Offworlder storekeepers sold the last of their stock for near nothing, or gave it away, piled clothes and food and unrecognizable exotica in their doorways, TAKE IT AWAY. Winters wrapped in yards of family totem-creatures paraded along the street-center, alight with hologrammic cold fire. Moon yelped as a firecracker I burst beside her, wrote her name in the air with an incandescent I I sparkler she found unexpectedly in her hand. Fistfights and worse fights broke out along the alleys as the electric tensions that lay be I neath this Festival’s melting valences exploded in sudden, petty violence. Moon had to struggle to keep her own hold on Gundhalinu as ‘ a fight broke out beside them and his instincts started him toward it. But a regulation Blue in a shining helmet had claimed it for his own, I and Gundhalinu changed direction again with wrenching urgency. v As they went on up the Street, Moon felt the crowd spirit infect f her with giddy optimism, pummeling her with the absolute awareness that she was here at last — this was the city, this was Carbuncle, and it was a place of unimaginable delight. She had come in time, she had come in the time of Change, when probabilities broke down and anything became possible. She had come to find Sparks, to change the Change, and she would.
I But more and more she found herself leading Gundhalhiu, pulling him against the current of humanity, his own senses and endurance failing him as hers heightened. She looked back at his sweating face, falling from the heights as she heard him cough and remembered that he had thrown away rest and treatment to help her. But he shook his head as she slowed, pushed her on again, “Almost there.”
They reached the Citron Alley at last. Moon found a store that was still open, asked the shop man eagerly for Fate Ravenglass. He looked at her face with peculiar surprise; she drew the neck of her tunic together over her tattoo. “Fate’s right next door, little lady-but you won’t find her in. She’s seeing to her masks, all around the city. Come back tomorrow, maybe you’ll have better luck.”
She has to be in! How can she be gone—? Moon nodded, speechless with disappointment.
Gundhalinu leaned against the peeling building wall. “Do you-have anything for a cough?”
The shop man shrugged. “Not much now. An amulet for good health.”
Gundhalinu gave a grunt of disgust and pushed away from the wall. “Come on, let’s ask around the hells.”
“No.” Moon shook her head, caught his arm, stopping him. “We’ll — we’ll find somewhere to sleep first. And come back here tomorrow.”
He hesitated. “You’re sure?”
She nodded, lying, but knowing that she would be utterly lost here in the city, if she lost him now.
They found refuge at last with his former landlady: a pillowed, mothering woman who took pity on him, once she believed that he was more than a ghost. She put them in the rooms that belonged to her grown son. “I know you won’t steal anything, Inspector Gundhalinu!”
Gundhalinu grimaced wryly as the door clicked shut, granting them privacy at last. “She doesn’t seem to care whether I brought you here for immoral purposes.”
Moon bent her head. “What does that mean?” blankly.
His smile grew wryer. “Nothing, I suppose, in this town. Gods, I want to see hot, running water again! I want to feel clean again.” He turned away and went into the bathroom; after a moment she heard water running.
Moon ate her share of the fisherman’s-pie they had panhandled on the street, sitting by the window with her back to the room’s self conscious schizophrenia — a room like all of Winter, caught between the Sea and the stars. The rooms were on the second floor, and she looked down on the Festival from above, watching humanity course like blood through the arteries of the city. So many… there were so many.
Cut off from the life support of its artificial vitality, she felt her endurance break down again, lost her confidence that she would ever find that one face in the thousands. The sibyl machinery had brought her to Carbuncle; but what did it expect of her now? Aspundh had not been able to tell her anything about the way in which it acted; only that it was the most unpredictable and least understood of the things a sibyl might experience. She had believed that it guided her; but now that she had come to the city there was no blinding revelation to help her: Had it abandoned her, forgotten her, left her to count grains of sand on the endless shore? How would she find Sparks without its help?
And what if she did find him? What had he become — a coldblooded killer, doing the dirty work of Winter’s Queen, even sharing her bed? What would she say to him if she found him; what could he say to her? He had rejected her twice already, on Neith, and on that hideous shore… how often did he have to tell her that she was no longer his love? Had she really gone through so much, just to hear him say it to her face? Her hand rose to her cheek. Why can’t I let go? Why can’t I admit it?
The curtain at the bathroom doorway pushed back and Gundhalinu came out, clean and freshly shaven, but modestly redressed in the same filthy clothes. He stretched out on the bed-sofa with a sigh, as though it had taken the last bit of his strength. Moon shut herself into the tiny washroom in turn, to hide from him the doubts that she could not speak and could not disguise. She showered; the steaming water soothed her crippling tension, but it could not wash her guilt away.
She came out into the larger room again, wearing only her tunic, drying her hair and her eyes; expecting to find Gundhalinu asleep. But he stood at the window as she had stood.
She joined him. They stood side by side, not touching, in silent communion before the diamond panes, watching the street below, listening as the Festival rattled against the glass.
“Why did I come here? Why did it make me come, when there wasn’t any reason?”
Gundhalinu glanced at her, frowning in surprise.
“What am I going to do, even if I find him? I’ve already lost him. He doesn’t want me any more. He has a Queen—” she pressed her hand against her mouth, “and he’s willing to die for her.”
“Maybe he only wants Arienrhod because he doesn’t have you.” Again Gundhalinu searched her face, looking for something she didn’t understand.
“How can you say that? She’s a Queen.”
“But she’ll never be you.” Hesitantly he touched her fingers. “And maybe that’s why he doesn’t want to go on living.”
She caught his hand in hers, pressed it to her cheek, kissed it. “Thou make st me — valued feel, when I wind-drift am… when I lost have been, for so long.” She felt her face burn.
He freed his hand. “Don’t speak Sandhi! I never want to hear it again.” He pulled clumsily at the sleeve of his rough shirt. “I’m not fit to hear it. Wind-drift… that’s what I am, not what you are. Spume on the sea, dust in the wind; dirt under the feet of my peo pie-”
“Stop it!” She stopped his words, aching with his pain. “Stop it, stop it! I won’t let you believe that! It’s a lie. You’re the finest, gentlest, kindest man I ever knew. I won’t let you… believe…” as he turned to her, his dark eyes drawing her, and his hands pressing her back, and his need…
He bent his head slowly, almost in disbelief, as her mouth rose to his kiss. Moon shut her eyes, kissing him again with tremulous hunger, feeling his astonished hands begin to caress her as she answered his unspoken question at last.
“How did I come to this place?” he murmured. “Is it real? How can you—”
“I don’t know. I don’t know, don’t ask me.” Because there is no answer. Because I have no right to love you, I never meant to… and I do. “BZ… this may be all there is, this could end tomorrow.” Because you give me the strength to go on searching.