The Scorpion Rules (20 page)

“All right, Armenteros.” The harshness of my mother's voice made the Abbot's voder buzz. “Let's hear your demands.”

I sat in the hard wooden chair at the map table—the table where I'd plotted the progress of the wars that had taken us, one by one. Bihn, taken so young. Vitor, solid and sad. Sidney, his hand falling from mine. The map table where I had studied the coming war, the war that was going to kill Elián. And me.

Off to my left, Armenteros was giving her demands—or rather, her demand. She had only one, and it was precisely what I had thought it would be—drinking water rights to Lake Ontario. I had even correctly predicted the amount, seven thousand acre-feet per annum.

Such mastery was usually a comfort to me. I could hear the Abbot's voice saying just that.
I wonder if ignorance is really the kindest thing.
And I could see the high table in the grey room, where the light was so even that no shadows fell. Would it be injection? Beams? A bullet to the head? What reason was there to care? There had not been a reason before. Why should there be one now? The Cumberlanders must surely be planning something less . . . private.

Queen Anne said, “That is beyond the carrying capacity of the lake.”

“Just under, my hydrologists say.”

Even filtered through the Abbot, the tilt of my mother's head was pure me—pure her. “That analysis was done in a wet decade. The usual pattern is 6,200 acre-feet—ten percent less.”

Armenteros shook her head slowly. “Seven thousand is the minimum required to sustain our population.”

“Then your population will need to change,” said Queen Anne. “The lake can't.”

“You suggest I let two hundred thousand people die of thirst?”

I was certain of my mother's raised eyebrow, though I could see only the back of the Abbot's head, the crack in his casing where the fibers had been jammed in. “I suggest you relocate them. But that is your decision: purely an internal matter.”

“Your Majesty,” said Armenteros. “I will not be coy.” She drew a husky breath. I knew what was next. It was time to make explicit the implied threat. Time to mention torture.

Coy
, she'd said.

Suddenly I was furious. I reached across the table and took hold of the bundle of fibers between the Abbot's head and Tolliver Burr's box. I yanked.

The wires tore free. The Abbot grunted and staggered, swinging round and catching himself against the table. On his screen, my mother's face froze and distorted.

“General Armenteros,” I said, “it would astonish me if you were
coy
.”

“Sit down, Your Highness,” Armenteros rumbled. “Burr, get the queen back.”

“Don't you dare,” I snapped at him. And then I rounded on her. “And you,” I said, “are not permitted to use my title. My name is Greta, and so you will call me. You think because I am hostage to the Precepture that anyone can use me? I am a Child of Peace. Touch one hair on my head and the AIs will come for you. Talis will wipe Cumberland from the map, do you hear me?
From the map!
” I slapped the table so hard that several soldiers jumped. My hand stung numb.

“Sit down,” said the general, and raised one finger. There was a wave of clicking around the room as guns swung up and pointed at me.

I laughed. “You won't shoot me. You can hardly torture me if you shoot me first.”

The general made a tock with her tongue, acknowledging the point. She sounded so much like the Abbot that it made me reel. I grabbed on to the table edge.

Tolliver Burr looked at Da-Xia as if deciding what role to cast her in. “What about her? We could shoot her.”

“The roommate? Who is she?” said Armenteros, as some of the guns swung to cover Xie.

Da-Xia smiled her destroying Tara smile, pressed her palms together in front of her and bowed over them. “I,” she said, “am the Daughter of the Heavenly Throne, the Beloved of the Mountains, the Pure Soul of Snow. Single me out, and you will find yourself at war with most of central Asia.”

“She's quite right,” said the Abbot. His head was hanging, and there was a thickening whirr in his voice. “They both are. The UN won't take this lightly. Talis will personally order the strike on Cumberland.”

Talis.
On the lips of another AI, it was a name to conjure with. The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

“I am leaving,” I said. “There is no need for me to be here while you decide how to hurt me.”

I let go of the table, which had pressed a white fault line into the soft part of my palm. I would have staggered, except that Da-Xia came and took my elbow, formally, as would befit the escort of a queen.

“And you,” I snapped at Burr. “You must have some other equipment in that ship of yours. Use it. I won't talk to my mother through the Abbot again. Let him go.”

“Thank you, Greta,” the Abbot slurred. He didn't lift his head. His hand was still pinned to the table. But he was alive. The guns followed us like eyes as we processed toward the door.

The light through the broken ceiling was chiaroscuro: here bright enough to make one squint, there thick with shadow. The soldiers by the door were blurred by their chamo and mostly hidden in the darkness; I could see only their movement, shifting to make way for us.

It wasn't until I was nearly there that I saw that one of them—his gun slack in his hand, his face as tense and sick as if the spiders were crawling over every inch of him—was Elián.

O
utside the miseri Da-Xia took my arm, and we ran like deer. We spilled out of the shadowy transept and into the bright morning. The grass was wet under our bare feet.

“ ‘It would astonish me if you were coy'!” Da-Xia tumbled against the Precepture wall, grinning from ear to ear. “There you are, Greta. Well done!” She was laughing.

A few moments ago I would have been laughing too—at the release, at the look on Armenteros's face—but seeing Elián had ripped it from me. I felt hollowed out. “Oh, Xie. . . .” I leaned against the wall beside her. The easterly light was sweet, but the old stones were still cool with the memory of night. “Do you remember Bihn?”

Bihn. She'd been tiny for her age, and sweet fingered. She had liked to braid my hair. She could hold so still that doves would come and eat out of her hand. When we were nine a Swan Rider came for her. He'd called her name, and she'd started screaming. Sidney, Vitor, and Bihn. Three of my classmates had died, in my time at the Precepture. But only Bihn had been dragged out screaming.

