The Snow Queen Part 40

All the rest, all the other Festival pageants, had been only dress rehearsals for the next Change, this Change. They had chosen the Queen for a Day by the same ancient ritual rules, to reign over the Mask Night and make this journey at dawn. But only a pair of effigies had been given to the sea at her command, and not human lives.

And only she and the a.s.sembly members had remained unchanged, like the ritual itself, through all of those Festivals, all the long years. But this final time would see the end of her and all her efforts to break free of them, while they went on and the system they symbolized went on forever. Her hands clenched on the soft cloth of her gown. If I could only take them all with me! But it was too late, too late for anything at all.

She saw the Summer Queen at last; standing on the pier in the open s.p.a.ce between the red-robed stands, with the bitter-colored water lapping below her. Her mask was a thing of beauty that stirred unwilling admiration in Arienrhod's heart. But it was made by a Winter. And who knew what homely, undeserving islander's face was hidden beneath it; what st.u.r.dy peasant body and dull-witted mind were wrapped in the glistening fish-net coc.o.o.n of silky green mesh. The prospect of that face, that mind, taking the place of her own made her stomach twist.

Herne was silent beside her, as silent as she was. She wondered what his own thoughts were as he looked on the waiting elite of his homeworld, and the waiting sea. She could tell nothing about the expression beneath his mask. d.a.m.n him. She prayed that he was regretting his suicidal impulse now; that he felt even a fraction of the despair and regret that she knew, standing here in the ruins of her life's ambition. Let death be oblivion, then! If I have to spend it with this symbol of all my failures, knowing that I did would be worse than all the h.e.l.ls of the G.o.d-d.a.m.ning oQworlders combined!

The cart had gone forward as far as it could into the open s.p.a.ce along the pier's edge. The escort of her n.o.bles slowed, stopped, let the traces settle. They circled slowly three times around her, casting their off world offerings into the back of the cart, as they sang their final song of farewell to Winter. They bowed to her at last, and she could hear their individual weeping and lamentation above the crowd's cries as they began to file away from the cart. Some touched the hem of her cloak to their lips as they pa.s.sed her for the last time. Some even dared to touch her hand a" some of the oldest, the faithful followers of a century and a half a" and their grief touched her suddenly, unexpectedly, deeply.

Their place was taken by a circle of Summers, also masked, also singing, a paean to the coming golden days. She closed her mind and did not listen to it. They, too, circled her three tunes around, throwing their own offerings into the cart a" clattering primitive necklaces of sh.e.l.l and stone, colored fis.h.i.+ng floats, sprigs of wilted greenery.

When they had finished their own song, a greater silence fell over the waiting crowd; until she could hear clearly the creakings and groans of s.h.i.+fting moorings, made aware of the greater alien crowd of s.h.i.+ps that covered the water surface; a near-solid skin of wood and cloth and clanging metal. Carbuncle loomed above them like a gathering storm, but here at this edge of the city's under structure she could see beyond its shadow, out across the gray-green open sea. Endless ... eternal ... is it any wonder that we wors.h.i.+p you? Remembering that once, hi a faraway time, even she had believed in the Sea.

The mask of the Summer Queen came between her and her view of the sea, as the woman came up between the cart's traces to stand before her. "Your Majesty." The Summer Queen bowed to her, and Arienrhod remembered that she was still the Queen, until death. "You have come." The voice was strangely uncertain, and strangely familiar.

She nodded, regal and aloof, in control again of the one thing that was still within her power. "Yes," recalling the ritual response, "I have come to be changed. I am the Sea incarnate; as the tide turns and the world has its seasons, so must I follow to lead. Winter has had its season ... the snow dissolves on the face of the Sea, and from it soft rains are reborn." Her voice rang eerily through the underworld. The ritual was being recorded by hidden cameras, broadcast sight and sound over screens set up throughout the city.

"Summer follows Whiter as night follows day. The sea joins the land. Together the halves become whole; who can separate them? Who can deny them their place, or their time, when their time has come? They are born of a power greater than any here. Their truth is universal!" The Summer Queen lifted her arms to the crowd.

Arienrhod started slightly. She had never said that last line, never heard it before. The crowds murmured; a p.r.i.c.kling unease crept hi her.

"Who comes with you to be changed?"

"My beloved," keeping her voice even, "whose body is like the earth, coupled with the Sea. Together beneath the sky, we can never be separated." The cold wind burned her eyes. Herne said nothing, did nothing, waiting with appropriate stoicism.

