“You know who it is, Reede,” the insinuating voice whispered.
A hologram. A projection, he told himself futilely. A nightmare… but he wasn’t dreaming. The Source had never done this to him before, invading the sanctuary of his own room, violating the one final place where he could pretend to himself that he was still a free man—
“Say it,” the Source murmured. “Tell me who I am.”
“Master,” Reede mumbled, spitting out the word. He clutched the blankets against his chest as every muscle in his body knotted with impotent fury. “What do you want—?” He cursed himself, helplessly, hearing his voice tremble.
“You had a midnight audience tonight, I understand, Reede—? With the Chief Justice, and the Queen?”
Oh, gods. Reede swallowed his heart. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“When were you planning to inform me about this?”
“Nothing happened,” he said hoarsely.
“Nothing,” the Source echoed, with heavy sarcasm. “The Great Enemy sweeps you away to a secret meeting, where nothing happens. They tell you that you really are the new Vanamoinen. They ask you to betray the Brotherhood, and work with them… but nothing happens.”
Reede’s mouth twisted. “You know I’m not going anywhere. Where could I go? I’d be a rotting corpse inside a couple of days.”
“You told them it was impossible to create a stable form of the water of life,” the Source chided. “But nothing happened—”
“It was a lie! I just said it to throw them off. That’s all.” He felt cold sweat crawl down his back as he stared into the darkness. He prayed that the Source couldn’t sense it, couldn’t really read his every thought and feeling—
“Then you could be lying to me.”
“I’m not lying to you!” Reede shouted. “What would it get me?”
“What, indeed? If you fail me, you’ll be a rotting corpse anyway, and Vanamoinen’s brain will die with you, no matter what you do, no matter what you say.”
Reede licked his lips. “It’s going to take time to recreate the water of life. I told you. You don’t want any mistakes—” his voice hardened, “like I made before.”
“No.” The Source made a disgusted noise. “You’ll have time enough… . But in the meantime, there is another thing the Brotherhood requires from you. Evidently the Queen’s obsession with the mers is not just that of a religious fanatic. Gundhalinu and the Queen know something important about the mers, something so secret that apparently no one else even suspects it—not even the Golden Mean. You’re going to help us find out what it is.”
“How?” Reede said irritably. “They wouldn’t tell me tonight… it was almost like they couldn’t tell me—” He broke off. “What do you want me to do?” he asked, shielding the sudden flicker of hope inside him. “You want me to pretend to go along with them, until I find out—?”
The Source laughed, and Reede’s hope guttered out. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you9 But no. You belong to me; Vanamoinen’s brain belongs to the Brotherhood … I see that your love affair with Ariele Dawntreader has flowered and borne sweet fruit, despite your thorns, Kullervo—”
Reede shut his eyes; his fists strangled the bedclothes. “I did what you wanted me to,” he said.
“And you’ve done it with all your heart, it seems. The foolish young thing is besotted with you. She tells her friends that you make her feel she will die of ecstasy. I think she would even take you home to mother, if you asked.”
Reede’s eyes came open. “You want me to marry her?” he asked incredulously.
“No …” the blackness hissed. “I want you to give her the water of death.”
A strangled sound of disbelief caught in Reede’s throat. “Why?”
“To complete our hold on her. The Queen is her mother … Gundhalinu is her father. When they see what begins to happen to her when the water of death is withheld, they’ll share their secrets with us.”
“What if they can’t—?”
There was only silence to answer him, and the sound of labored breathing
“What if I won’t?”
Only silence.
“Jaakola—!”
Only silence, and his own heart beating
TIAMAT: Carbuncle
“Ariele,” he whispered, leaning over her bed in the darkness like a shadow, covering her mouth with his lips, waking her with a kiss.
Her eyes opened, blinking in wild incomprehension, and she struggled against him, for the moment it took her to wake fully. “Ariele,” he said again, and she went limp beneath him.
“Reede?” she whispered, in amazement, because he had never been inside her apartment before, always refused to come anywhere near it.
He did not speak again, but used his mouth to go on kissing her—her face, her throat, while his hands fumbled with the fastenings of her sleepshirt. Finally he jerked it open, hearing cloth rip with his impatience, beyond caring. He pulled it down her body, hearing her sound of half-protest, half-surprise as he bared her. But she clung to him as he covered her nakedness with his kisses, stripped off his own clothes in a frenzy of desperate need and laid his body down on hers. She wrapped herself around him, welcoming him, eager for him, taking him inside her; sheltering him as he possessed her, giving her the only gift he knew how to give, until she cried out in astonished pleasure and release, setting his own need free inside her.
They lay together, their legs tangled, their bodies still joined, their hearts beating each to each, for a long time before he spoke her name again.
“I’m leaving,” he said, and he pressed his lips to her warm, shining skin, with infinite gentleness this time, before he slid off of her and sat up. “I want you to come with me.” His hand slipped down along her arm until he was holding her fingers closed inside his own.
She sat up too, suddenly wide awake in the darkness. “Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you going? Offworld?”
“No, I’d never get away with that… . Into the outback. You have to come with me.”
“Why?” she asked softly.
“Because I’m tired of living, and because you’re not.”
“I don’t understand.…”
“You don’t have to. You just have to trust me. Do you trust me, Ariele?”
Slowly she nodded.
He took her hand, drawing her up. “Then let’s go.”
They headed south along the coast hi the Queen’s hovercraft, into the sheltering darkness. Dawn found them still traveling southward above the infinite fields of the sea. Ariele had not spoken more than two words to him all the while as they flew, only huddling against him in the seat, with her head on his shoulder, drifting in and out of sleep. The pressure of her weight against him began to hurt him as his nerve endings grew hypersensitive. His mind magnified every symptom of his systemic deterioration through the long, silent hours, making his awareness of his growing discomfort infinitely more unpleasant; but he did not wake her.
The night seemed to go on forever; and yet the new day’s dawn peered over his shoulder too soon, telling him that their time of stolen peace together was running out.
Ariele stirred at last, as the hot light of the steadily rising suns beat in through the side window, falling on her face. She sat up again, rubbing her eyes, and looked out at the bleak unfamiliarity of the distant coastline. They were turning away from it now, heading out across the open sea. “Where are we?”
“Far away,” he said. “Down the coast about as far as there’s still any habitation. I’m going to drop you off at the last Summer village I can find, and then I’m ditching the hovercraft.”