The Snow Queen

5

“Gods, I hate this duty!” Police Inspector Geia Jerusha PalaThion jerked the end of her scarlet cape free of the patrol craft door seal The car trembled lightly, hovering on repellers in the palace courtyard at the high end of Carbuncle’s Street.

Her sergeant looked at her, an ironic half-smile crumpling the pale freckles on his dark, fine-boned face. “You mean you don’t enjoy visiting royalty, Inspector?” innocently.

“You know what I mean, Gundhalinu.” She jerked the cape roughly around to open from one shoulder, hiding the utilitarian dusty-blue of the duty uniform beneath it. A brooch with the Hegemonic seal pinned its folds. “I mean, BZ—” she gestured-”that I hate having to dress up like something out of a costume strobe to play spaceman’s burden with the Snow Queen.”

Gundhalinu tapped the flash-shield at the front of his flaring helmet. Her helmet had been sprayed gold; his was still white, and he was cape less “You should be glad the Commander doesn’t put a potted plant up there, Inspector, to make you more impressive… You have to look the part when you go to lay down universal law before the Mother lovers, don’t you?”

“Manure.” They began to walk toward the massive doors of the ceremonial entrance, across the intricate spiral patterns of pale inlaid stone. At the far side of the courtyard two Winter servants scrubbed the stones with long-handled brushes. They were always out here, scrubbing, keeping it flawless. Alabaster? she wondered, looking down, and thought about sand, and heat, and sky. There were none of those things here, not anywhere in this cold, spun stone confection of a city. This courtyard marked the beginning of the Street, the beginning of the world, the beginning of everything in Carbuncle. Or the end. She saw the frigid sky of the upper latitudes glaring at them helplessly beyond the storm walls. “Arienrhod is no more taken in by this charade than we are. The only possible good that could come out of this would be if she believes we’re as stupid as we look.”

“Yes, but what about all their primitive rituals and superstitions, Inspector? I mean, these are people who still believe in human sacrifice. Who deck up in masks and have orgies in the street every time the Assembly comes to visit—”

“Don’t you celebrate, when the Prime Minister drops in on Kharemough every few decades to let you kiss his feet?”

“It’s hardly the same thing. He is a Kharemoughi.” Gundhalinu drew himself up, shielding himself from contamination. “And our celebrations are dignified.”

Jerusha smiled. “All a matter of degree. And before you start throwing around cultural judgments, Sergeant, go back and study the ethnographies until you really understand this world’s traditions.” She turned her own face into a mask of official propriety, letting him see it while she presented it to the Queen’s guards. They stood stiffly at attention, doing their own costumed imitation of the ofiworlder police. The immense, time-gnawed doors opened for her without hesitation.

“Yes, ma’am.” Their polished boots rang on the corridor leading to the Hall of the Winds. Gundhalinu looked aggrieved. He had been on Tiamat for a little less than a standard year, and had been her assistant for most of that time. She liked him, and thought he liked her; she felt that he was on his way to becoming a competent career officer. But his homevrorld was Kharemough, the world that dominated the Hegemony, and a world dominated by the technocracy that produced the Hegemony’s most sophisticated hardware. She suspected that Gundhalinu was a younger son from a family of some rank, forced into this career by rigid inheritance laws at home, and he was Tech through and through. Jerusha thought a little sadly that a hundred replays of the orientation tapes would never teach him any tolerance.

“Well,” she said more kindly, “I’ll tell you one man in a mask who probably fits all your prejudices, and mine too — and that’s Star buck. And he’s an off worlder whoever or whatever else he is.” She looked at the frescoes of chill Winter scenes along the entry hall, tried to wonder how many times they had been painted and repainted. But in her mind’s eye she already saw Starbuck standing at the Queen’s right hand, wearing a sneer under that damned executioner’s hood while he looked down on the hamstrung representatives of the Law.

“He wears a mask for the same reasons as any other thief or murderer,” Gundhalinu said sourly.

“True enough. Living proof that no world has a monopoly on regressive behavior… and that scum tends to rise to the top.” Jerusha slowed, hearing the sigh of a slumbering giant deep in the planet’s bowels. She took a deep breath of her own against the Trial by Air that was a part of the ritual in every visit to the palace, and shivered under her cloak with more than the growing chill of the air. She never got over the fear, just as she never got over her amazement at the thing that caused it: the place they called the Hall of the Winds.

She saw one of the nobility waiting for them at the brink of the abyss, glad that for once the Queen had seen fit not to keep them waiting. The less time she stood thinking about it, the less trouble she would have getting across. It might mean that Arienrhod was in a good mood — or simply that she was too preoccupied with other matters to indulge in petty harassments today. Jerusha was thoroughly informed about the spy system the Queen had had installed throughout the city, and particularly here in the palace. The Queen enjoyed setting up minor ordeals to demoralize her opposition… and it was obvious to Jerusha that she also enjoyed watching the victims sweat.

