Author: Joan D. Vinge
Category: Science
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/joan-d-vinge/page,12,55162-the_summer_queen.html
Jerusha sighed, looking back at the stairway, where Moon and her two children had disappeared into the shadowed upper levels. She felt the mixed emotions hit her again, as she thought of something happening to those children. The sudden, gut-wrenching fear of loss stabbed like an assassin’s knife. She loved those children as if they were her own; and if her latest pregnancy ended like the others, they might be as close to her own children as she would ever come.… But no, she would not let herself think about that. This time everything would go all right—
If she had left Tiamat at the Change, she could have gotten help; but then, she would not have had Miroe, would not have had any reason to want a child. She would not even have had any reason to go on fighting a system that had never shown her anything but contempt when she tried to lead a full life, the kind any man of her people was free to lead. On Newhaven she had been expected to act like a woman—marry and raise children, but live subservient to her husband forever. Here, on Tiamat, she had thought that at last she’d found her chance to live as a complete human being. But when it was too late to change her mind, fate had played its final trick on her. She had not even told anyone that she was pregnant, this time—afraid that making it real would make her vulnerable.
She started toward the door, trying to shake off the creeping melancholy of her thoughts; knowing they would follow her home, to the empty apartment waiting for her down in Carbuncle’s Maze. She would call Miroe, and for a while his voice would fill the silence and drown out her fears. He spent most of his time away from the city, overseeing the plantation, experimenting with the new technology the sibyls and the Winters were creating daily … avoiding Carbuncle. Not avoiding her. She repeated it to herself again, less and less sure that she believed it, any more than she still believed that remaining on Tiamat had been anything but an act of desperation.
* * *
Moon entered the room, at first seeing only the unexpected brightness of the sunset sky through the oval window that filled most of the far wall. Blinking, she found the silhouette of her grandmother’s face; blinking again, she filled in its features as her grandmother turned toward her. “Gran—” she murmured, and stopped. How did you get so old?
Her memory of her grandmother had not prepared her for this stooped, wrinkled woman, this old woman with snow-white hair and skin so transparent that every vein seemed visible. The woman she remembered had gray hair, her face had been lined by time and weather; but she had been strong and vital and full of life, as she watched over two growing children—who had once been Moon herself and Sparks, her orphaned cousin—while Moon’s mother went out with the fishing fleet.… It had only been eight years.
But no. It had been eight years for her; but she had been offworld, and lost five more years in the lives of everyone she loved to the effects of time-dilation during her transit. For Gran it had been almost fourteen years since Moon had left the islands, following Sparks into the unknown.
Joy filled her grandmother’s face now, as she saw her granddaughter again, as her great-grandchildren ran to hug and kiss her. “Moon—” She raised her arms, struggling up from the cushioned bench. But as she rose her expression suddenly changed, and she bowed her head. “I mean, Lady—”
“Gran,” Moon said again, finding her voice, moving forward quickly to take her grandmother’s arms and straighten her trembling body upright again. “Oh, Gran.…” Moon held her tightly, feeling the fragility of bird bones, not the remembered solidness of her grandmother’s body; the proof of what her eyes had shown her. “It’s me. You don’t have to bow to me.” Suddenly she felt seventeen again, no older than she had been on the day she left home … feeling twelve again, or five.…
Gran’s arms took hold of her with a firm strength that the old woman’s body belied, and held her at arm’s length. “You are the chosen one of the Lady, you speak for Her,” she said, meeting Moon’s gaze with eyes that had lost none of the clear intentness that Moon remembered. “And I raised you myself, child. I am proud to have been so honored. You will certainly give me the honor of allowing me to show you proper respect.”
Moon nodded silently, still caught in the void of time and distance that had separated them for so long. “I’m so glad to see you,” she whispered, feeling the room slide back into focus, hearing the squeals and chatter of her children. She hushed them absently, ineffectively.
Gran hugged them close again, beaming but unsteady under their eager assault. “What a wonderful surprise you and Sparks have given me, to warm my old age, to ease the Change for an old woman.”
