“I know.” Fate shook her head, looking down. “But he comes here at his whim, not mine. A. d I don’t know… Wait.” Searching, she found the red bead, picked it up. “There is someone else who sees him more than I do. Her name is Tor Starhiker, and she runs the casino called Persipone’s. She calls herself Persipone; ask for her by that name. Are you here alone?”
“No.” Moon smiled. “I have someone,” realizing that she had been away from him far longer than she had meant to be. “I’d better get back and tell him what I’ve learned.” She stood up, hesitated. “Thank you for helping me. And thank you for being Sparks’s friend when I couldn’t be.” She longed for the time to hear all that had passed between them through that long brief gap of years. “May the Lady smile on you,” shyly.
“May She smile on us all. But especially on you, now.” Fate smiled.
Moon looked a last time at the mask of the Summer Queen before she went out the door.
She reached the rooming house where she had left BZ at last, burst in through the windowed door, breathless with elation and relief.
“Moon!” BZ stood in the narrow hallway, the tail of his ragged shirt half tucked in. His landlady stood beside him, overpowering his frail official presence with her own, midway through a shrug of denial. BZ pushed past her, ran to catch Moon in his arms, lifting her off her feet. “Gods! Where the hell have you been? I thought—”
“I went to the mask maker She laughed her surprise as he set her down again. “Stop, you shouldn’t—”
“The mask maker Alone? Why?” He frowned disapproval, but his face showed her only concern.
“I knew the way. You needed the rest.” She smiled until he smiled with her. “I found her. And BZ, you won’t believe this—” She broke off, remembering the landlady still listening intently behind his back. BZ glanced over his shoulder, cleared his throat.
“Ah” right, all right, Inspector.” The woman raised her hands in good-natured surrender. “I can take a hint.” She eased past them toward her own apartment door. “You had him worried.” She winked unsubtly. “Keep him worried and he won’t go off world without you, child!” She opened her door and went in; it closed behind her.
BZ glanced ceiling ward away from Moon’s embarrassment and his own. He moved them further down the hall. “Now tell me. You found her?”
“Yes! And BZ — when KR Aspundh went into Transfer, she was the one who told me to come back.”
It took a moment to register. “She’s a sibyl? Here?”
Moon nodded, missing the undertones of his incredulity. “The only one, for the whole galaxy—”
“What did you tell her?” He was suddenly angry.
This time she understood; old resentment and fresh disappointment darkened her eyes. She stepped back, away from him. “I told her I wanted to find Sparks.” And that’s all you have the right to know.
“I didn’t mean that.” He muffled a cough, muzzling his bad temper. “I — I was afraid you’d left me,” ashamed and awkward, “without even saying goodbye.”
Knowing that he knew it wasn’t the whole truth, she accepted it; because she knew that he wished it were. “BZ, how could I ever… not to you. Not to you.” She took his hands in hers, in promise, and kissed him with gentle grief. He let her go reluctantly, suddenly obsessed with the disorder of his shut. “So what did you find out? Has she seen him?”
“Fate doesn’t know how to reach him.” Moon saw his head come up. “But she told me about somebody who might: Her name is — ; Persipone; she runs a casino.”
She thought he was disappointed. But he nodded. “Right. I know the place. Uptown, one of the biggest. We’ll try it next.” He glanced toward the spidery stairway that helixed to the upper floors, and to the room that had been theirs for a night. “Just let me… get my coat.”
39
“Hi there… hello, sexy… welcome to hell, big spender…”
Tor leaned languidly against a pillar, greeting the faceless mob that poured through the wall of tinkling mirrors with soulless monotony. She bit down on a yawn, her mouth crinkling with the effort, trying to keep her makeup intact. They had just reopened after being closed for a few hours of rest and recovery, and they would not be closed again until the night of masks was over and the day of Change had come. She had been gulping uppers until they barely gave her a jolt, and her flower-lidded eyes were ready to sink into her skull. Like somebody about to begin a life of unwilling asceticism, the Festival crowd was insatiable in all its appetites, and the Source wanted them squeezed to the last drop.
And whatever the Source wanted, she meant to give him. He had touched the bureaucratic mountain of permission forms with his omnipotent, distorted finger, and it had melted into an unobstructed plain: He had given his blessing for her marriage to Oyarzabal, her escape from this world before the off worlders slammed the lid on Winter’s coffin and nailed it down tight. In just a few more interminable hours, this casino would close forever — well, forever as far as she was concerned. It struck her that she was going to miss this place, and that surprised her. But this casino had been filled with people who lived, people who weren’t afraid to take chances, people from a collection of worlds so diverse she could barely begin to fathom them; worlds she wanted to get her hands on, and would, thanks to Oyarzabal and the Source.
She experienced a moment of fleeting doubt at the thought that she would actually be Oyarzabal’s wife. The off worlders legal marriage seemed as heavy and ugly as a length of chain. To be chained to Oyarzabal forever… Oyarzabal, who was in lust with Per sip one not Tor Starhiker. Would she have to wear this damned wig, this painted, phony shell, forever, until it became the reality? Oh, the hell with it. If she got sick of Oyarzabal she could lose him fast enough: Chains were made to be broken. “…You look like a real winner… hello there—” She stopped in mid-drone, her mouth hanging. “Your Majesty?”
The white-braided girl in a nomad’s tunic looked at her in strange confusion, and the look was enough to convince her that she was wrong. But the girl stayed put in front of her, oblivious to the crowd’s jostling as it eddied past. “Are you Persipone?”
She smiled garishly. “Only a cheap imitation, kid. But by the gods, you’re a high-priced copy of the Queen.”
“I… uh—” The girl didn’t seem very flattered at the comparison. “Fate sent me.”
Tor laughed nervously. “Gods, I hope not… Oh! You mean i Fate Ravenglass?”
The girl nodded. “My name is Moon Dawntreader. She said you ; know my cousin Sparks.”
“Sparks! Yeah, I certainly do.” She felt an irrational relief rush I her, pushed away from the pillar. Hell and devils, I’m way too high tonight. “Come on, let’s get out of the stampede.” She realized for the first time that the girl wasn’t alone; a scarecrow Kharemoughi stood behind her like a shadow, wearing a Blue’s jacket with inspector’s insignia. Her heart leaped into her throat, irrationally again, before she saw that the rest of him was strictly nonregulation, saw the stains on his jacket front. The stains looked like dried blood. The possibility did not reassure her. Don’t ask; just don’t ask. She pointed, led them on through the casino. Moon Dawntreader gawked like a rube at the game effects drifting through her in the air, at the astounding extremes of clothing and the extremes of behavior that went with them; at the blaring, mind-battering totality of a gambling hell being experienced by a virgin soul. She heard the girl’s half-shout thinned by the throbbing music: “Look at us!” They were passing through the spillover of a hologrammic Black Gate, engulfed in flaming flotsam. “I never saw anything like this on Kharemough, not even in the Thieves’ Market!”