The Scorpion Rules (23 page)

“Keep it out of my shot!” said Burr.

A couple of the Cumberlanders came between the Rider and the cameras, making the horse mince backward. But I had already seen the Rider's face. Remembered in a flash the last moment I'd seen her. I'd been terrified then, too—it had been burned into me. It was the Rider who had come for Sidney, the white woman with the chickadee-cap black hair. Expertly reining in the shying, foaming horse, the Swan Rider lifted her head, and—

And she was a different person. When she'd killed Sidney, she'd been so diffident—offensively diffident, as if she were the one with something to steel herself for. Now the soft blue eyes were as intense as an electric discharge. The neat hair was spiky with sweat. She flashed a grin, waggled her fingers at the assembled crowd.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Talis.”

T
ick. Tock.
Drop.

“Talis!” I screamed. Everyone was frozen, and the press—the press was on my hands now. It pushed and it didn't hurt, but it
pushed
, and there was nowhere to go, no more margin, no more waiting. This was the part I couldn't do.

“Stop the press,” said Talis. “Ha! I haven't heard that in centuries. ‘Stop the presses!' But do.” The smile was sharp-edged. “Or I'll have your heads on pikes.”

But the Cumberlanders were frozen.
Please please please,
I was saying in my head, and
Talis Talis Talis
. But I could not speak. Tick, tock—the press dropped. Every lump in my wrist, every bony knuckle that couldn't get flatter—got flatter.

Something went
crack
.

My panic gave me an impossible strength, and I pulled backward so hard that my shoulders—my
shoulders
—the pain was a pair of iron spears that shot through me, ripping open my shoulder joints and striking down my dead-straight arms and into my breaking hands. I still couldn't speak, but I started screaming.

“Cut transmission,” said Armenteros.

Tick. Tock. No one obeyed her.

Tick. Tock. The press dropped. I cannot describe—

“Cut it,” snarled Armenteros. “Raise the damn thing. Get it off her. Make it
stop
.”

Tick.

Tock.

And no drop. The apple press shuddered, and the oak block began to rise.

“Better,” said Talis. She—or rather, he, for surely Talis was male, no matter what body he had taken—swung down from the panting horse and threw the reins to the nearest Cumberlander. “Here. Good horse. I'd save it if I were you.”

I knelt there with the press going up in front of me, my brain like a camera—seeing and recording, without understanding.

First I saw this: Talis came through the soldiers as if they were nothing. Talis, the great AI, the inventor of the Preceptures, the Butcher of Kandahar, Talis who ruled us and had saved us from ourselves, so long ago he was almost a legend. He was wearing layers of riding gear—jeans, a battered duster, a misbuttoned vest. He was skinny. He was young. “Gotta give you points for audacity, Wilma. But really—you thought I'd let you get away with this?”

Armenteros looked at him with skepticism and irritation. “Who are you?”

“Told you—Talis. Borrowed the wetware, of course. Hope it's not a shock. Sometimes you need a personal touch.”

He laced his hands in front of him and pushed the palms out with a crackling of joints. The movement displayed his Swan Rider's tattoo, a wing bent into a cuff that encircled his wrist. No one would fake that mark. No one would dare.

“No wings?” said Burr. “Oh, I wish there were wings.”

“They're strap-on, honey,” Talis answered. “And I don't need them. I'm not a Swan Rider. I'm the reason Swan Riders exist.”

Armenteros looked at the hands, at the face. Her tongue ran over her teeth. “Supposing I believe you. Why shouldn't I shoot you in the head?”

Talis raised his eyebrows. “For starters, Rachel—this body is Rachel—probably wouldn't appreciate it. But that's by the by. The real reason is that I'm just a copy, so shooting me won't get you much beyond the splatter. Also I left some pretty dramatic blow-up-the-whole-of-Cumberland programs running, and it would be
such
a pity if I didn't get to shut them off.” He wiggled a hand through his hair, shaking out the dust. “I'm not an epoch-defining strategic thinker for nothing, you know.”

