The Summer Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  “She used the offworlders’ own technology to have herself cloned—to have a perfect copy made of her, only her, with no one else’s genes in the mix to weaken her resolve … several copies, actually. She had them secretly implanted in the bodies of Summer women who had come to the next to last Festival, who would go home to the islands none the wiser, thinking the child they bore was a merrybegot, the result of a Mask Night fling with a man they would never see again. Out of all the clones she had implanted, only your mother was perfect … and grew up raised by Summers, as Arienrhod intended, so that she would understand her people’s ways when she came to rule in Arienrhod’s place. Arienrhod was willing to die—she told me many times that she didn’t want to live on in this miserable, half-dead world—as long as she knew that she would be reborn in the body of your mother.”

  Ariele stared, her mouth open, unable to name the feelings inside her, since disbelief was not permitted to be one of them. “But how could she know my mother would become the new Summer Queen?”

  He shrugged. “She had become Queen. How could your mother not?”

  “How do you know about this?” Ariele said. “Does everyone know—?” Except me.

  “Of course not, dear child. Most of the Summers don’t really know what Arienrhod looked like. Capella Goodventure saw her up close before she died, of course—saw them both together. It’s one small reason why she and your mother don’t get along.… Most of the Winters still think your mother actually is Arienrhod—in the flesh, that is—that somehow she cheated death and the offworlders, and lived on and is still Queen. But a few—a very few—people know the real truth. Arienrhod and I were old, old friends. I was … an intimate in all her most personal affairs.” He raised his eyebrows, and Elco Teel sniggered, lying on the floor.

  “Does … does Da know about this?” Tammis asked, his voice sounding odd.

  Kirard Set chuckled and took another sip of wine. “Oh, he certainly does. Most of it never would have come to pass without him. He and your mother were childhood sweethearts, you know. When she became a sibyl he thought she had rejected him, and he ran away to Carbuncle.”

  “What’s that got to do with Arienrhod?” Tammis said.

  Kirard Set waved his impatience aside. “When Arienrhod learned Sparks was in the City, she had him brought to her, thinking she could use him to lure your mother to her, to get her to leave the islands and come to the city.… She sent a message to your mother, supposedly from him, saying he was in trouble. Your mother did come after him, because of course she still loved him very much. But she had the misfortune to be abducted offworld by techrunners on her way here—or perhaps the good fortune, depending on your point of view; since she learned the power of her sibylhood, which even Arienrhod never dreamed of. But it took five years for her to get back, and in the meantime Arienrhod thought she was lost forever.”

  “My mother has been offworld? With pirates—?” Ariele murmured, astonished by the secret lives her parents had led when they were hardly older than she was herself. She had scarcely even wondered what their lives had been like before she was born, imagining they had always been the way they were in her earliest memories: old, weary, obsessed with work and not each other. To picture her mother young, passionate, daring anything for her father’s sake … and not even her own mother’s child. Arienrhod’s. Ariele blinked and shook her head, feeling giddy, tantalized, excited … frightened.

  “What about Da?” Tammis said again. “Did he think our mother was dead too?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.” Kirard Set smiled again, with a rueful sympathy in his voice that was not reflected in his eyes. “Arienrhod made certain he did. He was almost inconsolable.…”

  Ariele half frowned, not sure what he was saying, but only that something lay between the words that she did not understand.

  Elco Teel laughed. “But Arienrhod consoled him, for five years, right, Da—?”

  Ariele saw Tammis and Merovy turn to stare at him; realized she was staring at him too, with sudden comprehension. She looked back at Kirard Set. “You mean, my father … and the Snow Queen … were lovers?”

  Kirard Set’s smile widened with what she almost thought was approval, as he saw that she understood. “Oh yes, Ariele … it was inevitable. That they would both be Queen—that they would both fall in love with the same man. Arienrhod had fallen in love with him, just as your mother had—he was her favorite for five years. She gave him everything he wanted … even the water of life.”

  “Da … drank the water of life?” Ariele whispered. “But I thought … I thought … he was a Summer.” She remembered how the sight of mers always seemed to trouble her father, wondering suddenly if that was why. “And he was pledged … with my mother, for life.”