Jerusha recognized Kirard Set, an elder of the Wayaways family, one of the Queen’s favorites. He was rumored to have seen four visits of the Assembly; but his face, below the fashionable twist of turban, was still hardly more than a boy’s. “Elder.” Jerusha saluted him stiffly, painfully aware of the crow’s-feet starting at the corners of her own eyes; more aware of the moaning call of the abyss beyond her, like the hungry laughter of the unrepentant damned. Who would build a thing like this? She had wondered it every time she came to this place, wondered whether the crying of the wind was not really the voice of its creators, those lost ancestors who had dreamed and built this haunted city in the north. No one she knew knew what they had been, or done, here, before the collapse of the interstellar empire that made the present Hegemony seem insignificant.

If she had been anywhere else, she might have sought out a sibyl and tried to get an answer, obscure and unintelligible though it probably would have been. Even here on Tiamat, in the far islands the sibyls wandered like traveling occultists, thinking they spoke with the voice of the Sea Mother. But the wisdom was real, and still intact even here, though the Tiamatans had lost the truth behind it, just as they had lost the reason for Carbuncle. There were no sibyls in the city — by Hegemonic law, conveniently supported by the Winters’ disgust with anything remotely “primitive.” Calculated and highly successful Hegemonic propaganda kept them believing it was nothing more than a combination of superstitious fakery and disease-born madness, for the most part. Not even the Hegemony would dare to eliminate sibyls from an inhabited world… but it could keep them unavailable. Sibyls were the carriers of the Old Empire’s lost wisdom, meant to give the new civilizations that built on its ruins a key to unlock its buried secrets. And if there was any thing the Hegemony’s wealthy and powerful didn’t want, it was to see this world stand on its own feet and grow strong enough to deny them the water of life.

Jerusha remembered suddenly, vividly, the one sibyl she had ever seen in Carbuncle — ten years ago, only a short time after her arrival here at her first post. She had seen him because she had been sent to oversee his exile from the city, had gone with the jeering crowd as they led their frightened, protesting kinsman down to the docks and set him adrift in a boat. There had been a witch-catcher of iron studded with spikes around his neck; they had pushed him along at pole’s length, rightfully afraid of contamination.

Then, down the steep dropoff to the harbor, they had pushed him too roughly, and he had fallen. The spikes bit into his throat and the side of his face, laying them open. The sibyl’s blood that the crowd had been so afraid of spilling had welled and run like a necklace of jewels under his chin, patterning down his shirt (the shirt was a deep sky blue; she was struck by the beauty of the contrast). And stricken with fear like the rest, she had watched him sit moaning with his hands pressed against his throat, and done nothing to help him…

Gundhalinu touched her elbow hesitantly. She looked up, embarrassed, into the faintly scornful face of the Elder Wayaways. “Whenever you’re ready, Inspector.”

She nodded.

The elder lifted the small whistle suspended from a chain around his neck and stepped out onto the bridge. Jerusha followed with eyes looking fixedly ahead, knowing what she would see if she looked down, not needing to see it: the terrifying shaft that gave access for the servicing of the city’s self-sufficient operating plant, servicing that had never been needed as far as she knew, during the millennium that the Hegemony had known about it. There were enclosed elevator capsules that gave technicians safe access to its countless levels; there was also a column of air, rising up this shaft at the hollow core of Carbuncle’s spiral the way an updraft formed in an open chimney. Here was the only area of the city not entirely sealed off by storm walls; the bitter winds of the open sky ran wild through this space, sucking the breath out of the subterranean hollows. There was always a strong smell of the sea here high in the air, and moaning, as the wind probed the irregularities of cranny and protrusion in the shaft below.

There were also, suspended in the air like immense free-form mobiles, transparent panels of some resilient material that flowed and billowed like clouds, that created treacherous cross-currents and back flows in the relentless wind. And there was only one way across the hall to the upper levels of the palace: Here the corridor became a drawbridge vaulting the chasm like a band of light. It was wide enough to walk easily in silent air, but it was made deadly by the hungry sweep of the winds.

The Elder Wayaways sounded a note on his whistle and stepped forward confidently as the space around him grew calm. Jerusha followed, almost stepping on his heels with the need to include herself and Gundhalinu in the globe of quiet air. The elder continued to walk, at a calm even pace, sounding another note, and a third. Still the globe of peaceful air surrounded them; but behind her Jerusha heard Gundhalinu take some god’s name in vain as he lagged a little and the wind licked his back.