Da-Xia pivoted away from the wall, so that we were face-to-face. “You will not lose your courage, Greta,” she said, willing something into me, something fiercer than a blessing. Her eyes were black with their intensity, locked on to mine. “Listen to me. You will not.”

We were belly to belly. Her face was powerfully close.

I am not sure which of us moved first. But suddenly my mouth was on hers. And her lips were warm as the sunlight, and her skin was cool as the grass, and she was everything. Da-Xia. My whole world.

How could it possibly have taken me so long to see that?

Her hand slipped under the hem of my shirt and brushed over the goose-bumped skin of my flank.

“Xie . . .” It came out almost as a moan. I found my hand on the small of her back—awake to the flare of her hip, to the way my fingers fitted between the buttons of her spine. I pulled her closer.

Just then, Elián came bursting out the door. He saw us. He stopped.

Xie pulled away from me. A flush crept up her throat. I could not remember that I had ever seen Da-Xia blush. But she blushed under Elián's panting silence.

“Oh,” he said.

“Elián—” I felt the urge to explain. And then a surge of anger: What was there to explain? And what right had he to an explanation? He'd held a gun on me, listened to plans to have me tortured. And, all right, I'd told him to, but—

“You're not armed,” said Xie.

“Yeah, well—” Elián scratched behind his ear. “Some question in there about where my loyalties are.”

“Out here, too,” said Xie.

“God, Xie, like I'd ever—” He cut himself off and turned to me. “Greta. I didn't know, I swear. How could I know?”

“Da-Xia did explain.”

“And Thandi,” said Xie. “And Grego . . .”

“But I didn't—” He was breathing hard, his voice climbing toward hysteria. “I didn't know. I'm a
sheep farmer
, Greta. I like to bake. I go
bowling
.”

“How quaint,” said Xie.

I flipped up a hand to stop her, and sagged down against the wall. “Do you know what they're planning, Elián?”

He shook his head to deny it, but there was knowledge in his face. He must have seen me read it; he came out with it slowly. “I only know . . . That man—Tolliver Burr—he's having them— He wants them . . .” His voice dropped and he nearly gagged. “He wants them to move the apple press out onto the lawn. Where the light is better for filming.”

We considered that. I tried—oh, how I tried—not to consider it too closely. But there is no rest for a restless mind. The apple press—huge and ancient, with its screws as thick as a thigh, hand-turned from oak trunks in some unimaginable time before machines could speak. And the screws needed to be strong, to carry the force it took to juice an apple—to bring down the iron-bound oak top of the press, turn by turn. It was big, the press. You could lay a bushel of apples in it, or a bushel of potatoes, in the days when Vitor and Atta had tried to make vodka, before the unfortunate explosion of the still. You could put a bushel of carrots into it, or a human torso. Or perhaps just a hand . . . There were so many nerves in the hand. My own hands were cramping into fists. I could feel how much force it took, to turn the press those last few clicks.

I wrenched away from the wall and folded forward, retching.

I crouched by the wall a long time. They knelt with me. Xie rubbed circles on my back. Elián put his hand over mine, where it was digging into the thatch of the grass.

“Sorry,” I gasped as the fit passed. “Sorry.”

They both shook their heads. There was silence. I leaned back limply against the wall, grateful for its cool strength.

“Tolliver Burr,” said Da-Xia, rolling the name around. “Do you know, I could grow to dislike him. And Armenteros, too—no offense, Elián.”

“You should—” I coughed, and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. The bitter taste of fear was still strong enough to choke me. Well, it was either fear or yesterday's stuffed zucchini. “Elián, you should go back to your grandmother.”

Elián made a disbelieving huff. “No way am I leaving you.”

Da-Xia picked up my hand. “None of us will, Greta. Lean into that.”

I shook my head. “Elián—think. Our countries are at war. When Talis reestablishes control over the Precepture, both our lives are forfeit.” I tried to concentrate. “I meant it when I said to go. I meant it. Go back to the Cumberlanders. Your only way out of here is with them.”

“The expletive I will, Greta,” said Elián.

“But there's no way out for me,” I said. “You can't save me. Go.”

“Dipshit,” he whispered, and put a hand in my hair. “The expletive I will.”

“Elián Palnik, I think there's hope for you,” said Xie. She paused. “Albeit in a somewhat abstract sense. In the concrete sense, you're clearly doomed.”

“I can't go back, anyhow. Grandma—I feathered her good. They were going to court-martial me, except”—he smiled at Da-Xia—“turns out I'm not a soldier.”

“I haven't figured you out yet,” she answered. “But I think I concur.”

“I haven't figured you out either.” His gaze flipped between us. “I'm guessing there's a bunch of stuff I haven't figured out.”

Again, I could have explained. Da-Xia and I were not lovers, we were— What were we? How could I be worried about this when the apple press was being made ready? How could it be that I could still conjure a quickening in my blood when I thought of her kiss? We were not— We were . . . I did not know.

So I explained nothing, but stood up, wiping my hands down the rough linen of my samue. “Let's go see if any of the pumpkins can be salvaged.”

“The . . . pumpkins?” said Elián. I disliked his they've-broken-her-already-poor-thing tone.

“As an act of normalcy,” explained Da-Xia.

“As an act,” I said grandly, “of defiance. And hope.”

“Defiance and hope. Check.” Elián let loose one corner of his Spartacus smile. “Y'all will have to tell me if I'm doing it right.”

I have never been more proud to be a Child of Peace. By the time we made it to the toppled pumpkin trellises, all the Children were outside, and working in the gardens.