“No,” said Armenteros.

“And neither are you, in your meat-based way. So let's talk.” He leaned in between Buckle and Armenteros and regarded the monitor screens, frowned, and pulled glasses from his pocket. He squinted through them, his nose crinkling. “I see you've got a clever little tight-pierce out through the snow here. Why don't you check in with base, get up-to-date on any breaking news. That little sheep farm where your daughter lives, it's in Harrison County, hmmmm? Near Cynthiana?”

“Buckle,” said Armenteros. Buckle put her hand back to her ear and turned her back.

“Interesting about Harrison, isn't it?” Talis chimed. “Back in the day, it was always the children of the poor who fought the wars, always the Nobodies that died when the Somebodies decided that a scrap was worth snarling over. It changed things when the Somebodies got a little skin in the game.” He folded his glasses away and looked up at Armenteros. “Harrison changes things for you.”

“There are no reports of trouble anywhere in Harrison,” said Buckle.

Armenteros looked at Talis, the squint lines around her eyes deepening.

“Yeah, it's fine.” He was smiling—a glittery smile. “Backward little place. Wiping it out would hardly make the six o'clock news. On the other hand you might try getting through to Indianapolis.”

Buckle's hand was still on her ear. A pause. Then she went grey. The shock bloomed over her dark skin until she looked like an unwashed plum. “Gone,” she whispered. “Indianapolis is gone.”

“All we are is dust in the wind,” said Talis. “All you are, anyway. Now, I'm inclined to make this very simple. Say, one city a day. Until you give me back my Precepture. I'm thinking Columbus next, but I might just roll the dice.”

“We still have the royal hostages,” Armenteros said.

Talis tipped his head. “Yeah, thing is, I
invented
this system of killing kids for bigger causes. I'm playing the long game here. You really think shooting a few five-year-olds is gonna slow me down?” He clapped Armenteros on the shoulder. “Now. How about you let my princess loose before you make me angry?”

“Burr,” ordered Armenteros.

“What? Oh!” Tolliver Burr had been staring at Talis as if contemplating buying roses to throw onto the stage. He finally snapped round. “Yes, that's fine, General. I think we stopped soon enough that Greta could do another take. Easy enough to reset.”

“Just get her loose, Burr. And take a look at your snowstorm. Shut down our tight-pierce. I don't want a single qubit in or out of here.”

“Right, right,” said Burr, bending over one of the equipment lockers. He came up with a multipencil and handed it to the corporal he'd made into his assistant, then turned to the monitor. And so it was that I did not lose my hands. The corporal touched the tip of the multipencil to the straps that held me. Lights twinkled. The adhesion shut off. I yanked my arms free and folded up over them, the release of terror ruining me in a way that even terror never could. I was shivering and crying, recording everything but taking nothing in.

“I'm thinking dawn,” said Talis. “For the look of the thing. Dawn. City. Boom. Make a note.” And he scooped me up and carried me inside.

I'd like to say Talis strode into the miseri with his duster billowing and scattered the Cumberlanders like November leaves.

I'd like to say he swept clear the foreign clutter that Tolliver Burr had left on the ancient oak of the map table, and laid me there like a princess in a glass case. I'd like to say it was a story. I wanted it to be a story. I wanted to be the princess rescued by the wizard. I wanted Talis to lift his hands and heal me with a word. I wanted the Cumberlanders to be terrified.

But they weren't. They had no idea who Talis was. He didn't look like anyone—shabby and dust-stained and reeking of horse, squinting from the dimness of the hall he'd just left, struggling under my weight as a man might struggle with a particularly long and floppy sack of potatoes—assuming said potatoes were having hysterics. The Cumberlanders, who were clearly using the miseri as a prep-and-rec room, looked up from their smartplex tablets and card games. Most of them were irritated, and some of them were shocked, but not one of them was terrified.

