'The — Arienrhod caught us. She took him back.' She looked back along the hall, felt herself tearing inside. But the spur of alien prescience goaded her again: Leave him, leave him. Leave now... 'He'll be all right, now that the Summers have come to guard the Queen. They don't know him,' trusting the power that protected her to guard him too. 'I have to stop the plague. I know who's behind it; Sparks told me everything. I've got to tell someone, the police...'
'He didn't turn you over to the sibyl baiters, then?' BZ said, as though his mind couldn't leave the idea alone. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve, pulled open his coat.
'No. Arienrhod did it.'
'Arienrhod! But I thought she—' He didn't finish it, didn't need to. She felt his wordless compassion reach out to her.
She wrapped a strand of hair around her finger, looked at it, pulled on it. 'There were nine of us, BZ ... and none of us suited her. We weren't what she wanted us to be. So she — she abandoned us, she threw us away.' Moon lifted a hand, a farewell to her own lost soul. But sudden sun shafts penetrated her clouded sight. 'You knew. You knew about me too. Why did you trust me here, if you knew all along?'
'I knew all along that shed never make you into her image. Do you think I could spend — so much time with you, and not feel the difference between you?' He shook his head; his smile grew stronger. 'And it won't be long now before she'll damn her haste in getting rid of you. Come on, and tell me what you know about this plot.'
Moon walked with him again, holding the healing warmth of his trust against the scars of grief as they went on toward the looming palace entrance, moving toward the end of Winter. She told him everything she knew, forcing herself to keep her mind on the narrow path through wild lands The doors opened, letting hi the life force of the city, sucking them back into its vortex of vitality. There were no royal guards at the entrance now, but instead a knot of belligerent
Summers squatting in a watch of their own. Moon stayed close in BZ's shadow, until she realized that they had no more idea of what the Queen looked like than she had had. She saw one or two spot her trefoil tattoo instead, and look their surprise at her. 'BZ, how did you know to come after me? How did you know I needed you?'
'I didn't. When the Summers showed up, I decided I'd waited long enough. So I flashed my ID and made myself into a police escort.' He nodded left and right as the Summers let them by. 'I'm going to miss that badge ...' There was nothing to support the lightness in his tone, and it collapsed. He began to cough again, the ugly coagulation rattling deep in his chest. He stopped moving as they reached the no-man's-land between the Summer guards and the milling onlookers. 'Now ... listen, Moon.' He wiped at his eyes, struggled for a breath. 'I've got to face charges ... sooner or later anyway. I've got to go back, I might as well get it over with now. I'll report everything you've told me to the first patrolman I see. There's no need for you to risk turning yourself in. Your people are here; tell them about you and Sparks before they learn he's Starbuck. They can help you where I can't.' His mouth pulled into a tight line, as though he couldn't trust himself to say more. 'BZ.' She covered her mouth with her hand. 'How can I—' 'You can't. Don't try.' He shook his head. 'Just let me go...' He began to turn away, but she saw his knees turn to water. He collapsed in slow motion and lay senseless on the white stones.
Chapter 45
Tor sat in the corner, propped against the wall like a spineless rag doll; the laboratory's white, formless light drove spears into her watering eyes. Beyond the wall behind her back she knew there was a whole city full of people oblivious to her folly or her doom-oblivious to their own doom. But no sound of the celebration reached into this sterile room, no laughter, no music, no shouting. The wall was sound sealed, and no sound of hers would ever escape it, if she had even had the power to make one. She struggled futilely, silently, against the invisible bondage of her paralysis. It would be nearly an hour before her voluntary nervous system would have the control to move even a finger again; and she was sure there wasn't that much time left in the rest of her life. Oh, gods, if I could only scream! The scream echoed inside her head until she thought her eyes would explode ... and she whimpered, a thin, miserable thread of sound, the most beautiful noise she had ever made.
Oyarzabal glanced over at her from the table, where he sat in the hot glare of disfavor's spotlight. His broad face with its leonine brush of side-whiskers showed discomfort approaching her own; he looked away again hastily. The casually surreal debate about the most effective means of starting an epidemic here in the city droned on, the buzzing of a ghoulish hive. One of the others had gone to talk to the Source. Oyarzabal, you lousy bastard, do something, do something!
Oyarzabal suggested that they pollute the water supply. It was rejected as ineffective.
Hanood, who had gone to the Source half an eternity ago, came back into the room, relocking the door behind him with exaggerated care.
The insect drone fell silent. Tor watched heads turn to the judge's verdict, not even able to roll her own eyes. 'Well?' One of the men she didn't know asked it.
'He says get rid of her, naturally.' Hanood bent his head in her direction. 'Dump her body into the sea; nobody'll be able to figure out where she disappeared to in all this.' He waved a hand toward the unreachable reality beyond the wall. 'They say, 'The Sea never forgets'... but Carbuncle will.'
Tor moaned, but the sound stayed trapped inside her.
'No, damn it, I don't believe it!' Oyarzabal stood up to a confrontation. 'I'm going to marry her; I'm going to take her away. He knows that, he wouldn't say to get rid of her!'
'Are you questioning my orders, Oyarzabal?' The Source's hoarse, disembodied voice descended on him from the air; all of them looked up involuntarily.
Oyarzabal hunched under the weight of it, but his resolution held. 'You don't need to kill Persipone. I can't just stand here and let that happen.' His eyes searched the walls, the corners of the ceiling, uncertainly. 'There's got to be some other way.'
'Are you suggesting I should have them kill you, too? Your incompetence caused this situation, after all. Didn't it?'
Oyarzabal's hand slid toward his gun under the tail of his long leather vest. But it was five to one against him, and Oyarzabal never took suicidal odds. 'No, master! No — But... but she's going to be my wife. I'll make sure she's not going to talk.'
'You think now that Persipone knows what you're doing here she'll still want to marry you?' The voice turned colder. 'Amoral animal that she is, she still hates you for this. You'll never be able to trust her.'
Oh gods, oh Source, just let me talk! I'll promise him anything! Sweat trickled maddeningly down her ribs.
'And I'll never be able to trust you again, Oyarzabal, unless you prove your loyalty is still to me.' The voice paused, seemed to smile; Tor shuddered inside. 'But I'm not totally unsympathetic to your position. So I'll give you two choices: Either Persipone dies, or she lives. But if she lives you'll have to take measures to make sure she can never testify against us.'
Oyarzabal's sudden hope went behind clouds. 'What do you mean?' He dared to glance at her, looked away again.
'I mean I want her unable to tell what she knows to anybody, no matter what they do to her. I think an injection of xetydiel would be effective enough.'
'The hell! You mean turn her into a zombie?' Oyarzabal swore. 'She won't have any brain left!'
One of the others laughed. 'What's wrong with that: mindless and yours. Since when did a woman need a brain, anyhow?'
Oh, Lady, help me ... help me, help me! Tor called on the faith of her ancestors, abandoned by the thousand uncaring gods of the betraying off worlders I'd rather die. I'd rather die.
'You see the trouble women cause when they take too much freedom on themselves, Oyarzabal — see the trouble this stupid female's curiosity has brought on you. And think of the trouble her Queen is about to cause her
