“What?” Gundhalinu sat against the wall, gasping with incredulous delight. She noticed that he was missing a tooth. “Ye gods, I don’t believe it! Old Singalu? You’re making that up, aren’t you?” Laughter was the best medicine.
She shook her head. “No, really! It was an accident. But even KR was glad.” And she remembered tears welling in Elsevier’s eyes, in her own… Tears rose again suddenly; tears of grief this time.
“Dropped in on KR Aspundh.” He shook his head, wiped his own eyes, still grinning. “Even my father didn’t just drop in on KR Aspundh! Well, go on, what next?”
Moon swallowed. “We… we talked. He asked me to stay a few days. He’s a sibyl, you know—” She broke off.
“And I know there are a lot… of things you’re not telling me,”
Gundhalinu said quietly. He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to know. I don’t even want to know why the hell KR Aspundh has tech runners to tea. But you could have had anything you wanted there — the life, all the things you couldn’t have here. Why? Why did you leave all that, and risk everything to come back here? I can see it in your eyes, you wish you hadn’t.”
“I thought I had to.” She felt her broken nails dig into her palms. “I never wanted to go off world in the first place. I was going to Carbuncle to find my cousin… But when I got to Shotover Bay I met Elsevier, and then the Blues tried to arrest us—”
“Shotover Bay?” A peculiarly chagrined expression settled over his face. “It’s a small universe. No wonder I keep thinking… I’ve seen your face somewhere.”
She leaned forward with a smile starting, studied his face in turn. “No — I guess I was too busy running.”
He twitched his mouth. “No one’s ever called it memorable. So you were going to Carbuncle. But after five years, you aren’t still going there? Whatever happened to your kinsman is ancient history, by now.”
“It’s not.” She shook her head. “While I was on Kharemough I asked, and the Transfer told me I had to return, that it wasn’t finished yet.” The cold silence of the void grew loud inside her, squeezed her breath away. “But ever since I’ve come, everyone I’ve cared about I’ve destroyed, or hurt…” She hunched over, pulled herself into a hiding place.
“You? I don’t — understand.”
“Because I came back!” She let the words come, making him see her for what she was, every act and every retribution that had brought her relentlessly to this place… “I made it happen! I made them do it, it was all for me. I’m a curse — none of it would have happened without me, none of it!”
“You wouldn’t have seen it happen; that’s all. Nobody rules anyone else’s fate — we don’t even control our own.” She felt his hand hesitantly on her shoulder. “We wouldn’t be prisoners here; I wouldn’t be alive now to say… you’re wrong to blame yourself, if we did. Would I?”
She raised her head. “But the mers, Lady, even the mers… they were safe on Ngenet’s land, until I came!”
“If Starbuck and the Hounds were poaching, it was no fault of yours. It was nobody’s doing but the Queen’s. I’d say you must be thrice blessed, not cursed, if all you got… out of an encounter with Starbuck was a sore throat.” He began to cough, pressing his own throat.
“Starbuck?” Slowly she uncoiled, stretching her legs, gathering the courage to ask: “Was he — the man in black? What is he?” Not asking, Who is he?
Gundhalinu raised his eyebrows, took his hand away from her softening shoulder. “You’ve never heard of Starbuck? He’s the Queen’s consort: her Hunter, her henchman, her chief advisor when she deals with us .”… her lover.”
“He saved my life.” She traced the scab of the healing wound across her neck, finding the strength to ask, “Who is he, Gundhalinu?”
“No one knows. His identity is kept secret.”
He loved you once, but he loves her now. The words of the Transfer reverberated. “Now I understand. I understand everything! . It’s true.” She looked away, and away; but the emerald eyes behind the black executioner’s mask followed her, followed’ What is?”
“My cousin is Starbuck,” whispered.
Gundhalinu said calmly, “He can’t be. Starbuck is an off worlder
“Sparks is one too. His father was one. He always wanted to be like them, like the Winters… And now he is.” A monster. How could he do this to me?
“You’re jumping to conclusions. Just because Starbuck was afraid . to kill a sibyl—”
“He knew I was a sibyl before he ever saw my sign!” She struck back at his insufferable conviction. “He knew me; I know he did. And he was wearing the medal that was Sparks’s.” And he was killing mers. She pressed her knotted fist against her mouth. “How could he? How could he change into that?”
Gundhalinu lay down again, uncomfortably silent. “Carbuncle does that to people. But if it’s true, at least he had enough humanity left to spare your life. Now you can forget about him; forget about . one problem, at least.” He sighed, staring up into shadows.
“No.” She pushed herself to her feet, moving in a stiff circle be side the cot. “I want to get to Carbuncle more than ever. There has to be a reason for what he’s done; if he’s changed, there’s a way to change him back.” Win him back. I won’t lose… not after I’ve come so far! “I love him, Gundhalinu. No matter what he’s done, no matter how he’s changed, I can’t just stop loving him.” Or needing him, or wanting him back. He’s mine, he’s always been mine! I won’t give him up — no matter whose he is, or what she’s made him into… appalled by the truth, made helpless by it. “We pledged our lives to each other; and if he doesn’t want that any more, he’s going to have to prove it to me.” One hand made a fist, the other clung to it.
“I see.” He smiled, but there was uncertainty behind it. “And I always thought you natives led dull, uncomplicated lives,” unwitting condescension crept back, making him comfortable. “At least on Kharemough love has the courtesy to know its place, and not tear our hearts out of us.”
“Then you’ve never been in love,” resentfully. She crouched down by the pile of bright-and-dark cloth Blodwed had left them; picked up a piece distractedly. It was a tunic, sewn with wide bands of woven braid.
“If you mean all-consuming, sense-clouding, lightning-struck love — no. I’ve read about it…” His voice softened at the edges. “But I’ve never seen it. I don’t think it exists in the real universe.”
“Kharemoughis don’t exist in the real universe.” She took off her parka, pulled open the seal of her dry suit and climbed out of it, rubbing her skin-sore, abraded arms, scratching her back. Letting him watch, aware that he tried not to; taking perverse pleasure in his discomfiture. She pulled the soft, heavy tunic on over her skimpy un dersuit, struggled into the leggings and fur-lined boots, buckled the wide painted-leather belt around her hips. She touched the hand woven braid that ran down the tunic front, along the hem — all the colors of sunset against the night-blue wool. “This is beautiful…” Astonishment pushed up through her darker preoccupation. She realized suddenly that the braid, the garment, were very old.
“Yes.” Gundhalinu’s expression was not the one she had expected. But she saw the embarrassment lying below it, and felt a pinprick shame at his shame.
“Gundhalinu—”
“Make it BZ.” He shrugged away his self-consciousness. “We’re all on a first-name basis here.” He gestured at the animals.
She nodded. “BZ. We’ve got to find—” She broke off again, hearing someone enter the passageway. The lock rattled and the gate swung back. Blodwed came through it, trailed by a small, rosy cheeked child and carrying a box. She pulled the gate shut with her foot. The animals stirred and peered out at her all along the walls; tension made their movements furtive. The toddler wandered toward the cages, sat down unexpectedly on the floor in front of one. Blodwed ignored him, coming on across the room.