The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  Ravien made a noise like clearing out phlegm. “Wonderful,” he said sourly. “I could do ten times the business, if I didn’t have to be so careful. The bribes I pay would astound you, and still they raid me! But they’d close me down completely if I didn’t pay them. At least they’ve left me alone these past few weeks.…” He threw up his hands and stumped away, still muttering.

  Kedalion shook his head, even though Ravien was no longer there to see the gesture, and went on drinking, searching the crowd for a familiar face. He’d take a few days off and then it would be time to start hustling for another job. It wasn’t that he’d need the money that soon; more that he’d need to get away from here. This world depressed him too much, reminding him more acutely than even Kharemough of how uncomfortable human beings invariably made one another.

  The sound of tinkling bells and the heavy fragrance of perfume made him turn in his seat, as one of the entertainers insinuated herself against the bar beside him. “Ah,” she said, running slender ebony fingers through his close-cropped brown hair. “Hello, Kedalion. Have you missed me? I’ve missed you.” She let the fingers trickle like water down the side of his jaw.

  “Then it’s certainly mutual,” he said, feeling a grin spread across his face.

  She laughed. “I love you lightskins, the way you blush,” she said. Her name was Shalfaz, which was the name of the desert wind in the local dialect. She wasn’t young anymore, but she could still haunt a man’s dreams like the wind. Her body made music with every slightest movement, from the necklaces, bracelets, anklets she wore, heavy with the traditional clattering bangles and silver bells. She did not go veiled, since her occupation, though traditional, was hardly respectable, and her robes were of thinnest gauze, in brilliant layers like petals on a flower. “My room is empty—” she said. Her indigo eyes gazed meaningfully into his own light blue ones.

  He scratched his stubbled jaw, still smiling. “Yes,” he said, and nodded, answering her unspoken question. “But have a drink with me first; it’s the first time Ravien has given me liquor I minded leaving. Let me savor the anticipation a little.”

  She nodded and smiled too, bobbing her head in what was almost an obeisance. She sat down. “You honor me,” she murmured, as she saw what he was drinking.

  “On the contrary,” he said, feeling uncomfortable as he realized she meant that.

  She sipped the amber liquor and sighed, closing her eyes. She opened them again, looking out across the room. “What a strange night it has been,” she said, almost as if she were thinking aloud. “It must be a mooncrossing night. See that boy there—” She lifted her hand. “He was with me just since. But all he did was talk. He didn’t even take off his clothes. He asked me to show him how I did some of my moves in the dance, but it didn’t arouse him. He was very polite. But he just talked.” She shook her head. “He always comes in alone, not with friends. I think maybe he’s some kind of pervert, but he doesn’t know which.”

  “Maybe he misses his mother,” Kedalion said, following her gaze. “He’s only a kid.”

  She shrugged, jingling. “He said he wants to leave Ondinee. That’s why he comes in here, he said, to look for someone who would take him on for crew. He’s been here every night for a week.”

  “Oh?” Kedalion kept watching the boy, not certain why he did, at first. He saw a youth with Shalfaz’s midnight coloring, dressed in a loose robe and pantaloons of dark, bulky cloth. The boy’s long, straight, jet-black hair was pulled back in a ponytail; thin braids dangled in front of his ears. There was nothing about him that marked him as different from any of the dozen or so other local men scattered around the room—probably all hirelings of some drug boss, from their easy mingling with offworlders.

  Unease. That was what made the boy different; he looked uncomfortable. It was as if he was uncomfortable inside his skin, uncertain whether it was showing the right face to the universe, or about to betray him. It was a feeling Kedalion recognized instinctively.

  “Shalfaz,” Kedalion said, leaning back against the bar, “would you ask him to join us?”

  She turned to him, her eyebrows rising. “You wish to hire him?”

  “I wish to speak to him, anyway.” Kedalion shrugged, a little surprised himself. He was not impulsive by nature. “Maybe I wish to hire him. We’ll see.” He had had a partner when he started out, but they had gone their separate ways a while ago. Smuggling was a business that took its toll on the nerves, and after a while they had gotten on each other’s too much of the time. He had worked alone since then, but that had its own drawbacks, especially for a small man in a big man’s universe. He suddenly realized that he was tired; and he had never been a loner by nature.

