Amazement touched him with a tingling hand as he realized again that he lay beside the Queen of Winter. But a profound tenderness filled him, he ached to give her the love, the loyalty, the life that he had pledged to her lost other ness “Arienhrod…” He breathed the unfamiliar name against her ear. “Arienrhod. I want to be the only one with you.”

She opened her eyes then, regarded him with gentle censure. “No. No, my love.”

“Why not?” His arms closed her in, possessively. “I was the only one for Moon. Let me be the only one with you. I’m not just another fish in the net; I don’t want to share you with a hundred others.”

“But you must share me, Sparks. I am the Queen, the power. No one puts limits on me, no one commands me — I won’t allow it, because it weakens my control. There will never be an only one, man or woman.

Because I am the Only One. But there will never be an other one like you…” She kissed him softly on the forehead, her fingers closing over the off world medal resting on his chest. “My star child.”

He shivered.

“What’s wrong?”

“She used to call me that.” He pushed up onto an elbow, looking down at her as she lay back smiling, caught outside of time. “If I can’t be the only one, then I want to be the only one who counts.” He saw in his mind the mocking figure dressed in black who stood always at the Queen’s right hand, who baited him and bullied him at every private opportunity, with an evil enjoyment rooted in bitter jealousy. “I want to challenge Starbuck.”

“Starbuck?” Arienrhod blinked at him with honest surprise, before she began to laugh. “My love, you’re too new here to realize what you’re saying — and you’re far too young and alive to throw away everything. Because that is what you’d be doing, if you challenged Starbuck. I’m flattered by the gesture, but I forbid it. Believe me when I tell you that he counts for nothing in my heart. Since the first Festival night, when I put on the mask of the Winter Queen so long ago…” her eyes changed, and she was no longer seeing him, “there has been no one in my bed, or in my life, who made me long for the time when I was only Arienrhod, and lived in a world that was ignorant but free; when wishes and dreams meant something, because they weren’t always realized. You make me dream of lost innocence… you make me dream. There is no need for you to do, or be, anything more to make me love you-and want to keep you from harm. Starbuck could kill you with any weapon you could choose, including bare hands. And besides, Starbuck must be an off worlder he must have have the knowledge and the contacts among his own kind to help me keep them at bay.”

“I’m enough of an off worlder. He held out the medal, let it spin on its chain in the air above her. “And enough a part of this world to hate them like you do. I’ve listened and watched; I’ve learned a lot about the court, and the city too, how the off worlders use it. Anything I didn’t know you could teach me…” He smiled, a smile that Moon would not have understood. “And I know the one thing I really need to know, even if you don’t believe it — how I can challenge Starbuck and win.” He stopped smiling.

Arienrhod studied him silently; he felt her measure and weigh with her eyes. He thought a shadow passed across her face, before she nodded. “Challenge him, then. But if you do, and fail, I’ll call you a vain little braggart and make love to him on your grave.” She caught the winking pendant and drew him down on top of her.

“I won’t fail.” He found her lips again, hungrily. “And if I can’t be your only lover, I’ll be the best.”

15

This was the morning of the day. Starbuck prepared himself slowly, deliberately, in the innermost room of his private suite; reassuring himself with each precise movement and small decision that his control was absolute. He wore the utilitarian coveralls of his hunting clothes instead of the funereal foppery of his court clothing, for comfort and ease of movement. He pushed the black leather gloves down over each finger, settled the hooded helmet onto his head. It entered his mind that this might be the last time he would wear the mask, or perform this ritual, and his muscles tightened. He brushed the thought aside disdainfully — the way he would brush aside Sparks Dawntreader.

So that wet-eared Mother lover thought he could be Starbuck, had even gotten up the nerve to issue a challenge — and Arienrhod had accepted it. It would have smarted that shed done this to him, except that the contest was such an absurd mismatch he couldn’t believe she took it seriously. She wouldn’t let an ignorant punk from the outback with a pawnshop medal claim to be an off worlder unless she knew there was no chance in hell of his winning the contest.

No, she just wanted amusement; it was like her to come up with this. She hadn’t been the same since shed gotten the news about Dawntreader’s cousin: moody and spiteful, even harder to live with than usual. He wouldn’t have believed there was anything on this world that could pierce the armor of her supreme egotism or shake her unshakable arrogance. What had the girl been to her, that Arienrhod had had her watched all those years? He’d give a lot to know what made Arienrhod vulnerable…

He knew already what the boy had been to her — that shed finally gotten the elusive quarry bedded, after the longest pursuit he’d ever known her to need. The kid was either crazy or he’d played the reluctant innocent on purpose: It could have been either one, and either way it had worked too well. Arienrhod’s face when she watched the boy had driven him to private fury, with a jealousy he’d never known toward any of her lovers in the past.

But none of that mattered now. It had been a waste of time to sweat over it; she was already bored with him. Once the excitement of the chase was gone and the unattainable object was just another lousy lay, it figured that shed decide to get rid of this one like all the rest. That made sense. That fitted the Arienrhod he had always known. She would be his again, she would come back to him as she had always done; because he knew what she wanted, in everything, and he could give it to her.

And it was going to be a pleasure to take care of this next piece of business for her, by killing that troublesome little son of a bitch. Arienrhod had granted the boy choice of weapons; that didn’t bother him either, because he was good with any weapon, and the kid was a flute-playing sissy. It was almost beneath his dignity… but he planned to enjoy it anyway.

Starbuck studied himself in the long mirror and was pleased with the effect. He strapped on his weapons belt and left his chambers, heading for the Hall of the Winds, where Arienrhod had ordered them to meet. That had surprised him, but he hadn’t questioned it. The nobility and servants he passed in the halls gave him a wide berth, stealing fleeting, nervous glances. (Even the nobility always treated him respectfully, to his face, pampered highborn weaklings that they were.) They all knew that there had been a challenge, and that this was the day, although none would ever know who the challenger was… or the outcome, although everyone would guess.

What weapon would the kid try? he wondered. An electric eagerness tingled in his hands; he flexed them. The challenges were the kind of thing no respectable Winter liked to admit still existed anywhere in their half of the world: something left over from the dim dark times before the Hegemony had brought enlightenment back to this lost world; a time when the Queen was the actual Sea Mother in her people’s eyes, and men fought for her divine favors . just as they did now. The fact that it was a vestige of an uncivilized age did not bother him. He enjoyed testing himself against other men, proving to the world — to Arienrhod, to himself — every time he won that he was a better man than the ones who tried to bring him down. Not just the strongest, but the smartest, too. That was why he’d always won, and why he always would. Even if he had been born Unclassified on Kharemough, with the whole world on his back making him eat shit, he’d fought his way out of that sewer, and into a position of power the best-educated technocrat on Kharemough could not match. He had everything they had, and more — he had the water of life. How many of them squandered their lives’ fortunes to erase a day from every week, or month, that they aged? He drank from the fountain of youth every day — it came with the job. As long as he gave Arienrhod what she wanted, he would have everything he wanted, and he would never have to grow old. And as long as he stayed in his prime no challenger would ever take that away from him.