The Snow Queen (64 page)

Moon
stepped back from Arienrhod’s intensity, felt the wind warn her.
Lady, is she insane?
She tugged the
cloth of her cloak. “How do you know so much about me? Why would you even care?
I’m no one.”

“Moon Dawntreader
is no one,” Arienrhod said softly. “But you are the most important woman on
this planet. Do you know what a clone is, Moon?”

Trying to
remember, Moon shook her head. “A ... a twin.” She felt a peculiar prickling
begin just under the surface of her skin. But you’ve been the Queen forever.

“More than
a twin, closer than a twin. An ovum, a set of genes, taken from my body and
stimulated to reproduce an identical person.”

“From your
body,” Moon whispered, touching her own, looking down at it as though it had
suddenly become a stranger’s. “No!” raising her head again. “I have a mother
... my grandmother saw me born! I’m a Summer!”

“Of
course.” Arienrhod said. “You are a Summer ... I wanted you to be raised as
one. I had you implanted in your mother’s womb at the last Festival, along with
other clones in other hosts. But you were the only one who survived, and was
perfect. Come away from the edge ...” She moved forward to take Moon’s arm and
draw her away from the brink of the Pit.

Moon tried
to pull free, but her body belonged to the Queen ... and she felt it obey,
stiffly, liquidly; a thing made of technology and magic.
We’re so alike ... everyone sees it, everyone
. “Why—why did you
want so many—copies; Summers, not Winters?” Refusing to include herself.

“I only
needed one. It was my dream, then, to replace myself with you, when I died at
the Change. With myself—but raised to under, stand the Summer mentality, and
how to manipulate it. I would have brought you here, explained it all to you
years ago—so that you would have had time to adjust to your true heritage. But
then I thought you were lost to me ... and I found Sparks, instead.” Moon grew
rigid; but Arienrhod was looking inward. “And I decided that I didn’t have to
die—that I could live on, myself, and let I Winter live on with me. I made
another plan, to let me do that; I didn’t need you any more. But I still want
you—I’ve always wanted you here by me: my own fair child; and no one else’s.”
She lifted Moon’s face, with fingers under her chin.

No one else’s ...
Moon felt her eyes lock with Arienrhod’s, her
mind shifting heights—the voice that spoke to her like a mother, the face of a
girl, the face in the mirror; the eyes that call her down the endless spiral of
time ...
Who am I? Who am I?
“I’m a
Summer! And you’re trying to kill my people.”

Arienrhod
recoiled, the moment shattered. “He told you that ... he’s a fool. He can’t see
that they’re not his people, or yours. Moon, Myself, you are a Winter in your
heart, just as Sparks is an off worlder She gestured at the stars. “You’ve been
off world you know how the Hegemony oppresses us—you’ve seen what they keep
from us, and keep for themselves while they exploit us. Haven’t you?” demanding
an answer.

Moon stood
looking up. “Yes, I know it. And I hate it.” She saw the death of countless
mers among the countless stars. “The Change has to be changed.”

“Then you
understand how the absurd, tech-hating superstition of the Summers keeps us in
chains while the off worlders are gone. We’ll never break free from their
control unless we have the time to start developing a technological base of our
own. How else can we keep even what little the off worlders leave to us, unless
we destroy the Change pattern?”

“Not by
destroying our people!”
My people; they
are my people!
Blotting out Arienrhod’s mirror image with the memories of
her family, her childhood, her island world.

“Then how?”
Arienrhod’s voice lost its patience. “How else will you ever convince them, or
convert them?” But she stood as though she were actually listening, expecting a
genuine alternative.

“I’m a
sibyl.” Her heart lurched as she confessed it to the Queen of Winter, but she
knew that Arienrhod must already know it, too. “When I tell them the truth
about what I am, when I prove it, they’ll listen.”

Arienrhod
frowned her disappointment. “I thought you’d have lost your obsession with that
religious mummery, after what you’ve seen off world There’s no Sea Mother
filling your mouth with holy drivel; any more than the other ten thousand gods
of the Hegemony exist in any way except as straw men for the off worlders to
curse at.” A gust of wind poured out of the Pit, smelling of seaweed; Moon
shivered inside her cloak, in spite of herself. But Arienrhod, wrapped in fog
layers of filmy cloth, laughed at her mirror’s reflection of fear.