  Shalfaz left his side in a soft cloud of silver music. He watched her make her way across the room to where the boy was sitting and speak to him, gesturing at Kedalion. The boy’s head came up, and he rose from his chair almost in one motion to follow her back to the bar.

  They had almost reached it when a hand shot out from a table full of local youths and caught Shalfaz’s clothing, jerking her up short. She tried to pull away without seeming to, and Kedalion could almost make out her murmured half-protests as she explained that her time was taken. The man’s answer was slurred and crude. The boy hesitated, looking toward Kedalion, and then turned back, speaking brusquely to the other Ondineans as he tried to take her hand. One of the men pushed him away. Kedalion watched the boy recover his balance with surprising grace, saw his fists tighten with anger. But he didn’t reach for the knife at his belt, only stood with his hands flexing in indecision as the drunken youth at the table pulled his own blade.

  Kedalion slid down from his stool and crossed the space between them. “My guests would like to join me at the bar,” he said flatly. “I’d appreciate it if you would let them do that.” He hooked his hands over his weapon belt … realized with a sudden unpleasant shock that it was empty, because noncitizens were not allowed to carry weapons in the city. He kept his face expressionless, needing all his trader’s skill to ignore the gleaming knifeblade almost exactly at eye level in front of him. “Shalfaz—?” he said, with a calm he did not feel.

  “You insult my manhood, runt.” The Ondinean with the knife jabbed it at Kedalion’s face, this time speaking the local tongue, not Trade. “Leave now, and keep your own—or stay, and lose it.”

  Kedalion backed up a step as more knives began to appear below the table edge, hidden from most eyes, but not from his. He knew enough about young toughs like these to realize that if he pushed it they’d kill him; but even if he backed off now there was no guarantee they’d let the matter drop. His hands tightened over his empty belt, and he said numbly, “Neither of those choices is acceptable,” answering in their own language. He wondered how in seven hells he had managed to get into such a stupid position so quickly. The wine must have been stronger than he thought.

  “Kedalion, please go,” Shalfaz said softly. “I will stay here.” She moved closer to the man who still held her arm, her body settling against him.

  “Slut!” He slapped her. “You don’t tell a man what to do. I choose, not you!” He shoved her away. She crashed, jingling, into the offworlder who had been leaning against the bar behind them, watching with casual amusement. The bottle the man had been holding fell and smashed, spraying them with liquor and bits of broken ceramic.

  Kedalion dodged back awkwardly as the local youth aimed a kick at him. And then his vision seemed to strobe as the man Shalfaz had collided with suddenly exploded past her.

  Before Kedalion could quite believe it was happening, the man with the knife was no longer a man with a knife—he was a man howling on the floor, and the offworlder’s foot was on his neck. “You want a fight—?” The curved, jewel-handled blade was in the stranger’s fist, and he was grinning at the fury still forming on the faces of the other men around the table. He flashed the knife at them. “Come and get it,” he said.

  Kedalion backed up another step. “He mu
st be mad,” Shalfaz whispered. Kedalion, who had caught a flashing look into the man’s eyes, didn’t answer. Slowly he began to edge away, taking Shalfaz and the boy with him.

  “Dopper shit,” one of the Ondineans said, “there are six of us, and one of you. Do you want to kiss the sole of my boot and beg our forgiveness? Or do you really want your guts cut out of you with that blade?”

  Kedalion glanced back, hesitating as he saw the offworlder’s smile grow thin and tight. “Sure,” the offworlder said, twisting the knife so that it caught the light. “Gut me. I’d enjoy that; that sounds good. Or maybe use it to peel my skin off a centimeter at a time.… But you still have to get this away from me first.” He leaned on the edge of their table, waving the blade at them, invading their space with fatal nonchalance. “Well—?”

  Their stares broke and fell away from the hunger in his eyes. They looked at each other, their bodies unconsciously shrinking back from him. “The Foreteller has shown us that it is unworthy to kill the insane,” another man muttered. The blades did not go back into sheaths, but the men began to get up slowly from the table.

