But you never really unlearned a skill, even the skill of smiling graciously when you didn’t feel like it, and speaking empty pleasantries to empty-headed guests. She made her way among the tables, saying hello, making certain that the servers were doing their jobs.
She stopped suddenly, as she noticed Sparks Dawntreader sitting at a table in the far corner of the room, by the diamond-paned windows that faced on the alley. It was the third night she had seen him here in the past week. He had been here only one time before this, under duress, she suspected, at the party they had thrown when they opened the place.
He sat at the same corner table each time, isolating himself as much as possible from the rest of the crowd eating here, keeping company with a book or a tape reader. And yet he watched the others, the Winters who had once been his constant companions, while trying to pretend he wasn’t watching them; just as she watched him while pretending not to.
She wondered why he was here, since it wasn’t out of fondness or loyalty. She wondered why he wasn’t home with his family … wondered if he and the Queen weren’t getting along. It wouldn’t surprise her—it surprised her that they’d gotten along at all over the years, after all that had happened between them.
Moon had believed she loved him more than life itself when she’d come to the city hunting him. She had dragged everyone she met, including one Tor Starhiker, into her quest to save him and her confrontation with Arienrhod. There had been something about her that defied reason—maybe the intensity of her passion, or maybe just her uncanny resemblance to the Snow Queen—that had compelled Tor to defy her own better judgment and help a naïve girl fresh from the outback, full of impossible, romantic dreams.
Just because Moon had actually made those dreams come true, it didn’t mean that in the long run she wouldn’t come to realize that getting your heart’s desire was sometimes more of a curse than a blessing. Tor wondered if Sparks Dawntreader had come to the same conclusion; whether he was sitting there now moodily watching what went on across the room because he felt guilty, or because he missed the old days… whether once you began living on the dark side, you got a taste for it that would never go away. She sighed, turning away as a crowd of half a dozen new customers entered the restaurant.
She saw Kirard Set Wayaways at the front of the party, and his wife Tirady Graymount. They ate here almost every night—old friends of Shotwyn’s, who liked pretentious, nostalgic food.
As she started forward to greet them and show them to a table she saw them notice Sparks Dawntreader; watching their faces, she read their amusement and interest. They murmured inaudibly, nudging each other. Tirady and another woman split off from the group—at Kirard Set’s urging, Tor noticed—and went to Dawn treader’s table.
He looked up from his reading; startled but not surprised, Tor was sure. She greeted the rest of Kirard Set’s colorfully dressed party, still watching from the corner of her eye as she led them to their seats. She saw the women flank Sparks, putting their hands on him familiarly, kissing him in a more-than-polite greeting as they gestured toward their own table. Sparks shook his head, at first noncommittal, and then frowning. He stood up abruptly, shaking them off, and left the restaurant.
Kirard Set tsked audibly. He looked up at Tor looking back at him. “I guess poor Sparks didn’t like what was on the menu,” he murmured, with a smile she didn’t know how to read. “Please give my compliments to the chef.”
“I’ll lell him you’re here,” Tor said, keeping her own expression neutral. She had never liked Kirard Set much, particularly because she sensed that he didn’t like her. When he watched her, listened to her, she knew he never forgot for a moment that even if he was no longer a noble at the Queen’s court, he was still a rich, highly educated landowner, and she was and would always be an ignorant deckhand, no matter how many restaurants she owned, or expensive jumpsuits she wore. She turned away, trying not to listen to the tittering laughter behind her, or to wonder whether any of it was at her expense.
Shotwyn came out of the kitchen at her call, looking like a reprieved prisoner, his hands red and his face despairing. He might be an elitist, but at least he wasn’t a snob. She smiled at him almost fondly.
She visited the tables of other new arrivals, exchanging gossip about the offworlders’ pending return with Sewa Stormprince, her old boss from the docks. Stormprince had built herself a whole new career too; like a lot of other Winters, and even Summers, who hadn’t started out with land or money, but had sufficient guts and brains to make up for it. And like all of them, she found the sudden change in their future to be a subject of obsessive interest.
Sewa Stormprince came here to eat not because of the food so much as the old acquaintance, and Tor appreciated the distinction. But she forced herself to end their conversation and head back toward the table where Shotwyn was still standing with Wayaways and his friends. If he didn’t get back into the kitchen soon, they weren’t going to have enough food prepared to feed themselves dinner, let alone several dozen other people who were all ready to spend a ridiculous number of imitation offworlder-style credit markers on it.
“Well, you know, I don’t have anything against Worm’s parents, and neither does he, but I just wish they’d hurry up and die, so that we can add the coastal rights to our own plantation before the offworlders want to start hunting mers again—”
Tor managed somehow not to wince as she heard Kima Tartree’s high-pitched, strident voice announcing to the entire room something that anyone with half a brain would never even whisper in someone else’s ear. She saw the others around the table snigger in a combination of empathy and barely concealed disdain.
“Well, that’s calling it as you see it,” Shotwyn drawled, as she came up beside him and put a hand on his arm in an unobtrusive signal.
“I’m sure we’ve all felt equally frustrated by something that stood in our way, at some point,” Kirard Set said, dryly but with a peculiar vehemence. “In fact, my kinsman Borah Clearwater has been refusing to sell his plantation to me for years, although I’ve quadrupled the price of my offer and done everything but clean out his cesspool to try to change his mind.”
“Then why not forget about it?” Tor said.
He looked at her, looked away again. “I begin to think he has no mind to make up,” he said, with a heavy sarcasm that was not lost on her. “And he’s living out there with the Queen’s grandmother, so I get no help from her. It wouldn’t break my heart if the Summers’ beloved Sea Mother decided to take both of them to her watery bosom.…” His mouth curled. “In fact, I make a little offering to Her every night. If She doesn’t hurry up and do something for me, I may have to turn my credit to some more responsive god, like Arienrhod did.”
The laughter that answered him made Tor’s skin crawl. Kirard Set glanced up at her again, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t you agree?” She jerked more urgently on Shotwyn’s arm, until this time he responded, following her away, back toward the anonymity that waited beyond the double doors.
TIAMAT: Ngenet Plantation
Anele Dawntreader burst through the surface of the bay into the open air, inhaling deeply, with a gasp of relief. Her dripping hair clung to her face like seaweed. She pushed it back, blinking her eyes clear until she could locate the plantation house high on the hill, above the distant docks. Treading water, she made no move to start swimming toward shore. Her lungs ached, her body was numb with cold, but all she could feel that mattered was the transcendent joy of her stolen existence in the sea.