"Then so be it." The woman's voice actually broke. She held out her hands, and two of the attendant Summers placed a small bowl of dark liquid hi each. The Summer Queen offered a bowl to Herne; he took it willingly. She offered the other to Arienrhod. "Will you drink to the Lady's mercy?"

Arienrhod felt her mouth stiffen against the reply; said, finally, "Yes." The bowl held a strong drug which would dull her fear and awareness of what was coming. Beside her Herne lifted his black mask and raised the bowl to his lips, grimaced. Arienrhod raised her own. She had always intended to refuse it; rejecting the idea of dimming her awareness of the moment when her triumph would have been clear. But now she wanted oblivion. "To the Lady." She sniffed the pungent fragrance of the herbs, felt their numbing gall burn inside her mouth. She swallowed the liquid, deadening her throat; the second swallow, and the third were as tasteless as water.

As she finished it and returned the bowl she saw Summers approaching, carrying the ropes that would bind them to the cart, and to each other, inescapably. Terror congealed in her chest, panic darkened her sight. Deaden me, for G.o.ds' sakes! trying to feel the numbness spread. Herne almost resisted as the Summers laid hands on him; she saw his muscles twist and harden, and his weakness gave her strength. She sat perfectly still and pliant as the Summers bound her hands, her feet, bound her body tightly against Herne's and fastened the ropes to the cart itself. Even though the cart had the form of a blunt-nosed boat, she knew that its bed gaped with holes beneath the heaps of furs and offerings, and that it would sink almost immediately. She couldn't keep her hands from straining at their bonds, or her body from trying to pull away from Herne's. His masked face turned toward her, but she would not look at him.

The Summer Queen was back in place before them, but turning to face the water as she recited the final Invocation to the Sea. As she finished, the silence that had fallen over the crowd continued, the silence of antic.i.p.ation now. Now, at any moment, she would give the sign. Arienrhod felt a dreamlike lethargy creep along her limbs, along her spine; but her mind was still far too clear. Is it meant to work that way? At least now her body was becoming too leaden to betray her, granting her dignity hi death whether she wanted it or not.

But instead of moving aside, the Summer Queen turned back to face her again. "Your Majesty." The urgency of the m.u.f.fled voice caught at her. "Would you a" look on the face of Summer's Queen before you die?"

Arienrhod stared uncomprehendingly, felt Herne stare, too. Tradition said that the new Queen did not unmask, casting off her sins, until the old one had gone into the sea; giving the sign for the crowd to follow. But this woman had stumbled off the ritual path once al ready. Is she so stupid? Or was it something else? "I would see your face, yes," forcing the words out between numb lips.

The Summer Queen moved closer to the cart, where the crowd could not see her clearly. Slowly she put her hands to the mask, and lifted it off her head.

A cascade of silvery hair tumbled out and down. Arienrhod gaped at the face that the mask revealed. The ring of Summers surrounding the cart gaped, too. She heard their voices murmur as the wonder spread, as they all saw what she saw ... face to face with her own face.

"Moona"" barely even a whisper to betray her. Her body sat perfectly still, as though it saw nothing unusual, nothing remarkable, incredible, impossible. Not in vain. It was not in vain!

"G.o.ds," Herne mumbled thickly. "How? How'd you do it, Arienrhod?"

She only smiled.

Moon shook out her hair, meeting the smile with forgiveness, and defiance, and compa.s.sion. "Change has come ... because of you, in spite of you, Your Majesty." She lowered the mask over her head again.

The Summers around the cart drew away, looking from face to face, their own expressions caught between amazement and fear. "The Queen! They're both the Queena"" an augury, an omen. The sibyl tattoo was clearly visible on Moon's throat; they pointed at it and murmured again.

Herne chuckled with difficulty. "The secret's out ... it's out at last. She's been off world she knows what she is."

"What? What, Herne?" trying to turn her head.

"Sibyls are everywhere! You never knew, did you; you never even suspected. And those stuffed dummiesa"" glancing toward the off worlders in the stands, "they don't suspect a thing." His mangled laughter left him gasping.

Sibyls are everywhere? ... Can they be real? No, it isn't fair, there's so much left to learn! Closing her eyes, unable to focus her inner sight. But it wasn't in vain.

The chorus of wailing and execration began to press again, inexorable like the process of change, impatient for the sacrifice. All of the crowd's overflowing grief, all of its blame, all of its hostility and resentment and fear poured into this fragile boat, onto the helpless beings of herself and Herne, to be taken down with them at the ritual's culmination. She no longer strained against the contact between her body and Herne's, grateful at last for someone to share the trial, and this last moment, with her ... the pa.s.sing through into another plane. She had seen too many visions of heaven, too many h.e.l.ls, to choose among them. I hope we make our own.

