“I’m not just some queen!”
“No. You’re not. And you can prove it.”
“How?”
“Look.”
They looked up the river, in the predawn dimness.
The bag came floating toward them … if “floating” was the right word. Water was seeping into it rapidly, and it was beginning to submerge.
Siffha’h saw it and shrank back. “No!”
“What are you afraid of?” Arhu said. “It’s all over.”
“Yes—but—” Still she shrank back.
“But,” Arhu said. “There’s still a sound you haven’t let yourself hear.”
“I don’t want to hear it!”
“Neither did I. But once I did, everything changed. I couldn’t hear until I heard that sound: I couldn’t See until I Saw what was making it.”
“No—!”
“You know what’s happening in there,” Arhu said.
“I don’t want to think about it—!”
She tried to run, but Arhu got in front of her.
“If you don’t think about it,” he said, “that’sallyou’ll think about for the rest of your life. You’vealreadyspent all your life thinking about it. All the things you do, all the spells you power, all the time you spend inside that big blast of force you like so much—it’s all about being deaf and blind. You pour so much power into what you’re doing, of course, that everyone around you is deaf and blind too, for the duration, and no one else notices that you can’t see or hear most of the time.”
“You’re crazy, what are you talking about—?!”
He could see her glance over his shoulder. The bag was floating nearer.“You don’t dare be quiet,” he said. “You don’t dare be still. If you do, you’ll hear what’s happening in there.”
She took a swipe at him, a good one. It hit him across the nose. He bled, but he wouldn’t give back. “You owed me that,” Arhu said. “My claws must have dug into you, while I was trying to keep my head above the water—”
“Shut up!”
She launched herself at him, every claw bared. Arhu went down, and together they tumbled across the sparse flat grass by the bike path, spitting and clawing. She got her claws into him, hard. He gave as good as he got. Fur flew.
“Why did you do it—” she panted. “You were my favorite, I loved you, I slept with you, I ate with you, why—”
“I wanted to live! I wanted to breathe! So did you! You stepped on my head a lot of times, you clawed me, I loved you too, I ate with you, I slept with my head on your tummy, I washed you, you washed me, but there came a time when the washing wouldn’t help, the loving wouldn’t help, we both wanted to live and wecouldn’t—”
The bag floated closer. There was a slight movement inside it, as of some tiny struggle. The smallest sound from inside: a tiny mewling…
“It saw us coming,” Arhu panted. “It saw the Seer, it saw the Doer, It knew that together we would be a danger to It, It tried to kill us both. Still, Itcouldn’tkill both of us. Help was already coming: It knew one would survive. So It killed the one It thought was more of a threat, more of a power. It knew you would come back, but It counted on you being so tangled up with anger and so confused that you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself, and wouldn’t put your half back with the other half to make a whole again: you’d waste the power you had on things that weren’t all that important, and finally die frustrated and incomplete and useless. And you can still do that. Or you can frustrateIt—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t do.See.Just this once—”
And she opened her eyes, which were squeezed shut against Arhu’s clawing, and looked at him: and Saw.
Saw what happened inside the bag.
Not from her point of view: fromhis.
The grief.Tired.The pain.They’re all dead.The resignation.I don’t want to live any more, they’re all dead.The anguish.Sif, she had my same spots. She’s dead. I don’t want to live, let it end now.The water bubbling in…
And, abruptly, astonishingly, the rage built, and built, and burst up and out of her. To her amazement, it was not rage at what had happened toher:it was fury at what had happened tohim.It had never been directed at anythingoutsideher before, not really: not in all her short life. But now it leapt out … and found its target. Now she knew what it was that she had to do, what she had come back for, what business she had to finish.
Something that hung all about them in the air, something that laughed, that had been laughing forever, suddenly stopped laughing as force such as even It had not often experienced came blasting out at It. Not some unfocused curse at a generalized cruel fate, but a specific, narrow, furious line of righteous anger, a rage like a laser, aimed, directed, and tuned. The anger lanced out and found its mark.
WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM!YOU KILLED HIM!I’M GOING TO—
The air in the vision, the air outside it, shuddered with a soundless scream from something which had not been dealt so painful a blow in some time. That influence, for just a little while, fled…
…leaving Arhu crouching and squeezing his eyes shut against what his vision showed him, a shape like a Person made out of lightning, radiating fury and purpose and the ability to do anything, anything … for this little while.
The lightning looked at him.
“You were right,” she said. “There’s no spell I couldn’t power, now. Nothing I couldn’t do. Nowhere we can’t go.”
“ …We,” he said.
Very slowly, she put her whiskers forward.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go practice …” She passed, a long time—four breaths, five—then said it: ” … brother. We’re going to have a busy night.”
And the vision faded … and in her sleep, Rhiow put her whiskers forward, and knew that a tide had turned.
EIGHT
It was the morning of 6 June 1874: sunny and hot, one more baking hot day in the middle of one of the most prolonged hot spells to manifest itself in the British Isles for nearly fifty years. Temperatures had been in the eighties every day for the past two weeks.The Timesreported that a stationary high was in place over the Isles and showed no signs of moving in the immediate future.
A small stout woman on horseback came riding sedately up through Windsor Home Park at an easy canter. She wore a long black riding dress, and rode sidesaddle with some grace and ease. She rode around the path that skirted the East Terrace Garden, and came up to the George the Sixth Gateway, clattering through under the archway and into the wide, graveled space of the Upper Ward. Grooms ran forward to take her horse as she stopped near the little circular tower which marked the entrance to the State Apartments. One groom bent down to offer his back as a step to the woman dismounting: another took her by the hand and helped her down.
“He is breathing better this morning, Rackham,” she said to one of the grooms. “Perhaps he will not need the mash any more this week.”
“Yes, your Majesty.”
She swept in through the entrance to the State Apartments and up the stairs, then bustled down along the hallway which ran down the length of the first floor, making for the day room attached to her own apartments there. Maids curtsied low and footmen bowed as she passed: one of them rose to open the door to the day room for her.
The Queen stepped into the room, and then stopped, very surprised. Tumbling about on the carpet were two small cats, one mostly white with black patches, one more black with white patches, wrestling with each other. As the Queen looked at them, they rolled over and gazed at her with big innocent golden eyes.
“Meow,” said one of them.
The Queen’s mouth dropped open, and she clapped her hands for delight. One of the maids appeared immediately. “Siddons,” said Queen Victoria, “wherever did these darling kittens come from?”
“Please, your Majesty, I don’t know,” said Siddons, a beautifully dressed young woman who immediately began to wonder if she was going to get in trouble for this. “Maybe they came in from outside, your Majesty.”