The Scorpion Rules (19 page)

But I had promised to save him. And here— God help me, I needed him, but here was the moment when I could save him. I had not saved Sidney, and I could not save myself, but maybe I could save Elián. I closed my eyes and sank into the grass. Xie sank with me, and then the others, one by one. “Go, Elián,” I whispered. “Go with the soldiers.”

Elián hesitated, standing over us, his back to the sun and his face hidden in shadow. Then he turned and walked over to the Cumberlanders and took a place in their line.

“Oh,” I said. A very tiny noise, far too small for Elián to hear. As small as a crack in a dam. He was so ridiculous about his defiance. I hadn't really thought he would go.

“In fairness,” said Xie, “I don't think he understands.”

We were all sitting close together. It was like a game, a child's game, kids in a ring, whispering secrets.

Xie put her hand on top of my knee.

“They're going to use me against my mother,” I said. “Exploit her feelings. Public opinion.”

“I know,” said Xie. Her hand was warm and steady.

“But my mother is inured to the idea of my death,” I said. “So it won't be death.”

“I know,” said Xie.

Thandi put her hand on my other leg. Warm weight, on each of my knees. Steadying. “Something public,” I said. “Something—”

I tried not to look at Elián, standing in the line of men and women who were going to do something— That ugly word Grego had used. Something
damaging
.

T
hat night it rained. Rain at last, rain too late, rain just when I was all set to get myself tortured over water rights—rain. As if I needed further proof that the fates have a black sense of humor.

Not merely rain, either—a storm. It rolled in from the northwest, tall as a spaceport, black as a mountain range, a huge prairie thunderstorm. Xie and I pulled our mats and blankets onto the floor and lay side by side to watch it billowing and flashing.

For almost an hour we lay there, watching the storm roll in, slow as a Swan Rider. There didn't seem to be anything to say. I could feel the warmth of Xie's body against my side.

“It stormed the first night you came here,” she said, when the thunder was nearly on top of us. “Do you remember?”

I remembered. I'd been five and she'd been six. It had been my first prairie storm. I had been sure that the prickling feeling in my skin meant that lightning was coming for me. Sure I was going to be struck and catch fire and die.

I'd been paralyzed, but little Da-Xia had been bouncing on her cot in plain delight.
It's a big one!

Then she had looked at me.
Are you scared?

And I had said,
No.

All my life I've been scared. And all my life I've been telling people I was not. Almost—oh, almost—I believed it was true.

Overhead the clouds were bubbling, lightning crawling across their bellies. A strange green feeling thickened the air, as if everything were building a charge, about to be magnetically levitated.

It was not true, what I had always said. It was not true that I was not frightened.

I reached sideways and Xie took my hand.

The stone floor was hard, even through my mat. Hard under the points of my shoulders. Hard under each knob of my spine. Lightning flash-cracked and lit the room like—

“Xie,” I said. “Do you think they'll kill me?”

Da-Xia's fingers stroked the pulse point in my wrist. There weren't five people in the world who would have answered me honestly, but Xie was one of them. She said, “Not right away.”

The clouds burst. Hail crashed against the glass. It made a huge noise, and Xie and I twisted against each other, hiding in each other's arms, for a moment that startled. Then we both gathered ourselves, though the noise continued, loud enough that no one could possibly have known whether I was crying.

Finally the rain fell—only gusts and spatters, after all that—and slowly I shook myself to sleep.

When I woke it was late, well after dawn. Someone had turned off all the rota bells. Not hearing them made me feel as if I were floating in time. The sky had the blank, bruised look of someone freshly beaten.

Above the muddle of mats and blankets, Xie was sitting on the bare ropes of her cot. She nodded to me, and for a few moments I lay there, watching her long fingers fold cranes out of silvery candy wrappers the soldiers must have discarded. The room smelled faintly of chocolate. A Halifax smell: it made me queasy.

There was, surely, not much more time.

I got up.

I took more care than usual scrubbing up, braiding my hair. I ended up making the braids too tight; they pulled at my temples like electrodes.

I was just considering whether to redo them when the door opened, revealing, not the soldiers we had half expected, but a different sort of man. He was middle-aged, middle-height, and tawny everywhere—leathered skin and flyaway hair, eyes that were almost yellow. Tawny, and scrawny, like a lion who'd been kicked out of the pride. He stood alone in the doorway, a smile on his face and a clipboard in his hand.

“Ah, Princess Greta,” he said. “Your Royal Highness. And this must be”—he checked his clipboard—“the Daughter of the Heavenly Throne?”

“I am Greta,” I said. “I am a blood hostage to this Precepture, and a Child of Peace. We don't use our titles here.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, the Precepture is changing, as you've probably gathered. But, of course, I'm glad to follow your preferences. I'm Tolliver Burr.” He extended a hand to shake. I had nearly forgotten that people did that. When I didn't take his hand, he turned to Xie. “And you. Should I call you ‘Da-Xia'?”

Xie looked down her nose at him. “Do you know, I think ‘Daughter of Heaven' will do nicely.”

“Your Divinity,” he said. “Of course.”

“Mr. Burr—” I said.

“Tolliver, please.”

“Mr. Burr,” I said. “What did you need from us?”

“Ah. I was hoping you'd come with me.”

“Both of us?” Da-Xia continued her down-the-nose thing. I needed to learn that from her. It is an impressive trick when you're only five feet tall.

“Well, the crown princess, specifically, Your Divinity. She's needed in the library. But of course you're welcome to come.” He opened his arm in the direction of the miseri. Xie glided magnificently past him, leading the way.

“And what did you want with the crown princess?” asked Xie. “Specifically.”

“Oh, I'm a . . . specialist. A communications specialist.”

