“Why doesn’t Moon get rid of those damned aristos?” she said, feeling irritable as memory pinched her. “There are plenty of other Winters who’d be glad to take their places, and they don’t have all the bad habits Arienrhod taught her favorites.”
Fate smiled, sweeping the street ahead with her cane, a gesture that let her feel some kind of control over her progress, and maybe her life. “Yes, but they don’t own most of the land.” The Winter nobility may have been called “noble” by default, but most of them had held their positions at Arienrhod’s court because they headed the clans which controlled the most resources. “And they’re not all jaded fools: some of them are smart and creative and highly motivated. Those are the ones who will end up as the real leaders … I only hope 1 live long enough to see it.” Her mouth twisted with weary irony.
“Right,” Tor said. She shook her head, thinking privately that they had more chance of living to see the offworlders’ return than they did of seeing all Moon Dawntreader’s dreams come true. Looking toward the alley’s end, she could see the Summer Star now, the sign that had marked the Change for her people and the offworlders too. As their farewell gesture before leaving, the offworlders had sent down a beam of high frequency energy that fried the fragile components in every single piece of equipment they had left behind, including Fate’s vision sensors. Since they had blocked the development of any local technological base, nothing could be repaired.
Then they had gone, secure in the knowledge that the technophobic Summers would move north into the Winters’ territory, as they had done since the beginning of their days on this world. The Summer Queen would lead Tiamat’s people back—willingly or not—into the traditional ways that had meant their survival for centuries before the offworlders ever set foot here; keeping things stagnant and secure, until the Hegemony could return.
Moon Dawntreader meant to change all that. Tor’s admiration for the Queen’s goals was matched only by her skepticism about their achievability.
Tor steered Fate sideways, to avoid a Summer striding obliviously down the street with a load of kleeskins on his back. The batch of foul-smelling hides struck her as he passed, and knocked her staggering into Fate. She regained her balance, and caught Fate, barely in time to keep them both from sprawling in the gutter. “Watch where you’re going, you crackbrain! You want to knock down a blind woman?”
The Summer swung around without breaking stride. “Watch yourself, Motherless! I’ve got better things to do than teach you how to walk.”
“Like teach yourself some manners?” Tor spat.
“Parasite,” He turned his back on them and trudged on down the alley.
Tor flung an obscene hand gesture at his retreating back. Fate’s hand reached out, searching for her arm; caught hold of her. Tor forced herself to relax, muttering under her breath. She turned back again, and they went on toward Fate’s door. “They should all drown, the fisheaters. Then we wouldn’t have any trouble.”
“You think not?” Fate said, her voice gently mocking. “Who would you hate, then?”
Tor took a deep breath. “All right, so I don’t hate them. They’re our cousins. We all need each other to survive. All our sins went into the Sea with the Snow Queen, and now we’re all one…” She repeated the litany of the Summer Queen’s propaganda, the supposed will of the supposed Sea Mother. “But by all the gods, I don’t know who ever said fish was brain food.”
Fate laughed, and was silent again, lost in her own thoughts. Tor led her on down the alleyway. The Winters endured the Summers’ cyclical invasion, knowing there was no real choice. Winters and Summers had always needed each other to survive, and the ancient rituals they shared gave them enough common ground to get by. Her people waited out High Summer with the patience of exiles, secure in the knowledge that the offworlders would return at the first possible moment, bringing back to their descendants, if not to them, the sophisticated comforts to which they had grown accustomed.
But even though clan ties and traditional religion had left them blueprints for peaceful coexistence, the culture-wide shockwave of the Change still left them with ugly petty confrontations. Winters who had lost all sense of their heritage over the hundred and fifty years of offworlder rule, and newly arrived Summers, wary unwanted guests in the territories of their distant relatives, still cursed each other and had fistfights in the half-empty streets of Carbuncle, even after eight years.
The problem would get worse before it got better, if it ever did, because the new Queen’s unorthodox changes heightened all the old tensions. The coming of the Summers was a gradual thing, and that was probably all that saved their world from complete anarchy. In another decade this city would be teeming—in a completely different way than it had been when the offworlders filled its streets, but teeming nonetheless, just like the rapidly thawing countryside beyond its walls… .
“Here we are,” Tor said. She hesitated as Fate found her way up the single step to her door and unfastened the lock. “Will you be all right if I leave now?” Usually she stayed, and they shared dinner, although she knew Fate was perfectly capable of getting around her home and former shop alone. Sometimes after the meal Fate would play her sithra and Tor would sing, old songs about the sea, new songs about the stars; songs with long memories that carried them both back to better days. Neither one of them liked spending endless evenings alone, although neither one of them had ever spoken of it. But tonight she felt as restless as the large gray cat that wound around Fate’s ankles, yowling with impatience. “I think I’ve got to scratch an itch tonight.”
“Yes, I’ll be fine.” Fate nodded. She leaned down to pick up the cat, stroking its fur, scratching it fondly under the chin. “I think Malkin and I only want to sleep tonight, anyway. It’s been a long…” She broke off, and didn’t say what had been so long.
“You don’t need anything from the markets?”
“No, thank you. Thank you for everything.” Fate smiled, her sightless eyes finding Tor’s with uncanny accuracy. “Let me know whether he’s worth losing sleep over.”
Tor laughed, pushing her hands into the frayed pockets of her aging offworlder coveralls. “It doesn’t matter if he is or not, because I don’t intend to remember him in the morning.” She stepped down into the street and strode away, heading for her favorite tavern.
Moon sighed, wearied by the steep climb up the Street, the steep upward spiral of life. They had reached Street’s End at last; ahead she saw the wide vortex of alabaster pavement, and beyond it the elaborately carven double doors of the palace. Two guards stood at the entrance, as they always did, by Jerusha’s order. Moon blinked her eyes clear of the waking dream that had suffused her thoughts as she climbed the hill, as insubstantial as fog, as inescapable as a shadow: the memory of the dark-eyed stranger who had led her once to these doors… who had been her spirit guide when she was lost in this strange city, caught up in destiny’s storm. The man who had been her lover for one night, before his own destiny had swept him from her life forever…
Moon glanced at the woman beside her, feeling a pang of guilt; afraid that Jerusha PalaThion’s shrewd, observant eyes might have looked in through the open window of her thoughts, and seen too much, But Jerusha was gazing straight ahead, lost in a reverie of her own. Jerusha had stayed behind when the offworlders left Tiamat, as much from a sense of betrayal by her own people as from love of her new home. Moon had never fully understood her motives; Jerusha was not a woman much given to discussing her thoughts. But she was an excellent listener, whose friendship Moon had come to treasure as a rare gift. Jerusha was one of their chief advisors regarding the Hegemony’s castoff technology—and also her most loyal protector. Jerusha kept the transition peaceful in the restless city, with a cannily chosen security force of Winters who had worked for the old Queen and Summers who were loyal to the new one.