She turned her gaze outward a last time, to see Moon standing aside from the cart's path: Her body was taut with strain, as though she were about to speak an unforgivable curse, one that she could never take back. Why should it hurt her? I would rejoice-Not able to remember why she would rejoice, or even whether it was true. She rallied her mind one last time, before Moon could speak the fateful words, to speak her own last words. "My peoplea"" half obliterated by their cries. "Winter is gone! Obey the new Queen ... as you would your own. For she is your own now." She dropped her head, catching only Moon's eyes. "Where ... is he?"

Moon moved her head slightly, a twinge of jealousy in it, but granting her clone-mother's last request. Arienrhod followed her glance to find Sparks standing among the honored Summers, by the empty place that was the Summer Queen's own in the stands. But he stood with his eyes closed against the parting moment; or against the chance that she might look up and see him one last time... He cares ... he does care. She looked back again at Moon. They both do. In that moment infinitely surprised, eternally confounded, by life's imperviousness to reason or justice.

Herne's moldering stare lay waiting for her when she turned her head back again a" knowing whom her thoughts belonged to in this final moment.

"Forever ... Herne."

He shook his head once. "We're forever. This is. Death is. Life's what doesn't last."

"We live while someone remembers us. And they'll never forget me nowa"" Because her reincarnation already stood hi her place. She had no will left to let her look back at Moon once more, or at Sparks. Never look back.

Moon raised her hands to the Sea, crying like a gull into the storm of the crowd's antic.i.p.ation. "Lady Sea, Mother of us all, accept our gifts and return them ninefold, accept our sins and bring us renewal, accept the soul of Winter and let it be a" reborn." She faltered imperceptibly. "Let spring come to Summer!"

Arienrhod felt the cart lurch as the Summers pushed it forward, watched the oily water surface draw near. The tide was at full, and it lay below the pier's edge like a distorted mirror. Let it happen. It was not in vain. The howls and moans of the crowd were a hymn to the future, praising her memory. The cart began to tilt under her; she leaned forward, looking for her reflection as it slipped...

Chapter 55.

Moon saw the cart strike the water, plunge and reemerge; heard it, felt its impact vibrate in her bones. The crowd's roaring went on and on, hideously. The boat form drifted away from the dock, lowering in the water, swinging slowly until she could see Starbuck's hidden face and the face of the Snow Queen, Arienrhod ... herself: serene with drug stupor, bound to her impotent lover in a grotesque parody of an embrace. The boat began to spiral more rapidly as it filled with water. Moon tried to shut her eyes, but they would not close against the hypnotic final movement of the death dance on the water. She remembered her own ordeal by sea, remembered all that had brought her to this place, again, sacrifice upon sacrifice. And still she could not look away The boat lurched suddenly, as the faces revolved again toward the crowd, and in the blink of an eye it was gone. Moon blinked again and again, but it did not reappear. The sea surface lay in unperturbed undulation, with only a telltale litter of boughs to mark Her acceptance of Her peoples' offering. The crowd's roaring was like a storm, and the underworld trembled. Moon watched the lazy motion of the swells, standing as fluid and unresponsive as the Sea Herself.

One of the Summers came forward at last, touched her arm hesitantly. Moon shuddered under the touch, and breathed again. "Lady?" He bowed as Moon turned at last. The Summers acknowledged their Queen's role as the Sea Mother incarnate, and did not use the artificial off world form of royal address. "The unmaskinga""

"I know." She nodded, looking back over her shoulder at the sea even as she spoke. Fair voyage, safe haven. She moved away from the edge of the dock, into the crowd's eye once more. "Lady" ... 7 am the Queen.

"The Queen ... the Queen ... the Queen is dead. Long live the Queen!" The shouts of the Summers echoed inside her, a mockery.

She placed her hands on her mask, hands that felt damp and chill like the wind through the underworld. "My peoplea"" She felt her body resist the motion of exposing her face again; suddenly, disconcertingly aware of the danger she had only glimpsed in the eyes of the Summers who stood here on the pier around her. Now her resemblance to Arienrhod would be obvious to everyone a" and especially to the off worlders If they even suspected the truth... She shook her head, shaking the rest of the words loose that she must say to the waiting crowd: "Winter is past, Summer has come at last. The Lady has taken our offering, and will return it ninefold. The life that was is dead a" let it be cast away, like a battered mask, an outgrown sh.e.l.l. Rejoice now, and make a new beginning!" She lifted the mask from her head.