“Gran, you aren’t old,” Moon said; hearing the words ring false, wishing she had said nothing, as she guided her grandmother back to the settee. “Are you hungry? How long have you been here? Have they been taking care of you—?” Hurrying on, stumbling through the awkward moment of her grandmother’s painful smile.
“Yes, yes,” Gran said. “A good Summer woman, a sibyl—”
“Clavally—”
“Yes, she was very kind, bringing the children in. And the—what do you call them, the hands—?”
“The servants,” Moon said, glancing down.
Gran’s eyebrows arched. “Yes, well, they were very thoughtful, for Winters. Are they all Winters here? Why are you here, surrounded by these people, instead of our own?”
“Winters are just like Summers, Gran,” she answered, feeling the prick of impatience. “They’re just as human as we are. They’re sweet and sour together, just like islanders. They’re even sibyls—”
“So Clavally said to me,” Gran said, shaking her head. “Her own pledged is a Winter sibyl, she said! I’ll believe that when I see it.” She folded her knob-knuckled hands in her lap, worrying the folds of her heavy sweater.
“Yes, Gran.” Moon smiled again, in surrender, watching her children climb onto her grandmother’s lap, giggling and shoving, struggling for position. Seeing herself and Sparks there … feeling the memory start an ache inside her. “Gran … how is Mama? Where is she? Why didn’t she come here with you?” She forced the question out, afraid of the answer, as she had been afraid of it for the past eight years. She had come to hope that her family believed she was dead, and Sparks too; so that they would never know the real cost of this new life, this place of honor she had achieved. But in her darkest nights, she had been sure that somehow her mother did know.
“Moon,” Gran murmured, looking up from the two small, contented faces pressed against her, “I don’t know how to say this, but badly—”
“She knows, doesn’t she?” Moon said, unable to stop the words. “She knows everything, and that’s why she wouldn’t come here, even to see my children—” Her children looked up at her in surprise, at the sudden change in her voice.
“Moon,” Gran interrupted, her eyes filling with a sudden pain that aged them to match her face, “your mother is dead.”
“What?” Moon said. She felt her knees give. “What? No. How? When—” She sank down onto the Empire-replica recliner that pressed the back of her knees as she reached out for support.
“An accident, a fall … about three years ago. She slipped on the quay while they were unloading the catch, and struck her head on the stones. We thought she was all right, but then at dinner in the hall she grew sleepy.… They knew it was a bad sign, and they tried to keep her awake. But they couldn’t keep her from going to sleep. And she never woke up.” Gran’s eyes grew moist with grief, and she held the children closer; they gazed up at her with wide eyes, half-comprehending. “And so the Sea Mother has taken both my children back to Her breast.…”
“A concussion?” Moon said, the harshness of her voice startling even her. Now three sets of eyes were staring at her without comprehension. “All she had was a concussion. She could have been saved—”
“It was the Lady’s will.” Gran shook her head.
“It wasn’t!” Her own voice rose, as grief and frustration triggered her anger. “If we had the technology of the offworlders for our
selves, neither of your children would have had to die. Sparks’s mother didn’t have to die in childbirth—”
“Stop it, Moon!” Gran’s frown deepened the lines of her face. “What are you saying?” Her own voice quavered. She shook her head. “So, it is true.…” Her face filled with a different kind of grief. “You no longer follow Her will. But you are the Summer Queen, Moon—the chosen of the Goddess. It isn’t too late for you to hear Her voice again—”
“You don’t understand.” Moon shook her head; her hands hardened into fists in the lap of her robes. “Who told you that, Gran? Who brought you here? How did you make the journey here from Neith, if my mother didn’t—”
“I brought her to the palace,” a voice said calmly, behind Moon’s back.
Moon turned, pushing to her feet as she found Capella Goodventure framed in the scallop-form doorway like a portrait. Her graying braids circled her head like a crown, her face was drawn up in a witch’s knot of spite and satisfaction.
