The Summer Queen (128 page)

And now he was back in business on Tiamat, and he was holding
Moon’s child, for a ransom nobody could even name. If she had stopped him then,
for good, this wouldn’t be happening. But she had failed, and she was powerless,
this time, to do anything at all about it. But there was still Kirard Set.

A woman in a slit-backed black gown was coming toward them,
wearing a black wig netted with silver, her face so ornately painted that it
was impossible to tell who she actually was. She was called Persipone’, and she
looked the same as she had twenty years ago—except that twenty years ago it had
been Tor Starhiker beneath the paint, fronting for the club’s real owner. But
the Summer Queen did not offer them protection from the Blues, and this was not
Tor Starhiker, only some anonymous hireling playing at hostess.

“Welcome, Chief Inspector. How may I serve you?” Persipone
smiled, her face glowing with eerie phosphorescence.

“Bring me Kirard Set Wayaways,” Jerusha said flatly.

Persipone nodded, pressing her hands together like a gesture
of worship, and disappeared into the depths of the club. Jerusha waited,
unmoving and unmoved; at her side, Clearwater whistled in awe as he watched the
action unfold around them. “I’ve been wasting my pay in the wrong places,” he
said.

After a few moments Jerusha saw someone coming purposefully
toward them; not Persipone, and not Wayaways. TerFauw. Her brain put a name to
him. He was the one who actually oversaw the club’s functions; one of the
Source’s lieutenants. He was Newhavenese, from her homework), though from the
look of him he hadn’t been back there in a long time either.

“What do you want here?” he said, without even the pretense
of civility.

“I want Kirard Set Wayaways,” she answered, looking up at
him. She was tall enough that she didn’t look up to meet a man’s eyes often,
but he was considerably taller, and massive. It made her feel uncomfortable,
vulnerable, especially when she considered that this was how most women were
forced to feel whenever they confronted a man.

“What makes you think I know where he is? He could be anywhere
on the Street,” TerFauw said, in thickly accented Tiamatan. He gestured away
into the crowd.

“His wife said he was here. On business.” She pointed back
the way TerFauw had come, toward the hidden rooms and secret activities she
knew lay behind him.

“He could be gone already.”

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “If he was, you’d say so. Bring
him out.”

TerFauw grunted. “Tell me why the Hedge wants him,” he said.

“Not the Hedge. The Queen. His own people.”

He pushed his twisted lip into an unpleasant smile. “Then
what does she want him for?”

“Take a guess,” Jerusha said.

He nodded, thoughtful. “That’s good enough.” He glanced over
his shoulder, lifting his hand. “Bring him out,” he said, speaking to the air.

As she watched, three men appeared out of a shadow-black
opening in the wall; the one in the middle was Wayaways, and he didn’t look
happy to be there. The others were armed; she couldn’t see their weapons, but
she read it in the way they moved.

“The Summer Queen wants to see you,” TerFauw said tonelessly,
as Wayaways and his escort joined them.

“The Queen—?” Wayaways broke off, and Jerusha saw the look
she had waited to see slowly forming on his face.

“Let’s go,” she said, smiling the smile she remembered.

“No—” He turned to TerFauw, grabbing him by the front of his
jerkin. “You can’t let them take me away! I’m one of you, for gods’ sakes! I’m
a stranger far from home, I’m a Brother, the Source promised me the Brotherhoo—”

TerFauw drove his fist into Wayaways’ stomach, as casually
as another man might have shaken hands, doubling him up. He gestured again, and
his two men dragged Wayaways upright. “You go to your Queen, Motherlover,” he
whispered, into the face of Wayaways’ stricken betrayal. “And you better beg
her not to let you come back here again. Ever.” His finger flicked Wayaways suddenly,
excruciatingly, in the eye; Wayaways shrieked, covering it with his hands.

Jerusha took a deep breath. She forced her hand to move away
from her own weapon and hang loose at her side, as TerFauw turned his back on
them and strode away. Wayaways’ guards followed him, wordlessly.

Jerusha waited until Wayaways’ screaming had subsided, until
his hands had dropped away from his streaming eye. “Come on,” she said, to his
colorless face and vacant stare. “Let’s go.”

He went with her, without protest.

“Your visitor is waiting, Gundhalinu-ken.”

