'I'm enough of an off worlder. He held out the medal, let it spin on its chain in the air above her. 'And enough a part of this world to hate them like you do. I've listened and watched; I've learned a lot about the court, and the city too, how the off worlders use it. Anything I didn't know you could teach me...' He smiled, a smile that Moon would not have understood. 'And I know the one thing I really need to know, even if you don't believe it — how I can challenge Starbuck and win.' He stopped smiling.
Arienrhod studied him silently; he felt her measure and weigh with her eyes. He thought a shadow passed across her face, before she nodded. 'Challenge him, then. But if you do, and fail, I'll call you a vain little braggart and make love to him on your grave.' She caught the winking pendant and drew him down on top of her.
'I won't fail.' He found her lips again, hungrily. 'And if I can't be your only lover, I'll be the best.'
Chapter 15
This was the morning of the day. Starbuck prepared himself slowly, deliberately, in the innermost room of his private suite; reassuring himself with each precise movement and small decision that his control was absolute. He wore the utilitarian coveralls of his hunting clothes instead of the funereal foppery of his court clothing, for comfort and ease of movement. He pushed the black leather gloves down over each finger, settled the hooded helmet onto his head. It entered his mind that this might be the last time he would wear the mask, or perform this ritual, and his muscles tightened. He brushed the thought aside disdainfully — the way he would brush aside Sparks Dawntreader.
So that wet-eared Mother lover thought he could be Starbuck, had even gotten up the nerve to issue a challenge — and Arienrhod had accepted it. It would have smarted that shed done this to him, except that the contest was such an absurd mismatch he couldn't believe she took it seriously. She wouldn't let an ignorant punk from the outback with a pawnshop medal claim to be an off worlder unless she knew there was no chance in hell of his winning the contest.
No, she just wanted amusement; it was like her to come up with this. She hadn't been the same since shed gotten the news about Dawntreader's cousin: moody and spiteful, even harder to live with than usual. He wouldn't have believed there was anything on this world that could pierce the armor of her supreme egotism or shake her unshakable arrogance. What had the girl been to her, that Arienrhod had had her watched all those years? He'd give a lot to know what made Arienrhod vulnerable...
He knew already what the boy had been to her — that shed finally gotten the elusive quarry bedded, after the longest pursuit he'd ever known her to need. The kid was either crazy or he'd played the reluctant innocent on purpose: It could have been either one, and either way it had worked too well. Arienrhod's face when she watched the boy had driven him to private fury, with a jealousy he'd never known toward any of her lovers in the past.
But none of that mattered now. It had been a waste of time to sweat over it; she was already bored with him. Once the excitement of the chase was gone and the unattainable object was just another lousy lay, it figured that shed decide to get rid of this one like all the rest. That made sense. That fitted the Arienrhod he had always known. She would be his again, she would come back to him as she had always done; because he knew what she wanted, in everything, and he could give it to her.
And it was going to be a pleasure to take care of this next piece of business for her, by killing that troublesome little son of a bitch. Arienrhod had granted the boy choice of weapons; that didn't bother him either, because he was good with any weapon, and the kid was a flute-playing sissy. It was almost beneath his dignity ... but he planned to enjoy it anyway.
Starbuck studied himself in the long mirror and was pleased with the effect. He strapped on his weapons belt and left his chambers, heading for the Hall of the Winds, where Arienrhod had ordered them to meet. That had surprised him, but he hadn't questioned it. The nobility and servants he passed in the halls gave him a wide berth, stealing fleeting, nervous glances. (Even the nobility always treated him respectfully, to his face, pampered highborn weaklings that they were.) They all knew that there had been a challenge, and that this was the day, although none would ever know who the challenger was ... or the outcome, although everyone would guess.
What weapon would the kid try? he wondered. An electric eagerness tingled in his hands; he flexed them. The challenges were the kind of thing no respectable Winter liked to admit still existed anywhere in their half of the world: something left over from the dim dark times before the Hegemony had brought enlightenment back to this lost world; a time when the Queen was the actual Sea Mother in her people's eyes, and men fought for her divine favors just as they did now. The fact that it was a vestige of an uncivilized age did not bother him. He enjoyed testing himself against other men, proving to the world — to Arienrhod, to himself — every time he won that he was a better man than the ones who tried to bring him down. Not just the strongest, but the smartest, too. That was why he'd always won, and why he always would. Even if he had been born Unclassified on Kharemough, with the whole world on his back making him eat shit, he'd fought his way out of that sewer, and into a position of power the best-educated technocrat on Kharemough could not match. He had everything they had, and more — he had the water of life. How many of them squandered their lives' fortunes to erase a day from every week, or month, that they aged? He drank from the fountain of youth every day — it came with the job. As long as he gave Arienrhod what she wanted, he would have everything he wanted, and he would never have to grow old. And as long as he stayed in his prime no challenger would ever take that away from him.
He reached the audience hall. It was empty now, vast and still, as though it held its breath. He started across it, and his passage did nothing to disturb the stillness. He wondered what it would be like to hold power for one hundred and fifty years, as Arienrhod had. What would it be like just to be alive for that long; to have seen the return of the off worlders and the rebirth of Winter — to watch civilization reborn, and to have your pick of its pleasures? He would like to know how a man — or a woman — would feel after all that; and he wondered whether if he'd lived that long he might have begun to understand the involutions of Arienhrod's mind.
He'd lost count long ago of the women he'd known, from highborn tech to slave; he'd hated some of them and used most of them and respected one or two, but he'd never loved even one of them. Nothing had given him any evidence that love was anything but a four-letter word. Only weaklings and losers believed in love or gods...
But he had never experienced anything like Arienrhod. She was not so much a woman as an elemental; her magnetism was created of all the things he found desirable. She had made him an unwilling believer in his own vulnerability; and that had made him half-willing to believe in the power of strange gods, too ... or strange goddesses. And he wouldn't have one hundred and fifty years of youth and pleasure, one hundred and fifty years to work at unraveling her mysteries, even if he wanted to. He had only five years before he would have to leave this world forever — or die. In five years it would all end at the Change, and Arienrhod would die ... and he would die with her, unless he cleared out in time. He loved her, and he had never loved anyone except himself in all his life. But he didn't think he loved her more than life.
She stood waiting for him on the platform as he entered the Hall of the Winds; the pit groaned and sighed its eager greeting at her back. Stray tendrils of wind lifted her milk-white hair, let it fall free over the enfolding whiteness of her ceremonial cape. The cape was made from the down of arctic birds, flecked with silver, the softness of clouds ... he remembered the feel of it against his skin. She had worn it six times, at each of his previous challenges; she had worn it the first time, when he had been the challenger.
The Hounds stood off to the left, their skins glistening, their inner eyelids lying across their nacreous, expressionless eyes. They were here to pledge service to the winner — and to dispose silently of the loser's corpse. In ten years he had never fathomed their endless droning dialogues, or cared that he hadn't. He didn't know whether they had any sex lives, or even any sex. Their intelligence was supposed to be subhuman, but how the hell could you judge an alien mind? They were used on some worlds as slaves; but so were human beings. He wondered briefly what they were thinking as they turned to watch him; wondered if they ever thought about anything a man could relate to, besides killing.
He made his formal bows, to Arienrhod, to the boy. 'I've come. Name your weapon.' It was the first time that the naming had not been his to say. Arienrhod's eyes touched him as he spoke the ritual words; but there was no reassurance in her glance, only a reaffirmation of the coldness that had grown in her since the boy's arrival. Then was she really still infatuated with that Summer bastard? Did she really believe that he had a chance?
