“A dead friend.” He picked the dillyp’s limp body up like a sleeping child, she saw the dark stain that it left behind on the beach. She watched uncomprehendingly as he carried the body to the edge of the water, entered it without hesitation, wading further and further out until the frigid sea lapped his chest. And then he let the exile go quietly home.

As he came out of the water again Jerusha took off her coat and threw it around his shoulders. He nodded absently; she almost thought that the cold did not reach him. She remembered suddenly that one of the tech runners five years ago had been a dillyp.

“She must be dead, too.” His voice was like steel. She realized that there was no sign of Moon Dawntreader. “Starbuck, the Hounds, did this.” He gestured; the word was a curse. “The last Hunt. On my land.” His hands coiled into fists. “And leaving them like this, mutilating them, this — flaunting. Why?”

“Arienrhod ordered it.” The simple statement seared her like a beam of light, as she saw the only conceivable reason that Arienrhod might have for lashing out at an off worlder a total stranger. Because of me? No, no… not because of me!

Miroe turned as though her guilt shone out like a beacon. “This is a crime against a citizen of the Hegemony, on his granted land.” His voice accused her without needing to say the words. “You’ve seen it with your own eyes, you have the jurisdiction. Do you have the control to charge Starbuck with murder — Commander?”

She stiffened. “I don’t know. I don’t know any more, Miroe…” touching the badges on her coat collar. She took a deep breath. “But I swear to you, before your gods and mine, that I will do anything in my power to make it happen.” (seeing the ruined bodies) “She destroys everything she touches, goddamn her—” (BZ’s life gone up in a ball of flame) “—and I’ll make her pay, if I have to die to do it! She won’t get away with it—” (LiouxSked’s life ruined) “—she thinks she’s untouchable, she thinks she’ll be Queen forever; but she won’t get away with it—” (her own life ruined) “—if I have to drown her myself!”

“I believe you, Jerusha,” Miroe said, unsmiling; she heard the cold accusation fade from his voice. “But there isn’t much time.”

“I know.” She looked away, deliberately imprinting her mind with the gaping ruin of a creature whose only crime was life. “I’ve never seen a mer—” She pressed her lips together.

“You haven’t seen one here, either.” His voice was unsteady.

“Not those mounds of dead flesh — those are nothing at all. You haven’t seen the mers until you’ve seen them dance on the water, or heard their song… You haven’t understood the real crime until you know the truth about what they are. They’re not just animals, Jerusha.”

“What?” She turned back. “What are you saying?” No, don’t tell me this; I don’t want to know.

“They’re intelligent beings. There weren’t two murders on this beach today, there were half a hundred. And over the last millennium—”

She swayed, shaken by the wind. “No… Miroe, they’re not. They can’t be!”

“They’re a synthetic life form; the Old Empire gave them intelligence as well as immortality. Moon Dawntreader told me the truth about them.”

“But why? Why would they be intelligent? And how could the Hedge not know… ?” Her voice faded.

“I don’t know why. But I know the Hegemony has to have known the truth, for a millennium. I told Moon when I heard it that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.” Muscles twitched in his face. “I do now.” He turned his back on her.

Jerusha stood without words, without motion, waiting for the brittle bowl of the sky to crack open and fall, waiting for the weight of injustice to crush this eggshell world of lies and bring it crashing down on her… But there was no change in the sea, in the air, no difference in the profile of the cliffs or the suffocating awareness of death, waste, mourning. “Miroe… come back to the patroller. You’ll — you’ll catch your death.”

He nodded. “Yes. The survivors will return, in time. I have to leave them to — to their own. I can’t help them, I can’t help my own, any more.” He looked toward the small outrigger beached at the water’s edge, its sail flapping mournfully. “She gave me the most important gift anyone could have given me, Jerusha: the truth… She said she was told to come back here; shed had a sibyl’s sending. I don’t understand, I can’t believe it was meant to end like this for her. What does it all mean?”

“I don’t know. Nothing.” Jerusha shook her head. “Maybe everything we do is meaningless. But we have to try, don’t we? We have to go on looking for justice… and settling for revenge.” She started back toward the patrol craft her arms wrapped around her. As they passed the abandoned outrigger it occurred to her that Arienrhod’s Hounds had destroyed Arienrhod’s clone child… and Arienrhod would never know it.

32

“I was worried about you when they reported the storm.”

“It was nothing. We just rode it out,” listlessly.

Soft laughter. “How many of my Starbucks could say that without lying?”

Sparks did not answer, lying motionless on the bed, watching himself in the mirrors, watching her watch him watch, into infinity. Arienrhod lay beside him; the curving lines of her body were the folds of a continent rising from the sea, cloaked in the snow fields of her hair. Strands of thread-fine silver chain spilled down from her waist like a river of light. She massaged the fragrant oil into his skin with slow, exploratory fingers; but his body did not respond. Would not respond, to her most intimate touch, her most knowing suggestions. Like a corpse… gods, help me, I’m buried alive.

Arienrhod’s hand slipped from his thigh as his muscles hardened, rigor mortis. She rolled onto her stomach, resting across his chest as she looked down at him with concern in her agate-colored eyes. The wrong eyes — as he saw the shadows that lay just below the surface, the depths of wisdom without mercy… the eyes of a changeling who had made him a prisoner locked in his own mind. He closed his own eyes. But I did it all for you, Arienrhod.

“Are you so tired, then, after all?” She lifted the off worlder medal from his chest, turning it idly between her fingers; he heard the undercurrent of cool resentment below the shallows of her solicitude. “Or so bored? Shall I make it a threesome—?”

“No.” He put his arms around her and pulled her down on him, filling his hands with the silken cloth of her hair, kissing her lips, her eyes, the hollow of her throat . , . and feeling nothing. Nothing.

The ghost-girl who had come to him out of the sea would lie between them whenever they lay together from now on, and he would see her eyes — the right eyes, the only eyes. They would accuse him, weeping tears of blood, forever… “Arienrhod,” despairingly. “Damn it, you know I love you! You know you’re everything to me, everything she ever was, and more—” But the word was a moan. His hands fell away from her.

Arienrhod turned rigid on top of him. “

“She?”… What are you talking about, my love? Our Moon?” Her voice was soft and clouded-over. “Does she still come back to haunt you, after so long? She’s gone. We lost her a long time ago; you have to put her out of your mind.” She stroked his temples with her fingers, in slow circling motions.

“By all the gods, I thought I had!” He rolled his head from side to side, trying to look away from his own reflection, but it followed him inexorably.

“Then why? Why think about her now? Are you afraid of the Change coming? I promised you it would never come.”

“I don’t care about that.” About killing my people… then I don’t care about anything at all. He shifted her carefully off of him, rolled over onto his stomach and propped his head in his hands. She sat up beside him, the girdle of silver threads whispering over her skin.