This is insane! She repeated the litany of fear and resentment that always went with her crossing. What sort of a maniac would build this sadist’s jun house… knowing that the technology that had designed it could easily have circumvented it, if it had simply been meant as a security measure. At the tech level permitted the Winters on Tiamat now, it was effective enough. Whatever nerveless madman had had it put here in the first place, she suspected that it suited the purposes of the present Queen all too well.

They were midway across already. She kept her eyes fixed on the elder’s back, hearing the atonal wind-charmer’s notes that held back death shrill above the groaning pit. It was not the weaving of some magic spell, but the activation of automated controls that diverted the wind curtains to the travelers’ protection instead of their destruction. Knowing that was no great comfort to her when she considered the potential for human error, or for a sudden failure in such an ancient system. There had been control boxes once that did what the whistle player did now; but as far as she knew the only one that still worked hung on Starbuck’s belt.

Safe. Her boots found the security of the far rim. She controlled the overwhelming desire to let her legs melt out from under her and sit down. Gundhalinu’s sweating face grinned at her gamely. She wondered whether he was trying not to think about the return trip, too. Looking ahead again, she read triumph in the Elder Way — aways’ walk as they followed him on into the audience hall.

Even here, so near the pinnacle of Carbuncle, the hall was overpowering in its vastness; she imagined it could hold an entire villa from Newhaven, her homeworld. Fiber hangings in chilly pastels drifted down from the geometric arches of the pillared ceiling, winking and chiming with the exotic song of a thousand tiny handmade silver bells.

And across the expanse of white carpet — an off world import — the Snow Queen sat back on her throne, a goddess incarnate, a taloned snow hawk in an ice-bound aerie. Unconsciously Jerusha drew her cloak closer around her. “Colder than the Karoo ,” Gundhalinu muttered, and rubbed his arms. The Elder Wayaways motioned them to wait where they were, went ahead to announce their presence. Jerusha was sure that the dark, distant eyes beneath the crown of pale hair were already more than aware of them, although Arienrhod did not acknowledge them, but gazed out across the hall. As usual Arienrhod had struck Jerusha’s eye first; but now, as she followed the Queen’s gaze into the nearer distance, a searing line of light, the hum-snap of an energy beam striking home, wrenched her attention away.

“Schact!” Gundhalinu hissed, as voices cried out and they saw the knot of nobles split open as the bolt knocked one sprawling onto the rug. “Dueling—?” His voice was incredulous. Jerusha’s hand tightened on the empire-cross of her belt buckle, barely controlling her sudden outrage. Did the Queen mock police authority to the degree of staging murder in her presence? Her mouth was open to protest, to demand — but before she could find words, the victim rolled over and sat up, not blistered or charred, with no blood staining the snow-field purity of the rug. A woman, Jerusha saw; the fads in clothing affected by the nobility sometimes made it hard to tell. There was a faint distortion of air as she moved; she had been wearing a repeller field. She climbed gracefully to her feet with an elaborate bow toward the Queen, the rest clapping and laughing their amusement. Gundhalinu swore again, more softly, in disgust. As the nobles shifted, Jerusha caught sight of the black figure, the cold gleam of metal, and realized that the one who had playacted the murderer had been Starbuck.

Gods! What sort of jaded half wits would try to burn each other down for laughs? They treated a weapon that could maim and kill like a toy — they no more understood the real function or significance of technology than a pampered pet understood a jewelled collar. Yes — but whose fault is that, if not ours? Arienrhod’s gaze caught her suddenly in mid-expression. The strangely colored eyes stayed on her; the Queen smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. Who says the pet doesn’t understand its collar? Jerusha held the gaze stubbornly. Or that the savage doesn’t see through the lie that makes him less than human?

The Elder Wayaways had announced them and was backing from the Queen’s presence as Starbuck came to stand beside her throne. His hidden face also turned toward them, as if he were curious about the effect of his playacting. We’re all savages at heart.

“You may approach, Inspector PalaThion.” The Queen lifted a desultory hand.

Jerusha removed her helmet and walked forward, Gundhalinu treading close behind her. She was certain that no more than the bare minimum of respect showed on either his face or her own. The nobles stood off to one side, striking poses like so many hologrammic traders’ dummies, watching with sincere disinterest as she made her salute. She wondered briefly why they found playing at and with death so amusing. They were all favorites, young-faced — the gods only knew how old in reality. She had always heard that users of the water of life became pathologically protective of their extended youth. Could it be that there really came a time when you had experienced everything you could possibly desire? No, not even in a century and a half. Or could it be that they simply didn’t know, that Starbuck hadn’t warned them of the danger?

“Your Majesty—” She glanced up, half at Starbuck, then back at Arienrhod enthroned on the dais. The sweet girlish face was made into a mockery, a mask like Starbuck’s, by the too-knowing wisdom of her eyes.