  “But he thought she was gone.” Kirard Set shrugged. “And Arienrhod was there, and so much like her … and Arienrhod was very good at getting what she wanted; just as your mother is. Come now, children—” he glanced away from the look on her face, to Tammis’s, “surely you can understand, and forgive him, under the circumstances. Even in Summer a marriage—pledging—rarely lasts a lifetime. Everyone has the right to choose. Many Summers never pledge themselves to a single mate at all; they like variety. So do Winters. Arienrhod liked considerable variety, and your father learned to share her tastes. He developed quite a sophisticated palate, for a Summer. You have to understand, it was very difficult not to become intimately acquainted—not only with Arienrhod, but with her other favorites as well, when you were one of them. We were all so close—she encouraged it … But of course she was always his first love, and he was hers. Perhaps it would even have been ‘only,’ under other circumstances.”

  Ariele took a deep breath, realizing that her mouth had fallen open. She shut it, trying to hide the foolish, gaping incredulity of her expression before Kirard Set, or even Elco Teel, began to laugh at her. “What happened when Mama came back—?” Her voice was almost inaudible; she almost wished that she had never asked the first question, never heard any of this, at all, ever. Almost. “When she found out? What did they say?”

  “Only she and your father, and perhaps Arienrhod, know that.” He took another drink, and held the decanter out to her. She took it from him, and took a large swallow, almost choking. The hot burn of the wine going down her throat felt punishingly good. “But of course your mother was not really in a position to pass judgment on your father. She had only just learned herself that Arienrhod was her real mother … and her exact double. How could she blame Sparks for falling in love with her, all over again, when he’d lost her once … And besides, they say there was a Kharemoughi Police inspector who turned renegade to help your mother here in the city. You have to wonder what there was between him and her, what kind of hold she had over him, to make an offworlder turn against his own people. Don’t you—?”

  Ariele nodded, although she did not want to, biting her lip. She looked down, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.

  “But you haven’t asked me what happened between your mother and Arienrhod, when they finally met. That’s the best part.”

  Ariele looked up at him again. “What happened?” she asked faintly.

  “Arienrhod had made her new plans while Moon was away; she decided she would live on herself, after all. She’d planned to spread a plague that would kill all the Summers who’d come to Carbuncle for the last Festival—throw the world into chaos, so the offworlders would flee and she could keep her power.” Ariele grimaced, but he only smiled and went on. “She didn’t need your mother anymore … but of course she wanted her. How could she not—? She asked Moon to reign with her, share everything with her … even Sparks.”

  “And my mother said no,” Ariele murmured.

  “Obviously.” Kirard Set nodded. “And then Arienrhod ordered her thrown into the Pit.” Ariele gasped, in spite of herself. “That was when your mother performed her first ‘miracle.’ She stopped the winds in the Hall of Winds. I was there, I saw it myself … though to
this day I still don’t know how she managed it. I don’t suppose she’s ever told you how.… But no, of course not … Anyway, then the renegade Blue came into the hall and rescued her from the mob.… And the rest, as they say, is history. Your mother won the mask of the Summer Queen. Arienrhod went into the sea as planned. Your parents were reunited, you were born … and you know all the rest.” He lifted his hands in a graceful shrug of denouement.

  “What happened … what happened to the Blue?” Tammis asked uncertainly.

  “The gods only know.” Kirard Set shook his head. “He left with the rest of the offworlders, I suppose. Jerusha PalaThion might be able to tell you; he must have been one of her officers.… I wouldn’t pay any mind to the rumors, though.”

  “What rumors?” Tammis said.

  “Oh, well. More complications…” Kirard Set waved a dismissing hand. “Almost no one repeats that scurrilous garbage anymore, anyway. But some people used to point out that … well, that Sparks had been taking the water of life at the time of your conception during the last Festival—and of course it does make the user temporarily sterile.”

  They both looked at him, stricken, through a silence that seemed endless.

  He laughed gently, at last. “Ye gods, it’s only idle gossip. After all, the water of life was getting hard to come by, by the end of Arienrhod’s reign. She’d begun cutting back on how much she allowed us to have—sometimes once a week, not once a day anymore, even for old friends like myself and Tirady. That’s how we were blessed with our only son, over there.” He gestured at Elco Teel. “He was a complete surprise, unexpected … not unwelcome, don’t misunderstand me … but still an accident. It’s quite reasonable to think that your father had become unexpectedly fertile again too.”

  Ariele nodded dumbly. Kirard Set raised his eyebrows, and offered her the decanter once more. She shook her head this time, and got up from the couch. “I have to go now.”

  “Us, too,” Tammis said, getting up from the floor, holding Merovy’s hand with painful tightness. Elco Teel rolled onto his back, his hands folded on his chest, gazing at them with a pale, inscrutable stare as they passed by him.

  “Safe home, children,” Kirard Set called after them, and Ariele thought she heard laughter as she reached the front door. She frowned, in the darkened hallway ahead of Tammis and Merovy, where no one could see her.

