“I need water, to put it out forever.” Moon rubbed her arms. She began to walk again toward the brightness of the Street, feeling her mind slowly beginning to unlock and function. “Either way, it will be weeks—it could be months, before we’ll know. And all the while mers will die.” And with every mer’s death, the sibyl mind would die by inches… . She shook her head. “I know you’re right; I can only wait and see. But I’m not an empty shell. BZ was going to run an analysis of data Sparks had developed on the mersong. I can analyze that data myself.”
“Your systems are interfaced with the Hegemony’s governmental computer net, aren’t they?” Jerusha asked.
“Yes.” Moon looked over at her. “Why?”
“Martial law. I don’t know what that’s going to do to your access. Vhanu could restrict your usage, if he wants to make your life difficult. He can probably monitor anything you do with it, in any case.”
Moon looked away; touched the spines of the trefoil she wore with wary fingers. “I have access to a far better system than the one in this city; Vhanu doesn’t control my use of the sibyl net. And I think that I know now what questions I have to ask it, to get the answers I need. I’m going to call a session of the Sibyl College, and explain what I can to them about this … situation.” Her throat closed over the word. “Jerusha, what will they do to BZ, if—”
Jerusha glanced at her. “The Hegemony doesn’t have a death penalty,” she said, looking straight ahead again. “But they have some prisons that make their occupants wish there was one… . But it won’t be one of those, for him,” she went on hastily. “He has a lot of influence.”
“He has a lot of enemies, then,” Moon said softly. She glanced over her shoulder, down Blue Alley. “I’ll get him back. By the Lady and all their gods … I’ll make them pay, if it takes me the rest of my life.” She looked ahead again. “And if I fail, everyone will pay. …”
Jerusha looked at her, and said nothing more.
They reached the alley’s end, where her escort of constables waited. She informed them of Jerusha’s return; they greeted the news with smiling nods. “Gives us somebody to talk to the Blues in their own tongue again, eh?” the constable named Clearwater murmured. “It’s all Sandhi to me, Commander,” he said to Jerusha, and laughed.
Her own mouth pulled up in a wry smile. She .turned to Moon, her eyes intent. “Is there anything I can do for you, now that I’m back in your service, Lady” Anything at all—”
Moon hesitated, searching through the images that filled her mind, searching for one that she could alter. “Yes,” she said finally. “I want you to arrest Kirard Set Way away s.”
Jerusha started, and then nodded. “I’ll see to it,” she said. “Immediately. I’ll take Clearwater with me, if that’s all right with you.”
Moon nodded. She held out her hand, and Jerusha shook it, in the traditional way. “Welcome home.” Moon smiled, at last.
Jerusha made her way to Kirard Set Wayaways’ townhouse, followed by Clearwater, who didn’t ask any questions although she could see that he wanted to. She was sure Wayaways was in the city; she had seen him just yesterday, window-shopping in the Maze.
She knocked on his front door, waited, suddenly seeing in her mind an unexpected image from the time when Arienrhod had ruled—seeing Kirard Set Wayaways, as he stood waiting by the Pit, when the winds had still moaned hungrily; waiting for Police Inspector PalaThion and Sergeant Gundhalinu with a wind-taming bone whistle in his hand. She still remembered, after all these years, the smile on his youthful, perfect face as he saw the anxiety on their own faces; how he had laughed at them behind his eyes, letting the wind nip their heels as he led them across the span to their audience with the Snow Queen. She realized suddenly that she wanted to see their positions reversed; still wanted it, needed it, after all these years.
The door opened. But it was not Kirard Set who greeted her, it was his wife, Tirady Graymount. Jerusha felt surprise at the depth of her own disappointment.
“Chief Inspector PalaThion …” Tirady Graymount murmured, leaning against the jamb of the open door a little unsteadily. Her pupils seemed abnormally dilated; Jerusha wondered what kind of drugs she had been taking. She glanced past Jerusha’s shoulder at the constable, and her sour expression turned quizzical. “What do you want?”
“I’ve come to arrest your husband, Tirady Graymount,” Jerusha said.
The woman blinked, as if she were having a hard time processing the information. “The Hegemony is arresting him?”
“Not the Hegemony.” Jerusha glanced down at the blue uniform she still wore. She looked up again, and shrugged. “I work for the Queen now.”
“Oh,” Tirady Graymount said, as if that explained everything. “Well, my husband isn’t home. I’m sorry you missed him….” She smiled oddly.
“I don’t suppose you’d have any idea where I can find him?” Jerusha asked, already anticipating the predictable response.
But Tirady Graymount pushed away from the doorframe, in a motion like windblown grass. “Why, yes, I do.” She smoothed back her fair, gray-salted hair. “He’s gone down to Persiponë’s—the club. On business,” she added, and her smile this time was one of surpassing cruelty. “You know where it is. If you hurry, you’ll catch him there.”
“Thank you for your cooperation.” Jerusha kept the irony and surprise out of her voice.
“It’s my pleasure,” Tirady Graymount murmured, as they turned away. “Good day to you.” Her door closed sharply behind them.
Jerusha wasted no time getting to Persiponë’s, and few thoughts along the way on the state of Wayaways’ marriage. She held more than enough reasons in her own mind why Kirard Set could drive someone to drugs, or acts of petty revenge.
They entered Persiponë’s calculated mouth of darkness, stood blinking on the threshold, as everyone else did. She felt another odd frisson as the past whispered through her present like a fever-spirit. Persiponë’s Hell looked exactly as it had looked during Arienrhod’s reign. It was like something that existed outside of time; appearing, disappearing, reappearing again. Then, as now, it had been a front for the Source, the drug boss Arienrhod had turned to when she had tried to commit genocide on the Summers. The Blues had stopped it—Jerusha had stopped the Source, herself. But somehow the Source had slipped through their grasp, folded himself up into his own persona] singularity and disappeared.
And now he was back in business on Tiamat, and he was holding Moon’s child, for a ransom nobody could even name. If she had stopped him then, for good, this wouldn’t be happening. But she had failed, and she was powerless, this time, to do anything at all about it. But there was still Kirard Set.
A woman in a slit-backed black gown was coming toward them, wearing a black wig netted with silver, her face so ornately painted that it was impossible to tell who she actually was. She was called Persiponë, and she looked the same as she had twenty years ago—except that twenty years ago it had been Tor Starhiker beneath the paint, fronting for the club’s real owner. But the Summer Queen did not offer them protection from the Blues, and this was not Tor Starhiker, only some anonymous hireling playing at hostess.
“Welcome, Chief Inspector. How may I serve you?” Persiponë smiled, her face glowing with eerie phosphorescence.
“Bring me Kirard Set Wayaways,” Jerusha said flatly.
Persiponë nodded, pressing her hands together like a gesture of worship, and disappeared into the depths of the club. Jerusha waited, unmoving and unmoved; at her side, Clearwater whistled in awe as he watched the action unfold around them. “I’ve been wasting my pay in the wrong places,” he said.
After a few moments Jerusha saw someone coming purposefully toward them; not Persiponë, and not Wayaways. TerFauw. Her brain put a name to him. He was the one who actually oversaw the club’s functions; one of the Source’s lieutenants. He was Newhavenese, from her homework), though from the look of him he hadn’t been back there in a long time either.