“Good… I’m expecting a particularly important visitor tonight. Make certain the inner meeting room is secure, and prepared appropriately. She will be at the side entrance at midnight. See that she isn’t kept waiting.”
“Yes, master.” She? There were not too many women in the underworld society who rated such solicitude in an audience with the Source.
“That’s all, Persipone. Go back to your guests.”
“Thank you, master,” meekly. The door opened and she escaped, blinking again, into the white glare of the hall beyond. She sighed as the door clicked securely behind her; not offended, as she walked away, that he found her unattractive — only relieved. He was completely off her scale of ambition, and in her private heart she was very much afraid of him, for all the rational reasons — and for all the reasons a child fears the dark.
Arienrhod followed the lurid figure of Persipone through the private passageways to the Source’s inner meeting room. The sounds of the casino reached her distantly through the barrier of separating walls, a deep throbbing that was more vibration than true sound, that reached into her chest like death’s hand. It was more than appropriate she thought, that the heartless merriment of the gaming crowds should show its real nature here in the shadowy halls of the Source’s hidden power. Persipone stopped ahead of her, before a sealed doorway that looked like any other they had passed, and beckoned to her. She moved forward, and Persipone pressed her hand against a panel in the door — the arrival signal, as though they were not already being observed. She nodded to Arienrhod with self-conscious deference, and went away down the hall. Arienrhod was certain that the woman recognized her; wondered what she would think if she realized that Tor Starhiker/Persipone was equally well-known to her Queen as Sparks Dawntreader’s pawn.
But the door was opening before her, opening on darkness, and she put all other thoughts out of her mind. She pushed back the hood of her shadow-colored cloak and walked boldly forward, without waiting to be summoned. But as she crossed over the threshold the door sealed again behind her, sealing her into utter lightlessness. Panic seized her with heavy hands, as it always did. Suddenly it was hard not to believe that she had stepped into another plane, into the merciless unknown of an interstellar vice network — out of the world she knew and controlled. That she was lost… Her mechanical spies peered into every corner of this city, but they could not penetrate this place: It was guarded by even more powerful and sophisticated technology… this all-pervasive darkness that tried to smother her will and swallow her self-control. She stood rigidly still, until the moment passed and she recaptured her perspective. Darkness . it’s a damn good trick. I wish I’d thought of it.
“Your Majesty. You honor my humble establishment.” The Source’s ruined voice (like the voice of a corpse; or was that just an effect, too?) hissed the welcome, oddly accented. “Please take a seat, make yourself comfortable. I would hate to keep the Lady standing.”
Arienrhod noted the intentional play on words, the reference to her barbarian heritage. She made no response, but moved forward confidently to take the deeply cushioned seat across the empty table from him. Ever since their first meeting, where she had been forced to grope humiliatingly through the dark, she had been certain to wear light-enhancing contact lenses when she came to call on him. As her visual purple built up she could actually make out the general form of the room’s contents, and the uncertain outline of the Source himself. Try as she would, she could not fill in the features of his face.
“What is your pleasure, Your Majesty? I have a full store of sensory delights, if you care to indulge.” A broad hand gestured, vaguely misshapen.
“Not tonight.” She gave him no title, refusing to acknowledge the one he demanded of his other clients. “I never combine business with pleasure, unless it’s absolutely necessary.” She felt the heightened intensity of her other senses in the darkened room, and how her crippled sight still struggled to dominate them.
A hoarse chuckle. “Such a pity. Such a waste… don’t you ever wonder what you may be missing?”
“On the contrary,” refusing to be condescended to. “I miss nothing. That’s why I’m the Queen of this world. And that’s why I’m here. I intend to stay Queen of Tiamat after you and the rest of the off world parasites abandon it again. But in order to do that, I’ll need to employ your questionable services on a much bigger scale than I’ve done in the past.”
“You put things so delicately. How could a man refuse you anything?” iron on cement. “What did you have in mind, Your Majesty?”
She rested an elbow on the sense-absorbing chair-arm. Like flesh. It feels like flesh. “I want something to happen during the Festival, something that will create chaos — at the expense of the Summers.”
“You had in mind, perhaps, the sort of accident that befell the former Police Commander? But on a much larger scale, of course.” His voice betrayed no surprise at all; something she found both reassuring and disturbing. “Drugs in the water supply, perhaps.”
But why should it disturb me? It was my idea. “No drugs. That would affect my people too, and I don’t want that. We have to remain in control. I had in mind an epidemic, something most of Winter has been vaccinated against. The Summers would have no protection.”
“I see,” a dim nod. “Yes. It can be arranged. Although I would be betraying the Hegemony in a great way, if I gave you the means of retaining power. It’s very much in our interest to leave the savages in control when we depart.”
“The Hegemony’s best interests are hardly yours. You’re no more a loyalist than I am.” The smell of incense in the air was too strong, as though it were hiding something.
“Our interests coincide in the matter of the water of life.” She heard his smile.
“Name your price, then. I don’t have time to wade in the shallows.” Sharpening her own voice, she jabbed at his smug formless ness
“I want the take from three Hunts. All of it.”
“Three!” She laughed once, not admitting that it was no more than shed expected him to ask for.
“What is the price of a queen’s ransom, Your Majesty?” The darkness around them settled into his voice almost tangibly; she was aware again of how much more she heard, trying to compensate for not seeing his face. “I’m sure the police would be more than interested to learn what you have in mind for this world. Genocide is a serious charge — and against your own people. But that’s what comes of letting a woman rule… Women don’t rule the Hegemony, you know. There are many places, on many worlds, where even your arrogance could be broken, Arienrhod.”
Arienrhod’s hands tightened at the unexpected eagerness of his hatred, a terrifying crack of white-hot damnation between the shielding curtains of the darkness. She became aware of a peculiar odor underlying the perfume of incense in the air… an odor of disease, or decay. But he doesn’t dare! “Don’t threaten me, Thanin Jaakola. You may have been a slave master on Big Blue, and you may be responsible for the majority of the misery on seven different worlds,” letting his comprehension of her own private knowledge harden. “But until the Change this is my world, Jaakola, and you exist here only because I permit you to. Whatever becomes of me becomes of you, because if anything happens to me you lose your protection from the law. I’m sure there are many places that you would find a humbling experience yourself.” And I’m sure you never forget that For a moment. “What I’m asking of you is risky, yes, but simple. I’m sure it’s nothing you can’t handle easily, given your resources. I’ll give you the entire take of Starbuck’s final Hunt… and that is worth a Queen’s ransom, to you or anyone.”