Arienrhod raised a finger, the slight motion cutting off her words. “I have decided that from now on you will kneel when you come before me, Inspector.”

Jerusha’s mouth snapped shut. She took a moment, and a long breath. “I’m an officer of the Hegemonic Police, Your Majesty. I have sworn an oath of allegiance to the Hegemony.” She gazed deliberately at the rising back of the Queen’s throne, through her, around her. The blown-and-welded surfaces of glass, the shining spirals and shadowed crevices dazzled her eyes with the hypnotic spell of the Maze; the bizarre artistry that catalyzed out of Carbuncle’s volatile mix of cultures.

“But the Hegemony stationed your unit here to serve me, Inspector.” Arienrhod’s voice startled her attention back. “I ask only the homage due any independent ruler,” putting a slight emphasis on independent, “from the representatives of another.”

“Ask and be damned!” Jerusha heard Gundhalinu breathe the words almost inaudibly behind her; saw the Queen’s eyes flash to his face, marking him in her memory. Starbuck moved down one step from the throne, almost lazily, the gun still swinging from a black gloved hand. But the Queen lifted her own hand again and he stopped, waiting wordlessly.

Jerusha hesitated, too, feeling the stunner that weighed heavily at her side, and Gundhalinu’s quivering indignation behind her. My duty is to keep the peace. She turned slightly, toward Starbuck, toward Gundhalinu. “All right, BZ,” as softly as he had spoken; not softly enough. “We’ll kneel. It’s not such an unreasonable request.”

Gundhalinu said something in a language she didn’t know, his pupils blackening. On the dais Starbuck’s fist went tight over his weapon.

Jerusha turned back to the Queen, felt the eyes of the onlookers, no longer indifferent now, pressing hard on her shoulders as she dropped to one knee and bowed her head. After a second there was a rustle and a creak of leather as Gundhalinu dropped down heavily behind her. “Your Majesty.”

“You may rise, Inspector.”

Jerusha pushed herself to her feet. “Not you!” The Queen’s voice struck past her as Gundhalinu began to get up. “You kneel until I give you permission to rise, off worlder As she spoke, Starbuck moved like an extension of her will to his side, the heavy arm in fluid black closing over Gundhalinu’s shoulder, forcing him back to his knees. Starbuck muttered something in the unknown language. Jerusha’s hands fisted beneath her cloak, slowly opened again. She said brittlely, “Take your hands off him, Starbuck, before I run you in for assaulting an officer.”

Starbuck smiled — she saw his eyes crinkle, insolently, the face alter beneath the smooth surface of his mask. He did not move until the Queen gestured him away.

“Get up, BZ,” Jerusha said it gently, keeping her voice together with an effort. She put out her hand to help him to his feet, felt him trembling with fury. He didn’t look at her; the freckles stood out blood red against the darkness of his skin.

“If he were my man, I would discipline him for such arrogance.” Arienrhod watched them, expressionless now.

Punishment enough. Jerusha glanced away from his face, lifted her head. “He is a citizen of Kharemough, Your Majesty; he’s nobody’s man but his own.” She looked pointedly at Starbuck still standing at her side.

The Queen smiled, and this time there was a trace of appreciation in it. “Maybe Commander LiouxSked sends you to me as more than just a token female, after all.”

That proves you’re not omniscient. Jerusha’s mouth pulled into a tight half-smile of her own. “If I may ask your indulgence, then, I would like to make the point that—” she moved suddenly, and with a hidden nerve-blocking pinch, took Starbuck’s gun away from him, “these weapons are not toys.” The blunt metal grip settled in her hand, the tube pointed like a cautionary finger as he started toward her; she heard the excited twitter of the onlookers. “An energy weapon should never be aimed at anything unless you’re willing to see it blown apart.” Starbuck froze in mid-motion, she saw his startled muscles tense and twitch. She lowered the gun. “A repeller field will fail under a direct hit one time in five. Your nobles should keep that in mind.” The Queen made an amused noise, and Starbuck’s head twisted toward the throne, light dancing through the spines of his helmet.

“Thank you, Inspector.” Arienrhod nodded, making a curious motion with her fingers. “But we’re well aware of the limits and liabilities attached to your off world equipment.”

Jerusha blinked her disbelief, held the gun out again silently, butt first, to Starbuck.

“You’ll regret this, bitch,” for her ears only. He twisted the gun out of her hand, bruising her palm, and strode back to the dais.

She grimaced involuntarily. “Then… with your permission, Your Majesty, I’ll present the Commander’s monthly report on the status of crime in the city.”