  The three of them went out together, gathering in the street as the door of the Wayaways townhouse closed with finality behind them.

  “Why do you think he told us that?” Ariele said, her voice sounding thinner and more miserable than she wanted it to.

  “Because you asked him to,” Tammis said, his own voice heavy with accusation.

  “Well, he was the one who said I looked like Arienrhod!” Ariele snapped. “He said she was my real grandmother!”

  “Mine too,” Tammis said irritably. “Like it or not.”

  “My father…” Merovy broke in, her voice barely more than an insistent whisper, “says that Kirard Set would cut off his own ear, if he thought it would make someone else feel worse than he did.”

  Ariele stared at her, looked away again. “Are you coming home? Are you going with me now?” she asked her brother, looking uphill toward the palace; trying not to make it a demand, trying not to acknowledge that suddenly she didn’t want to go back there, like this, alone.

  But Tammis shook his head, his mahogany-colored curls moving against his neck. “I want to make sure Merovy gets home all right.” He glanced away, over his shoulder, as if Carbuncle’s still-busy Street, with its unchanging artificial day, was suddenly empty and shadow-haunted. He looked back at her. “You can come with us…”

  She frowned, tossing her head. “No, thanks. Don’t let me get in your way—” she said sullenly, even though she had heard nothing but awkward concern in her brother’s voice. She turned her back on them, and started on up the street. She didn’t look back until she had reached the alabaster-white courtyard before the palace.

  Safe home … Kirard Set’s farewell echoed in her memory like his mocking laughter. She stopped, standing at the Street’s beginning—or was it the end?—looking toward the palace entrance that had let pass so much of her world’s history; that had opened on the Snow Queen’s domain, long before she was born.

  She imagined her mother passing through those doors for the first time, in search of her father … imagined her father going through those doors for the first time, into the arms of the Snow Queen. Arienrhod’s home. Her mind tried to imagine her father in Arienrhod’s arms, in Arienrhod’s bed … the two of them doing things to each other she barely understood … doing things to each other she couldn’t even imagine. Why had her mother wanted to live here, after Arienrhod had died?

  Suddenly she didn’t want to live here anymore. Suddenly she wished that she had somewhere else to go, that she didn’t have to go in through those doors, ever again. But if she went somewhere else there would be questions and explanations to face, and she couldn’t bear that, even the thought of it. She looked down at the shimmering red-golds and blue-greens of her soft overshirt and pants, that had once been Arienrhod’s own … her grandmother’s, her other/mother’s. “You have her spirit,” Kirard Set had said. She lifted her head, straightening her back.

  She crossed the courtyard to the palace doors. The two constables who were always there on duty smiled at her and let her pass inside, her own face empty and unresponsive.

  She went on into the Hall of the Winds; stopped midway across the bridge that spanned the deep, green-glowing access shaft. They tried to throw her into the Pit … and she stopped the winds. She looked over the edge, cautious but unafraid, into the green depths that smelled of the sea; looked up again at the curtains hanging high overhead. I don’t suppose she ever told you how—? Ariele looked back the way she had come. The renegade Blue came in and saved her.… Who knows what there was between them—? She hurried on, her face pinched with doubt.

  She made her way through the palace, oblivious to the servants’ greetings; climbed the wide, curving stairs to the upper levels, searched the echoing halls until she found her father, in his study. She stood a moment looking in at him as he worked, stretched out on the segmented couch, humming faintly—an old folk song, she realized—and making notes on a noteboard.

  “Da—?” she said softly, at last, from the doorway.

  Sparks looked up, startled, and sucked in his breath. He stared at her for a long moment with an expression on his face that she had never seen before.

  “Da—?” she said again, uncertainly.

  “Ariele,” he murmured, “what are you … doing here?” He shook his head slightly, as if he were shaking something loose, and sat up on the couch.

  She shrugged, looking down, suddenly not knowing what to say.

  “Are you all right?” He leaned forward, with concern on his face, putting aside the noteboard.

  She shrugged again, and came into the room. She sat down beside him on the sofa with her hands twined between her knees.

  “What is it?” he asked, touching her shoulder gently.

  She felt tears start suddenly in her eyes; fought them back. “Da…” She looked up at him, finally. “Is Mama really Arienrhod … Arienrhod’s clone?”

  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. “Wh
at else do you need to know, Ari? 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 gray-green 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 walls, forever held at bay. Merovy followed his gaze; looked back at him uncertainly. “Do 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, warming 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 …