Jerusha PalaThion and the squad of constables led Kirard Set Wayaways through the taut silence of the small crowd of witnesses, to stand before her. Below the piei a boat waited, with two more constables aboard, both Summers. “Kirard Set Wayaways,” Moon said, meeting the empty terror in his eyes without remorse, “you stand before us accused of acts of violence and betrayal, both witnessed and suspected, against your own people. I do not have the power to judge you—” her voice cut him like wire, “for I am not the true Lady, but only a vessel for Her Will. Therefore, I commend you to the Sea’s judgment, under the traditional laws of our people.”
“You’re insane!” Kirard Set snarled. “Your rituals have nothing to do with me I’m a Winter, you can’t do this to me—”
“Tell that to Arienrhod,” Moon said softly, feeling as if she would strangle on the words, “when you see her—”
She looked away, hearing a murmur of noise ripple through the crowd behind her. Jerusha touched her arm, pointing.
A squad of Hegemonic Police was making its way toward them through the maze of docks and moorings. She saw their leader raise a hand, stopping his men a short distance away.
“Thank the gods—” Kirard Set mumbled. “I knew they’d come. I knew they wouldn’t let you do this to me, you insane bitch— Help!” he shouted. “Help me! , t They’re trying to drown me! Stop them!”
Moon saw weapons show among the constables, all of them Summers, ai |, i Jerusha’s signal.
The officer left his squad and came toward them, his hands peaceably at his sides. “Lady.” He nodded respectfully in Moon’s direction, before turning to Jerusha. “Good morning, uh, Commander PalaThion.” He saluted, as if in apology for stumbling over her new rank.
She returned the salute, with a faint smile of acknowledgement. “Good morning, Lieutenant Devu. What’s a patrol doing down here on the docks, at this early hour? Not standard procedure, is it?”
“No, Commander,” he said, giving Moon, and the crowd surrounding her, a slightly uncertain glance. “Commander Vhanu ordered us to hunt mers. We’re about to board our ship and do that.” He gestured behind him at the waiting Blues. Moon realized that they were carrying different equipment than she had ever seen on them before; realized suddenly what the equipment was intended for. She saw Jerusha stiffen; felt her own body go rigid. “But first, Ma’am, maybe you’d explain to me what’s happening here? You know that under the rules of martial law assemblies of more than ten people are restricted.” He jerked his head at the crowd. “What are you doing to this citizen?”
“It’s a trial,” Jerusha said. “He’s being tried on charges including kidnapping and drug dealing.”
Devu frowned. “Here? Now?” he said. “Like this?”
“According to the laws of Summer, Lieutenant,” Moon said. “He is going to be judged by the Sea.”
“They’re going to drown me!” Kirard Set shouted. “Help me—”
“You’re going to drown him?” Devu asked, his frown deepening.
“He will be taken out into the open sea, until the shoreline is no longer visible,” Moon said evenly, “and left there to swim ashore. Whether he drowns or not depends on him. The Sea Mother will judge him. That has been the law of our people, for centuries.”
“It’s obscene!” Kirard Set said. “You can’t let them do this to me—you’re a Kharemoughi, a civilized man, for gods’ sakes!”
“And I am the autonomous ruler of my people.” Moon lifted her head. “He is one of us, and he has broken our laws, not yours, Lieutenant.”
“What’s his name?” Devu asked, glancing at Jerusha.
“Kirard Set Wayaways Winter,” Jerusha said, shifting her weight from foot to foot, with her stun rifle cradled casually in the crook of her arm. “A Tiamatan native.”
“Wayaways?” The lieutenant rubbed his chin. “Hm,” he said, and nodded, with an odd, random smile. “Not our jurisdiction.” He began to turn away.
“Stay if you want to,” Moon said. “Watch our system of laws in action. Watch how the Sea deals with those people who offend Her sense of justice—”
Lieutenant Devu looked abruptly uncomfortable again. “Some other time, perhaps. We have to get going.”
“Give the Commander my greetings,” she said, fixing him with a stare. He bowed, nodded to Jerusha, and was gone, walking rapidly.
“No—!” Kirard Set wailed, but he did not look back.
Moon waited, watching the offworlders until they disappeared into the geometry of masts and machinery. Finally she turned back to Kirard Set, who stood silent now, glowering at her. “The Mother of Us All is waiting,” she said. She nodded toward the ladder behind him, that led down to the boat riding at low tide beside the floating pier.
“I’ll be back—” he said, with defiance and desperation.
“If the Sea wills it,” Moon answered steadily. “But if you live, don’t return to the city. She may forgive you, but I never will.”
He turned away from her, his face livid with impotent rage; he glanced out into I the crowd, as if he were searching for someone. Whoever it was, he did not find sthem. He turned back again, and moved slowly to where the ladder waited; went |slowly down it. “The hell with all of you,” he said, before his face disappeared.
Moon moved to stand at the rail as the small boat with its Summer crew and Winter prisoner unfurled its crab-claw sail and started outward along the golden road. “Arienrhod!” Kirard Set screamed suddenly, looking back at her with eyes like coals, and she did not know what he meant by it.
As she watched the boat grow smaller in the distance, she realized that someone else had come to stand beside her at the rail. She turned her head, wondering whether j. Danaquil Lu Wayaways had decided at the last moment to attend, and witness his cousin’s ordeal. But it was Tirady Graymount, Kirard Set’s wife, who stood beside , her, and their son Elco Teel. Moon realized that she had not seen them in the crowd |, before this moment, either. The woman’s face was pale and hollow-eyed—with | anguish, Moon thought. But her mouth, as if it had a life of its own, was smiling. She held an empty liquor bottle in her clenched fist; her other arm was around her son, ‘t holding on to him possessively as she watched her husband sail out toward the horizon. She raised her fist with the empty bottle in it suddenly; hurled the bottle with all her strength out into the sea. “I hope you drown!” she shouted.
Elco Teel put his arm around her shoulders, turning her away from the rail again. There was no expression at all on his face, as he led her back through the crowd.
Moon watched them go, feeling neither surprise nor compassion. She saw the astonishment on some of the faces around her; saw Jerusha shake her head. Standing alone, she looked out to sea again, watching the boat grow smaller. On its stem she could still read the name she had painted there with her own hand: Ariele. Behind her the crowd began to separate and drift away. She did not leave the rail until she had watched the boat out of sight.
Moon took her place at the head of the meeting table in what had once been yel another of the palace’s echoing, unused chambers. When she first came to live in the palace had reminded her of the countless ornaments it held: a jeweled shell, empty and without purpose. She had been afraid of it, frightened by its immensity and the power of all it represented—Arienrhod’s past, a kind of desire that seemed completely alien to her, yet which must exist somewhere inside her, too.
But the secret sentience that had compelled her to succeed its Queen had compelled her to remain here, within reach. In time she had come to accept the palace and all it held as simply a part of the greater pattern of her life. The palace itself was neither good nor evil, no more a matter of her choice or lack of choice than anything else, in a world that had seemed more and more random and beyond her control.