The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  The Summer swung around without breaking stride. “Watch yourself, Motherless! I’ve got better things to do than teach you how to walk.”

  “Like teach yourself some manners?” Tor spat.

  “Parasite.” He turned his back on them and trudged on down the alley.

  Tor flung an obscene hand gesture at his retreating back. Fate’s hand reached out, searching for her arm; caught hold of her. Tor forced herself to relax, muttering under her breath. She turned back again, and they went on toward Fate’s door. “They should all drown, the fisheaters. Then we wouldn’t have any trouble.”

  “You think not?” Fate said, her voice gently mocking. “Who would you hate, then?”

  Tor took a deep breath. “All right, so I don’t hate them. They’re our cousins. We all need each other to survive. All our sins went into the Sea with the Snow Queen, and now we’re all one.…” She repeated the litany of the Summer Queen’s propaganda, the supposed will of the supposed Sea Mother. “But by all the gods, I don’t know who ever said fish was brain food.”

  Fate laughed, and was silent again, lost in her own thoughts. Tor led her on down the alleyway. The Winters endured the Summers’ cyclical invasion, knowing there was no real choice. Winters and Summers had always needed each other to survive, and the ancient rituals they shared gave them enough common ground to get by. Her people waited out High Summer with the patience of exiles, secure in the knowledge that the offworlders would return at the first possible moment, bringing back to their descendants, if not to them, the sophisticated comforts to which they had grown accustomed.

  But even though clan ties and traditional religion had left them blueprints for peaceful coexistence, the culture-wide shockwave of the Change still left them with ugly petty confrontations. Winters who had lost all sense of their heritage over the hundred and fifty years of offworlder rule, and newly arrived Summers, wary unwanted guests in the territories of their distant relatives, still cursed each other and had fistfights in the half-empty streets of Carbuncle, even after eight years.

  The problem would get worse before it got better, if it ever did, because the new Queen’s unorthodox changes heightened all the old tensions. The coming of the Summers was a gradual thing, and that was probably all that saved their world from complete anarchy. In another decade this city would be teeming—in a completely different way than it had been when the offworlders filled its streets, but teeming nonetheless, just like the rapidly thawing countryside beyond its walls.…

  “Here we are,” Tor said. She hesitated as Fate found her way up the single step to her door and unfastened the lock. “Will you be all right if I leave now?” Usually she stayed, and they shared dinner, although she knew Fate was perfectly capable of getting around her home and former shop alone. Sometimes after the meal Fate would play her sithra and Tor would sing, old songs about the sea, new songs about the stars; songs with long memories that carried them both back to better days. Neither one of them liked spending endless evenings alone, although neither one of them had ever spoken of it. But tonight she felt as restless as the large gray cat that wound around Fate’s ankles, yowling with impatience. “I think I’ve got to scratch an itch tonight.”

  “Yes, I’ll be fine.” Fate nodded. She leaned down to pick up the cat, stroking its fur, scratching it fondly under the chin. “I think Malkin and I only want to sleep tonight, anyway. It’s been a long…” She broke off, and didn’t say what had been so long.

  “You don’t need anything from the markets?”

  “No, thank you. Thank you for everything.” Fate smiled, her sightless eyes finding Tor’s with uncanny accuracy. “Let me know whether he’s worth losing sleep over.”

  Tor laughed, pushing her hands into the frayed pockets of her aging offworlder coveralls. “It doesn’t matter if he is or not, because I don’t intend to remember him in the morning.” She stepped down into the street and strode away, heading for her favorite tavern.

