The Snow Queen (72 page)

Sparks
raised the flute to his lips,
lowered it again, his mouth suddenly dry, too dry for song. He swallowed,
feeling the pulse in his temple slow. He raised the fragile, hollow shell
again. Positioning his fingers over the opening, he breathed into the
mouthpiece. A tremulous note filled the air around him, like a spirit amazed to
find itself free from the silence it had thought would be eternal. The breath
clogged in his throat and he swallowed again; melody after melody filled his
head, trying to escape into the air. He began to play, haltingly, with wrong
fingers responding to memory’s patterns, shrill overtones stabbing his ears.
But gradually his fingers loosened, the water of song poured sweet and pure
from the depths of his being again and carried him back to the world he had
lost. Arienrhod had tried to ruin his last meeting with Moon, to take away even
that, as she had taken away his pleasure in any beauty or joy that was not of
her; but she had failed. Moon’s passion and belief were as pure as song, and
the memory of her carried away all shame, healed all wounds, righted all wrongs
...

He looked
up, the song and the spell broken, as the guarded door to the suite unlatched
and opened unexpectedly before him. Two figures hooded and robed entered. One
moved slowly, grotesquely.

The door
closed again behind them. “Sparks Dawntreader Summer ...”

Sparks squinted,
reaching up to brighten the suspended lamp. “What do you want? It isn’t time—”

“It’s time
... after twenty-odd years.” The first man, the one who moved easily, came
forward into the globe of light and pushed back his hood.

“What?”
Sparks saw the face of a man on the young end of middle-age, an off worlder. A
Kharemoughi, he thought at first, but with paler skin and a heavier frame, a
rounder face. That face ... something about it he knew ....

“After
twenty-odd years, it’s time that we met, Sparks. I only wish the setting were
more appropriate to a joyful reunion.”

“Who are
you?” Sparks rose from the couch.

“I am your
first ancestor.” The words registered, without meaning he shook his head. “Your
father, Sparks.” Something in the
your
was incomplete, as
though the stranger could not express all that he really felt by it.

Sparks sat
down again, dizzy, as the blood fell away from his head. The stranger—his
father—unfastened his cloak and shrugged it off onto a chair; under it he wore
a plain silver-gray jump suit, and the ornamental badge and collar of a member
of the Hegemonic Assembly. He made a small, formal bow, somehow awkward for all
its grace, as though he were equally uncertain about how to begin. “First
Secretary Temmon Ashwini Sirus.” The second man—a servant?—turned and shuffled
away, disappearing into the next room without comment, leaving them alone.

Sparks
laughed, to cover another sound. “What is this, some kind of joke? Did
Arienrhod put you up to this?” He covered his off worlder medal with his hand,
wrapping his fingers around it, tightening his fist until it whitened ...
remembering how she had teased him and tormented him, telling him she knew who
it belonged to, the name of his father; telling him lies.

“No. I
explained to the Summers that I had come to see my son, and they showed me
where you were.”

Sparks
jerked the medal off over his head. He threw it out to land at Sirus’s feet,
his voice harsh with disbelief. “Then this must belong to you, hero—it sure as
hell doesn’t belong on Starbuck. It took a lot of guts to come here and stick a
knife into me ... here’s your reward. Take it and get out.” He shut his eyes,
trying not to look for resemblances. He heard Sirus lean over and pick up the
medal. “‘To our noble son Temmon ...’” The resonant voice grew transparent.
“How is your mother? I gave her this on the Mask Night ... your legacy.”

“She’s
dead, foreigner.” He opened his eyes deliberately to watch Sirus’s face. “I
killed her.” He let the shock recoil. “She died the day I was born.”

The shock
turned to grief, disbelief. “She died in childbirth?” as though he actually
cared whether it had happened.

Sparks
nodded. “They don’t have all the modern conveniences in Summer. They won’t have
them here either, after the Change.” He ran his hands along the rough cloth of
his pants. “But that won’t matter to me. Or you.”