Arienrhod nodded, leaning out to lay a possessive hand on Star buck’s arm, as one might soothe a hackled dog. The nobles began to drift away, backing out of the Queen’s presence. Jerusha suppressed a smile of pained empathy. The report was no more significant than a hundred others before it, or any that would follow; she would sooner be elsewhere herself. She reached down and switched on the recorder at her belt, heard her commanding officer’s voice reciting the statistics on the number of assaults and robberies, arrests and convictions, off world or domestic crimes and victims. The words ran together into a meaningless singsong in her mind, raising all her familiar frustrations and regrets. Meaningless… it was all meaningless.

The Hegemonic Police were a paramilitary force stationed on all Hegemony worlds, to protect its interests and its citizens… which usually involved protecting the interests of the local on world power structures. Here on Tiamat, with its low technology and sparse population (half of which barely even entered into the Hegemony’s consideration) the police force was only a single regiment, confined to the star port and Carbuncle for the most part.

And its activities were confined, hamstrung, restricted: the breaking up of drunken fights, the arresting of petty thieves, an endless cycle of nose wiping and futile prosecutions, when right under their own noses some of the most blatant vice in the civilized galaxy went unchallenged, and some of the Hedge’s most vicious abusers of humanity met openly in the pleasure hells where they were so much at home.

The Prime Minister might symbolize the Hegemony, but he no longer controlled it, if he ever had. Economics controlled it; the merchants and traders had always been its real roots, and their only real lord was Profit. But there were many kinds of trade, and many kinds of traders… Jerusha looked up at Starbuck, slouching arrogantly at the Queen’s right: the living symbol of Arienrhod’s peculiar covenant with the powers of darkness and light, and her manipulation of them. He was all that was rotten, venal, and corrupt about humanity, and Carbuncle.

Crime and punishment on Tiamat — in effect, in Carbuncle — as on other Hegemonic worlds, had been split into the jurisdictions of two courts, one presided over by a local official chosen by the Winters and acting under local laws, and one by an off world Chief Justice, who passed judgment on off worlders under the laws of the Hegemony. The police provided the grist for both mills, and to Jerusha’s mind the harvest should have been bountiful. But Arienrhod tolerated and even encouraged the presence of the Hedge’s underworld, creating a kind of limbo, a neutral ground convenient to the Gates. And LiouxSked, that pompous, boot-licking imitation of a man and a commander, didn’t have the guts to stand up against it. If she only had the rank, and half an opportunity’ Do you have any comments to make about the report, Inspector?”

Jerusha started, feeling stupidly transparent. She switched off the recorder, an excuse to keep looking down. “None, Your Majesty.” None that you’d want to hear. None that would make the slightest difference.

“Unofficially, Geia Jerusha?” The Queen’s voice changed.

Jerusha looked up at Arienrhod’s face, open and compelling, the face of a real woman and not the mask of a queen.

She could almost trust that face… she could almost believe that there was a human being behind the ritual and deceit who could be reached… almost. Jerusha glanced back at Starbuck standing at the Queen’s side, her henchman, her lover.

Jerusha sighed. “I have no unofficial opinion, Your Majesty. I represent the Hegemony.”

Starbuck said something in the unknown language; she translated the crudeness of the insult from his tone.

The Queen laughed: high, incongruously innocent laughter. She gestured. “Well, then, you’re dismissed, Inspector. If I want to listen to a canned recitation of loyalty, I’ll import a coppok. At least their plumage is more imaginative.” The Elder Wayaways appeared, bowing, to lead them out of her presence.

Jerusha stood in the palace courtyard at last, staring fixedly at the patrol craft. A starburst of exploded cracks rayed out from the slagged impact point on the ruined windshield. So it’s come to this? “I’m sure there must be a lot of heavy remarks I could make about this.” Her hand jerked out at the vandalism, dropped away to the door latch instead. “But I’m goddamned if I’m going to put on a show here.” She slid into the bobbing seat as Gundhalinu got in on the driver’s side. “Besides—” she pulled down the door, “all I can think of to say is that I’m tired, and I feel like I’ve been spat on. Sometimes I wonder if we’re really in charge of anything on this world.” She dug into her pocket for the pack of iestas, tapped a couple into her palm. She put them into her mouth and bit down on the leathery-tough pods, felt the sour tang begin to ease her nerves. “Finally . Want some?” She held out the pack.

Gundhalinu sat rigidly behind the controls, staring out through the wild tendrils of destruction. He had been silent through their journey back, crossed the Hall of the Winds as though he were crossing an empty street. He began to punch in the ignition code, and didn’t answer.

She put the pack away. “Are you capable of driving, Sergeant, or shall I take the controls?” The sudden goad of officiousness in her voice made him flinch.

“Yes, Inspector! I’m capable.” He nodded, still looking straight ahead. She watched more words struggle in his throat; he swallowed hard, like an angry child. The craft began to nose slowly back and around, edging toward the city.