All of the crowd together a" Winters, Summers, even off worlders-became one in this one moment. Their shouts of joy and the rustle of countless masks being torn from countless heads crescendoed-baring faces freed for that moment from all past sorrows, sins, and fears. Their celebration and adulation lifted her up onto its shoulders, swept into her heart. This world will be free!

But as she spoke the words, holding her mask high, the crowd's voice changed; the cavernous underworld reverberated with the cries of a people who saw a thing beyond their understanding, and could not deny it... "Arienrhod a" Arienrhod!" Moon felt the Summers' superst.i.tion curdle, felt the disbelief spreading like paranoia through the crowd, imagined it echoing through the entire city. Knowing that she must stop it now a" stop it before she lost everything without ever having had it. How ... how do I stop them? like a prayer, pressing her hand to the sign at her throat. The sibyl sign ...

"People of Tiamat, children of the Seal" She reached up, pulling at the neck of her clothing, to bare the trefoil tattoo. "I am a sibyl!

See my sign a" I serve the Lady faithfully and truthfully. My name is Moon Dawntreader Summer, and I will do the same as your Queen. The keeper of all wisdom speaks through me, but only to you. Ask and I shall answer, and I will never speak falsely."

A hush fell, went on falling as the echoes died; all eyes throughout the city were on her throat, or on its image on some screen. The Winters were speechless with uncertainty, the Summers were speechless with reverence, at the undeniable proof of their Queen's trans.m.u.tation, the symbol of her rebirth and holy status. And from the corner of her eye Moon saw the strange look that pa.s.sed over the faces of the off worlder officials hi the viewing stands, to see that sign, below that face...

As she went on watching, her breath aching in her chest, she saw the look separating again into a natural spectrum of expressions: horrified amus.e.m.e.nt, fascination, disgust at the spectacle they had all just witnessed ... but still a lingering unease and uncertainty. Nowhere among them did she see any guilt, any respect, any real understanding of what they had seen. Next time a" next time whoever stands here will see those things.

Letting her gaze go on, she followed it, walking back toward her own place in the stands among the Summer elders. Sparks stood waiting hi the place reserved for her consort; his flaming hair was a beacon to sign her place ... his face was tight, like a drawn bow. She took her place silently beside him, looked away from the crowd again to the spot where branches drifted on the sea. The crowd still waited, murmuring and uncertain.

"They expect a few words from you, Lady." One of the Goodventures who had been her ceremonial guides leaned toward her. She sensed a fog of unease among the Summers, too.

She nodded, wondering again, as she had wondered all through the mind-numbing song and celebration of the Mask Night, what the words would be that could make her people listen: How could one transform so many, and still keep their trust? But somehow, somewhere, there had to be the words...

The words came to her suddenly, not from the strange guardian of her mind, but from the strength of her own feeling. "People of Tiamat, the Lady has blessed me once, by giving me someone to share my life with me." She looked at Sparks beside her; her hand touched his, hanging cold and strengthless at his side. "She has blessed me twice, by making me a sibyl, and three times, by making me a Queen. Since yesterday I have thought a great deal about my destiny, and this world's, which all of us will share. I've prayed that She will show me the way to do Her will and be Her living symbol. And She has answered me." In a way that I never dreamed She could. Moon glanced toward the sea, and the secret that lay beneath the dark waters.

"I know there is a reason why She has shown herself to you as a sibyl, through me. I don't know yet the full pattern of the future, but I know that to create it fully I must have help a" help from all of you, and especially from other sibyls. Summer has come to Carbuncle, and this city is no longer closed to sibyls a" more than anyone, more than anyone can know, sibyls belong here! Islanders, when you go back to your homes, ask your sibyls to make the journey here if they can a" not to stay, but to come to me and learn their part in the future's design."

She paused, hearing the crowd's voice whisper, trying to judge whether it was accepting her words, and her. She stole glances at the Summers in the stands around her, relieved to find a benign surprise looking back at her. The Winters would resent it, she knew instinctively, remembering their fear and scorn firsthand. She had to give them something of their own, a part hi the future. She glanced again at the waiting off worlders knowing the risk she took in this offering, the delicate balance she had to maintain while they still walked this world.

