The Summer Queen Read Online Free PDF

but grief to her and to this world. She had chosen to
stay behind on Tiamat at the Final Departure, and serve its new Queen instead.
    But when the offworlders had gone away at the Change, they
had gone forever, at least as far as Jerusha PalaThion was concerned. They
would not come back in her lifetime; she had exiled herself, and if ever she
changed her mind, she still could not change that. And had she changed her mind—?
Jerusha’s face pinched. She rubbed her arms, feeling the rough homespun cloth
chafe her skin. Gods, she was so tired, all the time, lately .... She wondered
if she was getting some disease, or simply getting depressed. She dressed like
a Tiamatan even though there were still plenty of offworlder clothes to be had;
trying to do the impossible, to fit in, when her dark curling hair and upslanting
eyes, her cinnamon-colored skin, marked her as alien. She had never felt at
home on this world, in all the time she had served here. She had hated this
ancient, musty, mysterious city the way she had hated its former Queen. But in
the end ... in the end it had worked its will on her. In the end it had still been
the lesser of two evils.
    Someone touched her shoulder. She started, caught off guard;
raised her hand in a defense gesture that Police training had programmed into
her reflexes. She stopped herself, chagrined, as she realized that the touch
belonged to her husband. “Miroe,” she whispered, feeling the tension inside her
dissolve.
    He made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Who were you expecting?”
    She gazed at him for a long moment. His offworlder’s face
looked as out of place here as her own. And yet he belonged here, had lived
here all of his life. It was not impossible to learn to love a new world ....
She only shook her head, and put her hand over his as she glanced away at the
Queen. “How is she?” she asked, looking again at the swell of the Queen’s
belly. Miroe had offworlder medical training, and Moon had chosen him, trusted
him over any local physician or healer to attend her; as she had chosen Jerusha
to watch her back.
    “I think I picked up two heartbeats today. I think she’s
carrying twins.”
    “Gods,” Jerusha murmured. She shifted from foot to foot,
wondering why her hands and feet went to sleep on her so easily lately.
    He nodded, with a heavy sigh. “She shouldn’t be doing this.
I told her that—she ought to let go of it, let the Summers treat her like a
goddess. That’s all they expect—or want—of her.”
    Jerusha looked back at him. feeling unexpected irritation
rise inside her. “She doesn’t want to be a puppet, Miroe. She wants to be a
queen. Just because women are the ones who get pregnant—” The sudden thought
filled her head like strange perfume: Am I pregnant—?
    He looked back at her, frowning. “Goddammit, you know that’s
not what I meant.”
    She looked down. Am I—? Feeling wonder fall through her like
rain.
    “She’s pushing too hard, that’s all. She wants it all to
change now. She should let it go until she delivers. That’s all.” The frown was
still on his face; concern now, instead of annoyance. “Carrying twins causes complications
in a pregnancy; you know that.”
    Jerusha forced her attention back to his words, saying
nothing about what she had just felt, thought, imagined. She wasn’t even sure;
there was no reason to mention it now, She looked at Moon again, at the swelling
curve of her stomach. “If she waits that long, the Summers will smother her in ‘worship,’”
she said sourly. The Goodventure clan, whose ancestors had been the Summer
Queens during the last cycle, had gotten a taste for power, and nursed their
hunger for it through a hundred and fifty years, through Tiamat’s near-endless
Winter. They still believed in the old ways of Summer’s conservative outback,
and they still believed they held their Goddess’s favor, over this heretic
upstart who was trying to unnaturally force the Winters’