“What did Starbuck say just before the Queen sent us away?” She kept the tone impersonal. She could recognize some of the Kharemoughis’ ideo graphic writing — the operating instructions on most of their exported equipment — but she had never bothered to learn spoken Sandhi. The force used the speech of the place where they were stationed as a linguistic common ground.

Gundhalinu cleared his throat, swallowed again. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, the bastard said… “If you’re what the Hegemony sends to represent itself, it must be short on balls these days.”“

“Is that all?” Jerusha made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Hell, that’s a compliment… I’m surprised the Queen thought it was funny. Wonder if she really understood. Or maybe she understood that it only reflected on us.”

“Besides,” Gundhalinu mumbled viciously, “she’s got his.”

She did laugh this time. “Yeah. And welcome to them. So Star buck is from Kharemough.”

Another nod.

“What did he say to you?”

He shook his head.

“There’s nothing you could possibly say that I haven’t heard by now,

BZ.”

“I know, Inspector.” He looked back at her finally, away again with his freckles reddening. “That is, I can’t tell you. It wouldn’t mean anything, unless you’d been raised on Kharemough. A matter of Honor.”

“I see.” She had heard him speak of Honor before, heard the capital H, the peculiar emphasis.

“I — thank you for taking my part against Starbuck. I could not have responded on my own to his insults without further losing face.” The ceremony of the words and the sudden gratitude in his voice caught her by surprise.

She looked out at the nobility and servants gaping back at them through the shattered windshield as they drifted past the mansions of the upper city. “There’s no honor lost in being insulted by a man who never knew the meaning of the word.”

“Thank you.” He swerved upward to avoid a child floating golden hoops in their path. “But I brought it on myself; I know that. And I caused trouble for you, and embarrassment to the force. If you want to dismiss me as your assistant, I’ll understand.”

She leaned back in the padded concavity of the seat, flexed the hand that Starbuck had bruised. “Maybe it would be just as well if you didn’t go with me to pay any more calls on the Queen, BZ. Not because I really disapprove of what you did. Simply because Star buck has a weapon he can use against you now; and that will only make it hard on you, and harder on me by association, and harder to keep them from dragging the Hedge’s good name in the mud. Other than that — frankly, I like you, BZ, and I’d be damned disappointed if you were that eager to get away from me.” Though you probably wouldn’t be the first.

A feeble smile of relief stirred on his face. “No, ma’am. I’m content . more than content. As for staying behind when you visit the Queen — that’s just cream.” The smile spread, infectious.

She nodded. “If I could get away with sending you instead of going myself, don’t think I wouldn’t do it.” She grinned; felt it pull down again. She unfastened her heavy cloak and shrugged it off, re moved her helmet, looking at the gold-painted eggshell curve. “Somebody ought to hang that on a tree. Gods, I’m fed up with this! I’d give anything to be doing an honest job, somewhere where they want a real police force and not a laughingstock.”

Gundhalinu glanced back, not smiling now. “Why don’t you get a transfer?”

“Do you have any idea how long it takes to get a transfer?” She shook her head, resting the helmet across her knees as she loosened the high collar of her uniform jacket. She sighed. “Besides, I’ve tried. No luck. They ‘need me here.”“ The bitterness in her voice burned like acid.

“Why don’t you quit?”

“Why don’t you shut up?”

Gundhalinu looked back at the controls dutifully. They were in the Maze now, moving more slowly along the congested street. Evening stained the sky beyond the storm walls already. Jerusha watched the tatterdemalion alleyways, the garish hells along the street front, pass by like a mockery of her own dreams and ambitions… And would she really give anything to be doing a better job? Would she take the risk of losing the rank she knew LiouxSked had given to her simply to make her a respectable offering to the Queen? She pulled an auburn-black curl over her left ear. After all, in another five years it would all change anyway. The Hegemony would be leaving Tiamat, and it would send her somewhere better-anywhere was better. Patience, patience was all she needed. The gods knew it was hard enough for a woman to survive in a career as a Blue at all, even now — let alone rise to a position of any authority.

She glanced down another alley as they passed its entrance. This one was predominantly blue-violet — painted walls, lights, banners: Indigo Alley… She’d been sent to Tiamat in the first place, she was almost sure, because she was a woman; and at first the idea had appealed to her. But it had soured soon enough. She was a Blue because she liked the job, and the job wasn’t getting done…

Half-glimpsed movement set off an alarm in her unconscious. “BZ, back up! Hit the flasher, I saw something down that alley.” She clapped on her helmet, jerking the strap under her chin as she hit the door open.