"If I a" if I seem to stray out of tradition's shallows as Summer's Queen, and into uncharted depths, have faith in me. Try to remember that I am the Lady's chosen, and that I only follow Her will ." secure hi the knowledge that she told the truth. "She is my navigator, and She charts my course by strange stars," stranger stars than the ones that lie above us. She glanced at the off worlders again. "My first command as your new Queena"" the potential of power sang in her head, potential energy, "is that all the off world possessions of the Winters will not be thrown into the sea. Hear me!" before the crowd could drown her out. "Things made by the off worlders offend the waters, they choke the sea with filth. Three things from each Winter are all She demands a" and the Winters will choose what offerings they make. Time ... time will take care of the rest!" She braced herself against the rise of Summer outrage.

But there was only a rippling water of dismay, here and there a s.h.i.+ning drop of laughter or applause from an astonished Winter. Moon took a deep breath, hardly daring to believe-They trust me! They listen; they'll do whatever I say... realizing at last what Arienrhod had known a" and how easily power, like fire, could break its bonds and destroy what it had been guardian to. Her hands tightened over the rail. "Thank you, my people." She bowed her head to them.

The Summers in the stands s.h.i.+fted into deferential resignation around her; but Sparks watched her like a cat, with suspicion and unease, as he sensed her sense of power.

She looked away quickly, struggling to keep her expression even as she saw the Prime Minister himself begin to descend opposite them, to start the final, official acknowledgement of her rule, to pay the hypocritical homage of one figurehead ruler to another. Watching him descend, she saw First Secretary Sims among the a.s.sembly members, caught his own eyes on her with a dubious foreboding. She nudged Sparks, led his gaze to his father's; saw him struggle to meet his father's sudden smile. Sparks looked down again silently at his grandfather, as the Prime Minister began his salutation.

The speeches of the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice of Tiamat, half a dozen other dignitaries whose function she had never even heard of, were brief and patronizing. She stood patiently through them all, s.h.i.+elded from their arrogance by her secret knowledge, but seeing in each face suspicion and mistrust stirred by her own speech to her people. The Chief Justice looked at her too long and too piercingly; but he only mouthed congratulations like the rest, praised the traditional and ritual, her peoples' smooth backsliding into ignorance. He urged her not to stray from tradition's path too strongly-to beware the consequences. She smiled at him.

As he left his place before her, the last of her tribute-bringers approached, and she saw that it was the Commander of Police. As PalaThion pa.s.sed the Chief Justice, she glimpsed a silent exchange between them, saw the dullness of PalaThion's eyes as she came on.

"Your Majesty." PalaThion saluted with formal precision, and the dullness sharpened and brightened as she took in Moon's actual presence above her at the red-draped rail. "I congratulate you." Incongruity p.r.i.c.ked every word.

Moon let her smile widen. "Thank you, Commander. I think I'm as surprised to find myself here as you are." She felt suddenly awkward, as though she were speaking through someone else's mouth.

"I doubt that very much, Your Majesty. But who knows... ?" PalaThion shrugged imperceptibly. She raised her voice, "The recognition of your position as the Summer Queen ends my duties here, Your Majesty, and all police responsibility for what happens on Tiamat. And all official rule by the Hegemony for a hundred years, until we return again at the next Change. Keeping order will be your responsibility from now on."

Moon nodded. "I know, Commander. Thank you for your service to my people ... and especially to Summer, for saving us from the a" the plague. I owe you a debt that I can't repaya"" two debts, leaning forward against the rail.

PalaThion glanced down, up again. "I was only doing my duty, Your Majesty." But a surprising grat.i.tude showed on her face.

"Tiamat regrets losing a true friend like you, and so do I. We don't have many true friends in this galaxy. We need them all."

PalaThion smiled thinly. "Friends turn up in the most unexpected places, Your Majesty... But sometimes you only know it when it's too late. The same goes for enemies." She lowered her voice. "Walk softly, Moon, until the last s.h.i.+p is gone from the star port Don't try to make the future happen yesterday. More than just your own people are wondering what you really are. You'd be in a cell right now if the Chief Justice didn't know it would cause a riot... The only reason you'll get away with changing the ritual is because it won't make any difference."

Moon blinked, her hands white against the red cloth. "What do you mean?"

"The Hedge has its way of dealing with tech h.o.a.rders when it goes. Never underestimate them a" not for a second. That's the best advice a friend can give you now."

"Thank you, Commander." Moon straightened her shoulders, trying to hide her dismay. "But even that won't stop me." Because the mers are the real key.