  * * *

  Moon sighed, wearied by the steep climb up the Street, the steep upward spiral of life. They had reached Street’s End at last; ahead she saw the wide vortex of alabaster pavement, and beyond it the elaborately carven double doors of the palace. Two guards stood at the entrance, as they always did, by Jerusha’s order. Moon blinked her eyes clear of the waking dream that had suffused her thoughts as she climbed the hill, as insubstantial as fog, as inescapable as a shadow: the memory of the dark-eyed stranger who had led her once to these doors … who had been her spirit guide when she was lost in this strange city, caught up in destiny’s storm. The man who had been her lover for one night, before his own destiny had swept him from her life forever.…

  Moon glanced at the woman beside her, feeling a pang of guilt; afraid that Jerusha PalaThion’s shrewd, observant eyes might have looked in through the open window of her thoughts, and seen too much. But Jerusha was gazing straight ahead, lost in a reverie of her own. Jerusha had stayed behind when the offworlders left Tiamat, as much from a sense of betrayal by her own people as from love of her new home. Moon had never fully understood her motives; Jerusha was not a woman much given to discussing her thoughts. But she was an excellent listener, whose friendship Moon had come to treasure as a rare gift. Jerusha was one of their chief advisors regarding the Hegemony’s castoff technology—and also her most loyal protector. Jerusha kept the transition peaceful in the restless city, with a cannily chosen security force of Winters who had worked for the old Queen and Summers who were loyal to the new one.

  The palace doors swung open before them; Moon’s footsteps quickened, forcing Jerusha to lengthen her stride to keep up. Moon began to smile, suddenly filled with eagerness, as two small bright forms came hurtling toward her. She kneeled on the hard pavement, catching the twins, hugging them close; astonished again, as she was every day, by the power of the emotions that filled her … still astonished, after all this time, to find herself the mother of two children. She kissed their faces, holding tight to their squirming warmth, absorbing the sweet smell of their hair, the excited clamor of their voices.

  “Mama, Mama, Gran is here!”

  “—Gran is here!”

  Their voices sang together as they echoed the words, each of them trying to be the first to tell her the news. “—Really!”

  “Wait, wait,” she murmured. “You mean that my mother is here—?” She had not seen her family in all the years since she had left the Windwards for Carbuncle. Now, holding her children in her arms, her need to see her own mother was as sudden and hot as the sun.

  “No, Gran—” Ariele insisted, her cloud of fair hair moving across her face as she shook her head. She pushed it back impatiently.

  “Gran—” Tammis echoed, pulling on his mother’s sleeve.

  “Your grandmother, Moon,” someone said.

  Moon looked up, to see Clavally Bluestone’s short, solid figure framed in the high arch of the double doors, the sibyl sign gleaming against her shirtfront, her own daughter Merovy clinging to her side while she watched the twins greet their mother. Clavally and Danaquil Lu had begun to spend less time at the Sibyl College after their child was born, and they had taken on the task of watching Tammis and Ariele as well.

  “Not my mother?” Moon repeated, her own voice suddenly thin with disappointment. She wondered why—how—her grandmother had come alone to Carbuncle.

  “We’ll show you!” Ariele cried, bounding impatiently back toward the palace entrance. “Come on, Mama!”

  Tammis stayed by his mother’s side, always the quiet one, his brown eyes gazing up at her somberly as he hung on her arm.

  “Tammis, I’m too tired—” she murmured, trying to take his hand instead. She broke off, as Jerusha swept Tammis off his feet and up into her arms. “I’ll take him,” Jerusha said, tickling him until he forgot the protesting squawk he had been about to make.

  Moon bit off the protest that came half-formed to her lips, drew back her hands, which had instinctively reached for him. She watche
d, resigned, as Jerusha strode on ahead, carrying Tammis on her hip, grinning back at him with tender whimsy.

  Clavally passed them, leading Merovy by the hand, nodding her head in a formal gesture of respect and farewell as she reached Moon’s side. Moon saw unspoken concern in Clavally’s glance, and wondered what she knew that she could not bring herself to say. “Danaquil Lu sent word that there is a party being given tonight by his cousin Kirard Set.” Clavally’s round face pinched slightly. “Dana asked if we would come, to help him get through it. But if you would like me to stay…”

  Moon smiled, her smile quirking slightly. She could guess, after this afternoon’s negotiations among the nobles, what Kirard Set was celebrating. “Go and keep him company. He’s like a man who’s been in a swarm of bloodflies after he’s been with his relatives. He does need you.”

  Clavally smiled wryly, and nodded.

