She paused, hearing the crowd’s voice whisper, trying to judge whether it was accepting her words, and her. She stole glances at the Summers in the stands around her, relieved to find a benign surprise looking back at her. The Winters would resent it, she knew instinctively, remembering their fear and scorn firsthand. She had to give them something of their own, a part in the future. She glanced again at the waiting off worlders knowing the risk she took in this offering, the delicate balance she had to maintain while they still walked this world.
“If I — if I seem to stray out of tradition’s shallows as Summer’s Queen, and into uncharted depths, have faith in me. Try to remember that I am the Lady’s chosen, and that I only follow Her will,” secure in the knowledge that she told the truth. “She is my navigator, and She charts my course by strange stars,” stranger stars than the ones that lie above us. She glanced at the off worlders again. “My first command as your new Queen—” the potential of power sang in her head, potential energy, “is that all the off world possessions of the Winters will not be thrown into the sea. Hear me!” before the crowd could drown her out. “Things made by the off worlders offend the waters, they choke the sea with filth. Three things from each Winter are all She demands — and the Winters will choose what offerings they make. Time… time will take care of the rest!” She braced herself against the rise of Summer outrage.
But there was only a rippling water of dismay, here and there a shining drop of laughter or applause from an astonished Winter. Moon took a deep breath, hardly daring to believe — They trust me! They listen; they’ll do whatever I say… realizing at last what Arienrhod had known — and how easily power, like fire, could break its bonds and destroy what it had been guardian to. Her hands tightened over the rail. “Thank you, my people.” She bowed her head to them.
The Summers in the stands shifted into deferential resignation around her; but Sparks watched her like a cat, with suspicion and unease, as he sensed her sense of power.
She looked away quickly, struggling to keep her expression even as she saw the Prime Minister himself begin to descend opposite them, to start the final, official acknowledgement of her rule, to pay the hypocritical homage of one figurehead ruler to another. Watching him descend, she saw First Secretary Sirius among the Assembly members, caught his own eyes on her with a dubious foreboding. She nudged Sparks, led his gaze to his father’s; saw him struggle to meet his father’s sudden smile. Sparks looked down again silently at his grandfather, as the Prime Minister began his salutation.
The speeches of the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice of Tiamat, half a dozen other dignitaries whose function she had never even heard of, were brief and patronizing. She stood patiently through them all, shielded from their arrogance by her secret knowledge, but seeing in each face suspicion and mistrust stirred by her own speech to her people. The Chief Justice looked at her too long and too piercingly; but he only mouthed congratulations like the rest, praised the traditional and ritual, her peoples’ smooth backsliding into ignorance. He urged her not to stray from tradition’s path too strongly, to beware the consequences. She smiled at him.
As he left his place before her, the last of her tribute-bringers approached, and she saw that it was the Commander of Police. As PalaThion passed the Chief Justice, she glimpsed a silent exchange between them, saw the dullness of PalaThion’s eyes as she came on.
“Your Majesty.” PalaThion saluted with formal precision, and the dullness sharpened and brightened as she took in Moon’s actual presence above her at the red-draped rail. “I congratulate you.” Incongruity pricked every word.
Moon let her smile widen. “Thank you, Commander. I think I’m as surprised to find myself here as you are.” She felt suddenly awkward, as though she were speaking through someone else’s mouth.
“I doubt that very much, Your Majesty. But who knows… ?” PalaThion shrugged imperceptibly. She raised her voice, “The recognition of your position as the Summer Queen ends my duties here, Your Majesty, and all police responsibility for what happens on Tiamat. And all official rule by the Hegemony for a hundred years, until we return again at the next Change. Keeping order will be your responsibility from now on.”
Moon nodded. “I know, Commander. Thank you for your service to my people… and especially to Summer, for saving us from the — the plague. I owe you a debt that I can’t repay—” Two debts, leaning forward against the rail.
PalaThion glanced down, up again. “I was only doing my duty, Your Majesty.” But a surprising gratitude showed on her face.
“Tiamat regrets losing a true friend like you, and so do I. We don’t have many true friends in this galaxy. We need them all.”
PalaThion smiled thinly. “Friends turn up in the most unexpected places, Your Majesty… But sometimes you only know it when it’s too late. The same goes for enemies.” She lowered her voice. “Walk softly, Moon, until the last ship is gone from the star port. Don’t try to make the future happen yesterday. More than just your own people are wondering what you really are. You’d be in a cell right now if the Chief Justice didn’t know it would cause a riot… The only reason you’ll get away with changing the ritual is because it won’t make any difference.”
Moon blinked, her hands white against the red cloth. “What do you mean?”
“The Hedge has its way of dealing with tech hoarders when it goes. Never underestimate them — not for a second. That’s the best advice a friend can give you now.”
“Thank you, Commander.” Moon straightened her shoulders, trying to hide her dismay. “But even that won’t stop me.” Because the mers are the real key.
PalaThion started to turn away, looked on across the Pier toward her own people. She hesitated. “Your Majesty.” She stood close in front of Moon again, speaking softly almost inaudibly. “I believe in what you want to do. I believe it’s just. I don’t want anything to stop it.” She seemed to reach out, without moving, “In fact, I want to help you make it happen,” in a frightened rush. “I’m — offering you my services, my knowledge, my experience, the rest of my life, if you’ll take them. If you’ll let me use them for something I can believe in.”
Moon felt PalaThion’s urgency reaching higher, further, deeper; beyond the thing she asked. “You mean… you want to stay? On Tiamat?” Her whisper sounded stupid and unqueenly. Sparks glared his disbelief.
But PalaThion, lost in her own inner vision, didn’t hear, or see. “Not on the Tiamat that was. But on the one that could be.” Her dark up slanting eyes asked, and demanded, a promise.
“You’re the Commander of Police — the Hegemony’s fist… Why?” Moon shook her head, certain that PalaThion was sincere, trying to re-form the slipping sands of reality.
“This is the time of change,” PalaThion said simply.
“That’s not enough.” Sparks leaned forward over the rail. “Not if you want to spend the rest of your life interfering in ours.”
PalaThion rubbed her face. “How much is enough? How much proof did I ask of you, Dawntreader?”
He looked away, and didn’t answer.
“To tell you what caused the change in me would take me a lifetime. But believe me, I have reasons.” She turned back to Moon.
“And you’ll have to spend the lifetime here, regretting it, if you change your mind. Are you sure?”
“No.” PalaThion glanced again at the off worlders waiting in the stands, light-years distant from the world she stood reaching out to. “Yes! What the hell have I got to lose? Yes.” She smiled, finally.