Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

“I didn’t.” He matched her sharpness with his own. “I came to say good-bye to you. That was the only reason.”

The only reason? She felt her face turn hot with surprise and embarrassment. Damn it. Ngenet! I don’t understand you at all! But she didn’t question this failure to question; couldn’t bring herself to ask, if he would not. “I… uh, I’m glad that you came. I’m honored, that you’ve come so far just to say good-bye.” Glancing at Tor, she caught hold of the gap between them again, and pulled it together. “Because this way I can tell you the news in person: Your young friend Moon is alive.”

“Moon?” He shook his head, pushed back his hair. “How? I can’t believe—” He laughed, and she saw something alive in him again that she thought had been torn out of him forever that day on the beach.

“She was picked up by Winter nomads; but she got away from them, along with one of my inspectors they’d been holding.”

“She’s here, in the city, then?” Jerusha saw him glance away suddenly, toward the unseen interior of the station. “Where is she?”

“Not in a cell, Miroe.” Jerusha straightened away from the desk. “As far as I know she’s reigning over the Festival along with her cousin Sparks. She’s the Summer Queen.”

He looked astounded, and so did Tor, standing behind him. But his expression changed again to something more private and prescient. “And a more perfect Queen could not have been chosen… Thank you, Jerusha.” He nodded.

“Me? I had nothing to do with it.”

“You had everything to do with it — you could have stopped it.”

She almost smiled. “No. I don’t think anyone could have stopped it, somehow.”

“Maybe not.” He did smile. “And she found her cousin Sparks, then? After all this time?”

“And yanked him out of the Snow Queen’s boudoir. He was Starbuck.”

“Gods—” His face emptied. “Starbuck.” The word turned as ugly on his tongue as it had on hers. “And — Moon?”

She nodded, her mouth tight. “I know. Strange bedfellows; a sibyl and a monster. But I knew that boy before Arienrhod got her claws in him — and so did Moon. And that’s still the boy she sees, even knowing the truth about him. Maybe she’s right, maybe she’s not; who knows? That’s not up to me to judge, thank the gods.”

“Then you’ve let him go? That doesn’t erase what he’s done. That doesn’t change it!” Revenge rose in his voice.

So even you would take revenge over justice, if the wound went deep enough. Even you. And I thought you were a goddamn saint, all these years. Not disappointed, but only relieved to understand finally that even he was human, with a right to human emotions, human failings. “I know, Miroe… And they’ll know it, too. The best day of their lives, it’ll come between them like an open grave, it’ll carry away their happiness like the smoke of a funeral pyre.” She saw the knowledge of what Starbuck had done to the mers struggle with his feelings for Moon.

He looked down at last; his head jerked once, accepting it.

“And Miroe, I’ve got the one who’s really to blame… Arienrhod, that’s who I’m talking about. She’s the one who put him up to it. And she tried to take over the city by starting a plague among the Summers. But she didn’t get away with it; and at dawn this morning her unnaturally prolonged reign comes to an unnatural end.”

Ngenet looked up again. “She tried to do that? The Winters’ Queen?”

“I told you what she was. And I told you I’d see that the guilty party paid. So now I’ve kept all my promises here.” Except for the ones I made to myself.

“Then I owe you my thanks again, for seeing that justice was done. Real justice, not blind justice.” He smiled, barely. “At our last meeting, as at our first… Where are you going next, Jerusha? Where’s your new assignment?”

She pushed away from the desk abruptly. “I’m being sent to Big Blue.” She moved in a tight, restless circle, tugged at her jacket sleeves.

Ngenet raised his eyebrows when she didn’t say more. “Whereabouts? Not the cinder camps, I hope,” reaching for a joke.

“Yes.” She turned on him, stung. “That is where I’m going. I’m in charge of the penal colonies there.”

“What?” He laughed uncomfortably, not able to believe it wasn’t a joke in return.

“It’s no joke,” flatly.

The laughter stopped. “You… running a place like that?” He looked at the desk, as though he expected it to give him an explanation. “Do they think so little of Tiamat that a penal colony is considered a step up?”

“No, Miroe.” They think so little of me. She covered the Commander’s insignia on her collar with the fingers of a hand. “You could say it’s a case of blind justice.”

“Do you want the job?” He stroked his mustache.

“No.” She frowned. “It’s a dead end, an insult—” She caught her breath.

“Didn’t you complain, then? After all, you’re a Commander of Police—” trying to comprehend the suddenly incomprehensible.

It was her turn to laugh without meaning. “I am a joke, that’s what I am.” She shook her head. “I either go where I’m assigned, or I quit.”

“Quit, then.”

“Damn it, that’s all I ever hear from a man! Give up… give in… you can’t handle it! Well, I can! I expected more from you, but I should have known better—”

“Jerusha,” shaking his head, “for gods’ sakes. Don’t turn me into a thing.”

“Then don’t treat me like one.”

“I don’t want to see you turn yourself into one! And you will, running a place like that… when you treat another human being like something less than human, you make yourself less than human. Either it’ll destroy your humanity, or it’ll destroy your sanity. And I don’t want to remember you going toward that; or imagine you—” He moved his large hands futilely.

“Then what else am I supposed to do? All my life I wanted to do something with my life — something worthwhile, something important. And becoming a police officer gave me that. Maybe it hasn’t exactly been everything I thought it would be — but what ever is, anyway?” If only there was something.

“You consider what you’ll be doing there worthwhile?” thick with sarcasm. He pushed his hands into his pockets.

“I already answered that.” She turned away. “In time, maybe I’ll be able to get a transfer. And besides, what else can I do? There’s nothing else.”

“You could stay here,” an uncertain invitation.

She shook her head, not looking at him. “And do what? I’m not cut out to be a fishwife, Miroe.” Tell me there’s something else.

But if there was an answer, he was kept from making it by the arrival of two of the officers she had called in. They had Festival confetti in their hair and faintly martyred expressions on their faces, but they saluted her with reasonable deference.

She returned the salute, tugged her uniform and her thoughts into order. “Make yourselves official; you’re going to the Change ceremony with me as soon as Mantagnes gets here.”

They brightened some at the prospect of getting front-row seats for the human sacrifice; stole curious glances at Tor Starhiker as they moved away. Jerusha recalled her presence with belated chagrin, until she saw that Tor had fallen asleep again.

Miroe stood broodingly beside her, his gaze on the floor. “You’re attending the — sacrifice?” He seemed to have a hard time getting the word out, just as Tor had. “The Snow Queen’s death?”

She nodded, feeling uncomfortable with the thought despite having lived with the prospect of it for so long. The Snow Queen’s death. A human sacrifice. My gods. And yet she wondered why the prospect of the clean, public execution of a woman who richly deserved it should seem more terrible than the living death of punishment at the place she was going to. The gods knew, a society that could undergo a total restructuring with only two executions as a result was better off than most. “It’s my last official act as a Hegemonic representative; we turn over to the new Queen the keys to her kingdom, so to speak.” And watch Arienrhod drown in regret. She glanced down, faltering. “Will you come, Miroe? I know it’s not a thing you want to see — so I don’t ask it lightly.”