You set me up for this, you bastard. I saw it coming. I knew it was coming, but after yesterday I thought — I thought — “I’ll fight this, Hovanesse.” Her voice trembled with rage, half the rage turning back on herself for letting it happen. “The Queen couldn’t ruin me, and neither will you.” But she has, Jerusha; she has… She turned and walked away from him again, and this time he did not call her back.

Jerusha left the Court Building and started back down the uncongested Blue Alley toward police headquarters. (Even in Festival time, the carousers avoided this piece of the city.) Her first and only thought was to go to her men, tell them her problem, see if she could get their support. It was true, then — feeling toward her was changing, because of yesterday; she had seen it in almost every face. But had it changed enough? If she had the time now, she might be given a fair chance to prove that she could hold their respect as well as any man. But she didn’t have that much time. Did she even have time to try to get them behind her now? And even if she did… was it worth it?

She found herself standing alone in the alley before the station house: that ancient, hideous fossil which had grown so familiar. No other building, no other post would ever be quite so hated — or, she suddenly realized, quite so important — in her life. But wherever she went, if she went in the uniform she wore now, she would always be an outsider, would always have to be fighting not simply to do a good job, but to prove that she even had the right to try. And there would always be another Hovanesse, another Mantagnes, who would never accept her, and try to drive her away. Gods, did she really want to spend the rest of her life that way? No… not if she could find something else to do with it that meant as much to her as this job, something she believed in as much. But there was nothing else . nothing. Beyond this job she had no life, no goal, no future. She went on past the station house, on to the alley’s end, and out into the river of celebration.

50

Sparks moved through the dimly lit rooms of Starbuck’s suite like a stranger, sleepless, aimless. No longer a part of them — but no longer free to leave. Both the public and the private entrances to the suite were watched now — not by the Queen’s guards, but by Summers furious over her attempt to stop the Change. They were guarding Arienrhod, too — and somehow her plot had been overthrown. But when he had tried to ask them about Moon, and whether she had been the one who told them, they didn’t know, or wouldn’t tell him. And when he had tried to get them to let him out, or to convince them that he was only a Summer like they were, they had laughed at him, and driven him back into the room with harpoons and knives: They knew who he was; Arienrhod had told them. And they would keep him here until the sacrifice.

Arienrhod would not let him go. If her dreams were ruined, then his would be, too. He would die tomorrow if she died; she had bound him to her as inescapably as they would be bound together when they were thrown into the sea. She was the Sea incarnate, and Starbuck was Her consort, and they would be reborn on the new tide… but as new bodies with fresh, untainted souls — Summer souls. That was the way it had been since the beginning of time, and even though the off worlders had twisted it to suit their own purposes, it had endured, and always would. Who was he to change Change? Moon had tried to save him from it, but his fate had been stronger than them both. He tried not to think about what had happened between Arienrhod and Moon after he had been taken away — when Moon must have learned the truth about herself at last Even if Moon had somehow escaped Arienrhod, there was no way she could come back to him now. He could only be grateful that he had been given one last hour with her, a condemned man’s last comfort . and the final irony of a wasted life.

He rummaged in a gilded chest, found the bundle of clothes he had worn when he first came to the palace, and brought them out. He spread them carefully on the soft surface of the carpet, finding at their core the beads he had bought himself on his second day in the city… and his flute. He laid the flute aside, took off the clothes he wore, and pulled on the loose, heavy pants and the rainbow shirt that belonged with the beads, dressing as though for a ritual. He took up his father’s medal from the dresser top when he finished, hung it about his neck in completion. He picked the flute up gently and sat with it on the edge of the heavy-legged reclining couch.

Sparks raised the flute to his lips, lowered it again, his mouth suddenly dry, too dry for song. He swallowed, feeling the pulse in his temple slow. He raised the fragile, hollow shell again. Positioning his fingers over the opening, he breathed into the mouthpiece. A tremulous note filled the air around him, like a spirit amazed to find itself free from the silence it had thought would be eternal. The breath clogged in his throat and he swallowed again; melody after melody filled his head, trying to escape into the air. He began to play, haltingly, with wrong fingers responding to memory’s patterns, shrill overtones stabbing his ears. But gradually his fingers loosened, the water of song poured sweet and pure from the depths of his being again and carried him back to the world he had lost. Arienrhod had tried to ruin his last meeting with Moon, to take away even that, as she had taken away his pleasure in any beauty or joy that was not of her; but she had failed. Moon’s passion and belief were as pure as song, and the memory of her carried away all shame, healed all wounds, righted all wrongs…

He looked up, the song and the spell broken, as the guarded door to the suite unlatched and opened unexpectedly before him. Two figures hooded and robed entered. One moved slowly, grotesquely.

The door closed again behind them. “Sparks Dawntreader Summer…”

Sparks squinted, reaching up to brighten the suspended lamp. “What do you want? It isn’t time—”

“It’s time… after twenty-odd years.” The first man, the one who moved easily, came forward into the globe of light and pushed back his hood.

“What?” Sparks saw the face of a man on the young end of middle-age, an off worlder. A Kharemoughi, he thought at first, but with paler skin and a heavier frame, a rounder face. That face… something about it he knew…

“After twenty-odd years, it’s time that we met, Sparks. I only wish the setting were more appropriate to a joyful reunion.”

“Who are you?” Sparks rose from the couch.

“I am your first ancestor.” The words registered, without meaning he shook his head. “Your father, Sparks.” Something in the your was incomplete, as though the stranger could not express all that he really felt by it.

Sparks sat down again, dizzy, as the blood fell away from his head. The stranger — his father — unfastened his cloak and shrugged it off onto a chair; under it he wore a plain silver-gray jump suit, and the ornamental badge and collar of a member of the Hegemonic Assembly. He made a small, formal bow, somehow awkward for all its grace, as though he were equally uncertain about how to begin. “First Secretary Temmon Ashwini Sirus.” The second man — a servant? — turned and shuffled away, disappearing into the next room without comment, leaving them alone.

Sparks laughed, to cover another sound. “What is this, some kind of joke? Did Arienrhod put you up to this?” He covered his off worlder medal with his hand, wrapping his fingers around it, tightening his fist until it whitened… remembering how she had teased him and tormented him, telling him she knew who it belonged to, the name of his father; telling him lies.

“No. I explained to the Summers that I had come to see my son, and they showed me where you were.”