Tree glanced down, away from the past. “I know,” he said sullenly. “I’m sorry.” He raised his head again. “I knew what I was promising when I swore to ‘serve and protect.’ This uniform means as much to me as it does to you. Believe it or not.”
“Right.” Staun sighed, and glanced away.
Tree frowned; his hands tightened at his sides. “It’s just knowing that as long as we play by the rules, we can’t ever win, but if we don’t—” He drew a finger across his throat like a knife blade. “It gets to me, sometimes.”
“Yeah, I know,” Staun said wearily. “Somehow, when I pictured ‘service above and beyond the call of duty,’ becoming a vigilante wasn’t what I had in mind, either.”
“They ought to give us medals, not kick us off the force, for what we’re doing,” MarDesta muttered.
Staun laughed. “Just don’t go in and ask the Chief Inspector to give us one, okay, Mardy?”
MarDesta winced, and grinned, and shook his head.
The first time they had raided a warehouse full of illegal goods, it had been an unpremeditated act. A nameday celebration had run late; too much of the locals’ kelp beer, plus too much frustration, had led to a midnight crate-smashing spree.
But in the sober reflection of a new day, the Blues involved hadn’t regretted it; instead, they’d decided to do it again … and to keep on doing it. The Name-day Vigilantes had been born, to flout the self-defeating restrictions laid on the Hegemonic Police by the Hegemony itself. In its lust to get its hands on the water of life, the Hedge capitulated to the Snow Queen’s every demand, effectively hamstringing its own police force; until, in Carbuncle, the only way to be an honest Blue seemed to be to do it outside the law.
The vigilantes had let only their most trusted friends in on their plans; and they had sworn a solemn oath that they would never let things get out of hand, or spread too far.…
“Saint Phimas wept! Get a full fix on that.” MarDesta pointed toward the Judiciate complex, either changing the subject or already oblivious to it.
Tree followed his gesture and saw Special Investigator Jashari, of the Judiciate’s Internal Affairs Division, standing outside the courthouse entrance with his arms around a stunning Kharemoughi woman. Tree watched the woman lean in to give Jashari a long, deep, completely outrageous kiss. Jashari bowed formally to her, and kissed her hand as she left him. “Is that his wife?”
MarDesta guffawed. “He’s got a wife, but that ain’t her. She’s back on Kharemough, minding their estates.”
“Talk about your Internal Affairs…” Staun said, grinning. “I guess it figures. You’d have to be a fucking hypocrite, to do his job.”
“Saint Ambiko, change my life!” Tree lifted his hands in an utterly sincere prayer gesture. He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman as she walked away. The fluid motion of her body made him think of the sea. “Damn, I know dead men who aren’t as cold as that rat-squad bastard. How the hell did Jashari get himself a woman like her? She’s even Kharemoughi—”
“And where did he find her, out here?” MarDesta said.
“They’d find you, if you had his rank and credit line.” Staun gave a grunt of disgust. “This place has always been a crossroads; Tiamat’s the closest world to a Gate. And the Queen lets the scum of the Hegemony hide behind her skirts, as long as they give her what she wants in return for giving us hell.”
“That’s the truth on a platter, with a side of greens,” MarDesta said feelingly.
“You serve here in Carbuncle long enough and you’ll see everything, including yourself walking backwards.”
Tree shook his head. “I’ve never seen a Kharemoughi woman who could move like that.”
“She’s not Kharemoughi,” Staun said. “She’s a shapeshifter. She could be anyone you wanted; anything … even Newhavenese.”
“She’s a ’shifter—?”
“She’s wearing a sensenet?” MarDesta echoed Tree’s disbelief. “How can you tell?”
“Because her hair just changed color, Mardy.”
“You were looking at her hair, ’Nion?”
Staun smiled wistfully. “That, too.”
They slowed as they reached the Records annex, the last building before Blue Alley spilled into Carbuncle’s one and only Street. MarDesta went inside to fetch SudHalek; Tree and Staun leaned against the wall to wait, basking in the sourceless light of Carbuncle’s artificial day.