“Thank you.” Gundhalinu moved past the guard through the
doorway to the visitor’s room. They addressed him as “Gundhalinu-ken” here,
because it was the only title he had which was not in limbo since his arrest.
The sibyl tattoo was clearly visible above the loose neck of his
detention-center coveralls, although they had taken away his trefoil: It could
be used as a weapon.

The room was small and brightly lit, with calm green walls
and a single table positioned at its center. There was carpeting under his feet
as he walked forward, there were pictures on the walls. And running across the
center of the room, through the middle of the table, there was an invisible
force barrier separating him from the woman who stood waiting at the other
side.

“Dhara—” he said. The full impact of all that had happened
to him in the past weeks hit him like a blow, leaving him dazed. He stopped,
staring back at her, at the child she held in her arms. He realized suddenly
that he had gone numb since his arrest; that he had been in a state of shock,
unable to face the reality of his situation or his reaction to it, until now.

“BZ?” she murmured, and he saw in her eyes the depths of uncertainty
that he remembered, always hiding beneath the surface of her bright calm when
she came near him. Her hesitation goaded him forward to take a seat at the
table, encouraging her to do the same.

She sat down across from him, conservatively dressed in a
long robe and slacks, her hair caught up with clips into graceful wings, the
way he had liked it best. She settled the baby on the table with a sackful of
toys; the baby reached eagerly for the bag, dumping out its contents. “Mine!”
he said.

BZ watched in fascination as the child sat among the toys
like someone who had just discovered treasure. The baby tried them on, twisted
them, banged them on the table surface, oblivious to the absurd and tender
smiles suddenly on the faces of the two people watching him at play.

“How do thou like thy son?” Pandhara said at last. She
reached out, stroking the little boy’s hair; he glanced up at her, distracted,
and offered her a bright, star-filled rattle. “BT Gundhalinu .... But it’s so
stuffy. I call him Little Bit,” she said. The baby looked up again, hearing his
name. “Big Little Bit ...” she said, touching the tip of his nose with her
finger. He smiled and put his own small, stubby-fingered hands up in the air. “So
big,” he said.

“He’s beautiful,” BZ murmured. “Even more beautiful than the
holos thou sent me. Gods, how he’s changed—”

“Babies do that,” she said, softly and a little sadly.

“And so do our fortunes,” he murmured, not meaning to.

She looked up at him, away again quickly.

“It’s not as if we didn’t know this could happen.”

She nodded, keeping his gaze this time. “He has thy eyes.”

BZ took a deep breath, remembering another boy with the same
eyes, half a galaxy away. “Yes,” he said “I think he does.”

She nudged the baby toward him across the table. “See,” she
whispered. “It’s thy father.” BZ leaned forward, reaching out until his hands
encountered the barrier The baby cocked his head, seeming to notice him for the
first time. He clung to his mother’s arm for a moment, peering reluctantly over
his shoulder. And then he smiled, his face filling with delight again. He held
out his own hands, until they met the invisible wall. He batted them against
the tingling surface, butted it with his head, trying to reach his father. BZ
pressed his own hands against the faintly yielding barrier, feeling joy and
longing fill his chest until he could scarcely breathe.

“Move away from the barrier.”

BZ jerked his hands away as a mild shock stung them. The
baby fell back, wailing; Pandhara scooped him up in her arms, comforting him.

“There was no need for that!” BZ pushed up out of his seat furiously,
shouting at the walls. He sat back down again, answered only by the echo of his
own voice, mocking him.

Pandhara stared at him as the baby quieted. “Are we being
monitored?” she asked incredulously, her eyes dark with impotent anger. “They
said we would have privacy—”

“It was probably just an automatic response,” he said, not
at all certain that it had been. He watched the baby turn in her arms,
struggling to get free, reaching out to him, calling, “Ba! Ba!” His hands rose;
he lowered them, clenching them into fists below the table’s edge. Pandhara
picked up a ball filled with colored lights and waved it in front of the baby;
he took it in his arms, biting it, and settled reluctantly into her lap. “How ...
how are things at the estates?”

“Fine,” she said, her voice strained. “Truly. Everything is
fine.”

“And how is thy work? Has BT let thee get anything done
since his birth?”