“Sibyls
aren’t a—” But Moon broke off again.
She
doesn’t know the truth. She can’t know ...
suddenly aware that she held a
hidden weapon, and that she had almost given it away. She felt her broken
confidence begin to mend itself; tried to keep the knowledge from showing in
her eyes, afraid that in some way Arienrhod would be able to read her every
secret.

But
Arienrhod was caught in the machinery of her own design. “I know why you wanted
to be a sibyl ... because you couldn’t be a queen. But you can be, now—” A
light behind the agate translucency of her eyes.

“Forget
Summer! You can share a whole world with me, a Winter world forever. Throw away
your trefoil and wear a crown. Cut the strings that tie you to those narrow-minded
bigots, and be free to think freely, and dream.” She cast an invisible sign
into the abyss. Moon felt the wind’s blade at her back. “They’ll never accept
you as one of them, or trust what you are now. It’s too late to save them,
anyway. The wheels have been set in motion. You can’t stop their fate, you
can’t change it .... Accept it. Rule with me, as you would have ruled after me.
We’ll build our dream of a new world together. We can do it together, we’ll
share it all—” She held out her hands, shining with passion. Moon lifted her
own hands, spellbound by the nearness, the undeniable reality of her own self,
her original self ... formed in the image of her creator ...

“Arienrhod,”
Arienrhod said.

Moon pulled
back, smarting: Realizing that Arienrhod did not see her at all, had no
understanding of why words meant to win and seduce battered and bruised her
other self like stones. Arienrhod’s egotism saw only the thing she longed to
see ... only Arienrhod. And you’re wrong. A deep and unshakeable certainty that
was more than her own relief moved in Moon, as though she had somehow been
tested without knowing it, and had proven her worth. “What about Sparks?” She
heard her own question, brittle ice to match Arienrhod’s expectations. “Will we
share him too?”

Arienrhod’s
placid face flickered, but she nodded. “Why not? Could I really be jealous of
my ... self? Could I refuse myself anything? He loves us both, how could he
help it? Why should he have to deny it?” as though she had to make herself
believe it.

“No.”

Arienrhod’s
head gave a curious twist. “No? No what?”

“No more.”
Moon drew herself up, feeling the limitless strength the word released in her.
“I’m not Arienrhod.”

“Of course
you are,” Arienrhod said placatingly, as to a stubborn child. “We share the
same chromosomes, the same body—the same man and the same dream. I know this
must be difficult for you to accept, when you never suspected .... I would
never have had it happen like this. But how can you deny the truth?”

Moon
wavered, felt a deeper certainty harden her resolve. “Because I know that what
you plan to do is wrong. It’s wrong. It’s not the way.”

“Why is it
wrong to change the world for the better, when you have the power to do it? The
power of change, of birth, of creation—you can’t separate those things from
death and destruction. That’s the way of nature, and the nature of power ...
its inexorability, its amorality, its indifference.”

“Real
power,” Moon lifted her hand to the sign at her throat, “is control. Knowing
that you can do anything ... and not doing it only because you can. Thousands
of mers have died so that you could keep your power while the off worlders were
here; and now thousands of human beings are going to die so that you can keep
it when they’re gone. I’m not worth a thousand lives, a hundred, ten, two—and
neither are you.” She shook her head, seeing the face before her, seeing
herself. “If I have to believe that being what I am means I’d destroy Sparks,
and destroy the people who gave me everything, then I should never have been
born! But I don’t believe it, I don’t feel it,” fiercely. “I’m not what you
are, or what you think I am, or what you want me to be. I don’t want your power
... I have my own.” She touched her throat again.

Arienrhod
frowned; Moon felt her anger like sleet. “So they were all imperfect, failures
... even you. I always believed I could supply the thing you lacked ... but no;
no one can give you that. You’re a gutless weakling—thank the gods I don’t have
to depend on you now to achieve my goals.”

