Tor shrugged. “Actually, I think I went into business with him because I thought he was so creative in bed.” She laughed. Shotwyn Crestrider belonged to one of the Winter clans that had gotten rich from the offworlder trade, probably from the hunting of mers along their plantation coastline. Like all the rest, he’d been scrambling for a way to hold on to the past in the upside-down world after the Change. Her own restlessness had collided with his when she met him one day at the Sibyl College. He had been intrigued by her history as front-woman for an offworlder gaming hell; she had been intrigued by the seemingly endless variations on the theme of a man and a woman that he had picked up at the Snow Queen’s court.
She had also been impressed by his other hobby—imitating the styles of various offworld cuisines, using available native foods. Together they had opened a restaurant catering to nostalgic Winters whose sophisticated tastes had few available outlets left. He had provided the money and the artistry; she had provided the business sense—managing the restaurant, arranging with growers to raise whatever exotic herbs and spices they could reconstitute. She had even gotten Fate to let her use the Transfer to find new ways of creating certain dishes, as Shotwyn’s own lifetime supplies of favorite seasonings were depleted. The result had been a perfect marriage of skills, if not personalities.
“Now I know what they mean by ‘cookin’ lasts, kissin’ don’t.’ ” She sighed. “I still like his cooking—and so does everybody else; the place is doing great business He’s got more ways to make fish taste and feel like something else than I ever thought possible, I’ll give him that. But I was a deckhand for too long before I ran Persipone’s, I guess; I never realized how much of the food I ate was ‘native cuisine.’ … I just thought it was food, plain and simple, and that’s how I liked it That’s still how I like it best. Shotwyn says I’m mired in the mentality of the underclass. Mired! How do you like that one? … Tram stop.” She pulled Fate to a stop, raising her hand as the tram moved slowly toward them up the street.
Fate chuckled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, myself,” The tram pulled in and they got on board.
“Damn right.” Tor settled Fate and then herself on a length of wooden seat vacated respectfully by a pair of Summers. “But what the hell, the restaurant gives me something to do with my nights, now that Shotwyn doesn’t. I mean, not that we never … sometimes we still get an itch, you know—”
Fate smiled. “I think I have some idea, yes.”
Tor looked away from the Lower City’s warehouses and stalls as they began to fade into the shops of the lower Maze. She looked back at Fate again. “Fate … you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“No—ask me anything.”
“Why is it that you never … well, you know, with anybody? All these years I’ve known you, and there’s never been anybody in your life that seemed to be special, even for a while.”
“Ah. That. Well, I was a sibyl long before I met you. And because the offworlders made everyone in the city believe sibyls were diseased lunatics, I couldn’t tell anyone, or I would have been cast out—and half-blind as I was, even with my vision enhancer, 1 was terrified of that. And I was terrified of accidentally infecting someone, if we were that intimate , . . even though 1 was never sure how much truth there was in all the lies.”
“How did you ever even become a sibyl?” Fate had existed, under her nose and everyone else’s, for decades—the only sibyl in Carbuncle.
Fate sighed, folding her hands in the lap of her velvet skirt. “I was not quite twenty-two years old. It was the first Festival after the one when I was conceived, and my family being maskmakers, we had been working on masks for this Festival’s Mask Night since I was a child. One day someone came to my shop. He wasn’t a Summer, although he claimed that he was, that he had just come to the city for the Festival. … He said that he was interested in my masks, and how I made them. He began to come by my shop every day. He’d sit and visit, and help me sort beads. I remember how I began to look forward to his visits, how I began to feel like a bird in flight whenever I heard his voice, or he touched me… . We spent the entire Festival-time together. And by the Mask Night, I was his chosen. In the darkness, I couldn’t see his tattoo. I let him make love to me … and he infected me.”
Tor shuddered involuntarily, with a Winter’s conditioned horror of contamination by a sibyl. She kept her hand steady on Fate’s arm, somehow; hoping Fate would not sense her response.
“He begged me to forgive him, afterwards … he claimed it was an accident. But he didn’t speak or act like a true Summer. I think now that he was something else—from somewhere else. That he knew the truth about the sibyl network, that they needed someone, a fixed data port here in the city. That he knew exactly what he was going to do to me …” She turned her face away, as though she could see the expression on Tor’s face, or could not be sure what showed on her own.
“He stayed with me awhile; he taught me how to control the Transfer, just enough so that I could get by. Not the whole truth. And then he left me. He said the! he had to go back to Summer before someone discovered what he was. He left me there alone, with my terrible secret, and my masks. And I created a kind of mask for myself, from that day on, pretending that I was not infected. But I was always afraid after that, of … physical contact. Of betraying someone else, or being betrayed.”
Tor shook her head. “That bastard—” Her fists knotted; she took a deep breath, letting go of her useless anger. “But what about now?” She looked back at Fate, with the ache still deep in her chest. “You know the truth about what you are, and Winters don’t hate sibyls anymore. You know how to protect yourself … or a lover. You could—”
“No.” Fate shook her head. “I’ve lived alone for so long, too long by now. I’ve grown to cherish my solitude. I’m not lonely, I’m not sad, my days are full of useful work and good friendships.” She smiled in Tor’s direction. “I’m content as I am.”
Tor grunted. “Maybe you’ve got a point. I can’t say the same about myself. …” They had reached the middle of the Maze, near the Sibyl College. “Do you want to stop off and see … uh, visit the Shop?” she asked, suddenly regretting the thought of their pleasant lunch ending so soon. Fate was far too punctual for her own good.
“Oh … All right.” Fate nodded, looking pleased at the thought. “I haven’t been there for quite a while.” She didn’t have to ask which Shop; there was only one that they spoke of that way. It had been one of Jerusha PalaThion’s ideas for making their new technological creations more accessible: a block of former warehouses where there were displays and demonstrations and free samples available for whoever was willing to try something new.
They left the tram at the entrance to Azure Alley, where the Shop was located, and made their way through the curiosity seekers to its open-fronted sprawl of stores filled with new or recently salvaged equipment.
“Tor, is that juice seller still across the street?” Fate asked, lifting her head “I think I smell their fruit—”
“Yeah. Do you want me to get you something?”
“A large cup of the roseberry juice would be wonderful. Suddenly I’m dying of thirst.”
“Too much salt in the stew,” Tor said, guiding her to a pillar where she could stand comfortably and wait. “I’ll be right back.”
Tor crossed the alley, noticing with satisfaction that there appeared to be a reasonable mix of Winters and Summers in the crowd Once they’d gotten past the new idea of a Change that really meant something, the Summers—especially the younger ones—had slowly come around to other new ways of doing things Not even Summers really liked to go on stirring the seahair paddies by wading through freezing water on stilts, when a simple ng of wind-powered paddles would do it for them, and leave them free to go out in their fishing boats with lightweight, ultra-strong nets that would let them bring in twice their usual catch.