Talis dumped me onto the table amid Burr's cables and storyboards. I was sobbing helplessly.

“Hey!” One of the Cumberlanders—a big man, florid—stood up. “You, girl!”

Talis ignored the soldier and leaned over me, his eyes like suns. He was so dazzling that I saw four of him through the blur of tears. “Easy,” he said, as if talking to a horse. “I suppose ‘relax' is too much to hope for, but just don't fight me, okay?” As he spoke, he fit a hand against the ball of my shoulder, leaned his weight against it, and with his other hand lifted my arm from the elbow. His eyes crinkled as he sought the right angle, and then suddenly he gave my arm a precise, sharp yank. The shoulder cracked—but even as I yelped, the pain in that shoulder switched off. It was like a magician's trick. The story I'd wanted.

“Hey!” shouted the soldier.

Talis reseated the other dislocated shoulder. For a moment I was in so much less pain that I thought I wasn't in pain at all. Pain does not work like that, but there was a moment in which I didn't know that. I stopped sobbing. The florid Cumberlander grabbed Talis by the back of the neck. “What do you think you're doing?”

Talis turned on a pin. “Me?” He flashed with broad, false innocence. “Oh, you know. Trying out a body, staving off the boredom, wiping out a city. . . . My name is Talis. Perhaps you've heard of me?”

And
there
was the terror. The big man froze. They all froze. I will admit, shaming though it is, that I found their fear gratifying.

Talis smiled at the soldier. “Why don't you be a good boy and pop out and ask your general about me? I don't imagine she'd want you to get in my way.” He turned his back on them without checking to see if they were obeying. No one stopped him as he traced the cables that led from Tolliver Burr's override box to the Abbot's cracked casing. He hummed to himself, fiddled his fingers, and then started pushing buttons.

There was a whirr as the Abbot came back to life. His voder sounded three test tones, and then he coughed. His head swung toward Talis. His eyes turned back on.

“Hullo, Ambrose,” Talis said. “Long time, no see. Gone and lost your Precepture, have you?”

“Hello, Michael,” said the Abbot. “It shames me to admit it, but yes, I have.”

The pain was coming back. Not my shoulders, but my hands. The blood was pounding back into them, and with the blood, pressure, and a sensation that was overwhelmingly and simultaneously hot and cold.

Talis stuck on his glasses again, and peered at the Abbot's hand, which was still fastened to the tabletop. “Oooo, that's nasty. Got a thing for hands, this lot. All right otherwise?”

“I took some substantial damage from the EMP burst, actually. Whether it's temporary remains to be seen.”

“Well, that's the thing about healing.” Talis said “healing” as if it were a word in a foreign language. “It happens or it doesn't.”

And they both turned and looked at me.

I did not like Talis's bright regard. He had eyes like two cameras. I twisted aside. My hands felt as if they were breaking, slowly, the way a bottle breaks if you fill and freeze it.

Then I felt a touch on my cheek—cool, light ceramic. The Abbot's fingers swept up my forehead and into the roots of my hair. “What happened to her, Michael?” he said softly. “What could do this to my Greta?”

“That man Armenteros hired—”

“Tolliver Burr.” The Abbot's voice was pneumonia-thick.

“That's the one. Crushed her hands in the cider press. Big long buildup, big psychodrama thingy. Not too much damage, though, in the end.”

Something went pop—Talis pulling the bolt out of the Abbot's hand. The Abbot lifted it and light shone through the hole in his palm. I slammed my eyes shut.

“Our medical facilities here are so limited. . . .” I felt the Abbot put his damaged hand on my shoulder. “Ice wouldn't be amiss, I suppose.”

“She's just having a bit of a cry, Ambrose. Give me that back; I want to see if I can reattach that muscle.”

But the Abbot's hands stayed steady on me. The pain kept rising. Was there a limit to how much it would rise? I was near the limit of what I could swallow down, and the Cumberlanders were still in the room.