“Follow me down.” She was out, running, as the patrol craft jounced to a stop at the dim alley entrance. Cooking smells hung heavy in the air; the narrow cul-de-sac was lined with hole-in the-wall eateries, and dinnertime empty. The few bodies who were out in it seemed to melt into the walls at the sight of a red light and a dusty-blue uniform. Halfway, it had been just halfway… She slowed, reaching for the light button on her helmet, angling toward the black crevices that pitted the three-story makeshift building face on her left. She switched on her headlamps; it showed her nothing in the first one but piled metal drums, nothing in the next. She was aware of Gundhalinu’s footsteps coming after her down the pavement . voices.

Her lamp flooded the next break in the wall, deeper than the others. It pinned three figures — no, four — five — one squatting over a prostrate victim, something alive with its own light in his hand. “Freeze!” Her stunner was in her hands and pointing.

“Blues!” A confusion of movement, like insects dazzled in the light; one movement that struck her wrong.

She fired, saw a weapon fly free as the man went down. “I said freeze! Get up, you with the blade; switch it off and throw it out here. Now!” She felt Gundhalinu stop beside her, stunner out, all her own attention focusing on the fourth man as he obeyed her order. The light-pencil slid across the pavement and struck her boot. “Now flat on your bellies, scum, and spread-eagle. BZ, pull their teeth. I’ll cover you.”

Gundhalinu went forward quickly; she watched while he crouched down by one and then another and checked them for weapons. While she waited, her gaze wandered to their victim lying helpless to one side; she frowned, moved closer to look down at his face. “Uh oh…” She caught a blurred image of youth and red hair in the harsh light; saw the terror whitening his eyes and heard the raw noise of his crippled breathing. She dropped to her knees beside him. Gundhalinu was searching the last of the slavers. “BZ, find the key for the cuffs they put on this boy. He took a bad jolt, I think he needs some antifreeze.” She snapped open the aid kit at her belt, removed a pre filled syringe of stimulant. “I don’t know if you can see my face, boy, but picture a big smile. It’s going to be all right.” Smiling, she pulled open the boy’s shirt and injected the medication directly into the muscles of his chest. He gave a small grunt of pain or protest. She lifted his head, let it rest on her knees as Gundhalinu moved in with jingling keys to take the handcuffs off him. The boy’s hands dropped limply at his sides.

“I know where I can put these to good use.” Gundhalinu grinned, holding up the cuffs.

She nodded. “Good. Do it.” She unhooked her own binders and passed them across to him. “Here you go. Equal treatment under the law.” Gundhalinu got up again. She watched him handcuff the three mobile slavers. A tremor ran through the boy’s body; glancing down, she saw him begin to gulp air with desperate relief. The lids drooped closed over his wild, sea-colored eyes. She smoothed the wet tendrils of red hair back from his face. “Better radio in, BZ; we’ll never get this crowd into the back seat. I think our young friend is coming out of it all right.”

Gundhalinu bobbed his head. “Right, Inspector.” The slaver he was straddling raised his face and then spat. “A woman! A fucking woman Blue. How the hell do you like that! Busted by a woman.” Gundhalinu nudged him ungently with a boot; he grunted.

Jerusha leaned back against the wall, propping her stunner on her knee. “And don’t you ever forget it, you son of a bitch. Maybe we can’t get at the heart of what’s rotten in this city, but we can sure as hell cut off a few fingers.”

Gundhalinu stepped out into the alley and started back to the patrol craft If anyone else out there wondered what had happened, they weren’t stopping to ask. She was certain that anyone with any real interest knew already. The boy made a tentative sound that was half a moan, and his hands came up onto his chest. He opened his eyes, squinted them shut again against the glare of her lamp. “Think you’re ready to sit up?”

He nodded, put his hands out again to push as she shifted him back against the wall. Blood oozed from his nose and a scrape along his chin; his face and his shirt were smeared with oily stains. He fumbled among the strings of gaudy broken beads hanging around his neck. “Hell. Oh, hell… I jus’ bought these!” His eyes were glassy looking.

“Never mind the packaging, as long as the goods are in tac—” She broke off as she saw the tarnished medal of honor swinging among the beads. “Where did you get that?” She heard the unthinking demand in her voice.

His fist closed over it protectively. “It belongs to me!”

“Nobody’s saying it doesn’t-Hold it!” Movement caught the corner of her eye; her gun came up. The slaver nearest the alley entrance swayed, halfway to his feet with his hands locked behind him. “Flatten, creep; or you’ll do it the hard way, like the boy did.” He flopped onto his stomach, glaring obscenities at her.

“He…” the boy began, and pressed a hand against his mouth. “He was gonna — cut me. They were gonna sell me! They said they I’d…” He shivered; she watched him struggle to control it.