“Son. Son
...” Sirus turned the medal over and over between his fingers. “What can I say
to you? The Prime Minister is my own father, your grandfather. When he came
back to me, it was all so simple. His blood in my veins made me royal in the
eyes of my league—it made me a leader; gave me a right to rule, nothing but
success and happiness. When he returned again to Samathe, he gave me this medal
with his own hands, and took me into the Assembly.” He let the medal slip
through his fingers. It circled on its chain, catching light, like a fiery
wheel. “I gave this to your mother because she was so like my mother’s people,
with her eyes as blue as a woodland lake, and her hair like sunlight ... She
carried me back to my homeworld for a night, when I was lonely and it was far
away.” He looked up, offering the medal from his outstretched hand. “This was
hers, yours, and it always will be.”

Sparks felt
his bones dissolve and his body turn to smoke. “You bastard ... why did you
come here now? Where were you then, years ago, when I needed you? I waited for
you to come back, I tried to do everything to be what I thought you’d be, so
you’d want me when you saw me.” He spread his hands, surrounded by the
technological mysteries he had solved so painstakingly, so pointlessly. “But
now, when it’s all gone, and I’ve ruined my life ... you come and see me like
this!”

“Sparks,
your life isn’t ruined. Your life isn’t over. I’ve come to—to make amends.” He
hesitated; Sparks turned back to him slowly. “Your cousin Moon told me about
you. It was Moon who sent me here.”

“Moon?”
Sparks swallowed his heart.

“Yes, son.”
Sirus’s smile filled with encouragement and reassurance. “Her mind is behind
this reunion, and her heart, I think, is waiting for another one ... Having met
your cousin, I know that you come from a fine family line.” Sparks glanced
away, silent. “And having collided with her belief in you,” ruefully, “I don’t
think there could be anything that would make me ashamed to have you for a
son.” Sims gazed past him and around him at the instruments and machines, the
silent testimony of their common blood, their shared heritage.

Sparks got
to his feet as his father came toward him. Sirus hung the medal around his neck
again, looking at his face and deeply into his eyes. “You favor your mother
more ... but I can see that you have a Technician’s need to know why. How I
wish there were an answer for every question ...” He put his hand on Sparks’s
shoulder tentatively, as though he was not sure that it would be allowed to
stay.

But Sparks
held his father’s eyes, absorbing the moment and the touch, as the cold empty
cell where a part of his wholeness had been captive for years was thrown open
at last, to let light and warmth pour in. “You came. You came for me—Father
...” He spoke the word he had never expected to hear from his own lips; put his
own hands over Sirus’s hand on his shoulder, clinging to it like a child.
“Father!”

“Very
touching.” The second man shuffled back into the room, breaking apart the
moment. “Now, if you don’t mind, Your Holiness, I want to get this over with.”

Sparks
released his father’s hand, turned resentfully to see the other man unfasten
his cloak and take it off. “Herne! What—?”

Herne
grinned darkly. “The Child Stealer sent me. I’m your changeling, Dawntreader.”
His paralyzed legs were meshed in a clumsy exoskeleton.

“What’s he
talking about?” Sparks looked back at his father. “What’s he doing here?”

“Your
cousin Moon brought him to me. She said he was willing to take your place at
the sacrifice of the Change.”

“Take my
place?” Sparks shook his head. “
Herne
? You? ... Why,
Herne? Why would you do that for me?” Not letting himself hope.

Herne
laughed once. “Not for you, Dawntreader. For her. They’re more alike than you
know. More than you know ...” His eyes turned distant. “Moon knew. She knew
what I needed, and wanted: Arienrhod, my self-respect ... and an end to it, the
last laugh. And she’s given it all to me. Gods, I want to see Arienrhod’s face
when she learns she’s been cheated in everything! I’ll have her to myself
forever, after all ... that should be enough of hell, and heaven, for both of
us.” His vision telescoped back to their faces. “Go to your flawed copy,
Dawntreader, and I hope you’re satisfied with her. You never were man enough
for the real thing.” He held out the cloak.

