But he did not wake, and still she did not disappear … still she looked the same as he remembered, after all these years … exactly the same, not a day older. He looked down suddenly, almost expecting to find himself transformed by the same spell, the dark magic of this haunted city—still wearing his old uniform, still hardly more than a boy.
But he wore the stark, unadorned black of a Chief Justice. The fishhook-barbed star of his sibyl trefoil rested in silent affirmation against his chest. He looked up again, wondering if he had gone half-blind, or insane.
He felt Vhanu’s hand on his arm, surreptitiously urging him to make some response. He turned slightly, to Vhanu’s curious glance. “They’re waiting for us; whenever you’re ready, Justice—”
“Yes, of course.” Gundhalinu ran his hands down his clothes in a compulsive gesture, looking toward the waiting figures. He looked back at the guards surrounding him. “You three,” he gestured at the three men closest, “will come with us.”
“But Justice—” Echarthe protested. “Don’t you think—”
“We’ll be safe enough,” Gundhalinu said impatiently. “Let the others guard the hovercraft—the vehicles are in more danger from the curiosity of the locals than we are.” He started forward, walking with even, controlled strides that seemed to belong to someone else. He watched the woman before him growing clearer, every detail about her more real—and yet still she did not age. “She hasn’t changed …”he murmured incredulously, to Vhanu. He had counted the years elapsed, his time, her time, knowing that she should be at least as old as he was now.
“Then she’s using the water of life,” Sandrine said, with sudden, unpleasant obviousness. “It’s the only way she could have stayed that young.”
“That’s impossible,” he murmured. And yet he could see that she was unchanged, untouched by time. She was looking back at him, watching him come—but he saw no flicker of recognition in her strangely colored eyes. She still wore her hair long and loose, falling nearly to her waist; her clothing was made of what looked to be bright-colored offworlder cloth, vintage clothes recut to look more like the Tiamatans’ own shapeless, pragmatic garments. Her gaze took in his face, his uniform, his trefoil, his companions, all with equal fascination, and equal lack of emotion.
He stopped before her, wondering at what point this would cease happening to him; whether if he tried to reach out and touch her she would disappear. Swallowing to ease his throat, he made a brief, formal bow. “Lady,” he said, careful to use the proper form of address for the Summers’ Queen. Hearing his own voice speak Tiamatan was more disorienting than hearing strangers speak it. “I am the new Hegemonic Chief Justice.”
“I’m not the Lady,” she said, and giggled, abruptly and disconcertingly.
He blinked, staring at her with an incomprehension so complete that it made her laugh again.
“I’m Ariele Dawntreader.” She made something that vaguely resembled a bow in return. “The Queen is my mother. She sent me out to greet you.”
“Oh,” he said, inadequately. He gazed at her in astonishment, realizing belatedly that she was not wearing a sibyl trefoil—did not even have the tattoo at her throat. He was aware that he went on staring at her, but he was unable to stop. “I didn’t know… . You look so much like her. I thought—”
“He thought the Queen had been using the water of life,” Sandrine said bluntly.
Gundhalinu frowned and gestured him silent as he saw sudden anger come into the girl’s eyes, and disgust.
“We don’t kill the mers anymore,” she said, looking back at Gundhalinu, and he heard the defiance in it. This time it was one of the people behind her who put a restraining hand on her shoulder. He realized—for the first time in a meaningful way—that there were others waiting with the girl, observing him; left unacknowledged by his disbelief at finding so much of a lifetime had passed in a heartbeat, that the woman he had been expecting to see had a daughter who was as old as she had been when he had left her—maybe older. A daughter. A husband…
He nodded in belated acknowledgment to the others in the welcoming committee—three older Tiamatan women, two of them wearing sibyl signs, one of them quite obviously blind, probably the woman Vhanu had spoken to. The third woman stared back at him as though she seemed to recognize him, although her face did not look at all familiar to him. The dichotomy between the group in front of him and his own group struck him suddenly—one all female, the other all male. He wondered whether Moon had done it intentionally, wondered what reactions the others around him were having to the situation.
“Please come with us,” the girl said, turning her back on him with unconscious arrogance. The other women stood aside for her, more tolerant than obedient, and followed her inside.
He followed too, flanked by his own people, like night following day. He wondered what Moon’s motive had been in sending her daughter to greet him; if she had meant to remind him of all the things that it had reminded him of … time, mortality, all that had passed in their separate lives since the day of his departure. Or whether she had simply meant it as an honor to her daughter, as an answer to a child’s curiosity. Her child…
He glanced from side to side as they moved along the entry hall, seeing the scenes of Summer’s bounty that had replaced the Winter murals of storms and snow. He remembered walking this hall before, more than once; the details came back to him with startling vividness. He realized suddenly that there was another face he had not seen yet, one he had been expecting to see among the greeters at the gate; Jerusha PalaThion, who had saved his career when he had broken Hegemonic law to help Moon—and then given up her own career to stay on Tiamat.
He had walked these halls with her, more times than he had liked, during his years on Tiamat. He had been stunned by her abrupt decision to remain here, even though he had thought he understood her disillusionment well enough, by then. And now, remembering the treatment she had received from the Hegemony she had served bravely and loyally, perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised that she was not eager to see an offworlder’s face at her door again … even his.
He realized that a part of his mind had been listening as he walked for the sound of the Pit—the hungry moaning that had filled the Hall of the Winds, and filled his heart with secret terror. Crossing the bridge that spanned the Pit had been an ordeal that had never gotten easier for him… that probably never did for anyone with a shred of imagination.
But this time there was no sound except the clatter of bootheels and the softer shuffling of leather-soled city shoes on the dark, polished floor, even as the corridor opened out suddenly, revealing the Hall.
Still there was only silence. Gundhalinu almost stopped short, looking up to find the wind-curtains hanging slack. He forced himself to continue on, crossing the bridge in the Tiamatans’ wake, listening to the incredulous mutterings of Vhanu and Echarthe as they followed him across that perfect, railless span above the glowing green-blackness. He wanted to tell them about the wind, how much more terrifying it had been before … that by comparison what they saw now was completely harmless. He didn’t.
He remembered the last time he had stood in this hall, a dumbstruck witness as Moon Dawntreader stopped the winds. He wondered if she had been responsible for stopping the winds for good. How, and what it meant if she had, he could not even imagine. So many questions… He forced himself to keep his gaze fixed on the way ahead; seeing the milk-white of Ariele Dawntreader’s hair, his mind unable to stop seeing someone else in her place. He had imagined this day of reunion so often … there had barely been a day since he left Tiamat when he had not imagined it. But he had never imagined it would be like this. He realized it would have been impossible to picture the reality, to imagine the absurd ordinariness of it all.