“I sent my people out into the islands to find some of your clan who might still be able to reach you, and remind you of your proper duty as the Summer Queen.”
“They have been very good to me, Moon,” Gran said, with gentle firmness, “bringing me here, all this way, to be with you. You should think about her words.”
Moon pressed her lips together. “That must have put you to a great deal of effort,” she said to Capella Goodventure. “I’m sure the Lady will grant you your just reward.” Her gaze was as cold as the sea.
Capella Goodventure’s frown deepened. “Perhaps you have already been shown the reward for your heresy committed in the Lady’s name.”
Moon stiffened. “What do you mean?”
Capella Goodventure bent her head. “Your mother’s accident. Perhaps it was a judgment.”
Moon felt herself go dizzy as the blood fell away from her face. “My mother’s death was not my fault!” Even her grandmother pushed to her feet, leaving the children tumbled wide-eyed on the settee.
“I didn’t say that.” Capella Goodventure lifted a hand, in protest, in warning. “I only meant to suggest—”
“That it was my fault! Who are you to push yourself into my life, where you’re not wanted? Get out! Leave me alone!” Moon’s hand found a smooth iceform sculpture on the table beside her; her hand closed over it, and she hurled it at the doorway. It shattered, sending bits of crystal flying. The children shrieked in surprise and fright. Moon turned back, seeing that they were all right, before she looked again at the doorway.
Capella Goodventure was gone. Standing in the hall at the top of the stairs, a Winter servant stood smirking at the Summer woman’s abrupt departure. “You get away from there!” Moon shouted, her voice breaking. He turned, his smirk falling away. “Yes, your majesty.” He scuttled out of her sight.
She stood staring after him. Your majesty … He had not been seeing her, but the image of a ghost she wore in her face, felt in her anger— Sometimes they still called her that, the Winter staff, cringing away when she snapped at them, as if she were not the Summer Queen but the Snow Queen, and her anger was as deadly as frost.
But Arienrhod was dead … like Lelark Dawntreader, the sandy-haired, sea-smelling woman who had rocked a sleepy child in her arms beside the fire, so long ago. They were both dead. And she was the Summer Queen.
She shook her head, pressed nerveless fingers against her mouth, as she became aware of Ariele and Tammis clinging to her, their faces buried in the homespun cloth of her robes—their voices crying at her like the voices of seabirds that it was all right. Comforting her, needing her comfort. She let her hands fall to their slender shoulders, felt the tension begin to loosen in their small bodies and her own, as she gently rubbed their backs. “It’s all right, treasures,” she murmured, hearing her voice falter as she spoke the words. “Why don’t you take Gran down to dinner. She’s come such a long way.…”
“You come too!” “I don’t want to go without you—” The children clung to her hands more tightly than before, their eyes still filled with need, until she nodded. “Yes, all right … we’ll all go.” She looked back at her grandmother; away again from the look in her eyes, her outstretched hand. Seeing her grandmother’s sympathy, sorrow, apology, concern, she felt her own tears rise. If she let herself take that hand she would become a child again too; and she could not afford to do that. She turned away, keeping her eyes downcast, watching her footsteps lead her one at a time out of the room and down the hallway, down the echoing stairs.
* * *
Sparks Dawntreader Summer—cousin, husband, consort of the Summer Queen—stepped silently out into the night-lit familiarity of Olivine Alley. It had been called “Blue Alley” when Winter ruled, and the blue-uniformed offworlder Police had made its ancient buildings their headquarters. He had avoided this place then; now, he almost made it his home. He began his nightly walk toward the alley’s mouth, to meet the long steep spiral of the Street, which would carry him inevitably to the palace no matter how slow he made his steps.
After eight years he still hated the palace, and so he spent as much time as possible outside it. But always he returned there at the end of each day, because Moon was waiting for him and he loved her, as he had always loved her, and always would. She was as much a part of him as his music, as much a part of him as his soul—the things Arienrhod had stolen from him, and Moon had given back to him. Life went on, whether he deserved it or not. And his children, living proof of their love, waited for him there, among the relics and the memories.
