Not half as sorry as I am. Arienrhod twisted a ring with her thumb. And not half as sorry as you will be, off worlder “You are dismissed, Inspector.”

PalaThion saluted and walked quickly away toward the Hall of the Winds, her red cape flaring behind her. Arienrhod’s hands tightened again, trembling. Sparks stood, picked up his flute, struggling with grief and bewilderment. “Your Majesty, I — may I go… ?” He kept his leaf-green eyes downcast; his voice was barely a whisper.

“Yes, go. I’ll call you when I want you.” She lifted a hand. He left the dais without making the proper bow. She watched him leave, forgetting her, with his hah — like new blood against the snow-white carpet: a wounded thing needing a hole to hide in, hurt, abandoned, vulnerable… beautiful.

Ever since he had come here she had felt something asleep within her stir. A freshening, a renewal, a desire… But not desire in the way she knew it for Starbuck, or any of a hundred other lovers past or present — for that soulless flesh hungry to answer power’s insatiable needs. When she looked at Sparks Dawntreader, yes, she ached to have that slender, supple body beside her on the bed, longed to touch it and feel it against her own. But when she looked at him she also saw his face, the freshness of his wonder, the innocence of his gratitude… those things that she had learned to despise in others and deny in herself through her long Winter’s reign. He was the beloved of Moon — her other ness the daughter of her mind — and half man, half-boy, his presence breathed on the dim embers of her own long-forgotten girlhood and stirred a warmth in the cold halls of her soul.

But he had not responded when she had let him know subtly, and then not so subtly, that she wanted him. He had retreated, mumbling and seeming half-afraid, behind the shield of his pledge to her other self. There he had remained, unyielding as stone against all temptation, while the heat of her unexpected frustration fed the fires inside her. But now, now that they had both lost their future… She willed him to turn back, to look at her once.

He stopped, a lonely figure on a field of snow, and looked back. A kind of haunted realization filled his face as she held him there with her eyes, thinking, We have both lost her…

He turned away again at last, went on to the spiraling stair that led to the upper levels.

“Now that you’ve lost the fish, maybe you’ll throw the bait back.”

She twisted to look at Starbuck, feeling the razor edge of envy that was always on his voice when he was talking about the boy.

“Get rid of that Summer weakling and his damned whistle, Arienrhod. The sight and sound of him makes me want to puke. Throw him back on the Street where you found him, before I—”

“Before you what, Starbuck? Are you commanding me now?” She leaned toward him, lifting her scepter.

He drew back slightly, dropped his eyes. “No. Just asking, Arienrhod. Just asking you — get rid of him. You don’t need him, now that the girl’s—”

She brought the scepter down sharply on the hand that rested on the throne arm; he gave a yelp of startled pain. “I told you never to speak of it.” She pressed a hand against her eyes, shutting him out of her view. She had lost the gamble; she had lost it! Her plan, her future, all were gone, on this one final miscasting of fate. Nine seeds that she had succeeded in planting, one flawless blossom that had grown up from them… and now that one was gone. Because of the interfering incompetence of those same off worlders whose cycle of tyranny she had hoped to break. If they had known what she was planning they could not have ruined her plans more neatly. And now — what was she going to do now? She would have to begin again, with a new plan, and one that would have to be less subtle, less fragile… and so potentially more dangerous to her own position. But it would take time to search out the possibilities…

And in the meantime she could have her revenge on the ones responsible. Yes, she could. “LiouxSked. I want him to pay for this, I want the Blues to suffer. I want him taken care of, gotten rid of.”

“You want the Commander of Police killed, over this?” Star buck’s voice betrayed a small astonishment.

“No.” She shook her head, shifting her rings on her fingers. “That’s too easy. I want him ruined, I want him utterly humiliated, I want him to lose everything: his position, the respect of his friends, his respect for himself. I want the police degraded. You know the kind of people who can make it happen to him… go into the Maze and arrange it.”

Starbuck’s dark eyes filled the slots in the blackness of his mask with darker curiosity. “Why, Arienrhod? Why all this over a Summer brat you’ve never even seen? First the boy to get her here; now this, because she’s gone — What in seven layers of hell could she possibly be to you?”

“She is something to me—” she took a breath, held it, “was something to me, and I could not begin to explain to you, even if I wanted to.” She had given him only the skeleton of the matter, no flesh on the bones, when his jealousy of the boy’s presence had begun to make him unmanageable. As long as he was certain her interest in other lovers was superficial, he was content; but Sparks was something more, and she was not the only one who realized it. She disliked Starbuck’s possessiveness, but like his other weaknesses it had its uses. And so she had told him of the girl’s existence, but not the reason behind it… “Since she’s gone now, there’s no reason for you to know what she was, in any case. Forget about her.” As I must…

“And the boy?” resentfully.

“Forget about him, too, if it makes you feel better.” She saw him frown. The more one withdraws, the more eagerly one is pursued. She thought of Sparks Dawntreader. “Concentrate on LiouxSked, and you’ll make me feel much, much better.” She reached out, touched his arm lightly.

He nodded, easing under her touch. “What about PalaThion? It was her fault the smugglers got off-planet at all. You want me to-arrange something for her, too?”

“No.” She glanced away toward the Hall of the Winds. “I have other plans for her. She’ll pay her debt… believe me, she will. Now go. I want it to happen soon.”

He bowed, and left the hall. She sat alone in the vast white silence.

14

Sparks lay spread-eagled across the bed in his private suite of rooms, his fingers tracing the tendrils of an alien vine across the elaborately carven headboard, and retracing them. Gone. She’s gone . repeating the words as he repeated the pattern, over and over. But he had no strength to believe — no strength to react, to move, to feel. No tears. How could she be gone — gone from his world as irretrievably as if she had died? Not Moon, who had been a part of his life from the day he was born. Not Moon, who had pledged herself to be a part of him forever…

Moon who had broken her pledge, and become a sibyl. Why? Why had she done that to him? Why had she done this to him now? Because shed believed he was never coming back? Then why hadn’t he gone back to Neith long ago! If he’d been there when she came home, this wouldn’t have happened.

But he hadn’t gone back. First because of all that had gone wrong, and then, after the Queen had come to find him, because of everything that had gone right. And always, because of Carbuncle. Neith and the whole of Summer’s world seemed as distant and gray as a bank of fog now; the only reality was the kaleidoscope of city images that had expanded his senses and his awareness until he would never be content in that narrow world of islands and sea again. The Sea… the sea was no more than a film of water on a ball of stone to the people of the city. They swore by a thousand gods, and prayed to them rarely — and the answers they really wanted they got from their machines.