“What do you want here?” he said, without even the pretense of civility.
“I want Kirard Set Wayaways,” she answered, looking up at him. She was tall enough that she didn’t look up to meet a man’s eyes often, but he was considerably taller, and massive. It made her feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, especially when she considered that this was how most women were forced to feel whenever they confronted a man.
“What makes you think I know where he is? He could be anywhere on the Street,” TerFauw said, in thickly accented Tiamatan. He gestured away into the crowd.
“His wife said he was here. On business.” She pointed back the way TerFauw had come, toward the hidden rooms and secret activities she knew lay behind him.
“He could be gone already.”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “If he was, you’d say so. Bring him out.”
TerFauw grunted. “Tell me why the Hedge wants him,” he said.
“Not the Hedge. The Queen. His own people.”
He pushed his twisted lip into an unpleasant smile. “Then what does she want him for?”
“Take a guess,” Jerusha said.
He nodded, thoughtful. “That’s good enough.” He glanced over his shoulder, lifting his hand. “Bring him out,” he said, speaking to the air.
As she watched, three men appeared out of a shadow-black opening in the wall; the one in the middle was Wayaways, and he didn’t look happy to be there. The others were armed; she couldn’t see their weapons, but she read it in the way they moved.
“The Summer Queen wants to see you,” TerFauw said tonelessly, as Wayaways and his escort joined them.
“The Queen—?” Wayaways broke off, and Jerusha saw the look she had waited to see slowly forming on his face.
“Let’s go,” she said, smiling the smile she remembered.
“No—” He turned to TerFauw, grabbing him by the front of his jerkin. “You can’t let them take me away! I’m one of you, for gods’ sakes! I’m a stranger far from home, I’m a Brother, the Source promised me the Brotherhoo—”
TerFauw drove his fist into Wayaways’ stomach, as casually as another man might have shaken hands, doubling him up. He gestured again, and his two men dragged Wayaways upright. “You go to your Queen, Motherlover,” he whispered, into the face of Wayaways’ stricken betrayal. “And you better beg her not to let you come back here again. Ever.” His finger flicked Wayaways suddenly, excruciatingly, in the eye; Wayaways shrieked, covering it with his hands.
Jerusha took a deep breath. She forced her hand to move away from her own weapon and hang loose at her side, as TerFauw turned his back on them and strode away. Wayaways’ guards followed him, wordlessly.
Jerusha waited until Wayaways’ screaming had subsided, until his hands had dropped away from his streaming eye. “Come on,” she said, to his colorless face and vacant stare. “Let’s go.”
He went with her, without protest.
KHAREMOUGH: Orbital Hub #1
“Your visitor is waiting, Gundhalinu-ken.”
“Thank you.” Gundhalinu moved past the guard through the doorway to the visitor’s room. They addressed him as “Gundhalinu-ken” here, because it was the only title he had which was not in limbo since his arrest. The sibyl tattoo was clearly visible above the loose neck of his detention-center coveralls, although they had taken away his trefoiclass="underline" It could be used as a weapon.
The room was small and brightly lit, with calm green walls and a single table positioned at its center. There was carpeting under his feet as he walked forward, there were pictures on the walls. And running across the center of the room, through the middle of the table, there was an invisible force barrier separating him from the woman who stood waiting at the other side.
“Dhara—” he said. The full impact of all that had happened to him in the past weeks hit him like a blow, leaving him dazed. He stopped, staring back at her, at the child she held in her arms. He realized suddenly that he had gone numb since his arrest; that he had been in a state of shock, unable to face the reality of his situation or his reaction to it, until now.
“BZ?” she murmured, and he saw in her eyes the depths of uncertainty that he remembered, always hiding beneath the surface of her bright calm when she came near him. Her hesitation goaded him forward to take a seat at the table, encouraging her to do the same.
She sat down across from him, conservatively dressed in a long robe and slacks, her hair caught up with clips into graceful wings, the way he had liked it best. She settled the baby on the table with a sackful of toys; the baby reached eagerly for the bag, dumping out its contents. “Mine!” he said.
BZ watched in fascination as the child sat among the toys like someone who had just discovered treasure. The baby tried them on, twisted them, banged them on the table surface, oblivious to the absurd and tender smiles suddenly on the faces of the two people watching him at play.
“How do thou like thy son?” Pandhara said at last. She reached out, stroking the little boy’s hair; he glanced up at her, distracted, and offered her a bright, star-filled rattle. “BT Gundhalinu. … But it’s so stuffy. I call him Little Bit,” she said. The baby looked up again, hearing his name. “Big Little Bit …” she said, touching the tip of his nose with her finger. He smiled and put his own small, stubby-fingered hands up in the air. “So big,” he said.
“He’s beautiful,” BZ murmured. “Even more beautiful than the holos thou sent me. Gods, how he’s changed—”
“Babies do that,” she said, softly and a little sadly.
“And so do our fortunes,” he murmured, not meaning to.
She looked up at him, away again quickly.
“It’s not as if we didn’t know this could happen.”
She nodded, keeping his gaze this time. “He has thy eyes.”
BZ took a deep breath, remembering another boy with the same eyes, half a galaxy away. “Yes,” he said “I think he does.”
She nudged the baby toward him across the table. “See,” she whispered. “It’s thy father.” BZ leaned forward, reaching out until his hands encountered the barrier The baby cocked his head, seeming to notice him for the first time. He clung to his mother’s arm for a moment, peering reluctantly over his shoulder. And then he smiled, his face filling with delight again. He held out his own hands, until they met the invisible wall. He batted them against the tingling surface, butted it with his head, trying to reach his father. BZ pressed his own hands against the faintly yielding barrier, feeling joy and longing fill his chest until he could scarcely breathe.
“Move away from the barrier.”
BZ jerked his hands away as a mild shock stung them. The baby fell back, wailing; Pandhara scooped him up in her arms, comforting him.
“There was no need for that!” BZ pushed up out of his seat furiously, shouting at the walls. He sat back down again, answered only by the echo of his own voice, mocking him.
Pandhara stared at him as the baby quieted. “Are we being monitored?” she asked incredulously, her eyes dark with impotent anger. “They said we would have privacy—”
“It was probably just an automatic response,” he said, not at all certain that it had been. He watched the baby turn in her arms, struggling to get free, reaching out to him, calling, “Ba! Ba!” His hands rose; he lowered them, clenching them into fists below the table’s edge. Pandhara picked up a ball filled with colored lights and waved it in front of the baby; he took it in his arms, biting it, and settled reluctantly into her lap. “How … how are things at the estates?”