He stiffened; his hand dropped away, giving her all the answer she needed. But he took a deep breath, and nodded. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t she ever tell me?” The words burst out with more force than she had intended. “Why did she lie to me, why did she pretend that she had a different mother, and Gran, and—”
“She didn’t lie,” Sparks answered, with quiet insistence. “Everything she s always told you was true. She just didn’t tell you all of it, the whole truth.” He sighed, his eyes growing distant. “She didn’t even know it herself, all those years She couldn’t have explained it to you, when you were little. But you shouldn’t have had to hear it from someone else.” He lifted her chin gently with his fingertips “What else do you need to know, An? I’ll tell you anything I can.”
“Were you Arienrhod’s lover?” She flung the question at him, before she lost her nerve.
He flinched, and forced himself to keep looking at her. “Yes,” he whispered His hands clenched silently on the silver leather surface of the couch. Ariele stared at his whitened knuckles, feeling her own hands tighten like two creatures locked in a death struggle.
“And you drank the water of life with her.”
“Yes.” The word was barely audible.
“Is that why … why seeing the mers always makes you unhappy?”
He nodded; but he looked away, as if there was something in his eyes that he didn’t want her to see. “Who’s been telling you all this—” His voice was rough
“Elco’s father.”
“Kirard Set?” His head came up again; his graygreen eyes were suddenly as bright as emeralds, and as hard. “What … what else did he say?”
“That—” Ariele nearly broke off, seeing the stark pain in her father’s face. “That Mama loved another man too. An offworlder. And maybe… maybe you’re not really even our Da.”
He put his arms out and pulled her to him, held her close, cradling her head against his chest, so that she could no longer see his expression, and he couldn’t see hers. She felt a tremor of anger run through him. But this time he did not answer her
Tammis stopped in the quiet alley in front of Merovy’s townhouse, glancing toward the alley-end, where the smoldering night waited beyond the storm wall’ forever held at bay. Merovy followed his gaze; looked back at him uncertainly. “P° you want to come in and … and talk?” He had not spoken more than two words to her on the way to her door.
He kissed her suddenly instead of answering her, pulling her against him with gentle insistence. She kissed him back, with no uncertainty now, wanning him with her warmth. They had kissed before, often enough, experimenting. But it had never made him feel the way it suddenly did now, her closeness somehow caught in the treacherous tangle of his emotions—the feel of her mouth on his, willing but uncertain, her body against him, the memory of the feel of Elco Teel’s mouth and body, all too knowing; the images of his father and his mother, naked with strangers. He had always imagined that the way he was with Merovy, loving her almost since he could remember, had been the way it was for them; but now he wasn’t sure, wasn’t even sure …
He broke off his kiss, letting go of Merovy almost roughly, pushing her back against the wall in the shadow of an overhanging balcony. She blinked her eyes, looking startled and then almost relieved. “Good night, Tammis …”she whispered, groping for the door handle behind her. She opened the door, and went inside. Tammis stood staring at the closed door for a long moment. Then he turned and headed back down the alley, pressing his fingers to his mouth.
He walked the whole distance home, needing time to gather his thoughts, needing to walk off the emotions that filled him with a dark heat, like poison. He had tried once to ask his father about the new feelings stirring so urgently inside him; about his confusion, when they were stirred as easily by the sight of a boy’s body as by a girl’s But when he had tried to talk about his sexual feelings openly and honestly, his father had lectured him on the ways of the Summer islands, giving him definitions of what was acceptable that he knew from watching his city friends were impossibly rigid. When he had tried to ask if there couldn’t be something more, his father had become furious, and ended the conversation.
He had brooded over it, sure that he had failed to understand something his parents had always found obvious. He had told himself that the casual, indiscriminate sex he saw occurring more and more among his Winter acquaintances only mirrored the emptiness of their minds and the aimlessness of their spoiled existence.
He still believed that, in his heart. And yet, tonight Kirard Set Wayaways had told him that everything he knew was wrong… .
He reached the palace at last, and went directly to his father’s study. He looked in at the door and saw his father alone, sitting on the edge of the silver-gray couch, with his head in his hands, his face buried—sitting as still as stone. Tammis watched him silently for a long moment; and then he turned away and went on down the hall.
He found his mother at work with Jerusha PalaThion in another room. They looked up together as he hesitated in the doorway. “Tammis—” she said, with surprise plain on her face. He saw her glance away at the time, and back at him; saw Jerusha’s gaze measure his expression.
Jerusha finished the mug of whatever she had been drinking, and got to her feet. “Ididn’t realize it was so late. We can try this again tomorrow. Maybe something will come to me in my dreams. …” She smiled, weary and wry.
His mother nodded, and looked back at him. Tammis could see the dark fatigue-circles under her eyes, as vivid as bruises against her pale skin. Jerusha went past him, still smiling as she looked at him and said, “Good night.” But he knew why she was leaving so abruptly—giving him privacy, for whatever he had to say.
“Tammis—?” Moon said again, her own face growing concerned. She held out her hands to him.
He crossed the room and took them, felt her warm fingers squeeze his, the feel of her touch, somehow still as calm and soothing as her kiss on his forehead when he was a child. He sat on the table-edge beside her, careful not to dislodge a pile of anything.
“What have you been doing tonight?” she asked him, her voice mild; but he thought he saw a glimmer of doubt in her eyes. He had not disturbed her while she was working in years.
He shrugged. “We were at Elco Teel’s after the Shop closed. …”
“Did you see what happened to Capella Goodventure today?” Moon asked, half curious, half as though she wondered whether that was what was bothering him.
Tammis nodded. “Elco Teel said it couldn’t have happened to a better choice of victims.” He smiled, a little guiltily; saw his mother’s smile mirror his, equally guilty.
“I’ll never hear the end of it. But thank the Lady Tor saved her, or I’d never hear the end of that.” She shook her head and rubbed her eyes.
“I want to learn how to do that,” he said, “what Tor did, I mean Everyone thought it was like doing magic.” His mother’s smile widened, and she nodded.
He pushed up off the edge of the table again, feeling his resolution falter. “I just wanted to say good night… .” He glanced away as he said it, not able to face her as he spoke the words.
“Nothing else?” His mother’s voice caught at him like an outstretched hand, making him turn back.
He looked at her, seeing her doubled in his mind: his mother … the Snow Queen. “We were at Elco Teel’s, and …” And he told her, all of it, even about the offworlder Police inspector; unable to make himself meet her eyes when he repeated it … afraid of what he might find there. She listened, holding herself as tightly as if she held something that wanted to run away; scarcely interrupting. He saw her whitening with anger, but knew, from her hand on his and the cold distance in her eyes, that her anger was not directed at him. “Why do you think Kirard Set told you all this?” she asked at last, her voice strained.