“Mutes tell no tales… though where you were going they wouldn’t have understood a word you said anyway. And they sure wouldn’t have cared… No, it’s not a pretty thought, is it?” She squeezed his thin arm gently. “But it happens all the time. Only these big-hearts won’t be making it happen again. You’re from ofiworld?”

His hand tightened over the medal again. “Yeah… I mean, no. My mother wasn’t. My father was.” He squinted fiercely into the light.

She kept the surprise off of her own face. “And the medal belonged to him.” She made it a statement of accepted fact, not caring where he’d gotten the medal, more interested now in the possibility of bigger crimes. “But you were raised here? You consider yourself a citizen of Tiamat?”

He rubbed his mouth again, blinking. “I guess so.” A trace of hesitation, or suspicion.

Gundhalinu reappeared from the alley; the beam of his light overlapped her own to drive the shadows back. “They’ll be here for a pickup any time, Inspector.” She nodded. He stopped by the boy. “How you doing?”

The boy looked up at Gundhalinu’s dark freckled face, almost staring, before he seemed to remember his manners. “All right, I guess. Thanks… thanks.” He turned back to Jerusha, met her eyes, looked down, away, back again. “I don’t know how… I just . thanks.”

“You want to pay us back?” She smiled; he nodded. “Be more careful where you walk. And be willing to swear in a monitored testimony that you’re a citizen of Tiamat.” She grinned at Gundhalinu. “Not only kidnapping and assault, but attempting to take a citizen of a proscribed planet off world She stood up. “I’m feeling better all the time.”

Gundhalinu laughed. “And somebody else is feeling worse.” He bent his head at the prisoners.

“What does that mean?” The boy climbed to his feet, leaning heavily on the wall. “Do you mean I can’t ever go to another world, even if I want to?” Gundhalinu put out a hand, steadying him.

Jerusha glanced at her watch. “In your case, maybe you can. If your father was an off worlder that makes a difference — if you can prove it. Of course, once you leave here you can never come back… You’d have to take it up with a lawyer.”

“Why?” Gundhalinu asked. “Were you planning to ship off?”

The boy began to look hostile. “I might want to, some time. If you come here, why won’t you let us leave?”

“Because your cultures haven’t reached an adequate degree of maturity,” Gundhalinu intoned.

The boy looked pointedly at the off world slavers, and back at Gundhalinu. Gundhalinu frowned.

Jerusha switched on her recorder. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just get a few facts for the record. Then we’ll see about taking you down to the med center for—”

“I don’t need it. I’m all right.” The boy straightened up, pulling at his clothes.

“You’re probably not the best judge of that, you know.” She looked at him sharply, met embers in his gaze. “But that’s up to you. Go home and get a good night’s sleep instead, if you want. In any case we need to know where to reach you when we want you. Please state your name.”

“Sparks Dawntreader Summer.”

“Summer?” Belatedly she registered the burr in his speech. “How long have you been in the city, Sparks ?”

He shrugged. “Not very long.” He glanced away.

“Hm.” Which explains a lot of things. “Why did you come to Carbuncle?”

“Is that against your laws too?” sarcasm dripping.

“Not as far as I know.” She heard Gundhalinu’s sniff of disapproval. “Are you employed, and if so, doing what?”

“Yes. Street musician.” The boy’s hand began to grope suddenly, searching his shirt, his belt, the air. “My flute…”

Jerusha lit the corners of the darkness with a sweep of her helmet light. “Is that it?”

The boy dropped down on hands and knees beside one of the slavers, and picked up the pieces. “No — no!” His face and his hands tightened with pain. The slaver laughed, and the boy’s fist hit him in the mouth.

Jerusha moved forward, pulled the boy up and away. “That’s enough, Summer… You’ve had a hard time of it here, because nobody’s told you the rules. And nobody can, that’s the problem. Go back to your quiet islands where time stands still, while you’re still able to. Go home, Summer… and wait another five years. You’ll belong here after the Change.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

Like hell you do, she thought, looking at his battered face and the broken flute still clutched in his hands. “In that case, since you now lack a means of earning a living, I’m going to charge you witrr-vagrancy. Unless, of course, you leave the city within the next day period.” Anything to get you back on a ship and away from here, before Carbuncle ruins another life.

The boy looked incredulous. Then his anger came back, and she knew that she had lost. “I’m not a vagrant! The — the mask maker in the Citron Alley. I’m staying there.”

Jerusha heard the sound of another patrol craft arriving, and booted feet in the alleyway. “All right, Sparks. If you have a place to stay, I guess you’re free to go home.” Only you won’t go home, you fool. “But I still need your monitored victim’s deposition, to put these leeches away for good. Stop in at police headquarters tomorrow; you owe me that much at least.”

The boy nodded sullenly, and stepped out into the alley. She didn’t expect to see him again.