A hoarse chuckle. “Such a pity. Such a waste… don’t you ever wonder what you may be missing?”
“On the contrary,” refusing to be condescended to. “I miss nothing. That’s why I’m the Queen of this world. And that’s why I’m here. I intend to stay Queen of Tiamat after you and the rest of the off world parasites abandon it again. But in order to do that, I’ll need to employ your questionable services on a much bigger scale than I’ve done in the past.”
“You put things so delicately. How could a man refuse you anything?” iron on cement. “What did you have in mind, Your Majesty?”
She rested an elbow on the sense-absorbing chair-arm. Like flesh. It feels like flesh. “I want something to happen during the Festival, something that will create chaos — at the expense of the Summers.”
“You had in mind, perhaps, the sort of accident that befell the former Police Commander? But on a much larger scale, of course.” His voice betrayed no surprise at all; something she found both reassuring and disturbing. “Drugs in the water supply, perhaps.”
But why should it disturb me? It was my idea. “No drugs. That would affect my people too, and I don’t want that. We have to remain in control. I had in mind an epidemic, something most of Winter has been vaccinated against. The Summers would have no protection.”
“I see,” a dim nod. “Yes. It can be arranged. Although I would be betraying the Hegemony in a great way, if I gave you the means of retaining power. It’s very much in our interest to leave the savages in control when we depart.”
“The Hegemony’s best interests are hardly yours. You’re no more a loyalist than I am.” The smell of incense in the air was too strong, as though it were hiding something.
“Our interests coincide in the matter of the water of life.” She heard his smile.
“Name your price, then. I don’t have time to wade in the shallows.” Sharpening her own voice, she jabbed at his smug formless ness
“I want the take from three Hunts. All of it.”
“Three!” She laughed once, not admitting that it was no more than shed expected him to ask for.
“What is the price of a queen’s ransom, Your Majesty?” The darkness around them settled into his voice almost tangibly; she was aware again of how much more she heard, trying to compensate for not seeing his face. “I’m sure the police would be more than interested to learn what you have in mind for this world. Genocide is a serious charge — and against your own people. But that’s what comes of letting a woman rule… Women don’t rule the Hegemony, you know. There are many places, on many worlds, where even your arrogance could be broken, Arienrhod.”
Arienrhod’s hands tightened at the unexpected eagerness of his hatred, a terrifying crack of white-hot damnation between the shielding curtains of the darkness. She became aware of a peculiar odor underlying the perfume of incense in the air… an odor of disease, or decay. But he doesn’t dare! “Don’t threaten me, Thanin Jaakola. You may have been a slave master on Big Blue, and you may be responsible for the majority of the misery on seven different worlds,” letting his comprehension of her own private knowledge harden. “But until the Change this is my world, Jaakola, and you exist here only because I permit you to. Whatever becomes of me becomes of you, because if anything happens to me you lose your protection from the law. I’m sure there are many places that you would find a humbling experience yourself.” And I’m sure you never forget that For a moment. “What I’m asking of you is risky, yes, but simple. I’m sure it’s nothing you can’t handle easily, given your resources. I’ll give you the entire take of Starbuck’s final Hunt… and that is worth a Queen’s ransom, to you or anyone.”
The darkness magnified his separate breaths, and his silence.
Arienrhod held her own. At last she detected the faint inclination of his head, and he said, “Yes. I’ll handle the matter, for the agreed payment. I’ll enjoy thinking of you ruling Tiamat after we’re gone, without the water of life to keep you young. Ruling in Carbuncle after we’re gone… it won’t be the same place without us, you know. It really won’t be the same.” His laughter tore like rubber.
Arienrhod stood up without further comment, and only after her back was to him and she was crossing the room to the door did she allow herself to frown.
“Where the hell are you going?”
Tor started guility as the voice caught her from behind in the corridor — Herne ’s voice; she was just past the room she had arranged for him to use here in the casino. Most of the other rooms along this corridor were used by prostitutes and their clients. But a new day was dawning somewhere in the outer world, and the hall was empty; the casino was closed for a brief span of rest and recovery.
Tor turned back with deliberate slowness to study Herne . He leaned heavily against the door frame, his useless legs wrapped in the clumsy, powered exoskeleton that let him get around on his own after a fashion. A short, slashed robe thrown on carelessly over his head left him just short of indecent. She frowned. “I’ve got a heavy date. What’s it to you, grandmother?”
“Dressed like that?”
She glanced down at her coveralls; saw her face in the mirror of memory stripped of its painted persona — her own dreary, genuine self, tired of pretending to be someone she was not, glad just to see her own lank and mousy hair emerge from underneath the gold capped wig. “Why not?”
“Only you would ask a question like that.” He sneered his disgust, tugged at his robe. His eyes were bloodshot, his face heavy with fatigue, or drugs, or both.
“If I dressed to turn you on I wouldn’t get much return on the investment.” She watched his mouth thin; satisfied. Time had not made her like him. And it never will. She was bound for a meeting with Sparks Dawntreader, not a rendezvous with a lover; time had made her like him even less than Herne . It was hard to remember that he had ever been the frightened Summer kid shed found cowering in an alley. She had changed outwardly since that day, until sometimes she hardly recognized her own face; but she knew that when she threw off the trappings, she would always find herself. But she had watched the inner thing that had made Sparks Dawntreader himself slowly suffocated by something inhuman… “What are you standing around the hall like a hooker for, anyway, for gods’ sakes? You spy for me, not on me, remember? Sober up and get some sleep; how do you expect to do your job if you stay up all day?” She wished that she were safely asleep in her elegant rooms upstairs, and not starting out for a thankless confrontation at dawn.
“I can’t sleep.” He bent his head, rubbed his face on his arm against the doorjamb. “I can’t even sleep any more; it’s all a stinking—” He broke off, looked up at her abruptly, looking for something he didn’t find. His face hardened over again. “Get off my back!”
“Lay off the drugs, then.” She started on down the hall.
“What was she doing here last night?” His voice caught at her.
Tor stopped again, recognizing the emphasis, his recognition of the Source’s midnight caller who had passed this way, too. Arienrhod, the Snow Queen. The Queen had been muffled in a heavy cloak, like her bodyguard; but Tor was a Winter, and she knew her Queen. It surprised her that Herne would know her, too, or care what she was doing here. “She was here to see the Source. Your guess about what they were doing is as good as mine.”
He laughed unpleasantly. “I can guess what they weren’t doing.” He glanced away down the hall, back in the other direction. “It’s getting close to the final Festival; close to the end of everything, for Arienrhod. Maybe she’s not ready to give it all up to the Summers, after all.” He smiled, an iron smile, full of pointless amusement.
Tor stood still as the idea struck her that the Change was not an inevitability. “She has to. That’s the way it’s always been; otherwise there might be a — a war or something. We’ve always accepted that. When the Summers come…”