“You bitch,” he muttered. But he smiled.
“And don’t you just love it?” She kissed him, then, letting him into her mouth, closing her eyes so that she could imagine the offworlder kissing her instead.
They wandered on through the crowd in a group, finding strength in numbers among the growing press of offworlders; playing at games, watching and learning, groping after a sophistication that suddenly made their own behavior seem like childish, provincial pretense. At last, when Tor refused to let them have anything beyond three drinks, they drifted out of the club and on down the Street in search of simpler, more familiar pleasures.
As they passed the entrance to Olivine Alley, Ariele stopped, peering down its throat. For most of her life its strangely baroque hive of buildings had been the home to the Sibyl College her mother had founded. But now it was called “Blue Alley” again; it had become what it had been before—the official home of the offworlders: their government offices, their ground, not to be casually wandered into, as she had done all her life since she was a small child. There were still people moving along it, even though the hour was getting late; most of them wore the uniform of the offworlder Police. This ground had been hers to walk on, to play on, by right. But now if she entered it she knew she would be stopped, questioned, driven off— politely, because she was the Queen’s daughter, but peremptorily, as if she were a nuisance or a threat.
“Come on, Ari,” Brein said, impatiently, tugging at her arm when she still did not move.
“Wait.” She shrugged off the hold, watching the three figures coming toward the alley’s entrance. They were deep in conversation; not a pleasant one, from the look on their faces. The one in the middle was BZ Gundhalinu, the Chief Justice; on his right was the Commander of Police. At his left was Jerusha PalaThion, wearing the same dusty-blue uniform, with the insignia of a Chief Inspector.
She still had not gotten used to the sight of it, or to the sight of Jerusha among those strangers with their alien faces … making her see with painful clarity the alienness of Jerusha’s own face, a thing she had never recognized through all the years before. The three of them reached the corner and started downhill. Only Vhanu, the Police Commander, glanced her way; he frowned and looked ahead again.
“Hello, Aunt Jerusha,” Ariele called out, hearing the mocking echo of her voice come back at her from the building walls.
Jerusha stopped; she turned back, the others turning with her. She searched the faces of the cluster of gaudily dressed Tiamatan youths in wary surprise. Ariele moved forward slightly, waiting through the endless moment until Jerusha picked her out of the crowd.
“Ariele—?” Jerusha came toward them, her expression half curious and half incredulous. Ariele leaned close to Elco Teel, murmuring instructions in his ear. He nodded, and grinned.
“Ariele,” Jerusha said again; Ariele read dismay in the older woman’s stare. “What have you done to your hair?”
The Chief Justice followed Jerusha toward them, as Ariele had hoped he would; only the Police Commander remained where he was. She saw Gundhalinu’s belated, barely concealed start as he recognized her. She had not seen him close up in months. She heard Elco murmur something behind her, and snickers of laughter: He was the one. The Blue who had slept with her mother, before she was born. The one who had made the father she loved suddenly look at her as if she were a stranger, and turn away from her without a word. The one who had come back to Tiamat to tear her family apart….
She thought she caught, again, the look she had seen in Gundhalinu’s eyes before—the strange mix of uncertainty and longing. It was not sexual, but an emotion that ran equally deep and strong… the kind of look a man might give to his long-lost child. The thought made something twist in her stomach. “Hello, Ariele,” he said, in Tiamatan; his voice was soft and faintly accented.
She looked away from him deliberately. “I wanted it to look offworld—” She touched her hair, answering Jerusha’s question instead; ignore Gundhalinu entirely now. “We love everything offworld.” She put her hands on her hips, flaunting her glittering clothes, the flamboyant circle of friends all around her.
“Except the offwortders,” Elco Teel said, with perfect venom, just as she had told him to.
“Yes,” she murmured, leaning her head languorously against his shoulder, smiling with satisfaction. “Too bad they can’t just all stay home where they belong.” She let her gaze meet Gundhalinu’s again, raking him with spite.
He looked down. “Good night, Jerusha,” he murmured, to his Chief Inspector. He glanced back at Ariele, and she thought he was going to say something more to her. But he only gazed at her a moment longer, as if he were taking her picture with his mind. And then he turned away, back to the other Kharemoughi, who was still pointedly keeping his distance, his dark face closed and suspicious. They went on down the Street.
Jerusha watched them go, before she looked back at the small cluster of Tiamatans. Ariele read disapproval and annoyance in her glance. Jerusha opened her mouth—changed her mind, as Gundhalinu had, before the words could form. Instead, she said, “You look like a hooker.”
“What’s a hooker?” Ariele said.
“A whore,” Jerusha said flatly. “You look like a whore in that outfit.”
Ariele frowned, feeling her face redden. She had never heard the term before the offworlders had come back. “So do you,” she said sullenly. She jerked her head, the abrupt motion signaling her friends to follow her. She felt their hands stroking her, their voices in her ear congratulating her, giggling and muttering like the empty cries of sea birds as she started on down the Street, leaving behind the woman who had once been her mother’s loyal defender—and perhaps her own.
Gundhalinu sighed heavily, rubbing his face, as Vhanu fell into step beside him and they continued on their way. Vhanu glanced at his expression, and away at the crowd of Tiamatan youths who were already passing them by, accompanied by rude remarks and catcalls. Vhanu made an audible noise of disgust. “Delinquents,” he murmured, in Sandhi.
Gundhalinu did not respond, watching the crowd of teenagers, his eyes following a white-blond crest of hair bobbing in their midst; watching to see whether Ariele Dawntreader looked back at him. “Sorry, NR—what was that?” His mind snapped back into focus as he realized that Vhanu was still speaking.
“I said that—” Vhanu pointed at the Tiamatan youths disappearing into the crowd ahead of them, “is exactly the kind of thing I mean. They laughed at us! That pack of miserable—”
“In Tiamatan; please, NR—” Gundhalinu said abruptly, in Tiamatan. “Speak Tiamatan, not Sandhi. We all need the practice.”
Vhanu glanced at him, and controlled his sudden, obvious irritation. “Very well. Those miserable little—” He broke off, at a loss for a satisfactory term in a foreign tongue. “They put on our clothes and cut off then-hair, but that doesn’t make them our equals. They still behave like… like… dashtanu.” He fell back into Sandhi in exasperation. Barbarians. “Damn it, PalaThion keeps putting all of us through these indoctrination sessions along with the new recruits— By all the gods, even you and I have been fed the tapes half a dozen times ourselves. I can recite the information word for word—”
“It makes a good impression when the force sees us studying the material as well,” Gundhalinu said, keeping his voice neutral; wondering to himself a little wearily when the information would actually begin to have any effect on Vhanu’s attitude.