The way ahead was still a tunnel with no light at its end; but as he passed one more alley entrance, light flooded around him suddenly, and voices shouted at him to stop.
He jerked to a halt; trapped in the sudden crisscross of beams like an insect, as dark figures swarmed around him.
“We’ve got him! Commander!” someone called behind him, catching hold of the binders that still trapped his wrists. He jerked free, but there was nowhere left for him to go. He stood still, his exhausted body trembling, humiliating him. Someone stepped in front of him; he was blinded as another helmet light shone directly into his face. He swore, squinting; opened his eyes again as the light unexpectedly dimmed to a bearable level. Blinking his sight back, he tried to make out the face of Vhanu, BZ Gundhalinu’s right-hand man, the ass-kissing martinet Gundhalinu had stupidly made Commander of Police.
But it was a woman’s face he saw—middle-aged, cinnamon-skinned; New havenese, not even Kharemoughi. The Chief Inspector… PalaThion, that was her name. But they’d called her Commander. He peered at her, seeing that she was not wearing a Police uniform; realizing that the people surrounding her, and him, were all Tiamatan—the local constabulary, not the Blues. “Huh—” he said, half in confusion and half in disbelief. And then, like a mindless recording, he said, “I have to see the Queen.”
PalaThion’s eyes narrowed as she looked at his face, until she was almost frowning. “Who are you?”
“Reede Kullervo. I need to see the Queen.”
“Yes—” she whispered, but for a moment she wasn’t seeing him. “Thank you, gods!” she murmured. Uncertainty filled him as she looked at him again, at his pinioned hands. She turned away as the sound of running feet closed with them, and more lights joined their pool of illumination.
“You got him?” a voice demanded. He saw blue uniforms gathering in the light of the constables’ lanterns; recognized the voice of the sergeant who had been in charge of him.
“Don’t let them take me back,” he muttered, holding PalaThion’s gaze. “Don’t.”
She nodded, a barely perceptible movement of her head, before she stepped past him to face the Blues. Reede turned, squinting again as their lights picked him out inside the ring of constables. “This man is in our custody now. We have a prior claim on him.”
“He’s an offworlder,” the sergeant said. “He’s under our jurisdiction.”
“What’s he charged with?”
The sergeant hesitated. “He says he’s the Smith.”
“Do you have any proof of it?”
The Blue glanced at his men, back at her. “No. Not until we run an ID check on him. What does the Queen want him for?”
“He kidnapped the Queen’s daughter,” PalaThion said, her voice deadly. “He’s in our custody, and he stays with us. If Vhanu wants him, let Vhanu come to the palace, and discuss it with the Queen. Although I don’t expect he’ll get much cooperation, as long as we’re under martial law.”
The sergeant’s face twisted; Reede watched him assessing the situation, the fact that the Tiamatans outnumbered his own men. He must have left part of his patrol behind with Niburu and Ananke. Finally he jerked his head. “Keep him, then. And tell the Queen if she wants to talk about an end to martial law, she’d damn well better turn the lights back on!” He gestured at the others; they followed him away down the Street.
“Did the Queen really shut down the city?” Reede asked, when they had gone.
PalaThion shook her head. “But Vhanu’s ready to blame it on her. Are you really the Smith?”
Reede looked away. “I thought you worked for Vhanu,” he said, ignoring the question. “I thought you were Chief Inspector.”
She shook her head again. “I worked for Gundhalinu. But he’s gone.”
“I know,” Reede murmured. “I know.” He felt a sudden wave of nausea hit him, and realized that he was shivering again, as if it were cold. It was not cold. “Shit!” He jerked his head. “Take me to the Queen, damn it, I don’t have much time!”
“Ease off, boy,” she said, putting a restraining hand on his pinioned arm. “We’ll get you there soon enough.”
He glared at her; pulled away from her grasp and started on up the hill at a jog trot, forcing them to follow.
At last they reached Street’s End, the plaza before the palace entrance. Its white alabaster expanse was ringed with lanterns. PalaThion took the lead now, speaking to the guards who stood as they always did near the heavy doors. The doors opened to let them pass, and Reede entered the Summer Queen’s palace for the first time. He followed PalaThion down a long, echoing corridor, his eyes disturbed by the dance of light around him, the glimpses of painted pastoral scenes—green hills, water and sky, illuminated by the restless motion of lantern beams.
Up ahead the hall finally ended, opening out into a vast, high chamber. The air smelled suddenly, surprisingly, of the sea. Far above him were more windows like the storm walls at the end of every alley along the Street. But these were shut, unlike all the rest. Beyond the windows the night sky burned with the light of a million stars.
Reede looked down again, seeing another cluster of lights across the chamber. Someone was waiting there. “It’s the Queen,” PalaThion murmured.
But between the Queen and where he stood, there was something else … a strand of darkness arcing across a well of eerily glowing green light. Reede moved past PalaThion, starting toward it with a sense of premonition, a sudden urgency.
“Kullervo!” PalaThion called sharply, catching hold of his arm. “Wait a minute, that’s the Pit. You can’t cross this room in the dark; there’s no floor.”
“It isn’t dark,” Reede murmured.
“It’s pitch black,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“Let me go.” He jerked against her hold, starting forward again. “I see perfectly. I have to go there …”
She released him, wordlessly; he saw the look in her eyes. She doesn’t see it. He felt his skin prickle with sudden terror, felt his entrails knot up inside him. But he went on, alone, drawn toward the glow like an insect, helplessly, instinctively. He reached the spot where the railless span bridged the Pit, and stopped again. Now, here, at last, all his questions would be answered… . He had finally come to the place where he had been meant to be.
He held his breath as compulsion locked his muscles and forced him to step out onto the bridge, over the well of bottomless light. He was dimly aware that PalaThion had followed him, but was keeping her distance. He took another step, trembling with awe and fear, feeling the green light reach up to caress him like a lover, engulfing his senses in the most beautiful music, the sensation of silk and velvet, the smell of the ocean wind… . “No,” he whispered, like a child, as he went on into the light, “no, I don’t want to, I’m afraid …”as his consciousness dissolved into the sea of sensation and compulsion. He sank to his knees at the center of the bridge, as he sank deeper and deeper under its spell… .
Vanamoinen. It reverberated in his brain, a demand, an affirmation. Yes…. He was Vanamoinen, not the other, the receptacle of flesh and blood, the stranger who huddled on the span now in pathetic human misery. He remembered… how he had chosen this world, created this city, an ornate, incomprehensible jewel that would haunt humankind for generations after he was gone. They would preserve and protect it, because it was unique, never guessing that it existed to be the pin in the map, marking the secret place where lay his real girt to future generations: the databanks that preserved all that he could gather of human knowledge—the nexus of the sibyl mind, the mirror of his soul.