon felt different kinds of pain start in her chest.
PalaThion came back into the room wearing her uniform; went on past them and out, without saying anything more. The door opened and closed behind her, cutting them off again from the celebration of the world outside. Moon fingered the trailing streamers of the Summer Queen’s mask. Her mask… my mask.
“Sparks, please, believe that it’s right. My becoming Queen is part of something much greater, much more important, than either you or me. I can’t explain it to you now—” She knew, with misery, that he had never been meant to know; that he had always been the enemy to the shapeless sentience that guided her. “But we have to stop the off world exploitation of Tiamat. When I was off world I met a sibyl on Kharemough; I learned that there are sibyls on all the worlds of the Old Empire — the whole reason they exist is to help worlds rebuild and relearn. I can answer any question.” She saw his eyes widen, and change.
“And while I was on Kharemough I began to see what you always saw, about progress, technology, the magic of what the off worlders do, and how it isn’t magic to them. They understand so much more, they don’t have to be afraid of disease, or broken bones, or childbirth. Your mother wouldn’t have died. We have a right to live that way too, or there wouldn’t be sibyls on this world.”
She saw hunger in his eyes, for what she had seen that he would never see. But he only said, “Our people are happy the way they are. If they start reaching for power, wanting what they don’t have, they’ll end up like the Winters. Like us.”
“What’s wrong with us? Nothing!” She shook her head. “We want knowledge, we’re asking for our birthright. That’s all. The off worlders want us to think it’s wrong to be dissatisfied with what we have. But it’s no worse than being self-satisfied with it. Change isn’t evil — change is life. Nothing’s all good, or all bad. Not even Carbuncle. It’s like the sea, it has its tides, they ebb and flow… What you choose to do with your life doesn’t matter, unless you have the right to choose anything. We don’t have any choice. And the mers don’t even have the right to live.” And they have to live, they’re the key to everything.
Sparks grimaced. “All right, you’ve made your point! Someone should try to change it. But why us?” His hand closed over his medal. “You know… my father said he could get us off Tiamat. He could arrange for us to go to Kharemough. It would be so easy…”
“They don’t need us on Kharemough. They need us here.” Seeing Kharemough, the Thieves’ Market, the night sky: It would be so easy. Even if we can plant the seeds here, we’ll never see the final harvest, we’ll never know whether we lost or won… “And we owe something to both places that we can only pay back here.” Her voice grew dark.
“Some things can never be repaid.” Sparks moved to the window; Moon saw someone outside wave in passing. “And having to stay here, in Carbuncle, in the palace—” He broke off. “I don’t know if I can stand it, Moon. I can’t start over, in the same place where I was—”
“Look at the people out there. This is the Mask Night — the night of transition. No one is what they were, or will be… we’re not anything, our potential is infinite. And when the masks come off, they peel away the layers of our sins, and leave us free to forget, and start over.” And to prove to the sibyl mind that you are as I see you, and not wearing a death mask.
She went to stand beside him. “After tonight nothing will be the same. Not even Carbuncle. The Summers are coming here, and the future is trying to. It will be a new world, not Arienrhod’s.” But it will be hers too; it always will be. Knowing it, she didn’t say it. “And I promise you I’ll never set foot in the palace again.” And I’ll never tell anyone why.
He looked over at her in surprise; when he believed what he saw, relief freed his face. But still he sighed, and still she felt the space between them. “It’s not enough. I need time — time to forget; time to believe in myself again… and believe in us. One night isn’t enough. Maybe a lifetime won’t be enough.” He turned to the window again.
Moon looked with him, not able to keep looking at him, letting the crowd blur and swim out of focus, oily colors on a water surface. It never rains here. It ought to rain… there are never any rainbows. “I’ll wait,” biting off the words, to keep from choking on them. “But it won’t take that long.” She found his hand on the windowsill squeezed it. “Tonight it’s my duty to be happy.” Her mouth quirked at the irony. “This should have been our Festival, to carry with us in our memories forever. It’s the last Festival; and we will remember it. Do you want to go out there and end our lives the way we were meant to? Maybe, if we tried, we could make tonight one we want to remember forever.”
He nodded; a smile teetered on his face. “We could try.”
She looked back at the Summer Queen’s mask, saw it overlain by faces, all the many lives that had sacrificed so much to make it hers. One face—”But first… I have to tell someone good-bye.” She bit her lip, a counterpain.
“Who?” Sparks followed her eyes.
“A — an off worlder A police inspector. I escaped from the nomads with him. He’s in the hospital now.”
“A Blue?” He tried to take back the tone of his voice. “Then he’s more than just a Blue: a friend.”
“More than just a friend,” faintly. She faced him, waiting for him to understand.
“More than… ?” He frowned suddenly, and she saw his face flush. “How could you—?” His voice broke, like a stick snapping. “How could you… How could I. We. Us…”
She looked down. “I was lost in the storm, and he was my sea anchor. And I was his. When someone loves you more than you love yourself, you can’t help—”
“I know.” He let his anger out in a sigh. “But what about — now, you and him? And me?”
She ran her fingers down the colored front of her nomad’s tunic. “He didn’t ask me for forever.” Because he knew he couldn’t. “He always knew that no one would ever come before you, or come between you and me, or take your place for me.” Even though he would have tried; wanted to try; did. She felt his face trying now to come between Sparks’s pinched face and her own. “No one!” blinking hard. “He — helped me to find you.” He gave up everything, gave me so much; and what did I give him? Nothing. “Then he left me, asking nothing else. I have to know, to be sure, he’ll — be all right, when he leaves here.”
Sparks laughed; the sound was raw in his throat. “What about us? Will we be all right, when they’re gone? When we’re the ones who get stuck, when we have to live on with their memories looking over our shoulders, reminding us how we broke our pledge, our promise — and broke it, and broke it?”
“We’ll make another. For our reborn souls — tomorrow.” After tonight. She picked up the Summer Queen’s mask. After the dawn. “But I think we never broke the old one, in our hearts.”
He kissed her once before she put the mask on again.
“What about a mask for you?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t need one. I’ve already taken mine off.”
52
“Well, this sure’s hell’s not how I imagined spendin’ Mask Night.” Tor interrupted herself to fill her mouth with another sugary, alcohol soaked drunken-cake from the sack in her hand, doing her best to deaden body and mind against the coming end of the world. She pulled her mask back into place, hanging onto Pollux’s stalwart bulk, an island of comfort in the thinning Festival crowd. “Not with nothin’ but a hunk of cold metal to cozy up to, and a future of cleaning fish. Hell, I get seasick in the bathtub. And I hate fish, goddamn it!” Shouting it.