Dawntreader held up his palm. He had learned to speak Trade on the way here, using an enhancer, practicing it on them. He showed off the eye he had burned into his own flesh, a reasonable facsimile of the Source’s mark; or at least Kedalion hoped so .
Samir stared at the brand, frowned. “Nobody told me about that,” he said flatly.
“How could they?” Kedalion answered, his tension giving it the snap of impatience. “I’m telling you now. Kullervo needs to see this man, he’s got special information, he’s a local expert on the mers. If Kullervo doesn’t get to see him, somebody’s going to be real pissed off.”
Samir looked at the scar. He looked back at Kedalion, his stare long and hard. At last he shrugged, and nodded. “All right,” he said, and waved them on.
They made their way through the maze of tunnels that led into the heart of the citadel complex, where transportation waited that would take them to Reede Kedalion pushed his hands into his coat pockets, feeling for his huskball; hating the prospect of being a passenger and not a pilot, especially now, when he felt so powerless. The huskball was not much more than a rough nub in a nest of loose shavings now; he had nearly worn it out, with years of nervous fiddling. He wished “he knew where to find another one; even though he knew a new one would never be the same, would be like encountering a stranger in his pocket. “Well, here we are,” he said, with relentless banality, as they reached a transport stop.
“That was great, Kedalion,” Ananke said suddenly, glancing over his shoulder. “The way you— Gods, I thought I was going to puke when Samir stuck his gun in ^your face. Reede couldn’t have backed him down better.”
“Actually,” Kedalion said, with a slow smile, “I was thinking how Gundhalinu f would have done it, back on Four. Gods, he was slick.”
Sparks looked at him with a sudden frown, as if he had unintentionally hit a nerve.
“Sorry,” Kedalion murmured, realizing what lay behind the look. “I was also thinking about when I was a kid, and we used to go drafting, off the cliffs. If you didn ‘t keep your glider in balance, you ‘d kill yourself. You knew if you failed you’d die. So you didn’t fail.” His smile faded. “Actually, I’m still thinking about that.”
“Yeah,” Ananke muttered, as they sat down on a metal bench to wait for |transportation; he tugged at his leather-gloved foot as he looked out over the scene. Dawntreader leaned back in his seat, silent, staring straight ahead.
“Reede—?”
Reede pushed back in his seat as Ariele’s voice reached him from the entrance | to his lab. He shook his head, shaking off his stupor of fatigue. He had been resting I here with his head on his arms for what seemed like hours, sleepless, while she still [ slept on in their bed, escaping reality a while longer. He wondered what her dreams had been like. Not like his own, he hoped.
“Reede? Where are you?” He heard panic starting in her voice.
“Here.” He got up from his seat, moving through the maze of equipment and imagers to find her, to reassure her. He did not want her to see him as he had been, wallowing in useless self-loathing, unable to work, or even to think. He should have killed her, should have killed himself, when he had the chance. But something incomprehensible had stopped him; had made him choose to live, when the only sane choice had been to die. Lunatic. Coward. Masochist. The litany repeated again in his mind, as it had been repeating ever since he had regained consciousness, and found himself back in the Source’s hands. He looked down at his own hands, still clumsy with bandages.
But the water of death was alive inside him again, invading and controlling every cell in his body, healing him with a vengeance. He did not really need the bandages anymore, but they were an excuse for stalling his research work that much longer. Because it was not his hands that he couldn’t control; it was his mind. He couldn’t even pretend anymore that he could do what was required of him, do the Source’s dirty work. He could only think about the mers, and the mystery of their existence. The patterns of the mersong, and the profound secrets he had discovered hidden within it, haunted him day and night: so alien, and yet so familiar. He could not think of the mers only as receptacles for the water of life: to think of them that way was an obscenity, to think of the water of life at all was futility, it was—
He met Ariele, felt her trembling through the layered silken cloth of her Ondinean-style robe as she came into his arms. “What’s wrong?”
“I couldn’t find you… . Reede—” She looked up at him, with terror echoing in the depths of her eyes. “Am I all right? Do I look … changed I don’t feel well. …”
He caught her arms with his bandaged hands, shook her, insistently. “You’re all right. You’re fine.” He touched her cheek, keeping his touch gentle although he could barely feel her flesh. He turned her so that she could see herself in the reflective surface of a cabinet. “Look. Look at yourself… . See?”
She shut her eyes; opened them, stared at her reflection. Slowly she nodded, her body going soft and yielding in his arms.
“You feel fine,” he went on, with calm reassurance. “So do I.”
“I had a dream—” Her voice was unsteady.
“It was only a dream. You have hours to go still before you even have to think about the next dose.”
She looked back at him suddenly.
“I have it,” he murmured. “I have it here already. Don’t worry.” He stroked her hair.
She clung to him, sighing. “I don’t feel bad. I feel good … I’ve never felt better. It’s true. You’re so good and strong and wise. I love you, Reede. I love you. I love you….”
He put his arms around her again, feeling bile rise in his throat. He controlled the tremor that ran through his body, kept her from feeling it pass through her own She was the one thing that could drive the mers from his mind; but seeing her, being with her, only filled him with suicidal guilt, as he watched her moods swing from euphoria to terror, and back again. He had been too sick for them to force him to commit the act—but he had been forced to watch, as they made her drink the water of death, starting the irreversible process of her dependency, not simply on the drug, but on him. He was to blame, and yet she did not cower or rage at him. She did this to him—she loved him.
And so he had tried his best, as soon as he was able, to make it up to her; to give her stability and courage and reassurance. They were strengths he had not known existed in him, but he had found them somewhere, somehow, for her sake. But he was not certain how much longer he would be able to go on this way, barely holding their lives together, day after day.
And even if he was able to stay sane, keep them both sane, the gods only knew what would become of them. If he didn’t produce fast enough to please the Source, then Jaakola could cut off her supply, use her against him, make her suffer for it, causing him pain but keeping him intact… . Even if he did produce, Jaakola could hurt her anyway, do anything he wanted to her, any time he felt like it, simply on a whim. Jaakola enjoyed keeping him on a short drug supply, stringing him out just to let him know how powerless he really was. Now that he had Ariele to be afraid for too, whole new dimensions of potential cruelty opened like bloody jaws, waiting. Whatever happened to Jaakola’s plans to force secrets out of the Summer Queen and Gundhalinu, he was sure they’d never get their daughter back alive… . Even if they did, it would only be to watch her die. And there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing.
He let go of her, fumbling in his pockets. His sense-deadened fingers barely recognized what they had been searching for when they found it. He pulled it out: his ring, the mate to the one he had given Mundilfoere. He had worn it all these years alone. He took hold of her hand and slipped the ring over her thumb. Her hands were large for a woman’s, long-fingered, but her fingers were slim, and the ring rested precariously against her translucent skin. She closed her hand over it. Looking up at him, she took his hand in hers, and kissed his bandaged, open palm.