Tammis glanced down, staring at his trefoil, or seeming to. He looked up again, finally “Can I go now, Justice Gundhalinu?”
Gundhalinu nodded, surprised and vaguely disappointed by the suddenness of the question. “Yes,” he said.
Tammis got up from his seat slowly, wincing again, and hesitated. “Maybe … maybe I will take something, for—” he gestured at his bruised body, “before I go. If you don’t mind.”
Gundhalinu pointed. “Through there. Help yourself to anything you need.”
Tammis started away across the room, stopped in the doorway, looking back. But he said nothing.
Gundhalinu listened to him rummaging through the medicinals in the bathroom, listened to him reenter the hall and head directly for the door. At the last possible moment, before the door closed, he heard the words, “Thank you.”
TIAMAT: Carbuncle
Moon Dawntreader stood alone in the center of a hundred glittering revelers in the Great Hall of the palace. Around her they ate and drank, laughed and gossiped and danced and sang—Winters and Summers and offworlders, all but indistinguishable from one another for once, behind the disguises of their Festival masks and exotic clothes.
She wore a mask made for her by Fate Ravenglass—a recreation of the mask that had crowned her Summer Queen, made of dappled green velvet and shimmering rainbow gossamer, echoing the flowers of the hills, birdwings, the blues of sky and mirroring sea, the gold of the sun. She hid behind it, gazing out through its eyeholes at the people around her like someone peering through at another world; catching only surreal glimpses of color and motion, hearing every sound as if it had reached her from a distance.
She moved to her body’s own slow, instinctive music, drifting with the tide of the crowd. This Mask Night Ball was the climax to an interminable cycle of parties and banquets and functions that she had been expected to participate in as Queen during the Assembly’s brief, endless visit.
She had watched the Prime Minister, and everyone around him, drink the water of life in her presence, like addicts, on the night of their arrival; and then she had left the starport and gone back to the city, making her anger plain by her absence. But she could not afford to ignore every function that had been planned, because to do so would have meant that she lost face, and endangered her position with the offworlders. So she had attended them all, or her body had, although her thoughts were far away, among the mers, trapped inside the greater vision that she was never allowed to lose sight of now.
And she was attending this final ball without pleasure, without illusion because it was required. There was hardly anyone here she recognized, and she knew that even if they wore no masks there would be hardly any faces she wanted to see. It was growing late, and already the crowd was thinning as people paired off to spend the rest of the night together—this night, when traditionally everyone was allowed, and even encouraged, to cast aside their inhibitions and put off their regrets until tomorrow, when at dawn they would symbolically cast the past into the sea.
It was considered bad luck to spend this night alone, without a lover. On the last Mask Night, she had been with Sparks, reunited after so long, and their future had seemed infinite in its promise of joy. But Sparks was not even in the room tonight; he had made excuses, saying he wanted to spend what little time was left with his father, before the Assembly departed. She supposed that much was true. But she was sure he would not return before morning, no matter how he actually spent his night.
Tammis was not here either, not even making a pretense with Merovy; they were living apart, she had heard, but neither of them had come to her to tell her about it. And Ariele … only the Lady knew what she was doing tonight, or who she was doing it with. There was gossip about an offworlder. Tor had seen them together, she was just a little worried, she’d said…. Ariele had not been near the palace in weeks; it had surprised Moon that she bothered to appear at the starport banquet—or that she left it with the rest of her family, when the water of life appeared. She would never understand her own daughter, never understand….
The Prime Minister and several other partiers, who might or might not be any of his own people behind the mass-produced sameness of their masks, came to bid her good night. She was resolutely gracious, with relief giving her responses a sincerity that they did not deserve. She recognized the voice of Vhanu, the Police Commissioner; there were several Blues, uniformed and unmasked, with the dignitaries for security. She wondered where Jerusha was tonight. On duty for the Hegemony, she supposed; missing her old friend suddenly, painfully. No one… She lifted a hand to her face; encountered the startling textures of her mask, instead of her own flesh. She let her hand drop again.
She had searched the crowd all evening for the black uniform of the Chief Justice, the silver flash of a trefoil among the dazzling abundance of jewelry and medals. But she had not found him. BZ had appeared at every other function in the days between the disastrous arrival banquet and this masked ball; sitting beside her when it was required, but seeming to take no more pleasure in anything than she did. She had seen in his eyes both apology and resignation, and they had spoken to each other only when it was necessary. Tonight he must have left early—if he had even come at all, since with masks to hide behind anything was possible… . She started on, moving slowly toward the stairway at the far end of the room. The Prime Minister had gone, there was no one here anymore that she was required to wait for.
A sudden flash of reflected light caught her eye. Turning, she glimpsed a mask through the blur of colors that made her stop in sudden fascination. In the crowd of bright repetition, someone was wearing a mask as distinctive as her own. Something indefinable about it told her that, like her own, it had been made by Fate Ravenglass. But she knew all the masks that Fate had made, only a dozen or so—by hand, in the old way, after she had been given back her sight. Fate had given them to Moon and her family, to Tor, to a few other people she considered her special friends. There were other surviving maskmakers, and some of them had gone back into business, selling handmade masks to rich Tiamatans and offworlders. But Fate, who had been counted the best of them all, had said she would not be bothered this time with masks that were not gifts of friendship.
Moon wondered who it was who had received this gift, only able to tell that it was a man, from this distance. The shine of the mask caught her eye again as its wearer turned toward her, as if he felt her staring at him. The mask’s face was a mirror, reflecting the light and color and motion all around him, until it became a star in the heart of the night-blackness that framed it. She stood where she was, motionless, as he began to move toward her through the crowd. She watched him come, hypnotized by her own reflection gradually becoming visible in the mirror of his face, growing clearer, more distinct, as he approached her. And suddenly she knew him, by his motion, in the same way she had recognized the workmanship of his mask.
“BZ,” she said, softly and with certainty, although he was not in uniform. She lifted her hand to him.
“Moon.” His voice; his eyes, looking back at her from the heart of her own bizarre, masked reflection. He took her hand in his, touching it palm to palm in a warm caress. His fingers cupped hers and did not release them.
“I thought you hadn’t come,” she murmured. “It’s almost over.”
“I almost didn’t come.” He shook his head; his mask rustled like soft laughter. “But Fate sent me this mask. It would dishonor her gift if I didn’t use it tonight.”
She looked down, at his hand still holding her own, seeing her fingers clinging to his, unable to let go. She looked up again, at his eyes, her eyes, the blackness of space and the wild profusion of spring reflected around them.