insinuating more than she was sure of, following his face.
He didn't answer, but a kind of wild panic showed, far down in his dark eyes.
Yes, I know everything about you ... I've seen your echoes for a hundred and fifty years. 'The ledoptra is by far the more profitable cargo. And once you reach Tsieh-pun, and the mistake is discovered, it will be too late to do anything about it — the Gate will have closed. It's all very simple, you see. Even simple enough for you. Profit — that's all that really matters, isn't it?' A profit in knowledge for Winter; a reward that money can't buy. She smiled inwardly, at the secret knowledge of all the similar profits she had accumulated, in similar ways, down the long years; quietly stockpiling technology and information against the coming time of famine.
The trader nodded, his eyes still searching the corners of the room furtively. 'Yes, Your Majesty. If you say so.'
'Then I'll see that it's arranged. You may go.'
He went, without further urging. She looked down, speaking reference notes into her desk recorder.
When she looked up again Starbuck stood in the doorway, bemused admiration showing in his eyes.
'I see... Well, is that all, then?' Arienrhod leaned against the cushioned back of the chair at her desk, listened to it sigh familiarly as she set it gently rocking.
'Is that all?' Starbuck laughed, with an aggrieved edge on it. 'I've been out on the Street all day long busting my ass to please you. Don't I bring you a big enough load of rumors? Doesn't that bitch Blue have more trouble than she can handle already, without me buying her more? Doesn't—'
'There was a time, you know, when that question would have cut you to the quick.' Arienrhod leaned forward again, into the cup of her hands. 'Sparks Dawntreader used to sail on my smile, and quiver at my frown. If I had said 'Is that all?' he would have gone down on his knees and begged me to set him another task; anything, if only it made me happy.' She set her lips in a petulant pout, but the words wrapped razors, and cut her inside.
'And you laughed at him for being a sap.' Starbuck's black gloved fists rested on his hips defiantly. But she sat without responding, letting the words do their work; and after a moment his hands dropped, and his gaze with them. 'I am what you wanted me to be,' softly, almost inaudibly. 'I'm sorry if you don't like it.'
Yes... and so am I. Once she had known the warmth of a forgotten summer when she looked at him, when he held her. But he had forgotten Summer, and she saw no past in his changeable green eyes; not hers, not even his own. Only her own reflection: the Snow Queen, eternal Winter. Why must I always be too strong for them? Always too strong ... send me someone I can't destroy.
'Are you sorry? Sorry you let it happen — let me become Star buck? Haven't I done the job?' He was not defiant any more.
'No, I'm not sorry. It was inevitable.' But I am sorry that it was inevitable... She found a smile, an answer for the insecure boy who had stolen away his voice. 'And you have done very well.' Too well. 'Take off your mask, Starbuck.'
He reached up and pulled the black helmet off, held it under his arm. She smiled at the blaze of hair spilling out, the fair face still the same, fresh and youthful ... no, not really the same. Not any more. Not any more than her own was. Her eyes stopped smiling behind her smile; she watched his smile fade in response. They looked at each other for a space of time, silently.
He broke free at last; stretched, struck a pose with feline self awareness. 'You mind if I sit? It's been a long day.'
'By all means, sit, then. I'm sure it must be enervating to wallow in depravity day after day as diligently as you do.'
He frowned as he settled into one of the matched wing-form chairs, across the intimate gulf between desk and doorway, and himself and her. 'It's boring.' He leaned forward suddenly, reaching across the space with his voice. 'Every minute seems like a year, it bores the hell out of me when I'm away from you.' He sat back again, restlessly, hopelessly, fingering the off worlder medal that dangled in the silken gap of his half-open shirt.
'You shouldn't find it boring to make trouble for the Blues — for the woman who lost Moon for us both.' She forced her tone to stay businesslike, shaping her emotion into a weapon to punish ... whom?
He shrugged. 'I'd enjoy it more if I could see some results. She's still on top.'
'Of course she is. And she'll stay there to the bitter, bitter end. And every day of what should have been sweet victory she'll spend walking barefoot over broken glass... Stay here in the palace tomorrow, and I'll let you watch her.'
'No.' He looked down at his feet abruptly. She saw with some surprise that his face burned. 'No. I don't want to see it, after all.' His hands felt along his studded belt for something that wasn't there, had not been there for a long time.
'Whatever you want. If you even know what you want,' half critical, half concerned. But he was unresponsive, and so she went on, 'I must say PalaThion's held together more stubbornly than I'd expected. Brittle as she is, I thought shed be showing deeper fractures by now. She must be getting support from somewhere.'
'Gundhalinu. One of the inspectors. The others hate him for it; but he doesn't give a damn, because he thinks he's better than they are.'
'Gundhalinu? Oh, yes ...' Arienrhod glanced down, at the note recorder. 'I'll keep that in mind. And there's another off worlder Ngenet is his name; he has an outback plantation down along the coast. She's been out to visit him there, I understand. A friendship with questionable roots ...' She smoothed her hair, gazing at the mural behind Starbuck's head, the white blackness of a winter storm roaring down out of the ice-crowned peaks, obliterating the valley and the world around a solitary Winter holding. 'His plantation has never been harvested, has it?'
Starbuck straightened up in his chair. 'No. He's an off worlder I thought we couldn't, unless he—'
'That's right. And I undertand that he strictly forbids it; he's hostile to the whole idea. Now what would happen, I wonder, if you hunted his preserve, and PalaThion couldn't punish you?'
He laughed, none of the old reluctance showing now. 'A good Hunt. And the end of an affair?'
'All in a day's work.' She smiled. 'The final Hunt will net us some souls.'
'The final Hunt ...' Starbuck leaned into a wing of the chair back, playing with his fingers. 'You know, I heard something interesting on the Street. I heard the Source had a midnight visitor a few nights back. I heard it was you. And the word is that maybe you're not ready to see the end of Winter come.' He glanced up. 'How's my hearing?'
'Excellent.' She nodded, listening to the silence keep them company. Surprised, yes — but only a little. She knew his sources of information, that he used Persipone to use Herne. She even approved of his resourcefulness. It only surprised her a little that her intentions were quite so obvious to them all. She would have to keep closer watch on Persipone.
'Well?' Starbuck pressed his knees with his fists. 'Were you going to tell me about it? Or were you just going to let me go on thinking we were both going into the sea together at the next Festival?'
'Oh, I would have told you — eventually. I just rather enjoyed hearing you swear to me that you couldn't, wouldn't, live without me ... my dearest love.' She stopped his anger with three words that came unexpectedly from her heart.
He stood up, came across the room and around the silver-edged curve of desk to her. But she put up her hands, holding him back with quiet insistence. 'Hear me first. Since you've asked, then I want you to know. I have no intention of going meekly to the sacrifice, and seeing all that I've struggled to make of this world thrown into the sea after me. I never had. This time, by all the gods who never belonged here, this world is not going to sink back into ignorance and stagnation when the off worlders go!'
'What can you do to stop it? When the off worlders go, we lose our support, our base of power.' It pleased her to hear his unconscious pledge of allegiance. 'They'll see to it that we do. And then we can't hold back Summer, any more than we can hold back the seasons. It'll be then world again.'
'You're brainwashed.' She shook her head, gestured with a ring heavy hand at the city beyond the walls. 'The Summers will gather here in the city for the Festival — here on our ground. All we need is something that will take them unawares ... like an epidemic. One that we Winters are fortunately immune to, thanks to the miracle of off world medicine.'
Starbuck's face twisted. 'You mean ... you could do that? Would — ?'
'Yes, and yes! Are you still so bound to those ignorant, superstitious barbarians that you aren't willing to