Carbuncle was an entirely enclosed, self-contained city, a relic of the Old Empire. It lay like a cast-up shell on the shore of the world-encompassing ocean that Tiamatans worshiped as Mother, Goddess, and Provider, for its omnipresence in their lives. The Street spiraled down from the Snow Queen’s palace at the city’s peak to the artificial harbor beneath it, making a widening gyre through the honeycomb of alleys where its inhabitants lived and worked.
The unchanging light that bathed them all shone ceaselessly, part of a closed system as constant as a mother’s womb. Beyond Carbuncle’s transparent storm walls, the twin suns of Tiamat rose and set, marking the days, years, centuries. But Carbuncle never slept, just as it had never changed down through the millennia since the Old Empire’s fall.
On the wall above Tree’s head, a faded sign preserved Blue Alley’s original name, Olivine. He had heard once that the alleys were named for the colors of gemstones, although he had no idea what gems, or in what languages, or even if it was true. This was Blue Alley now, even to the natives, and would be for as long as the Hegemony remained here. The entire government complex was located in Blue Alley, but it was the blue-uniformed Police who patrolled the city’s streets, the interface where onworlder and offworlder met, and frequently collided.
Staun pulled out the small, battered notebook that he usually had with him, and scribbled something in it with a stylus. He had been doing that for as long as Tree could remember; but it was the one thing Staun had never shared, even with his brother. Tree looked away again, having been taught long ago not to read over Staun’s shoulder.
He watched the shapeshifter turn the corner and disappear, heading uptown. “Where do you think she’s going?”
“Probably to the Queen’s ball,” Staun said, and laughed.
“Maybe we should’ve taken that duty after all.” Tree sighed, looking back toward the Judiciate complex. He swore suddenly under his breath.
“What?” Staun asked.
“Gundhalinu.” Tree pointed with his chin. Gundhalinu was coming up the alley toward them; alone, with an expression on his face that Tree couldn’t peg.
“Be more careful what you wish for,” Staun muttered, stuffing his notebook into a pocket as Gundhalinu approached.
But the sergeant passed on by without even a glance their way, as if they had morphed into the wall.
“What the hell?” Tree frowned.
Staun relaxed into a slouch again, shaking his head. “Kharemoughis … who can ever figure them out?” He pulled a tin of bitterroot out of his sleeve pocket. Taking a chew for himself, he handed one to Tree.
Tree put it in his mouth, chewing gamely until his tongue finally went numb. Bitterroot chews were a poor man’s stress relief; they tasted worse than shit. After eight years on the force, he knew exactly how many other, better things, legal or otherwise, were available to help an officer ease the stress of his job. But Staun had an unshakable loyalty to bitterroot; he claimed it was all that had saved his sanity in the hard years after Ma died.
The first time Staun had given him a chew of bitterroot, when Tree was ten, it had made his tongue bleed. It still made his tongue bleed. After all these years, he didn’t see much point in complaining about it. He glanced toward the Street again, studying the passersby. Now that Gundhalinu was safely out of sight, his thoughts drifted back to the shapeshifter they had watched leave the alley. Anything he wanted … even Newhavenese?
“Staun?” he said.
“What?”
“You ever think about Tarina anymore?”
“Tarina?�
�� Staun glanced over at him. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“Who’s Tarina?” MarDesta asked, emerging from the Records building with Baine SudHalek in tow.
“Girl I used to know, back home,” Staun said noncommittally. “We talked about getting married once.”
“What happened?”
“She didn’t want to live in Buttfuck, Tiamat, for ten years.”
SudHalek grunted in sympathy. “Who would?”
“She made great kassock pie,” Tree said. “And she never burned the tapola.”
Staun looked back at him. “You’re thinking of Ma.”
Tree shook his head. “Tarina cooked like Ma did.”
“I never thought about it.”
“Maybe you should have. Maybe she would’ve said yes.”
“Yeah, well.” Staun looked away. “I guess I had too much else on my mind back then.”
