The Swan Riders (12 page)

Of course she had known. But how could she have known?

“I hope it's early,” said Talis, “or we'll never get her home.”

“It's early,” rasped Sri.

Talis lifted his hands from her head—he'd been pressing hard enough to leave fingerprints on her temples, pale prints that reddened slowly—and smoothed back her hair as if in benediction. “Sri,” he said. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“What, and miss the fun?” The burnt-sugar smile—bitter and sweet—was lopsided. “Let Evangeline cut my vocal cords because the screaming bothers her? I didn't want to sit around in a yurt and wait to die.” Francis Xavier climbed off Sri, and she swiped the drool from her face with the back of her hand. Tremors danced along her jaw.

Talis rocked back on his heels, laced his hands behind his neck, and popped the air out of his cheeks. “Bad timing, though, if you slow us down on this particular trip.”

“Talis, I promise.” Sri's voice was rough. “It won't be this that slows us down.”

“You can't promise that.”

“I do, though,” she said. “I promise that.” She stretched a hand toward me, and I knelt beside her. She fitted her fingers into the bruised place inside my arm, but very softly.
You are hurt
, the touch seemed to say.
I am hurt, too.

Francis Xavier knelt behind me and wrapped his hand around my shoulder.

“I asked Talis once why the Swan Riders were all young.”

Neuroplasticity
, he'd answered.
Joining a cult, that's a young man's game.

Francis Xavier's fingers squeezed—fellowship, comfort—and Sri gave me the other half of Talis's answer. She said: “We never grow old.”

The light was long and slanting. The grass was red and gold.

Talis took a step back as he watched the three of us and chafed at his wrist. But no, it wasn't his wrist; he was just using it. It was Rachel's wrist, the Swan Rider's wing tattoo like a beautiful piece of bondage. This was going to happen to Rachel.

This was going to happen to me.

W
e camped where Sri had fallen—away from our shelters and wells, away from any source of food or fuel or water, and still within easy reach of the people we took to be our enemies. We took turns watching through the night, with the horses standing asleep around us and the stars sharpening as the night grew colder. By dawn, I was wearing my crinkle sheet as a cloak and pacing to stay warm. I could see the mist of my own breath as the light rose.

It was a setup for a disaster, but disaster did not befall us.

Or, it did not befall anyone but Sri.

My datastore made me an expert on Rider's Palsy, and so I knew now what Talis had known when he'd shouted for the horse to stop: that at first the episodes were here and there, short and spaced, but toward the end they clustered. Sri had had at least one to land her among the trommellers, and another to cut short our escape. She had one more in the night—or perhaps more, but one that woke me, with the screaming.

Clustered. Stage five.

Stage one was the first clinically detectable scarring; stage two the first twinges and blurring of vision; stage three the stage where jolts of pain first appeared; stage four the first true episodes; stage five clustering. Stage six was terminal excitotoxicity—the technical name for an ugly brand of death.

Stage five meant Sri had a month, at best. And she lay on her mat as limp as a braid of hair.

But I fell asleep again after the dawn watch, and when I woke, Sri was awake, on her feet, and saddling her own horse.

And then we rode.

A second day, and a third. The weather had certainly turned, the wind growing sharp and cold. Tall grasses crashed around us like surf. We all added sheepskin vests under our dusters, and Francis Xavier also wore a long strip of crinkle silk—UN blue, of course—wrapped around his head in what was technically known as a tagelmust: a Bedouin fashion of head wrap and neck scarf (with optional sand-fighting face covering) that had become common among the herders of this newest desert. It seemed to me neither warm enough nor cold enough for that, but Francis shivered when he believed no one was looking.

“Where are you from, anyway?” I asked him when we stopped for lunch on the second day, somewhere near the pin that marked the exact middle of nowhere.

Francis Xavier looked at me for a moment before answering mildly: “Somewhere warmer.”

“Haven't you heard?” called Sri from where she bent unpacking hard tack and cold meat. “The Swan Riders aren't from anywhere. We don't have histories.”

Or futures.

But though the weather was swinging to cold and Sri was growing thinner and more strained by the day, her knife trembling as she carved—though we slept as little as we could and ate on the run, though we watched the skies for explosions, though we felt a threat at our back—despite all these things, nothing terrible happened.

And in the end, the blow did not come from behind.

We came over a ridge, and then, directly in front of us, the sky was suddenly split by a white streaking contrail.

A bomb. I thought that and jerked the reins backward. Gordon Lightfoot skipped a step and hopped like a crow. I wasn't ready for it and the saddle hit me hard. I went
uffff
and Talis—who had already stopped—put out a hand to steady me. My whole body tightened, ready for the explosion . . . but it was not a bomb. The contrail was shooting
upward
. A rocket; a spaceship launching.

I'd seen my share of magnetic launches—the Precepture itself had had an induction spire—but a launch massive enough to require rocket boosters was rare. And where was it coming from? Medicine Hat was the only thing of any size ahead of us—two hundred miles away, far enough to make the contrail small. But what could they be launching from there?

“There's no launch spire in the Hat,” said Francis Xavier. “They cart salvage to the zeppelin depots in Calgary.”

Or they
had.

“So where's that being launched from?” I said.

“That's not a launch,” said Talis, lifting his chin as he tracked the spiraling contrail upward. “That's a flare.”

