“From Sparks.”
“What’s happened to Reede?” he demanded.
She told them, everything. “… And Sparks said to tell you, that you’ve got to be ready to protect them, if—when they get back. That you’d know what he meant, and why.”
BZ stirred, not sure whether he had moved through the entire telling. Moon sat beside him like a porcelain statue. Only her eyes were alive, searching the air for some answer, for some escape; for something that did not exist. “Gods,” he said at last, pressing his hand to his own eyes. He should never have let Reede leave his house that night. He had miscalculated, Reede had lost control anyway, panicked and run. Now the Source had him—and Ariele.
He looked up again. “Sparks is gone? He’s already gone after them?” Tor nodded. He swore, and sank back in his seat. “He said he was going to try to get them both out?”
“That’s what he said.” Tor nodded again.
“Damnation—!” It was too late even to tell Dawntreader who he was really going after, how high the stakes really were.
“Where is this … this tape, of what the water of death does to you?” Moon asked, her voice toneless, her hands tightening over her knees.
Tor glanced away. “It’s gone. I saw part of it. Somebody was … coming apart. Pieces of flesh …” She blanched. “It’s worse than anything you can imagine. You don’t need to see it. You don’t want to see it. You don’t.” She shook her head.
Moon’s eyes brimmed suddenly, but the tears did not fall. “Reede Kullervo wasn’t dying when we saw him,” she said, almost angrily. “I don’t understand. How does this ‘water of death’ work?”
“It’s what happens when it stops working, probably,” BZ murmured. “There’s no drug I know of called the water of death. But it could be something Reede created himself, trying to make the water of life, from the name. An unstable form of smartmatter.” A nightmare. He swore. “No wonder he thought we couldn’t save him, if the Source holds his supply.”
“You mean, there’s no other place he can get it?” Tor asked. “Nobody else makes it?”
“No. And I don’t even have a sample.” He shook his head. Turning back, he saw Moon’s stricken look. He touched her arm. “He’s got to bring some out with him … he’s smart enough to realize that. I can get it analyzed and reproduced, if necessary. They can have all they need—”
“If they come back,” Moon said faintly. “There must be some way we can help them. You have contacts, BZ—”
“Sparks said that’s what the Source would expect,” Tor interrupted. “That your—uh, contacts would try to save them. He said the Source would be expecting that. He wanted to be the unexpected.”
BZ nodded reluctantly. “But there may still be things that can be done to help him. Our friend Aspundh,” he said to Moon. He flexed his hands, which wanted desperately to close around someone’s neck.
“But if … if he fails—? We can’t give the Source what he wants.” She looked back at Tor. Her face was starkly, unnaturally calm, as if she had passed completely beyond fear and grief.
“You mean, you don’t know what he wants? You don’t have it?”
Moon shook her head. “We know what he wants. We’re the only ones who do. But we can’t give it to him. We can’t. That’s the hell of it….” She shut her eyes.
Tor looked at Moon, uncomprehending. She looked back at Gundhalinu, meeting the same hopeless knowledge in his eyes. He saw compassion, if not understanding, fill her own.
Moon rose from the seat beside him. He stood up, realizing as she did that there was no more to say that could be said here; that there was no point in remaining longer. Tor rose from her own seat, and moved across the room to put her hands on Moon’s shoulders. He was surprised to see tears in the woman’s eyes. “He’ll save her,” Tor murmured. “I know he will.”
Moon lifted her head, as Tor let her hands fall away. “Or die trying,” she whispered. Her own arms hung strengthless at her sides. “Thank you, Tor.”
Tor shook her head fiercely. “Don’t thank me for this! Spit at me, curse me if you want to, for telling you this—but for gods’ sakes, Moon, don’t thank me.”
Moon smiled, crookedly, and reached up to touch the wetness on Tor’s cheek. “Not for that,” she said gently. “You know what I mean.” She turned away, her head down.
“What are you going to do about Kirard Set?” Tor asked suddenly.
Moon turned back.
“I’ll have him arrested,” BZ said.
“No.” Moon shook her head. Her eyes turned cold. “No. Let me.”
“What are you going to do to him?” Tor asked.
Moon hesitated. “The Sea will judge him,” she said finally, “by the traditional laws of our people.”
Tor nodded, her satisfaction tinged with sudden unease. “Do it,” she whispered at last.
They went out of the club together, oblivious to the blaring noise, to the stares of its patrons as they passed.
“BZ—” Moon turned to him, blinking in the sudden brightness of the alley. “Do you remember what Reede said to us, about Sparks?”
BZ shook his head, his mind caught in an endless loop of frustration. He had been sure the next round in the Game that had assembled them all here would move Reede’s piece to their side … not that Reede would be snatched from the board. He had believed Reede’s midnight visit was the safe meeting Kitaro had promised. But it had not been safe—and now the Brotherhood held the key to the riddle of the mers, and the only ransom that might bring Kullervo back was the answer to an impossible question.
Gods, how had it gone so wrong? Had the shielded figures who brought Reede to his door simply bungled Kitaro’s orders, because she was no longer there to guide them? Or had it been enemy action, an unexpected move by some unknown player, throwing the crucial game piece back into the hands of Chaos—?
“BZ?” Moon said again.
“No,” he murmured distractedly. “I don’t know. …”
“Reede said that Sparks had been keeping things from us, too. He said, ‘Ask him about the mers.’ We can’t ask him now. But maybe we should search his files.”
He looked at her, realizing that her thoughts had been following the same course as his own, without ending up in a blind alley. But he shook his head again. “Sparks has no formal technical training; there’s nothing that he could have discovered that would be of any real use.”
“Sparks is a very intelligent man,” Moon said, looking at him steadily. “He’s spent half a lifetime studying the mers. Most of what we know about their speech comes from his work. Don’t underestimate him. He’s one-quarter Kharemoughi, after all.”
BZ’s mouth quirked. He looked down. “All right then.”
“Come to the palace with me. All his work is there, at the Sibyl College.”
He nodded. They made their way back through the city until they reached the palace. Moon led him to the rooms that had become Sparks’s living quarters as well as his private office. BZ surveyed the makeshift sleeping area in one corner of the large room, which was already filled nearly to capacity with books and electronics gear. Clothing and personal possessions were piled haphazardly into wooden chests, or shared uneasy shelf space with Sparks’s study materials. He felt a sudden guilty empathy for the man whose private life he had already intruded on so profoundly. “Where do we begin?”
Moon hesitated, looking around her as he had; as if she had never seen this room before, or did not recognize what had become of it. “I think maybe you should search his datafiles for information. I’ll—I’ll search through his things.” She looked away from him again at the room, her hands pressing her sides.