“Like helping your kid brother get through the academy, and getting his orders changed, and making sure the transfer got through…?”
Staun shrugged. “I couldn’t very well leave you behind, now could I?” He smiled suddenly. “What is all this about me and Tarina? You think I regret the choice?”
“You could’ve had a family, a real life—”
“I have both,” Staun said, giving him a look. “And my timeline’s got plenty of string left to unwind. I’m your brother, not your grandfather.” Abruptly he cuffed Tree’s helmeted head. “I know what your problem is. I think you need to get laid, partner.”
Tree frowned, pulling away. “That’s not—”
“Hey, yeah,” MarDesta interrupted. “SudHalek, you lucky perverts over in Vice always know some ladies who owe you a favor, right?” SudHalek shrugged modestly. “We’ve got time before the festivities start at RedFutter’s. Can you get us some dates?”
“Sure.” SudHalek grinned. “It’s my nameday; how could they refuse?”
Frowning and silent, Tree followed the others as they set off into the Maze, Carbuncle’s wide-open heart, where any and all forms of entertainment could be found at any time of the day or night.
They passed a boy playing a flute on a street corner, heard the calls of food vendors, the dickering of customers and store owners, a dozen more kinds of music echoing off the walls down the narrow alleyways. Buyers and sellers and curiosity-seekers from eight different worlds, speaking a hundred different tongues, engulfed them. The heady input of sights and sounds and smells rebooted Tree’s mood; his restless dissatisfaction flowed back into a shared eagerness for the evening ahead.
“Gods … now I really have seen everything,” Staun muttered, glancing over his shoulder at the couple they had just passed in the crowd.
“What the fuck was that?” SudHalek whispered. “Was that even human?”
“What?” Tree glanced behind him, seeing only a heavyset man in a hooded cloak, and a woman whose body was completely hidden beneath layers of shadoudt veils. He heard the tinkling of countless tiny bells on her clothing, wrists, and ankles; their faint, sweet music was almost lost in the street noise. “What? They’re probably Ondinean.”
“His face.” SudHalek screwed his own face into a grimace. “Didn’t you see it?”
“No.” Tree shook his head. Growing up in Miertoles Porttown, he had learned early to watch a crowd for certain kinds of motion, telltale body language. As a Blue, he rarely let himself be distracted by irrelevant details.
“Remember that corpse we found last year, with all his guts hanging out?” Staun asked.
“Yeah.…” Tree looked back at him.
“It was a match.”
Tree mimed gagging. “By the Boatman! There goes my appetite.”
“Five to ten she’s as ugly as he is, under the veils,” MarDesta said, to sniggers of laughter.
“How’d you like to wake up next to a face like that in the morning, laddo?” SudHalek waved a hand behind him.
“You’re a twisted son of a bitch, Suddy.”
“What do you suppose they’re doing here?”
“Going to the Snow Queen’s ball, to drink the water of life,” Tree said sourly.
“Yeah, that’s Carbungle for you.”
“That’s life, laddo,” SudHalek murmured.
Staun shrugged, with a final glance over his shoulder as the couple disappeared into the faceless crowd. “I guess there really are some fates worse than death.”
“Spit in your hand!” Tree spat in his palm and tightened his fist in a warding gesture. “That’s bad luck. Don’t ever say that, damn it!” He glared at his brother, wiping his hand on his pants.
“Tree…” Staun frowned, and shook his head.
“Do it!” Tree said fiercely. “You know where we’re going later tonight.”
The others stared at him. Finally, Staun spat into his own fist, with a look that said it was done just to humor him. Reluctantly, the others followed, one by one.
3
Devony Seaward stopped just inside the doorway of the private meeting room, spellbound by its beauty, as she always was. The room’s nacreous walls and ceiling made her feel as though she had entered the heart of a polished shell; and this was just one of half a hundred rooms inside the Snow Queen’s palace at the pinnacle of Carbuncle—that relic of a civilization which had been ancient before Tiamat’s history even began.