  “Enjoy it,” Moon said. “It’s in a good cause.” She looked down at Merovy, at the little girl’s shy, wide-eyed gaze fixed on Tammis. “You have fun too,” she added gently.

  Merovy nodded soberly as her mother led her on past. She looked back over her shoulder, still watching Tammis. “Bye, Tammis,” she called.

  He waved, his own expression equally somber, from where he sat perched on Jerusha’s hip.

  Moon entered the palace, looking up at the frescoed walls as she walked the echoing hallway that led into its heart. The first time she had come into this place, the walls had been haunted by stark scenes of winter. Those murals had long since been painted over at her order with scenes of bright sunlight, green fields, the blues of sea and sky. But still the images of Winter seeped through into her memory, imprinted indelibly on her mind’s eye, making her remember all that had happened here at Winter’s end … making her remember Arienrhod, who haunted the very air here, who haunted every mirror. She forced herself to look down, fixing her vision on her children and the way ahead.

  “Mama!” Ariele cried impatiently.

  Moon saw her daughter dancing from foot to foot at the edge of the Pit, and her breath caught. “Ariele!” she called sharply, quickening her steps, as Ariele knew she would.

  “Hurry up,” Ariele shouted, and darted out onto the railingless ribbon of bridge that arced across the shaft. Ariele laughed, fearless, shaking her tumbled, milk-white hair at their dismay.

  Moon stepped onto the bridge, her feet soundless in their soft city shoes, and caught her daughter up in her arms. “How many times—” she began, angrily.

  “You’re too slow! I want to see Gran!” Ariele insisted. She wrapped long, slender legs around her mother’s waist, drumming her feet. “You smell like fish—euw.… Come on, Mama.”

  Moon sighed and carried her across the bridge, leaving Jerusha to make her way as slowly as she chose with Tammis. The bridge was wide enough that, even railingless, it allowed people to walk its span with no more than a quickened heartbeat, ever since she had stopped the wind. Moon glanced up, resolutely not looking down, letting her eyes find the pale curtains that hung like fog in the vaulting space overhead. A glowing mass of stars was beginning to show through the fading light of day in the tall, starkly silhouetted windows.

  Moon stepped off the far end of the bridge and let her squirming daughter down to run on ahead. She stayed where she was, turning back to wait for Jerusha; to stand for a long moment gazing into the Pit, letting the sharp smell of the sea clear the stink of fish from her nostrils. The currents of past and present collided inside her like a riptide, their undertow sucking at her. She swayed a moment, closing her eyes, before she turned and started on again into the palace, her clothes still reeking.

  She had defied both Summers and Winters, by crossing that bridge and taking up residence here. The past was no longer an option, not for her, or for anyone. It was unreachable in time, like the sea at the bottom of the Pit. She could only go on, into Summer, changing with the world.

  And Gran had come. She tried to recapture the happiness and excitement the news had filled her with.

  Tammis slithered out of Jerusha’s arms as they caught up, and came to take her hand. She looked down at his hand, so small inside her own, its golden-brownness in such stark contrast to her paleness. She squeezed his hand gently, smiling down at him.

  “Where’s Da?” he asked. He asked it every day.

  “He can’t come home yet,” Moon said. She gave him almost the same answer, every day.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there’s so much to do,” she murmured, as she always did.

  “Well, why can’t he do it here?”

  “Tammis—”

  “Doesn’t he love us? Doesn’t he want to be here?”

  “Of course he does.” She looked away, seeing the palace walls that Sparks had known for far longer than she had, and which he hated now so much that he spent as little time as possible inside them. She made herself look back at Tammis, and smile. “He loves you very much. He loves us all. He’ll be home to play songs for you at bedtime.… Someday you’ll understand why it’s so important for us to finish our work.” Which will never be finished; not in our lifetime. “Someday I hope you’ll help us finish it.”

  “Ariele too?”

  “Yes, Ariele too.”

  “I want to help.” He gave a small hop, hanging on her hand.

  “I know.” She nodded, looking down.

  “Are you happy, Mama?”