Sparks took
it from him, threw it around his own shoulders. “That’s one way of putting it,
I suppose.” He fastened the catch at his throat. His father held out a small
jar of brownish paste. “Stain your face and hands, so that the guards will take
you for a Kharemoughi.”

“One of the
galaxy’s Chosen.” Herne smirked.

Sparks went
to the mirror, smeared the stain over his skin obediently, watching himself
disappear. Behind his own reflection he saw Sirus waiting, and Herne searching
the room with eager possessiveness—saw Starbuck in his element, and a son with
his father, and they were two different men. Two different men, who had been
the same man; who had loved the same woman who was not the same woman, and
loved her now for the ways in which she was different. One of them ready to
return to life, and one of them ready to die ...

He finished
coloring his skin and raised his hood, went back to Sirus’s side. “I’m ready,”
smiling at last at his father’s smile.

“Son of a
First Secretary, grandson of a Prime Minister ... you suit the role admirably.”
His father nodded. “Is there anything you want to take with you?”

Sparks
remembered his flute lying on the couch, picked it up. “This is all.” He
glanced at the clutter of hardware briefly, and away again.

“Herne—”
Sirus said something humbly in Kharemoughi, and for Sparks repeated it: “Thank
you for giving me my son.”

Sparks
took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

Herne
folded his arms, enjoying something that
Sparks
did not fully understand. “Any time,
sadhu
.
Just make sure you remember that you owe it all to me. Now get out of my
chambers, you bastards. I want to start enjoying them, and I don’t have much
time left.”

Sirus
tapped on the door; it opened.
Sparks
looked
back quickly at
Herne
standing in his element, taking his own place.
Goodbye, Arienrhod
... Sirus went out with his shuffling servant,
leaving Starbuck alone.

Moon was
swept on the crowded tide from one end of the Street to the other, down to the
creaking docks of Carbuncle’s underworld where the city waded in the sea. There
the procession made offerings to the Sea Mother and set her free at last, after
an eternity compressed into hours, to spend her own Mask Night however she
chose until dawn.
Until dawn.

She made
her way back up the Street toward Jerusha PalaThion’s townhouse, fending off giddy
worshipers and eager would-be lovers in the crush of costumed bodies, feeling
all around her the quickening pulse, the rising passion of the night’s promise.
But the electric energy all around her only made her more sharply aware of her
own solitary journey through it, and that she might spend the rest of her life
alone if she spent the rest of tonight that way.

Night was
bluing into black at the alley’s end when she reached PalaThion’s townhouse at
last and banged on the door. PalaThion opened it, wearing a shapeless robe
instead of her uniform; started, at the face of the Summer Queen confronting
her.

Moon lifted
the mask from her shoulders, held it in her arms, saying nothing.

“My gods
...” PalaThion shook her head, as though this were only one more blow in a
beating that had already left her dazed. She stood aside, letting Moon escape
into sanctuary, out of the mauling mobs beyond her door.

Moon went
on through the atrium and into the living room, her heart in her throat,
searching. No. Nothing yet.” PalaThion followed her in. “He hasn’t come back.”

“Oh.” Moon
forced out the word.

“There’s
still time.”

Moon nodded
silently, laid the Summer Queen’s mask across one end of the reclining couch.

“Is that
too heavy for you already?” PalaThion’s voice grew less kind.

Moon
glanced up, saw the weary disillusionment that turned the woman’s eyes to dust.
“No ... But tomorrow at dawn, if
Sparks
isn’t—isn’t—” looking down again.

“Did you
win that mask honestly?” PalaThion asked bluntly, as though she actually expected
an honest answer.

Moon
reddened, smoothing its ribbons. Did I? “I had to win it.”

PalaThion
frowned. “You’re telling me that you really believe it was fore-ordained ...
sibyl?”