She took one step forward, and then another, toward the thin span of utter blackness silhouetted above the abyss. He didn’t tell me it would be dark! Fear made her falter, her fingers playing over the sequence of buttons on the control box at her wrist — the sequence Herne claimed would unlock a safe tunnel through the air. Did he lie about everything? But she wasn’t the object of Herne’s twisted passion, only its surrogate. If her presence here was anything to him it was only as a tool for his revenge.
She took another step, and another, until she came shivering to the brink of the Pit. The sudden damp updraft rising out of the shaft caught her by surprise, butting her back on the platform. And with it came the smell of the sea, pungently sweet-sour, fish and salt and moldering pilings. Moon cried out in amazement, her voice swallowed by the wind. “Lady!” The breath of the Sea blew her back again, stumbling over her unaccustomed skirts; she caught her balance, instinctively, a sailor on a pitching deck… only a sailor, not a Queen.
She lifted her head, saw the shuddering ghostly curtains not as clouds now, capricious and uncontrollable, but as flapping sails un tended under the sea wind. And in her hand, in this palm-sized box, were rudder and line to set a course across this well of the Sea. The updrafts beat her back again, in final warning.
“I will go.” She touched the first button, heard the first tone in the sequence, felt the air grow quiet around her. And with the skill of a hundred generations before her, a people who had dared the sea and the stars before that, she stepped out onto the rimless span and began to walk. Every third step she sounded a new note, being sure each step was neither too short nor too long, holding her concentration locked into the sequence, the pattern, the rhythm.
And as she passed over the center of the bridge, the greenish glow intensified and she felt a nameless presence, a soundless voice, an echo from a distant place and time… the song the sibyl cave had sung to her. She moved more slowly, until she could not move at all; mesmerized by its inhuman beauty, imprisoned in the moment. Her fingers relaxed on the control box, its shrill intruding tone grew thin and faded… A sudden clout of wind knocked her to her knees, the sound of her own scream shattered the prism of spell and set her free. She scrambled up again, recapturing the control note with frantic hands. She hurried on, reckless with panic, feeling the call still tend riling through her mind, but even fainter.
She reached the far rim, stood sobbing for breath on solid ground, dazed and uncomprehending. This wasn’t a choosing-place! How could it know her?… She remembered dimly that somewhere in this city Danaquil Lu had been called by the sibyl machine. Was this the same well of the Sea that had sung to him? She shook out of her cloak, backing away from its rim in silence; turned away from the sight of the abyss, and left the Hall.
She chose another corridor, tracing the arteries of the palace diagram Herne had drawn on paper and graved into her memory. She began to hear music again — mortal music this time, the sounds of a graceful Kharemoughi art song played by a string quintet. She saw in her mind’s eye Aspundh’s gardens, the shimmering splendor of the aurora dancing into dawn across a velvet sky. She reached the wide, carpeted stairway leading to the vast hall that was half the palace’s second story; met the music drifting sedately down it, and two startled servants who bowed their heads and hurried on past her.
She hurried on, too, climbing past the landing that gave entrance to the grand hall, where tonight the Queen was holding a reception for the Prime Minister and the Assembly members. She went on to the third level, where Herne had told her Starbuck’s chambers were, knowing that he would probably still be in the crowded hall below, but knowing that she did not dare enter the place where Arienrhod herself was the center of attention.
But as she left the stairway, she heard the music beckon unexpectedly, found a tiny, half-hidden alcove overlooking the hall below. She wondered whether it was a watchman’s perch — but there was no one watching from it now. She tiptoed forward to the railing, looked down out of the shadows, her skin crawling with the certainty that all eyes would be on her like searchlights.
But as the hall opened out under her gaze she forgot herself, no more than an insect on the wall to the mass of royal guests below: Pale Winter nobles and dark-skinned Kharemoughis mingled freely, the eye-dazzling spectrum of their dress diminishing the contrast of their origins. They feasted desultorily at buffet tables spread with the last of Winter’s culinary art, the eclectic delights of native and imported cuisines. Moon swallowed, her mouth suddenly full of saliva, remembering the one inadequate meal she had eaten in the casino, hours ago. Mirror-faceted balls suspended in the air above her eye level turned silently, perpetually, sending a snowfall of fractured light down over the crowd.
Moon let her eyes rove, noticing the security force of off world police stationed unobtrusively around the perimeters of the hall. She wondered whether the Police Commander was here tonight, thought a curse at her for what the woman’s untempered justice had done to BZ; what it would have done to her own life, and Sparks’s. Once she thought she glimpsed First Secretary Sirus, but lost the face again as a cluster of guests gathered for a toast.
But nowhere in the vast hall could see a woman who looked like a Queen… or one who looked like her. And nowhere a man in black who masked his face like an executioner… or a red-haired boy whose face she would know anywhere, no matter how it had changed. Wasn’t he here, then? Had he left the hall already; would she find him in his chambers?
She moved back from the balustrade, her heart beating like a caged bird’s wings. I will find you. I will’ So there you are. Can’t you resist spying on your guests, even to night?” A man’s voice directly behind her, slurred and full of teasing hostility.
Moon froze, feeling her face turn crimson with betraying guilt. She pulled her mouth into a line, clenched her teeth to hold it there, hoping her blush would seem to be anger. She turned, picking up her skirts, holding her head high. “How dare you speak to—” Her gown slipped through senseless fingers. “Sparks?” She swayed.
“Who else?” He shrugged, and hiccupped. “Your faithful shadow of a man,” bowing precariously.
“Sparks.” She brought her hands up, locked them together to still them, to keep from reaching out. “It’s me.”
He frowned, like someone hearing a tasteless joke. “I hope to hell so, Arienrhod; or I’m not drunk enough to save me from real-time nightmares…” He peered at her, bleary eyed, rubbing his arms through his slitted shirtsleeves.
“Not Arienrhod.” She struggled to pry words out of her dust-dry mouth. “Moon. It’s Moon, Sparkle—” She touched him at last, felt the contact climb her arm like a shock.
He wrenched free, as if the contract burned him. “Damn you, Arienrhod! Leave me alone. It isn’t funny; it never was.” He turned away down the hall.
“Sparks!” She followed him into the light, struggling with the clasp of her necklace. “Look at me!” It came undone, she caught it in her hands. “Look at me.”
He swung around truculently; she raised her hand to touch her throat, lifted her head higher. He came back to her, squinting — she saw all the color go out of his flushed face at once. “No! Gods, no . she’s dead. You’re dead. I killed you.” He pointed at her, accusing himself.
“No, Sparks. I’m alive.” She seized his hand in both of hers this time, pulled it to her against his resistance, ran it along her shoulder. “I’m alive! Touch me, believe me… You’ve never hurt me.” Or if you have, I can’t remember now.