  The offworlder snorted and stepped back, looking down at the man still sprawled on the floor. “You kiss my boot, you shit.” The bottom of his foot brushed the man’s lips in a not-quite-gentle caress. He shoved the man’s dagger into his own belt. “Then think twice about being an asshole in such a crowded room.”

  The Ondinean scrambled to his feet, spitting and wiping his mouth, and joined his friends. “You will die for this!” His voice shook. The others put restraining hands on him, because they were surrounded now by the club’s security. Ravien himself stood beside the offworlder, putting a cautionary hand on his shoulder. The stranger shrugged it off. But he only murmured, “Yes. Sooner or later…” looking back at them. “Sooner or later we all get what we deserve.”

  Kedalion joined Shalfaz and the boy at a table as far from the scene of the fight as possible, stopping only to collect his bottle from the bar. As he went he saw the club’s security herding the Ondineans toward the door. He noticed with some surprise that Ravien escorted the offworlder solicitously back to the bar instead of having him thrown out with the rest. Well, the man had lost a bottle. Or maybe Ravien didn’t want his private entrance marked by a litter of corpses.

  The offworlder shot Kedalion a curious glance as he passed. Kedalion touched his forehead in a brief, wary acknowledgment, and the stranger gave him a surprisingly cheerful smile. Kedalion looked away from it, and went on to the table. He poured drinks for himself and the two Ondineans; noticed the boy’s stare as he handed a drink to Shalfaz. “You ever see that one before?” Kedalion asked her, gesturing over his shoulder at the stranger.

  She nodded, still looking as unnerved as he felt. “He comes in often to watch the shows. He never visits anyone’s room, male or female. He is usually very quiet, and sits by himself.”

  Kedalion took a deep breath, shaking himself out, and looked at the boy again. “So,” he said, somewhat inadequately, “Shalfaz says you’re looking for a way to get offworld.” The boy nodded, self-consciousness struggling with hope on his face. “I can’t imagine why.” Kedalion glanced toward the door and back, his mouth twitching sardonically. “Why?”

  The boy also looked toward the spot where the locals had made their forced exit. He made a disgusted face of his own in response.

  Kedalion studied him, as unobtrusively as possible. The boy was small and slight compared to the men who’d just left, even though he still towered over Kedalion. Maybe he was tired of being bullied. “What kind of work are you looking for?”

  The boy hesitated, and then said, “Anything,” meeting Kedalion’s stare. Kedalion half smiled, thinking that at least the kid didn’t ask for “honest work.” He probably knew how much of that he’d find in a place like this.

  “What skills do you have?”

  The boy hesitated again, his face furrowing. “I’m flexible,” he said.

  “Physically or mentally?”

  “Both.” A spark of pride showed in the boy’s changeable eyes.

  Kedalion laughed out loud this time. “That’s unique,” he said. “And probably an asset.” The boy was wearing the long, curved ritual knife all the local men wore, although his was plain and cheap-looking, like his clothes. He also carried a less common state-of-the-art stun weapon, partly concealed by the folds of his jacket. “You ever kill anybody?” Kedalion asked, wondering suddenly if that was why he was in a hurry to leave. But he remembered how the boy had hesitated, confronting the men who had accosted Shalfaz—not a coward, but not a hothead, either.

  The boy jerked slightly, as if he had been insulted. Most of the young Ondinean males Kedalion had met fought knife duels as often as they smoked a pot of water weed together. Those blades weren’t for show; they could cut a man open like a redfruit. If it wasn’t for modern medical technology, Ondinee would be depopulated inside of a couple of generations. “I don’t want to kill people,” the boy said. “But I would kill someone if I had to.”

  There was none of the glazed bravado Kedalion expected in the indigo eyes, but somehow he knew that the boy meant what he said.

  “Have you killed people?” the boy asked bluntly.

  “I don’t want to kill people either.” Kedalion shrugged. “I’m just a runner.”

  The boy’s glance searched out Kedalion’s legs, hidden under the table edge.

  “Not that kind of runner. As you can see, I’m not equipped for the odds.” For a second a smile hovered on the boy’s lips. “Just say I’m a trader. I transport goods from world to world. I travel a lot. I run an honest business. But I can’t say the same for most of my customers. My mother, rest her soul, would say I keep bad company. What’s your name?”