“Hallo, Sparks!”
Sparks stopped, glancing toward the brightly lit doorway and the figure limned by its glow.
“We’re celebrating! Come, be my guest. I owe you, for your support with the College—”
He recognized the voice now; his eyes filled in the old/young features of Kirard Set Wayaways. Kirard Set stood in the entrance to a tavern called the Old Days, formerly one of the most flamboyant and expensive gaming hells on the Street. Now its equipment lay cold and silent, while the surviving nobility of the Snow Queen’s reign sat among its ghosts, drinking to their memories and tossing bone dice—almost the only pleasures left to them now, aside from conspicuous consumption and sex.
“What are you celebrating?” he asked, curious but wary, as he stepped into the light. The old Queen’s favorites knew him too well, for better or worse. He became aware of the rich smell of fried meal-cakes, heard other voices calling his name. Talk and laughter spilled past him into the street; he heard someone plucking a mindle with virtuoso skill, and drumming, whistling, voices singing.
He touched the pouch at his belt. He always carried his flute with him; telling himself that he never knew when he would find time to practice or a chance to play.… But he wore it more as a talisman now, the way a sibyl wore a trefoil; because it had come to symbolize a higher order which music had first revealed to him—a greater truth which music never betrayed. His work with the Sibyl College had shown him the beauty of mathematics and physics; how they lay at the secret heart of everything, including music itself. Every day new facets of that universal order revealed themselves to him. He had begun to study mathematics in every free moment, experiencing a purity of pleasure he had never found in anything before, except his playing.…
The music pulled at him, suddenly irresistible. He stepped into the tavern’s brightly lit interior, and Kirard Set pressed a crystal goblet of wine into his hand. “We’re celebrating the choice of Wayaways land for the site of the new foundry,” Kirard Set said, and he shook his head, smiling. “She’s really incredible, you know, the Queen—” He put an arm around Sparks’s shoulders. Sparks resisted the urge to shrug it off. “But of course you know that, better than anyone.… How did she do it, anyway? How did she— But never mind, of course your lips are sealed with a kiss.” Kirard Set made a moue with his lips, and nudged Sparks’s shoulder.
Sparks took a long drink of the wine, imported offworlder wine, leftover stock. Th
e nobles had hoarded it the way they had hoarded technology, before the offworlders’ departure. At least the Hegemony had not been able to spoil its wine the way it had killed its abandoned hardware. Sparks sat down at a table, following Kirard Set’s lead without comment. What had once been a hologramic gaming array was covered now by a slab of wood, and a tapestry cloth that had originally draped the window of some offworlder official’s exclusive townhouse.
Sparks studied Kirard Set’s smiling face, and wondered what actually went on in his mind. Not much, he supposed. He had always found Kirard Set’s behavior either unpleasant or unfathomable. But one thing was obvious: Kirard Set, and a number of the other former nobles, actually believed the Summer Queen was the same flesh and blood woman who had ruled Winter; that somehow Arienrhod had cheated the Summers, the Hegemony, and Death itself to go on ruling her world, pursuing the goal she had sworn to achieve: independence from offworlder control.
Sparks glanced away again, with a sigh. Across the room he noticed Danaquil Lu Wayaways with his wife and child, standing apart, looking uncomfortable. Merovy was asleep, held in her father’s arms. Sparks felt a twinge of guilt, remembering his own family waiting for him at the palace. He had stayed at the College far too long, later even than usual, caught up in his studies. His own children would be asleep, by now. He shook his head, putting down the wine-filled goblet. “I can’t stay.” He began to get up.
“Sparks!” A woman’s voice called his name, a hand caught his arm as he rose. “Darling, you can’t leave us already. We never see enough of you anymore.” Shelachie Fairisle tweaked the laces of his shirt, half pulling it open. He took hold of her jewel-decorated hand and plucked it from his shirtfront like an insect.
She twitched her hand free from his grasp. “Aren’t we hard-to-get,” she said, matching his frown. He noticed the lines in her face that deepened with her frown.