“Ariele too?”
“Yes, Ariele too.”
“I want to help.” He gave a small hop, hanging on her hand.
“I know.” She nodded, looking down.
“Are you happy, Mama?”
She looked back at him, realizing with sudden pain that it was a question which was almost meaningless to her. But it was not meaningless to him, and so she smiled at him, a real smile, filled with the same unquestioning love that she found in his eyes. “Yes, I am. When I’m with you and Ariele.”
“And Da?”
“Yes, and Da.” She hugged him against her side, looking away again. The Winter staff who took care of the palace and its occupants hovered discreetly at the corners of her vision, waiting for some sign of interest or some command from her as she moved through one vast, purposeless room after another. Their presence still made her uncomfortable, after so many years. She had been born into a world where everyone took care of their own needs, and few people had more possessions, or space in which to keep them, than they could easily use.
Arienrhod’s palace—it would never seem like her palace—would have covered a small island in the Windwards, and every room of it was filled with strange and exotic gleanings from all over the Hegemony: the furniture, rugs, and hangings, the exotic playthings and ornaments, glittered everywhere like bizarre deepwater stormwrack.
She had changed scarcely anything of what she had found here, telling herself that she wanted everything for study, just as she wanted whatever other artifacts of the offworlders had survived their leaving. But in the secret places of her soul she knew that she had not touched them because she was afraid of them, afraid of violating the memory of Arienrhod….
Over the years she had grown used to seeing Arienrhod’s possessions, just as she had grown inured to the uncertain, overeager attentions of the palace staff; although every time she found herself growing too comfortable with them she felt as if she were startling awake out of a bad dream.
A man in the uniform of a city constable approached deferentially. “Lady,” he murmured, bobbing his head. “Commander—” He turned to Jerusha, addressing her by her old title, which had become her new title by default. “The daywatch sergeant asked me to report that a person carrying a concealed knife was arrested trying to enter the palace without—”
“Not here, damn it!” Jerusha whispered sharply, as Moon froze beside her. She gestured him away, leaving their presence with a brusque, apologetic nod.
“What was that, Mama?” Tammis asked, his face filling with concern as he saw. his mother’s worried frown. “Is somebody going to hurt us?”
“No, treasure.” she murmured, stroking his head, hugging him against her. “No, of course not. …” She led him on across the hall to the wide, curving stairs, where Anele was waiting to hurry them upward to Gran.
Jerusha watched the Queen and her children go with a rush of sudden emotion that was almost a physical pain. She turned back to the constable, her own expression settling into anger. “By all the gods, Shellwaters—don’t you have sense enough to keep your mouth shut in front of a child, even if you don’t have the sense to keep it shut in front of the Queen?”
He grimaced and looked down. “I’m sorry. Commander, I—” “Forget it.” She shook her head, getting herself under control. “Just remember it next time”
“Yes, Commander.” He looked up again, relieved; she felt an odd relief of her own as his neutral gaze met hers. He was Tiamatan, which meant that he didn’t mind serving a woman; and he was a Winter, which meant that he didn’t mind serving an offworlder. At least when she was doing her job she felt less like an alien here than she had in her old life. “You say they got the man—or was it a woman?”
“Yes, Commander. A woman … a Summer. She claims she heard the Sea Mother’s voice telling her to drive out the impostor pretending to be Queen.” He made a disgusted face; something in his voice said that it was no more than could be expected of a Summer. “We have her in detention.”
“All right. Good. Give me a full report tomorrow. And for gods’ sakes, try to keep the gossip down.”
He nodded, and made what passed for a salute among the locals. She watched him go out of the room. A handful of the palace staff watched him go as well; she knew they were already spreading rumors among themselves. It was an irony that was no more lost on her than it was on the Queen that the Winters of Carbuncle were more loyal than the Summer clans were to Moon Dawntreader. Jerusha tried to spare Moon and her family the awareness of just how many rigid, narrow-minded religious fanatics there were among her people; but she knew in her heart that the task was futile. Moon knew it as well as she did. She hears voices telling her the Sea Mother wants her to kill the Queen…. Jerusha shook her head. What the hell was the matter with some people—? But then, she remembered that Moon Dawntreader claimed to hear voices that told her to defy her own traditions and change her world….
Jerusha sighed, looking back at the stairway, where Moon and her two children had disappeared into the shadowed upper levels. She felt the mixed emotions hit her again, as she thought of something happening to those children. The sudden, gut-wrenching fear of loss stabbed like an assassin’s knife. She loved those children as if they were her own; and if her latest pregnancy ended like the others, they might be as close to her own children as she would ever come…. But no, she would not let herself think about that. This time everything would go all right—
If she had left Tiamat at the Change, she could have gotten help; but then, she would not have had Miroe, would not have had any reason to want a child. She would not even have had any reason to go on fighting a system that had never shown her anything but contempt when she tried to lead a full life, the kind any man of her people was free to lead. On Newhaven she had been expected to act like a woman—marry and raise children, but live subservient to her husband forever. Here, on Tiamat. she had thought that at last she’d found her chance to live as a complete human being. But when it was too late to change her mind, fate had played its final trick on her. She had not even told anyone that she was pregnant, this time—afraid that making it real would make her vulnerable.
She started toward the door, trying to shake off the creeping melancholy of her thoughts; knowing they would follow her home, to the empty apartment waiting for her down in Carbuncle’s Maze. She would call Miroe, and for a while his voice would fill the silence and drown out her fears. He spent most of his time away from the city, overseeing the plantation, experimenting with the new technology the sibyls and the Winters were creating daily … avoiding Carbuncle. Not avoiding her. She repeated it to herself again, less and less sure that she believed it, any more than she still believed that remaining on Tiamat had been anything but an act of desperation.
Moon entered the room, at first seeing only the unexpected brightness of the sunset sky through the oval window that filled most of the far wall. Blinking, she found the silhouette of her grandmother’s face; blinking again, she filled in its features as her grandmother turned toward her. “Gran—” she murmured, and stopped. How did you get so old?
Her memory of her grandmother had not prepared her for this stooped, wrinkled woman, this old woman with snow-white hair and skin so transparent that every vein seemed visible. The woman she remembered had gray hair, her face had been lined by time and weather; but she had been strong and vital and full of life, as she watched over two growing children—who had once been Moon herself and Sparks, her orphaned cousin—while Moon’s mother went out with the fishing fleet…. It had only been eight years.