“What’s this?” Aspundh leaned on his fist, bemused. “Who is this Sparks ? A romance?”
Elsevier pushed Moon away to arm’s length and held her there gently. “Oh, Moon, my dear child,” she said with inexplicable sorrow, “I don’t want to have to hold you to that promise.”
Moon twisted her head, not understanding. “We were pledged, but he went away when I became a sibyl. But now, when I go back I can tell him—”
“Go back? To Tiamat?” Aspundh straightened.
“Moon,” Elsevier whispered, “we can’t take you back.” The words rushed out like a flight of birds.
“I know, I know I have to wait until—” She beat the words away.
“Moon, listen to her!” The shock of Cress’s broken silence stopped it.
“What?” She went slack in Elsevier’s grip. “You said we would—”
“We’re never going back to Tiamat, Moon. We never meant to, we can’t. And neither can you.” Elsevier’s lip trembled. “I lied to you,” looking away, searching for an easy way, finding none. “It’s all been a monstrous lie. I’m — sorry.” She let go of Moon’s arms.
“But why?” Moon brushed distraughtly at her hair, strands of cobweb tickling her face. “Why?”
“Because it’s too late. Tiamat’s Gate is closing, becoming too unstable for a small ship like ours to pass through safely. It… hasn’t been months since we left Tiamat, Moon. It’s been more than two years. It will be just as long going back.”
“That’s a lie! We weren’t on the ship for years.” Moon pushed up onto her knees as comprehension melted and ran down around her. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because I should have done it at the beginning.” Elsevier’s hand covered her eyes. Cress said something to Aspundh in rapid Sandhi.
“She isn’t lying to you, Moon.” Aspundh sat back, unconsciously separating himself from them. Elsevier translated his words dully. “Ship’s time is not the same as time on the outside. It moves more slowly. Look at me, look at Elsevier — and remember that I was younger than TJ by many years. Moon, if you returned to Tiamat now you would have been missing for nearly five years.”
“No… no, no!” She struggled to her feet, wrenching loose as Cress tried to hold her down. She crossed the room to the window, stood gazing out on the gardens and sky with her forehead pressed hard against the pane. Her breath curtained the glass with ephemeral frost, making her eyes snow blind “I won’t stay on this world. You can’t keep me here! I don’t care if it’s been a hundred years — I have to go home!” She clenched her hands; her knuckles squeaked on the glass. “How could you do this to me, when you knew?” turning furiously. “I trusted you! Damn your ship, and all your gods damn you!”
Aspundh was standing now beside the low table; he came slowly toward her across the room. “Look at them, Moon.” He spoke quietly, almost conversationally. “Look at their faces, and tell me they wanted your life to ruin.”
She forced her unwilling eyes back to the three still sitting at the table — one face inscrutable, one bowed with shame, one winking with the track of acid-drop tears. She did not answer; but it was enough. He led her back to the table.
“Moon, please understand, please believe me… it’s because your happiness is so important to me that I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.” Elsevier’s voice was thin and brittle. “And because I wanted you to stay.”
Moon stood silently, feeling her face as rigid and cold as a mask. Elsevier looked away from it. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know.” Moon forced the words out past frozen lips. “I know you are. But it doesn’t change anything.” She sank down among the pillows, strengthless but still unforgiving.
“The wrong has been done, sister-in-law,” Aspundh said. “And the question remains — what will you do to repair it?”
“Anything within my power.”
“Our power,” Cress said.
“Then take me home, Elsevier!”
“I can’t. All the reasons I gave you are true. It’s too late. But we can give you a new life.”
“I don’t want a new life. I want the old one.”
“Five years, Moon,” Cress said. “How will you find him, after five years?”
“I don’t know.” She brought her fists together. “But I have to go back to Tiamat! It isn’t finished. I can feel it, it isn’t finished!” Something resonated in the depths of her mind; a distant bell. “If you can’t take me, there must be a ship that can. Help me find one—”
“They couldn’t take you either.” Cress shifted among the cushions. “It’s forbidden; once you leave Tiamat, the law says you can’t go home again. Your world is proscribed.”
“They can’t—” She felt her fury rising.
“They can, youngster.” Aspundh held up his hand. “Only tell me, what do you mean, ‘it isn’t finished?” How do you know that?”
“I — I don’t know.” She looked down, disconcerted.
“Just that you don’t want to believe it’s finished.”
“No, I know!” suddenly, fiercely certain. “I just don’t know-how.”
“I see.” He frowned, more with consternation than disapproval.
“She can’t,” Cress murmured. “Can she?”
“Sometimes it happens.” Aspundh looked somber. “We are the hands of the sibyl-machine. Sometimes it manipulates us to its own ends. I think we should at least try to learn whether her leaving has made any difference, if we can.”
Moon’s eyes fixed on him in disbelief, like the rest.
Cress laughed tightly beside her. “You mean it — acts on its own? Why? How?”
“That’s one of the patterns we’re still trying to relearn. It can be damnably inscrutable, as I’m sure you know. But anything able to perform all its functions would almost have to possess some kind of sentience.”
Moon sat impatiently, only half listening, half understanding. “How can I learn that — whether I have to go back?”
“You have the key, sibyl. Let me ask, and you’ll have the answer.”
“You mean… No, I can’t! I can’t!” She grimaced.
He settled onto his knees, smoothing his silver-wire hair. “Then ask, and I will answer. Input…” His eyes faded as he fell into Transfer.
She swallowed, taken by surprise, said self-consciously, “Tell me what — what will happen if I, Moon Dawntreader, never go back to Tiamat?”
She watched his eyes blink with sudden amazement, search the light-dappled corners of the room, come back to their faces, to hers alone—”You, Moon Dawntreader, sibyl, ask this? You are the one. The same one… but not the same. You could be her, you could be the Queen… He loved you, but he loves her now; the same, but not the same. Come back — your loss is a wound turning good flesh bitter, here in the City’s heart… an un healing wound… The past becomes a continuous future, unless you break the
Change… No further analysis!” Aspundh’s head dropped forward; he leaned against the table for a long moment before he looked up again. “It seemed to be — night, there.” He took a sip from his drink. “And the room was full of strange faces…”
Moon picked up her own glass, drank to loosen the invisible hand closing on her throat. He loved you, but he loves her now.
“What did I say?” Aspundh looked toward her, clear eyed again, but his face was drained and drawn.
She told him, haltingly, helped on by the others. “But I don’t understand it…” I don’t understand it! How could he love… She bit her lip. Elsevier’s hand touched hers lightly, briefly.
“You could be Queen,” Aspundh said. “Your loss is an unhealing wound. I think you had a true intuition… your role in a greater play has been left unfilled. An inequality has been created.”
“But it’s already happened,” Elsevier said slowly. “Doesn’t that mean it was meant to happen?”