To his relief he did not see his sister, or any of the usual Winter crowd. They generally started their nights here; they would have gone on to other clubs by now. He stayed away from the bar, where Tor was holding forth; not able to face her tonight, even though he knew he would not find anything in her eyes but sympathy. Sympathy was more than he deserved, and more than he could bear.
He didn’t feel like playing the games either; their futility and emptiness mirrored his own mood too accurately. He wandered like the damned through the crowds, watching strangers play the tables, playing with each other’s heads, in the disorienting shadowplay of random light. Blaring music and the cloying heaviness of perfumes and drugsmoke saturated his senses, until he could forget for a time that he was an individual human being, filled with grief, and love, and confusion; that he had any need to think at all.
He stopped moving after a span of time he could not judge, finding himself in the rear of the club, where the density of milling flesh was less. Across a momentarily empty space of floor, he saw someone sitting in a booth, alone like he was. He had seen that night-black offworlder face before, that slight, slim figure with hair like shining jet, and indigo eyes. The offworlder was Ondinean, he’d been told; not much older than he was, and always part of a striking triad. Its second member was the shortest man he’d ever seen, and the third was the one with the tattoos and the uncanny skill at the interactives, the young offworlder his sister was trying to add to her collection of trophies.
The Ondinean was leaning back into the corner of the booth with one foot up on the bench; the foot wore an open-toed leather glove instead of a boot. He was juggling berries one-handed, with a look of resignation on his face. Occasionally he let a berry fall—always intentionally, because there was always another that replaced it—and something the size of a cat that wasn’t a cat would scuttle forward on the table to eat it.
Tammis started toward him, dodging random bodies, drawn by curiosity and something stronger to stand before the booth, watching the Ondinean perform his solitary juggling act. At last the Ondinean glanced up, startled to find that he had an audience.
“You’re very good at that,” Tammis said; suddenly, equally selfconscious. “I wish I could do that.”
The Ondinean nodded, with a hesitant grin coming out on his face. “You’re a sibyl. I wish I could do that.” He caught the berries one by one, and dropped them into a bowl.
“You mind if I join you?” Tammis gestured at the room behind him, where there were no empty tables.
The Ondinean shrugged, as if it didn’t matter to him either way. But he watched intently as Tammis slid onto the bench across from him. The look was one that Tammis knew, and it was not indifferent.
“What kind of animal is that?” Tammis asked, as the creature on the tabletop between them rearranged itself to study him. It had eyes like the bright black buttons on a child’s toy.
“A quoll,” the Ondinean said, stroking it gently, still looking at him with uncertainty and speculation. The quoll burbled and chittered, sidling closer to its owner on nearly invisible legs.
“Did you bring it from Ondinee?”
The Ondinean nodded, and reached for another berry; the quoll scuttled forward eagerly. The berry slipped out of his fingers and dropped under the table. He glanced down, did something casually with his gloved foot. A moment later the foot appeared briefly on the bench beside him. He held the berry between his toes, so deftly that the fruit was not even bruised. He took the berry in his hand and fed it to the quoll, watching Tammis again, as if he were trying to see whether his lithe grace had made any impression. “That’s enough,” he murmured, when the quoll looked around for more. He ate one of the remaining berries in the bowl, in slow bites that revealed his even white teeth. He pushed the bowl across the table to Tammis, offering him the I one. Tammis took it, savoring its sweetness. “What’s its name?” Tammis asked, nodding at the quoll. The Ondinean shrugged. “It’s never told me.” Tammis smiled.
“I know you,” the Ondinean said slowly. “I’ve seen you in here a lot. You’re I Queen’s son, aren’t you? Her brother?”
Ariele’s. Of course he would know Ariele…. Tammis felt surprise stir in n, almost pleasure, as he realized that the Ondinean had noticed him. He nodded. PTammis.”
“Ananke,” the Ondinean said, suddenly selfconscious again. He turned his I palm up on the tabletop, staring at it. “You’re a sibyl too, like the Queen. Are i going to become king someday?” he asked softly.
Tammis saw the scar, like a strange eye, staring back at him. “No.”” He shook head, sensing Ananke’s unease, wanting to put it to rest. “My sister will be en, if she wants it. How did you get that—?” He risked the intimacy of pointing : the scar, livid against the paler skin of Ananke’s palm.
“It means I work for somebody called the Source.” His voice turned flat. Tammis blinked, and changed the subject. “Where are your friends tonignt?”
Ananke looked up at him, surprised or confused for a moment. “Kedalion’s over there-” he pointed toward the bar, “making time, I guess. He claims the owner’s ; to take him home later. Reede’s with your sister.” His voice was toneless, and he didn’t meet Tammis’s eyes.
“What about you?” Tammis asked.
Ananke shrugged. “I’m here. I’ve got to wait for Reede.”
“You’ve got to?”
His mouth quirked. “Taking care of Reede is what we do.” He glanced up, ; back his long, shining hair. The gesture was almost feline in its unconscious lity. “You worried about your sister?”
“No,” Tammis said.
Ananke looked at him a moment longer, and then shrugged again. “Then why are you here?”
Tammis met his eyes; eyes so deep a blue that they were almost black. “Because I didn’t feel like being alone tonight,” he said softly.
Ananke’s hand hesitated, in the act of reaching out to stroke the quoll. He continued the motion as if he had not meant to betray himself with that hesitation, as if the meaning of the words was lost on him. But he did not look away. “I guess nobody wants that,” he said. “I guess everyone gets tired of being alone.” He looked down, finally, with an odd spasm working his mouth.
Tammis put out his own hand, stroking the quoll’s back; letting his fingers stray until they made tentative contact with Ananke’s hand. “We could go somewhere … somewhere else.”
Ananke froze, staring at the interface of pale and dark fingertips. And then slowly, almost painfully, he took his hand away. He shook his head. “I can’t,” he murmured. “Got to stay here. Got to look out for Reede.” He shrugged, as if he were trying to shake something free from his back. “It’s what we do.”
Tammis hesitated, seeing depths of fear in Ananke’s eyes; but the eyes clung to his face with sudden, helpless longing.
Ananke shook his head, his midnight hair moving across his shoulders in a way that made Tammis ache with sudden need. He looked down. “I can’t.”
“Another time—?”
“I can’t.” His head came up again, to meet Tammis’s gaze. “I can’t, ever.” A tremor ran through him. His long, slender hands made fists, and he withdrew them below the tabletop.
Tammis stared at him a moment longer; certain all at once that for once he understood exactly what someone else was feeling. He took a deep breath, forcing the heat inside him to subside, until all that was left was the unexpected warmth of a different kind of contact. “That’s what I always tell myself …”he said at last. “But I never mean it. That’s why I’m here tonight, and not at home with my wife. Because I don’t know what I want.”