PalaThion started to turn away, looked on across the Pier toward her own people. She hesitated. "Your Majesty." She stood close in front of Moon again, speaking softly almost inaudibly. "I believe in what you want to do. I believe it's just. I don't want anything to stop it." She seemed to reach out, without moving, "In fact, I want to help you make it happen," in a frightened rush. "I'm a" offering you my services, my knowledge, my experience, the rest of my life, if you'll take them. If you'll let me use them for something I can believe in."

Moon felt PalaThion's urgency reaching higher, further, deeper; beyond the thing she asked. "You mean ... you want to stay? On Tiamat?" Her whisper sounded stupid and un queenly Sparks glared his disbelief.

But PalaThion, lost in her own inner vision, didn't hear, or see. "Not on the Tiamat that was. But on the one that could be." Her dark up slanting eyes asked, and demanded, a promise.

"You're the Commander of Police a" the Hegemony's fist ... Why?" Moon shook her head, certain that PalaThion was sincere, trying to re-form the slipping sands of reality.

"This is the time of change," PalaThion said simply.

"That's not enough." Sparks leaned forward over the rail. "Not if you want to spend the rest of your life interfering in ours."

PalaThion rubbed her face. "How much is enough? How much proof did I ask of you, Dawntreader?"

He looked away, and didn't answer.

"To tell you what caused the change hi me would take me a lifetime. But believe me, I have reasons." She turned back to Moon.

"And you'll have to spend the lifetime here, regretting it, if you change your mind. Are you sure?"

"No." PalaThion glanced again at the off worlders waiting hi the stands, light-years distant from the world she stood reaching out to. "Yes! What the h.e.l.l have I got to lose? Yes." She smiled, finally.

"Then stay." Moon smiled, too. Ifthis world changed you, then it can change itself ... we can change it ... I can. "Everything you want to give I'll need, Commandera""

"Jerusha."

"Jerusha." Moon stretched out her hand; PalaThion gripped her wrist, the handshake of a native.

"I won't be free of this," gesturing at her uniform, "till the last s.h.i.+p is gone from here; but neither will any of you. After that I'll be finished with the Hegemony, and ready to belong wholeheartedly to the future."

Moon nodded.

"And now, with your permission, I'll leave you, Your Majesty.

While I have the guts to change my old mistakes for new ones, I'm going to say some things that need to be said to a man who can't speak for himself."

Moon nodded, blankly, and watched her lonely journey back across the open s.p.a.ce to the ranks of the off worlders Moon raised her voice again as Jerusha disappeared among the stands, to p.r.o.nounce the end of the ceremonies, of the Festival, of Winter ... but only the beginning of the Change.

Cold twilight moved on wind wings through the oozing underworld of docks and moorages, where cold dawn had seen the Change come to Carbuncle. Moon walked with Sparks, trailed by a discrete retinue, among the creakings and sighings of the restless s.h.i.+ps, the dim, echoing voices of their weary crews. The jam of Whiter and Summer craft that had clogged every open patch of water surface had thinned by half already, as Summers and Winters alike began their post-Festival exodus from the city.

The Summers would be returning before long; the Change was the sign for them to begin their northward exodus, leaving the equatorial ranges of the sea to fill the interstices of the Winters' range. As Tiamat approached the Black Gate and the Twins' solar activity intensified, the lower lat.i.tudes would become uninhabitable a" the sea would turn against them, its indigenous life retreating to the depths or the higher lat.i.tudes, forcing them to do the same.

The Winters would have to share with them the scattering of islands and the vast reaches of ocean that had been theirs alone, and share as well a new, hand-to-mouth existence without off world sustenance. The n.o.bility now would be going out of the city to relearn the task of making their plantations, which had been little more than boundaries for the Hunt, into a base that could support the precarious balance of life the off worlders had left them to.

And in the middle of this cyclical chaos, somehow she, Moon, had to begin a new order. "I thought that once I got to Carbuncle all my problems would be over. But they're just beginning." Her plaintive breath frosted. Even here, while they walked together, soothed by the presence of the sea, she felt the burden of the future bear down on her like the weight of the city overhead. She leaned on a time-grayed railing, looking down at the mottled, green-black water. Sparks leaned beside her, silent, as he had been all day: trying to make the best of what he could not change a" to accept that change happened indiscriminately, and made its favorites and its victims one.

"You've got supporters now. And you'll get more. You won't have to carry it all alone. You'll always have them around you." A sullen note crept into his voice, and he moved slightly away from her. She knew that all of the people that she would be depending on knew what he had been; and even if they didn't still hate him for it, they would always remind him of it, and let him go on hating himself. "No one rules all alone ... not even Arienrhod."