“Communications,” I echoed, uneasy.

There were two guards outside the miseri. Burr nodded to them, and they stepped aside. The door slid open.

Books still lay where they'd been knocked down by the sonic boom. Daylight fell through the broken ceiling, and I could smell the sharp, sad scent of dust after rain.

Beside the map table stood the Abbot.

He turned as we came in. His face was back on its screen. “Marcus Aurelius says that the best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury. I admit I'm struggling with that. Good morning, Da-Xia. Good morning, Greta. I am relieved to see you looking well.”

“Good Father,” I said, and my voice came out husky. I'd thought the EMP might have killed him. I was more pleased to see him than I could easily say.

“I see you've met Mr. Burr.”

“Tolliver, please,” said Burr again.

As I came closer to the Abbot, I saw that one of his hands was pinned to the table. Beside the hand rested a small box with a twinkling touch screen. A filament bundle ran out of the box, coiled on the table like a baby snake, and ran up to the Abbot's head. I looked from the Abbot to Burr and back again.

“Mr. Burr and I have been having a disagreement,” said the Abbot. There was a funny little wheeze in his voice. “I've been explaining to him that I am a Class Two Artificial Intelligence, with full rights of personhood under the Bangalore Convention, and not, in fact, a communications terminal.”

“But you can uplink,” said Burr.

“Of course I can,” said the Abbot. “Your question should be whether I will.”

“Oh,” said Burr, as if the matter were merely technical. “I think our box will work all right.” He leaned past me and did something to the touch screen.

The Abbot jerked like Elián under shock, and then—he died. It was exactly like seeing the life drain from a human's eyes. One moment the Abbot was there, and then it was just a body, a hunk of parts. “Father!” I cried. But he did not come back.

Da-Xia's hand was on my arm—I could feel her shake. But none of the Cumberlanders reacted.

“Father Abbot?” I said. Nothing.

“Is it working, Burr?” Wilma Armenteros came out of the shadows behind the Abbot's desk.

“Yes, General.” Burr squinted at the screen. “We're go for uplink.”

“Good,” Armenteros grunted. She pulled out a chair opposite the Abbot. “Your Highness. Have a seat.”

Slowly I circled the table to her. I sat. I stared at the dead thing that had been my Abbot. The general patted my shoulder, her hand heavy. I could feel my pulse in my temples, tugging at the fine hairs where my braids were too tight. Armenteros loomed behind me. The chair was hard.

Da-Xia came and stood beside the Abbot. Her eyes said,
Hold on
. I wished I might hold her hand. I looked at it, splayed out beside the Abbot's on the table. The Abbot's hand had a screw driven through it, piercing the external rubber muscles and forcing a new opening between the metacarpal nuts. The table was narrow—I could have touched that lifeless hand. I didn't. I felt the back of the chair notch under my shoulder blades: I must have been leaning away.

Tolliver Burr came bustling round the table to my side. “That's perfect, hold still a moment.” He held some sort of meter next to my face, and then flipped it around to read it. He nodded at the general, satisfied. “This is fine. If I had a scatter box, I could smooth out some of the shadows—but really, you don't want it to look too polished. She just needs to be clearly recognizable.”

Armenteros nodded. “Thank you, Burr. Please patch us through.”

“Of course, just let me get out of the shot.”

Out of the
— His words echoed in my head. Was someone about to shoot me?

I looked up at the Abbot. His facescreen was blank. Only a few scattered pixels showed where his eyes and mouth had been when he'd . . . gone.

“And . . . go.” Burr lifted a hand from his touch screen with a little ta-da flair of his wrist.

And suddenly, in the place of the Abbot's face, there was my mother.

Queen Anne was not wearing her wig.

That shocked me, shocked me almost as if she'd met us disrobed. Her hair was short, mussy, more ash than fire. For a moment she didn't look at me. Clearly I had not come into focus for her. I heard the whirr of a lens moving somewhere, and then her eyes met mine. “Greta,” she said.

I did not know what to say. I tried: “Mother.”

“Are you all right? Have they hurt you? Have they hurt any of you?”

“I—” How could I explain? The fact that I'd been in dreamlock when the EMP had hit was not the Cumberlanders' fault. That I'd been in dreamlock at all was too complex a matter to treat here. “None of the Children I've seen are hurt. They've hurt the Abbot—” I looked at his hand, and back to where his face should have been. I could see only my mother.

“Greta . . .” She seemed to be pleading with me. For what?

“And, pan right,” said Tolliver. He tapped something on his box. It must have overridden my mother's virtual presence, because the Abbot pivoted mechanically, to focus on the general.

“There's your proof of life, Your Majesty,” said Armenteros. “Are you satisfied?”

“I take it you have retrieved your own hostage,” Queen Anne said, her voice crisp enough to stamp on coins. “Your grandson, I believe.”

Armenteros glanced into the darkness, and then looked back and shrugged. “A side benefit, Your Majesty, and not relevant to this discussion.”

The Abbot's head—my mother's head—swung; she turned back to face me. She had zoomed. Her face filled the facescreen, and was shown only chin to forehead. Her eyes were where eye icons would have been. They searched me. I felt I should say something, but I really did not know what. Her gaze held me trembling.

“Greta, talk to me. Say something only you know. Something they couldn't fake.”

My scalp prickled, but I didn't stop to think. I just answered: “I'm not Joan of Arc,” I said. “I know because I'm frightened.”

“Greta.”
I hardly even heard my name. I could only see it, on the shape of my mother's lips. She lifted the Abbot's hand and touched me: I felt the light coolness of the ceramic fingertips on my cheek. For a moment I let myself lean into that well-known touch, and then I looked at my mother and nodded. My mother nodded back, queen to queen, and turned to face the general.