Moon looked
down at her hands, at white fists. “Then we really have nothing to say to each
other, after all. You told me I could go.” She took a step toward the bridge,
her heart leaping ahead.

“Wait,
Moon!” Arienrhod caught up to her again, drawing her back and around. “Can you
really leave me like this; so soon, so easily? Isn’t there some way for us to
share something more than our stubborn pride? You above all should have been
the one, the only one, who would understand the things no one else could ever
reach in me, the things that I’ve never been able to give to anyone else.” Her
voice, her touch, softened. “Give me time, and perhaps I can learn to reach
what lies unreachable in you.”

Moon
swayed: a fatherless, motherless child hearing her own voice crying a lifelong
loneliness; reaching out to embrace her own strength, and redouble it, parent
and child in one. But her inner eye showed her Sparks, scarred in body and
mind, and what his final silence had sworn her to. “No. No, we can’t.” Her gaze
fell. “There’s no time left.”

Arienrhod
flushed; softness fell away from her face, left unforgiving iron. Her hand rose
as if to strike Moon’s face; but it caught the beaded choker instead and
jerked, breaking the threads. “You think you can stop me. Then leave, if you
can. My nobles know that you’re a Summer sibyl.” She waved at the Winters still
standing patiently beyond the bridge and behind them. “And they know that you
came here disguised as me, to commit some treachery. If you can make them
believe you’re not those things, then you deserve to go free—and to be a part
of me.” She turned away abruptly, striding back toward the palace halls alone.

As she went
toward them the waiting nobles advanced, bowing as they passed her, and ringed
Moon in at the foot of the bridge. Moon watched Arienrhod go on, never turning
back, until she lost sight of her beyond the shifting wall of vengeful faces.

“Well,
Commander. I hope you enjoyed the Queen’s banquet.” Chief Inspector Mantagnes
broke off his conversation with the sergeant, hoping nothing of the kind, as
Jerusha entered the hollow quiet of headquarters from the clamoring streets.
Virtually everyone on the force was out, either protecting the Prime Minister
or patrolling the festivities. The two men made a desultory salute; she
returned it perfunctorily. Mantagnes eyed her dress uniform enviously. She knew
that he must have spent the evening brooding because he wasn’t at the reception
in her place, strutting in front of his fellow Kharemoughis in the position
that was rightfully his.

“I don’t
enjoy wasting my time, when there’s still so much work to be done.” She looked
pointedly at the two of them; pulled off her scarlet cloak, opening her collar.
“You’re relieved as acting commander, Inspector.”

“Yes,
ma’am.” He saluted again, his eyes reminding her that she wouldn’t be hearing
that for much longer. Yes, you son of a bitch, you’ll have your turn. The Chief
Justice’s damning, unfavorable report on her and Mantagnes’s own ambitious
backbiting would ensure the record of her command here was painted as black as
the void. Her career would be finished with this post, her seniority and rank
swept under the carpet of official censure. She would never have a chance at a
command again; she would be shipped off to some godforsaken outpost on the back
side of nowhere acknowledging grimly that there were worse places than
Carbuncle). And there she would rot for the rest of her natural life.

Gods, I’m sick of Kharemoughi arrogance!
She bunched her cape between her
hands as she started toward her office.
If
I have to see one more damned, supercilious Technocrat face ...
BZ
Gundhalinu’s face came suddenly into her mind, slowing her.
One more face.
That face she would give
anything to see, right now, right here. But he had never arrived with his
prisoner. She should have known—but how the hell could she know that Gundhalinu
of all men would run off with the girl instead?
Because it was obvious!
She had put into her report that he was
ill, unaccountable for his actions; and the gods knew it was probably truer
than she wanted to admit.

And tonight
she had seen Sparks Dawntreader, openly flaunting his sanctuary there at the
banquet, drinking himself into a stupor. And Arienrhod, serenely beautiful as
always, serenely unconcerned about her upcoming fate as she moved among her
subjects and her supposed masters—far too unconcerned.
Damn it! What’s she planning?