She looked up again as a clamor reached her from somewhere up the ramp. She squinted past the crate in her arms, seeing what appeared to be two men arguing with the constables Jerusha had set to question whoever came this way. One of the arguing figures was an old man, the other younger, but painfully stooped. Danaquil Lu. And as the voices reached her clearly, she recognized the unmistakable bellowing of Borah Clearwater. “Jerusha,” she called over the side of the ship, and pointed with her chin toward their argument. Jerusha nodded and started away.
“Lady … ?” someone murmured behind her. She turned back, looking into the face of a tall, brown-haired woman. “I have a question.”
Moon set down the crate she was holding, and nodded. “Ask, and I will answer Input.…” From the corner of her eye she saw Sparks stop his work and move toward her with protective concern as the woman’s voice filled her ears, her mind, and she began the abrupt fall away into darkness.
“… No further analysis.” She came back into herself again, and sat down on the crate as a brief wave of dizziness caught her. Sparks put his hands on her shoulders, rubbing them gently. She felt the eyes of the other deckhands and sailors watching her, watching her differently now.
“Thank you, sibyl,” the woman murmured, smiling and bobbing her head as she backed away. Moon saw two or three others beginning to cluster near her; knew that they would be the next to come forward with questions.
“Well, what am I supposed to make of this?” A man’s voice—Borah Clearwater’s voice—carried sharply and clearly up to her.
She pushed to her feet and went to the small trimaran’s rail, peered over it. “Make of what, Borah Clearwater?” she said, to his turned back.
He jerked around, away from Jerusha’s annoyed expression, to look up at her. He looked blank for a moment, seeing only a plainly dressed island woman with her hair in braids, and not the Summer Queen, answering him. His frown deepened as he recognized her. “If you think you can change my opinion about anything by doing an honest day’s work, you’re wrong.”
Moon laughed, wondering if he actually believed she was here because she was trying to impress him. She felt Spark’s impatience like heat as he came up beside her.
“I’m sorry to intrude like this, Lady,” Danaquil Lu said, edging his uncle aside with an effort. “But my uncle has been … wishing to speak to you about the—uh, right-of-way you granted to our kinsman Kirard Set Wayaways.” From Danaquil Lu’s chagrin and air of resignation, she guessed that Clearwater had not let him rest until he had agreed to speak to her.
She smiled at him, a brief, reassuring smile, before she looked at Borah Clearwater. Leaning on the rail, she met his stare with a calm centeredness that would have been impossible two days ago—two hours ago. “So you think I arranged this for your benefit, Borah Clearwater? Just as you seem to think I granted that right of-way to spite you?”
Clearwater snorted, but for just a moment he didn’t answer. “Who knows why you do anything? Rot me, this makes as much sense as the other!”
“And who do you think you are,” Gran’s voice interrupted suddenly, “to come here and speak to the Lady in that tone of voice?”
He turned back to look at her as she stood up, putting aside the net she had been mending. “I think I have more business speaking to her than you have speaking to me,” he grunted.
Danaquil Lu rolled his eyes. “Uncle—” he murmured, pulling at the older man’s shoulder.
“She’s my granddaughter, if you must know,” Gran said irritably. “It was my suggestion that she come here and be among her own people and her own ways for a while. She has the grace to respect her elders. Show her the respect she deserves from a Summer, or you might as well be a Winter!”
He glared at her. “I am a Winter, as it happens. But if she acted more like a Summer, and left things well enough alone, I’d be happier to respect her judgment.”
“A Winter!” Gran looked him up and down dubiously.
“We aren’t all perfumed sissies,” he snapped.
Moon looked on, silent with surprise as Gran came to her defense, suddenly and deeply moved by her grandmother’s protectiveness. Danaquil Lu stood beside Jerusha, looking bemused. “But as to the matter of the right-of-way across your lands, Borah Clearwater,” she interrupted, “why is that such a problem tor you, really? It won’t interfere with your crops or your fishing rights. You’re going to be paid very well for the use of such a tiny strip of your ground. Is it simply the principle of the thing? Or is it because you hate change that much—because you hate me, and my new ideas?”
He snorted again, his mustache bristling. “I’m not fond of you, Moon Dawntreader. I’ve made that plain enough, and i’m honest enough to admit it to your face, unlike some. But it’s my kinsman Kirard Set Wayaways that I hate. He’s buying out the holdings all around mine for their mineral rights, for development and building factories. There’s metal ores all over my plantation. He wants me to sell out too, but since I won’t he’s made you give him a toehold on my land. Now that he has that much from you, he’s going to keep pushing until he gets it all. Goddammit, you’ve made him believe it’s possible, and now he’ll never rest. The whole Wayaways clan is a spot of gangrene, you ask me—excepting young Dana here, he’s probably crazy but he’s all right. They ought to be cut out, dammit, not encouraged to spread!”
“I hear what you’re saying, Borah Clearwater,” Moon said gently. “Kirard Set Wayaways is one of the most motivated and effective people I have working with me to develop Tiamat. But I don’t intend to do him any favors at anyone else’s expense. You’ve registered your complaint with me. I won’t forget it.”
Clearwater grunted. “Not until you run short of ores, at least, and I refuse again to let him stripmine my fields.”
Moon frowned. “I want to make Tiamat a better place for our people to live. I don’t intend to destroy it in the process. No one will force you off your traditional lands against your will. I’ve given you my word. You’ll have to trust it. That’s all.” She turned away from the rail, not listening to his continued complaint or even the sharpness of her grandmother’s voice, at him again for questioning the word of a sibyl, of her grandchild. Moon looked back at the curious stares of the gathered sailors. Slowly another of them started forward with a question.
She answered his question and half a dozen more, before she looked up at last and found no one else waiting. Drained but satisfied, she rose from her seat among the crates and started back to work.
But Sparks took her arm, smiling, and led her to the rail, nodding down at the pier. She started as she saw Borah Clearwater still there, still talking to her grandmother—but sitting beside her now, mending net; speaking agitatedly, but in a tone of voice so normal that Moon could not make out the words through the clangor and shouting of the docks. Jerusha glanced up from where she sat with ill-concealed restlessness, saw where they were looking; smiled and shrugged, shaking her head. Moon went back to work, smiling too, filled with sudden gratitude and surprise at the Unexpected rewards of this day; feeling a brief pang as she looked out to sea and did not know where to direct her prayer of thanks.
She heard a sudden paincry, and the clatter of something dropping on the pier below. She went back to the ship’s rail, saw Jerusha on her hands and knees on the salt-bleached wood, her rifle lying beside her. Moon climbed over the rail, landing on the dock, as Gran and Borah Clearwater pushed to their feel in consternation, as constables came running. Moon saw with sudden bright grief the red stain of blood spreading down Jerusha’s pantslegs. “Sparks!” she cried. She fell to her knees, taking hold of Jerusha as the other woman tned to rise, holding her, holding her tightly; feeling the pain that convulsed Jerusha’s body as if it were her own; remembering the pain of birth, the pain that had come to Jerusha PalaThion too soon, much too soon. “Find Miroe. Hurry—!”