Francis Xavier started the slow process of arranging an uncertain frown.

“Trust me,” said Talis. “I've set off my share of missiles.”

“We get shares of missiles?” asked Sri.

“It's a flare,” said Talis again. “Which means it's small. Which means it's closer than you think.”

And he was right. When I'd thought it two hundred miles away, the parallax of the contrail had been all wrong. I adjusted my perception. This was not a suborbital launch but a signal rocket. Small. And no more than five miles away.

Talis glanced back the way we'd come. “We could easily have been spotted topping that rise.”

“Or it might have nothing to do with us,” I said.

“Greta, dear,” said Talis. “I'm five hundred years old. How do you suppose I got that way?”

“Multiple copies and massive fortifications,” said Sri.

“My point,” said Talis crisply, “is that when you're the center of the universe, it's always about you.”

I thought of Mahrip saying,
Do you need help?
What did the trommellers want? To murder Talis? Rescue me?

Wind swirled the dry grass around the horses' knees, and a sudden gust carried a smell of cold tin: snow coming, maybe. Talis's eyes swept down the contrail to its base—or at least to the lowest point we could see, framed in the notch between two hills. The trail was already tattering away.

“That creek bed goes through around there, doesn't it?” said Sri.

“It does.” Francis Xavier shaded his eyes against the afternoon sun. “I remember that crossing. The gully's steep.”

Talis might or might not remember the place, but he certainly knew it. “It's more than steep: it's practically a defile. Decent spot for an ambush.”

Sri was still looking at the flare, and her horse, Roberta, was sidling as if nervous. “Can we get real-time intel?” Sri asked. “Satellite imaging?”

“Try it, Greta,” said Talis.

The satellites were ever above me, their nets of eyes and whispers. I closed my eyes and tried to drift into that net. Like wiggling your ears, Talis had said.
My eyes,
I thought.
My whispers.
For a moment nothing happened, just the brush of data, like a comb through long hair, a sensation of being touched in a place where one had no sensation.
My eyes
, I thought.

And then they were. I opened my eyes and I was every satellite feed in the world, drifting above the planet as it spun and lit beneath me. I could see everything. I narrowed as if narrowing my eyes, looking at Saskatchewan, looking down, reaching down with one finger to see—

“Whoops,” said Talis, closing his hand on my wrist. “I know I was talking smack about it, but let's not
actually
destroy Saskatoon, shall we?”

I froze. I'd been reaching with a weapons satellite.

The world flashed wide. The planet, the whole earth was suddenly spinning under my eyes. Under Talis's eyes, all the time. How could I stay human, if I had eyes like that?

We needed to bring the satellites down.

“Well, first let's use them with a little more skill . . . ,” said Talis. His voice seemed to echo in outer space. Had I spoken aloud?

I blinked three times. And suddenly I was on a horse. In Saskatchewan.

I was on a horse, and I was shaking. Afraid to move a finger. The Swan Riders were both staring, but Talis smiled, strange and sad. “I'll do it,” he said, and lifted a hand to his temple with a flourish, like a carnival mind reader.

A silence stretched out. I very carefully did not reach for anything. I breathed in. And out. Talis let the silence lengthen, and my heartbeat slowed down, and down, and down.

I had not accidentally become the Butcher of Saskatoon. And I would not, I swore to myself. I would not.

Finally, Talis dropped his hand back onto the saddle horn. “Yes, there are people along the creek bed. A dozen or so? But more than that . . .” He shook his head. “There's some washout in the signal.”

“Jamming?” asked FX.

“There is thorium in the soil in these parts—it will make us blind to ultraviolet and infrared anywhere it's disturbed.”

“Like the creek bed,” said Sri.

“So it's natural,” said Francis Xavier.

Talis shrugged. “If you're not feeling suspicious, which personally I always am.” He tapped at his lips with two fingers: a plop-tock sound. “In fact, I'll tell you what: let's err on the side of total paranoia. That usually works for me.”

“Let me guess,” said Sri. “We're not going down there?”

“We're not going down there,” said Talis. “But we can't stay here, either, not if we've been spotted. We need to move, and we need to do it unpredictably, and we need to do it now. Sri, I wanted to get you to your station for evac, but we need to cut sideways.”

“There's a refuge about fifty miles off, across the southern fording,” said Francis Xavier.

“And a supply cache even closer,” said Sri, and pointed. Mostly south, a bit east.

Talis frowned and followed her pointing fingers with his eyes—his eyes and more, I think, because the next thing he did was rattle off a set of latitude and longitude coordinates.

The map bloomed in my head instantly. It took the Swan Riders a moment. They both paused, then both nodded.

“That's the one,” said Sri.

“The church on the ridge,” Francis Xavier added.

I let myself know it: Our Lady of the Snows, Catholic, established 1901, abandoned 2217. Nothing but a bit of foundation wall at this point, but it was a landmark that marked a Swan Riders' cache, offering good sight lines of the valley we would need to cross, and enough cover to make that assessment in relative safety. It took us back toward Saskatoon, but also far enough off our known course that no one would find us.

Talis looked sidelong at Sri. “I am sorry. I wanted to get you home.”

“I'm a Swan Rider. I am where I need to be.”

“Okay.” Talis reined NORAD around. “Let's move.”