She smiled. “Well ... less. But I asked Ochi—my youngest sister,
thou remember her—to stay with us while she completes her study course. She
watches him part days while I work. He would be into everything otherwise,
wouldn’t thou, my Little Bit—?” She looked down at him. He held up the ball. “Pretty
ball,” she said.

“Pitty baw,” he echoed, and nodded.

“And how has thy social life been?” BZ asked, not quite casually.
“I nope thou’ve been able to see thy friends, and not felt too ... isolated
there.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “No,” she said finally,
“I’m not lonely. My friends come often, someone is almost always there; they
love the beauty of the place as much as I do.” She glanced down. “I see
Therenan Jumilhac quite often these days ... thou met him that afternoon at the
cafe .... BT adores him, he’s very good with children.”

“I’m glad,” BZ said, and smiled.

She looked up again. “BZ, I wanted to come sooner. I tried.
They wouldn’t even let me see thee, until KR Aspundh intervened, somehow. He
sends thou his highest regards, and regrets that he could not come with us. His
health is poor right now, and he isn’t permitted to leave the surface. He said
to tell thee that he is doing all he can to help thy cause, that he knows these
charges are unjust.”

“Tell him I’m grateful, and wish him a swift recovery.” BZ
nodded and smiled. “My attorneys tell me that the Central Committee is trying to
suppress what happened on Tiamat, calling it a matter of Hegemonic Security, in
order to keep my side of it from the people. They can’t afford to let me have
any kind of access to the public record. But Pernatte himself sent assurances
that when my trial comes up there will be Hegemony-wide media coverage. He’s
the head of the Secretariat, and he’s always been one of my strongest
supporters.”

Pandhara opened her mouth; closed it again, with an odd
frown working the muscles of her face. “I don’t even know, myself, what
happened on Tiamat, BZ. They would not even tell me what thou had been charged
with.”

He felt his own mouth tighten. “With treason. ‘Secretly working
to undermine the Hegemony’s security.’”

Pandhara looked stunned—exactly the way he had looked, when
he had heard the full charges. “But that carries a sentence of life
imprisonment, if thou’re found guilty.”

Without reprieve. He nodded, glancing away. “At least I’ll
still be alive; we’re civilized, after all .... And it’s not like I’ll be sent
to the Cinder Camps. Wherever I am, I’ll be able to work to change their minds.
They won’t send me anywhere too unpleasant,” he repeated, trying to reassure
her. “They owe me that much.” He forced himself to smile, and shrug. “Let’s
take it as it comes, Dhara. I haven’t even been tried yet. If I make my case
well enough, I’ll be exonerated.”

The stricken look did not leave her face; but she nodded, controlling
herself with a visible effort “How did it happen, BZ? Who brought the charges?”

“It was Vhanu,” he said.

“Vhanu?” She leaned forward in disbelief; the baby squeaked,
and dropped his ball. She reached down to pick it up, and he knocked it out of
her hands. She handed him a flutterstick, her eyes still on her husband. “But
Vhanu was like a brother to ... to thee ....” She broke off, biting her lip.

“Yes,” BZ whispered. “Like a brother.” He shook his head. “From
the day we arrived on Tiamat—long before that, really, but I didn’t want to
believe it—we didn’t agree on anything about the way the Hegemony should be
running things. 1 should have seen it coming ... but I couldn’t afford to. The
irony is that the real problem wasn’t even the one I thought I was going there
to deal with. That was no problem at all, in the end. Instead it was the water
of life .... Gods.” He leaned back in his chair, drained. “It can’t have been
meant to happen like this.”

“And what about the Queen?” Pandhara asked, her voice betraying
only the slightest hesitation. “Was she involved in what happened?”

He looked up, to see both regret and understanding fill her
eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Our—relationship was the thing that turned the situation
critical.” He looked down again, remembering the humiliation of his arrest, of
being dragged from Moon’s bed in the middle of the night and taken away. He
forced the memory out of his thoughts. “Dhara, I ... I have two children on
Tiamat, too. Moon was pregnant, when I left there before. I didn’t know it.
They were grown, by the time I got back.” He looked at the child in her arms,
beyond his reach, and was filled with a vast, aching emptiness. He sat very
still, afraid that any motion would make him lose control. He could not afford
to do that to her now, or to himself. He could not, he could not ....