  “Ananke,” the boy said, looking down. It meant Necessity. He glanced at Shalfaz, and back at Kedalion again. “I would like to work for you.”

  “Do you have any tech training?” Kedalion asked, skeptical. The boy didn’t look old enough to have had much work experience.

  “Some.” Ananke nodded earnestly. “I’ve been studying with the university whenever I can pay for an outlet.”

  He had ambition, at least. Kedalion sipped his drink, noncommittal. “How do you support yourself?”

  “I’m a street performer,” the boy murmured. “A juggler and an acrobat.”

  Kedalion reached into the maze of pockets inside his long, loose coat, pulled out the huskball he had carried with him like a kind of talisman ever since he was a boy. He tossed it at Ananke with no warning. Ananke caught it easily, flipped it into the air, over his shoulder; made it disappear and reappear between his hands. Kedalion grinned, and caught it, barely, as the boy suddenly threw it back to him. “Okay,” he said. “You work my next run with me, we’ll see how it goes. At least it’ll earn you passage to somewhere else. I’ll pay you ten percent of the profit when we get there. You can make a start with that.”

  The boy grinned too, nodding. “I have all my things here. I’ll get them—”

  “Relax.” Kedalion put up a hand. “I’ve still got to find us a cargo. And besides, I just got here; I won’t be going anywhere for a while.” He glanced at Shalfaz. She smiled, and his bones melted. “Just be here when I want to leave.”

  Ananke nodded again, looking at them with an expression that was knowing and somehow full of pain all at once. Kedalion remembered what Shalfaz had said about the boy, and wondered. Ananke began to get up from his chair.

  “With my compliments,” a soft, slightly husky voice said, behind Kedalion’s back. “And my apologies.”

  Ananke looked up, sat down again, surprise filling his face. Shalfaz shrank back in her seat, her hands fluttering.

  Kedalion turned in his own seat, to find the offworlder who had challenged the Ondineans standing behind him. The man grinned disarmingly, taking in the tableau of mixed emotions as if he were used to it. He probably was, Kedalion thought. He was tall, but slender; Kedalion’s memo
ry of the fight seemed to hold someone a lot larger, more massive. But there was no mistaking those eyes—bluer than his own, probing him with the intensity of laser light when they met his. The offworlder looked away first, as if he was aware of the effect his gaze had on strangers.

  He set something down on the tabletop between the three of them—another bottle. Kedalion stared at it in disbelief. The bottle was an exotic, stylized flower form, layers of silver petals tipped with gold. Pure silver, pure gold.… Kedalion reached toward it, touched it, incredulous. Only one thing came in a bottle like that: they called it the water of life. It was the most expensive liquor available anywhere in the Hegemony, named for the far rarer drug that came from Tiamat, a drug which kept the absurdly rich young at unbelievable expense. The real thing was no longer available at any price, now that Tiamat’s Gate was closed for the next century. Kedalion had never expected to taste this imitation of it any sooner than he tasted the real thing.

  “Apologies—?” he remembered to say, finally; he tore his eyes from the silver-gilt bottle to look up at the stranger again. “I should be sending you a bottle.” He shrugged, realizing that his own smile was on crooked as he looked into that face again.

  The stranger grunted. “Ravien tells me I should have let you settle your own quarrel,” he murmured. “I made an ass of myself. I’m not in a very good mood tonight. But then, I guess I never am:…” The gallows grin came back; his fingers drummed against his thigh. “Sorry.”

  “Nothing to forgive,” Kedalion said, thinking that if the stranger hadn’t intervened, even the genuine water of life wouldn’t have been enough to revive him. “Believe me.” He looked at the silver bottle again, still not quite believing his eyes. He picked it up, almost afraid to touch it, and held it out to the stranger.

  “Keep it,” the stranger said. “I insist.”

  Kedalion looked into his eyes, and didn’t argue. He pulled the bottle toward him, his hands proving its reality again, and unset the seal with his thumb. Sudden fragrance filled his head like perfume, made his mouth water, filled his eyes with tears of pure pleasure. “Ye gods,” he murmured, “I had no idea.…” He passed the bottle around the table, letting the others touch it with awed hands, breathe in its essence; watching their faces.