“Thank you—” she said, and pressed her hand to her mouth, giggling as though it reminded her of another joke. “Did thou enjoy it, BZ—?”
He nodded, feeling mildly out-of-focus. He had hardly been aware of eating at all, but his bowl was almost empty. “Excellent,” he murmured. “What is it?” He ate another mouthful.
“Grisha,” she said, beaming. “My mother’s recipe.”
“Grisha—?” He swallowed convulsively, and began to cough. “You mean we’re eating rat meat?”
“BZ! How dare thou suggest it.” She looked at him in disbelief. “We are not eating rat meat. Don’t be such a bloody snob.” But she began to giggle again, helplessly. “Thou’ve never eaten grisha.…”
“My father used to make it all the time,” Aspundh said. “I loved it.”
Gundhalinu stared at him. “But grisha is … is—” Remembering a beat too late that KR Aspundh’s father had been a Nontechnician.
“So ‘common’…?” Pandhara reached across the wide table to pat his hand, reaching to his rescue. “Of course it is. ‘Common’ only means that everyone eats it.”
He looked back at his dish, shaking his head. “My nurse… told me when I was a boy that Unclassifieds ate grisha made out of rat meat and spoiled vegetables.”
“You make do with what you have,” she said gently
He glanced up, down again, remembering Tiamat, remembering World’s End, remembering the stranger things he had eaten, and would soon eat again. … He ate another mouthful, and another, under their watchful gazes, and smiled, slowly. “We grow or we die, don’t we? It really is very good, you know.”
After dinner they settled into the deep cushions of the sunken meditation room. A servo left them a drifting tray of sweets. Pandhara lit a spicestick, inhaled and exhaled; the incense-heavy smoke curled languorously into the air over her head. He had never seen her smoke one before today. So many things that he did not know about her; that he would never know, now….
“Those are very unhealthy, you know,” Aspundh chided her mildly.
She looked at BZ; he saw something that was more than a simple question and less than grief in her gaze. “Tonight I feel reckless, KR.”
Aspundh glanced from face to face, and said no more about it. Instead he turned to Gundhalinu. “So the time has finally come. The way is open to Tiamat once again. And you are going back, as Chief Justice. It has all worked out just as you said it would, years ago.”
Gundhalinu almost nodded; but his neck resisted the lying motion. “No,” he said softly. “Not exactly as I planned, KR.”
Aspundh said nothing, waited.
The tray of sweets drifted up to Gundhalinu’s side; he picked up a small, ornate cake. He held the cake in his open palm, studying it; put it back and pushed the tray away. “You’ll probably think I’m mad, but … I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.” He put his hand over his eyes, unable to go on looking at them for a moment. “Suddenly I’m full of doubts—about why I’m really going, what I can possibly achieve there … about whether there’s even any point to all of this. I’ve been living with this obsession for years; and now, suddenly, I find myself wondering why. Was it only because for so long I had nothing else to hold on to? Since I’ve come back to Kharemough….” He shook his head, looking up at them again. “Gods help me …” he whispered, “I don’t want to leave.”
Aspundh frowned; but there was sympathy, not censure in the older man’s eyes. He glanced at Pandhara. “How much of this have you discussed with PHN?”
“Enough,” he said, his own eyes meeting hers.
“And how do you feel about what he has told you, PHN?”
Pandhara moved restlessly among the cushions. “I want him to be happy. …” She jerked her head, almost angrily. “I want him to stay—” She looked at BZ again, and the look made him ache. “Thou have been such a solitary “Wn, BZ. … All these years, thou’ve worked on this dream, and not until now have I understood even the smallest part of why … only that thou were not at peace, and could not be, I thought, until thou saw it through.”
Gundhalinu shut his eyes, pressing his face with his hands again. “Damn it all! After I survived World’s End, I knew I could face anything that came between me and what I had to do—” His hands dropped away, lay motionless in his lap. “Anything but this.” Anything but happiness.
“Then we must let Moon know that the fleet will be arriving within months … but you will not be coming with it,” Aspundh said.
Gundhalinu’s head rose; he felt his face flush. “Moon told me,” he murmured, “after she came back to Tiamat … that even she could have been happy staying on Kharemough. But she felt something, that forced her to go back. The sibyl mind spoke to her somehow, made her know what she had to do. I’ve never felt anything like that. If I could just be half as certain as she was that I was doing the right thing—”
“Perhaps you haven’t heard ‘voices’ because you haven’t required them. Your own desire, your own belief in what was right, have carried you this far on youi own,” Aspundh said. “Perhaps she was never as certain as you were—or even as you believe she was. Have you seen or heard anything, in your dealings with the Police High Command or the Central Coordinating Committee, to make you believe your opinions of them are unjustified?”
Gundhalinu’s eyes darkened. “No.”
“And do you still feel at all responsible for what will happen to Tiamat … ?’
“Yes.” He looked down. “Yes, damn it! You know I do.”
“And what about Moon Dawntreader?”
BZ looked toward Pandhara, helplessly, knowing that she could read in his eyes what his own pain and confusion would not let him say.
“Have you considered,” Aspundh asked, almost reluctantly, “what may happen to the Summer Queen when the Hegemony returns to Tiamat?”
Gundhalinu felt a cold fist close around his heart. “Gods … No, they wouldn’t order her sacrificed! It isn’t the time… Summer has scarcely begun there. It would be a total violation of the Change rituals.”
“This return of the Hegemony is already a total violation of the pattern, on Tiamat. I’m not saying it would happen. I don’t know that. But what if it did—?”
Gundhalinu sagged back into the elusive support of the cool, satin-surfaced cushions. Moon Dawntreader was not the ruler that the Hegemony would be expecting to find when it got to Tiamat. If she defied them … most of the old Winter power structure was still alive, and would be more than willing to sacrifice Summer to the sea. He looked toward Pandhara again, his throat aching with the sight of her; realizing he had known all along that he could not stay, could never be free of his memories, or the truth.
“BZ,” she said, and her own voice was stronger now, more certain. “When thou told me all the things I did not know about thy past, all that thou had endured and overcome … and how because of Tiamat thou had become all the things thou are … I felt as though the spirit of this place, and thy ancestors, had touched my soul through thee. That whatever it was thou felt thou must do, it was right, and thou would achieve it. I saw it in thy eyes then, even when thou embraced me. I see it now … thou are only a ghost. Thou are not truly here, and will never be, while all the answers to what thou are still wait for thee on Tiamat. Go back to
Moon… and the gods go with thee.” She reached out, only to touch his fingers with her own.
He closed his hand over hers; her hand felt more substantial, more real, than his own flesh. He looked back at Aspundh almost reluctantly. Moon. He must do it now, one final Transfer, one final message, to let her know….