She glanced across the room, to find the Snow Queen herself waiting there. Millennia telescoped into a moment, and Devony forgot her surroundings entirely.
She bowed, with all of her considerable, practiced grace. “Your Majesty.”
Arienrhod nodded in acknowledgment, and gestured her forward to stand in front of the baroquely carved imported desk. “Devony.” The Queen’s smile and voice were warm, almost welcoming, but her eyes were as cold and distant as the icebound peaks of the interior Devony remembered from her youth. Arienrhod’s eyes were always like that; Devony no longer took them personally. “What news have you charmed out of the offworlders this week?”
The Queen never made small talk. Devony wondered whether it was because she had too many other things on her mind, or whether, after nearly a century and a half, the Queen had simply had enough of it. In either case, she was honored just to be in the Snow Queen’s presence, holding Arienrhod’s complete attention, and knowing that the Queen found her information useful.
Devony prompted the memory feed of her sense-net and began to speak from the notes she had made for herself. She had become an excellent listener over the past few years, and with a little encouragement, her clients were at least as interested in talking about themselves as they were in having sex. When she combined their conversations with the idle gossip and casual remarks of her numerous offworlder acquaintances—including Berdaz, the employer whose sense-net she wore—their pillow talk told her far more than they ever suspected.
Other Winters who worked for and with the offworlders also brought news they had overheard to the Queen. Their first loyalty was always to Arienrhod, the ruler of all the Winter clans—of all Tiamat, for as long as the Black Gate remained open. But the offworlders who came through the Gate to this world weren’t loose-tongued fools, for the most part, and few Winters got the kind of intimate opportunities that came to Devony for learning things the Queen found useful.
She knew as well as any Tiamatan that the end of the Snow Queen’s reign was coming soon, along with the end of the planet’s century-and-a-half-long High Winter. In less than five years of standard time, the increasing gravitational stresses created as the Twins, Tiamat’s binary sun system, approached the perigee of their orbit around the Black Gate would render the Gate’s space-time wormhole unstable, and make travel through it impossible. Before that happened, the offworlders would abandon Tiamat.
The Hegemony called it the Departure. Tiamatans called it the Change … and everything would change then, for the worse.
The Black Gate would not reopen, the Hegemony would not return again, for another century. Few, if any, Tiam
atans who witnessed the Departure would live to witness the Return.
That would hardly be a tragedy, except for one thing: when the offworlders left, they took progress with them. Tiamat would slide back into primitive stagnation under the rule of the mer-loving, technology-hating, superstitious Summer clans for a hundred long years.
The Summers were already migrating north from their scattered island homes, as increased solar radiation from the increasingly unstable Twins caused rising temperatures worldwide, and made their insular lives untenable. By tradition, Winters and Summers would share the slowly expanding strip of arable land along the east coast of Tiamat’s single continent throughout High Summer; they would be forced to endure each others’ unwelcome presence face-to-face in Carbuncle itself.
The new Summer Queen would be chosen … and the Snow Queen, along with her consort, would be sacrificed to the Sea Mother. They would be drowned together in a ritual as ancient as it was barbaric.
Any technology left behind by the Hegemony would go into the sea with them. There would be no more mer hunts, and no more water of life; the mers, held sacred by the Summers, would have a century in which to renew their depleted numbers.
All of which suited the offworlders perfectly. The Hegemony wanted Tiamat to remain in a perpetual technological dark age, so that when they returned, bringing a new Snow Queen to power, the Winters would be desperate for their high-tech bribery, eager to let them exploit Tiamat’s resources—rather, its single, singular resource: the water of life.
During the century and a half of her rule, Arienrhod had come to recognize the pattern as clearly as the Hegemony did; and she had determined to make this Change a real one, a permanent one—a change for the better. Throughout her reign, the Queen had been acquiring proscribed technology from the offworlder criminals whose presence here she tolerated and facilitated. But she distrusted them as much as she despised the Hegemony; which was why, she had explained, she spied on all factions equally, constantly, for her own sake and the sake of her people.
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