He looked back across the open space at Moon and Sparks, away again, as a murmur of anticipation began far above them in the Police-cordoned crowds lining the ramp that led down from the city. The sound swept toward him, infecting the people in the stands, who began to murmur and point as they caught their first glimpse of the sight they had been waiting here to see.
A ship-form cart was progressing slowly down the ramp, surrounded by Summers dressed in traditional clothing, dyed in shades of green and decorated with embroidery and designs worked in polished shell. They wore wreaths and garlands of flowers, and they chanted a Tiamatan lament that fell strangely on his ears.
The cart itself carried two passengers sitting stiffly upright, wearing masks. One of the masks was the one that Moon had worn, as Summer Queen, last night. The other was a mass of fiery brilliance, like the sun—Sparks’s mask, he realized suddenly. As the cart drew slowly nearer, he saw the ropes that bound the two figures to the seat.
His glance went again to the two faces in the stands across the way, proving to himself that the couple in the cart were only effigies, not human beings. Moon’s gaze held his for a long moment, before she looked away again, at the cart and its masked figures. Her hands hugged her arms as if she were reassuring herself of her safety, her reality.
The cart came to a halt in the open space, just before it reached the sea. Moon left her place and made her way down to the pier, and the crowd’s murmurous voice fell silent at last. Throughout the city other crowds were watching this climax of the Festival’s celebration on monitor screens. Gundhalinu wondered how many of them were fantasizing that this was the real thing—that the ceremonial ship-form that had made the journey down here from the palace gates was actually about to send two living beings into the sea to drown. He wondered how many of those watching had seen the real thing, the last time.
The last time it had happened he had been in the hospital, recovering from pneumonia, the result of his ordeal among the nomads. Suddenly, staring at the effigies, he was glad that he had not been here to watch Moon give the command that had sent the Snow Queen into the sea. He wondered what she must have felt then, watching her mother, her rival, her mirror image, drown before her eyes. He wondered what she must be feeling now, what she must remember, as she presided over this harmless imitation of the real sacrifice—which would have been a real sacrifice, if he had not stopped it. She stood staring at the masked effigies before her, her own face frozen.
He felt giddy with the rush of empathy that filled him as he looked at her. He wanted to make his way down to the pier where she stood, to take her in his arms, to take her pain inside him, to hold and support her…. He did nothing, standing motionless at the ribbon-draped rail, the picture of official propriety and indifference
Moon tore her eyes from the effigies, looking past them, past the waiting honor guard of Summers at the contents of the cart, which was fully laden with offerings to the Sea Mother. Her expression changed again, suddenly. He followed her gaze, seeing heaps of greenery and odd artifacts donated or tossed into the cart as it passed through the crowd. His eyes found the thing that her eyes had discovered: a Festival mask, with a mirrored face framed in midnight black—his mask, that he had left behind at the palace. Its face was shattered, the mirror a net of a thousand fractures, as if someone had deliberately smashed it in before consigning it to oblivion in the depths of the sea… .
Moon glanced up suddenly, looking at him, before she turned to look back at the stands behind her, at her husband, silently witnessing. She bowed her head again; gathering strength, looking at neither one of them now, turning inward. She lifted her arms to the crowd, to the Sea Mother, lifted her voice and began to play her part in the ritual prayer and process.
BZ took a deep breath, easing the constriction in his chest as he listened to her song. He looked up at the masked faces—the one unmasked, among them—as the pure, clear beauty of her voice repeating the archaic recitation washed over him like the waters of the sea, washing away the past, telling him that from this moment on everything in his life was changed….
“I hate this,” Ariele murmured, shifting her weight from foot to foot as her body grew impatient with standing. “This is humiliating.” She lifted her hands to the mask, all rainbows and colors of the sea, that Fate had made for her. It was beautiful; even Reede had said so, as close to wondering as she had ever seen him get about anything but the mers. She had felt beautiful wearing it, shining through the countless parties, falling through the pleasures of the night with her chosen lover… . Until he had abandoned her at dawn, forcing her to come here alone, to endure this ceremony without him.
Already stung by Reede’s refusal to stay with her, she had watched the offworlders standing in judgment on the platform across the way, every one of them unmasked, their alien faces staring back at her in curiosity and bemusement. They were watching her mother perform the traditional Change ritual as if she and all her people were some sort of animals quaintly dressed in clothing and imitating human behavior.
Now, standing here under their eyes, she felt the beauty of the mask she wore wither and die, as if their gaze was frost. Her hands tightened over the fragile form as something inside her tried to force her to take it off. But then her own face, her emotions, would be left naked to their stares. She lowered her hands again to her sides, as the Chief Justice suddenly looked directly at her.
She turned her face away so that she did not have to look at the man who claimed to be her father. She listened to the strange yet familiar patterns of her mother’s recitation rise and fall, filling the air; thought about the last time her mother had performed this ritual, in earnest, drowning her true grandmother on the day her own life was begun.
She looked at her true father, his hair as bright as the sunrise, standing alone like she was here in the stands, but just beyond her reach. He was not looking at her, or her mother, or even the offworlders; he was staring out at the sea. She called to him, as loudly as she dared, but he did not respond, did not acknowledge her in any way.
She felt her eyes burn suddenly, and turned away, looking behind her at Merovy, who was also alone, because Tammis had not even had the nerve to show up here. Merovy hid her sorrows behind another of Fate’s masks, this one the color of fog, the color of birds’ wings. Its forms were so subtle that at a glance someone might mistake them for simple, or plain.
Ariele wondered where Tammis was. For once, in her own isolation, she felt compassion for her brother and his silent wife. She reached back, touching Merovy’s hand, seeing her start in surprise. She felt Merovy’s fingers close over hers, briefly and warmly.
“What is it you find humiliating about being here, Ariele?” someone asked behind her, curious and without censure.
She glanced back over her other shoulder, recognizing the voice of Clavally, tying it to another masked face; realizing that Merovy had come with her parents.
“The offworlders,” she murmured. “The way they watch us. They make everything we do seem meaningless and stupid. They don’t believe in anything.”
“They believe in everything,” Danaquil Lu said wryly. “Which is just as bad.”
She shook her head irritably, and felt Clavally’s light touch fall on her shoulder. “Do you believe in the Sea Mother? In the rituals?” Clavally asked.
She looked up and back, suddenly glad that her mask covered her face. She listened to her mother’s voice calling on the Sea. “I don’t believe the sea is some kind of god,” she whispered, finally. “But neither does my mother, even though she’s supposed to.”