  She looked back at him, realizing with sudden pain that it was a question which was almost meaningless to her. But it was not meaningless to him, and so she smiled at him, a real smile, filled with the same unquestioning love that she found in his eyes. “Yes, I am. When I’m with you and Ariele.”

  “And Da?”

  “Yes, and Da.” She hugged him against her side, looking away again. The Winter staff who took care of the palace and its occupants hovered discreetly at the corners of her vision, waiting for some sign of interest or some command from her as she moved through one vast, purposeless room after another. Their presence still made her uncomfortable, after so many years. She had been born into a world where everyone took care of their own needs, and few people had more possessions, or space in which to keep them, than they could easily use.

  Arienrhod’s palace—it would never seem like her palace—would have covered a small island in the Windwards, and every room of it was filled with strange and exotic gleanings from all over the Hegemony: the furniture, rugs, and hangings, the exotic playthings and ornaments, glittered everywhere like bizarre deepwater stormwrack.

  She had changed scarcely anything of what she had found here, telling herself that she wanted everything for study, just as she wanted whatever other artifacts of the offworlders had survived their leaving. But in the secret places of her soul she knew that she had not touched them because she was afraid of them, afraid of violating the memory of Arienrhod.…

  Over the years she had grown used to seeing Arienrhod’s possessions, just as she had grown inured to the uncertain, overeager attentions of the palace staff; although every time she found herself growing too comfortable with them she felt as if she were startling awake out of a bad dream.

  A man in the uniform of a city constable approached deferentially. “Lady,” he murmured, bobbing his head. “Commander—” He turned to Jerusha, addressing her by her old title, which had become her new title by default. “The daywatch sergeant asked me to report that a person carrying a concealed knife was arrested trying to enter the palace without—”

  “Not here, damn it!” Jerusha whispered sharply, as Moon froze beside her. She gestured him away, leaving their presence with a brusque, apologetic nod.

  “What was that, Mama?” Tammis asked, his face filling with concern as he saw his mother’s worried frown. “Is somebody going to hurt us?”

  “No, treasure,” she murmured, stroking his head, hugging him against her. “No, of course not.…” She led him on across the hall to the wide, curving stairs, where Ariele was waiting
to hurry them upward to Gran.

  * * *

  Jerusha watched the Queen and her children go with a rush of sudden emotion that was almost a physical pain. She turned back to the constable, her own expression settling into anger. “By all the gods, Shellwaters—don’t you have sense enough to keep your mouth shut in front of a child, even if you don’t have the sense to keep it shut in front of the Queen?”

  He grimaced and looked down. “I’m sorry, Commander, I—”

  “Forget it.” She shook her head, getting herself under control. “Just remember it next time.”

  “Yes, Commander.” He looked up again, relieved; she felt an odd relief of her own as his neutral gaze met hers. He was Tiamatan, which meant that he didn’t mind serving a woman; and he was a Winter, which meant that he didn’t mind serving an offworlder. At least when she was doing her job she felt less like an alien here than she had in her old life. “You say they got the man—or was it a woman?”

  “Yes, Commander. A woman … a Summer. She claims she heard the Sea Mother’s voice telling her to drive out the impostor pretending to be Queen.” He made a disgusted face; something in his voice said that it was no more than could be expected of a Summer. “We have her in detention.”

  “All right. Good. Give me a full report tomorrow. And for gods’ sakes, try to keep the gossip down.”

  He nodded, and made what passed for a salute among the locals.

  She watched him go out of the room. A handful of the palace staff watched him go as well; she knew they were already spreading rumors among themselves. It was an irony that was no more lost on her than it was on the Queen that the Winters of Carbuncle were more loyal than the Summer clans were to Moon Dawntreader. Jerusha tried to spare Moon and her family the awareness of just how many rigid, narrow-minded religious fanatics there were among her people; but she knew in her heart that the task was futile. Moon knew it as well as she did. She hears voices telling her the Sea Mother wants her to kill the Queen.… Jerusha shook her head. What the hell was the matter with some people—? But then, she remembered that Moon Dawntreader claimed to hear voices that told her to defy her own traditions and change her world.…