The Scorpion Rules (24 page)

“She needs her friends,” the Abbot said.

“Yes,” I croaked. I felt as if I'd spent an hour screaming: my throat was raw. “I need Xie.”

“And Elián?”

Elián's fingertips on mine, his eyes like a wild deer's.
Told you I was Spartacus.
“Yes.”

“Ambrose, really. She's fine. And I'm just going to kill her later, when I get my room back online.”

“Michael . . .” There was just a hint of a rebuke, a not-in-front-of-the-children note in the hoarse, weary voice.

“Oh, fine,” Talis pouted. He pointed to one of the Cumberlanders, at random. “You, get some painkillers. And you”—another point—“go find Li Da-Xia and Elián Palnik. Tell them they're wanted in the lounge.” None of them moved. “Come on,” Talis singsonged at them. “What did your nice general tell you about me? ‘Do what he says'? ‘Don't make him angry'? ‘If you have family in Pittsburgh, call them now'? Snap to it!”

A second's silence. Then they snapped.

“Or did I say Columbus?” Talis called after them, light as broken glass. “Honestly.”

The Cumberlanders were leaving—backing out, some of them. I was glad they were going. I was twitchy with pain. I could feel every knob of my spine wriggling against the table. I rolled onto my side and let my legs pull up, my body folding itself shut around my heart by pure instinct. My hands: I will not speak of them. I hoped only that Talis would heal them soon.

The last of the Cumberlanders left. The Abbot sighed. Talis was pacing, energy threatening to crack him like an egg.

“Pittsburgh . . . ,” the Abbot mused. “Erasing whole cities seems a bit excessive.”

“The hell it is. They sent soldiers to my Precepture. I'll have it back from them double-quick, and then I'll make an example of Armenteros that will make three-star generals and two-bit presidents think twice for generations to come. I'll make a story out of her. A
myth
.”

“She's a patriot, Michael. I'm sure she's taken her personal risk into account.”

“Patriots,” snarled Talis. “Spare me.”

“And what of my Children?” said the Abbot, cupping one hand over my ear. “I'm sure the Cumberlanders must have made some wholesale threat against them, to keep the UN at bay. Now that you're here, what will become of them?”

Talis popped the air out of his cheeks. “Well, losing all the hostages would be a blow. But Armenteros will never go that far. I'd turn Kentucky into a crater and send her kids to lap up their damn drinking water from the bottom like dogs. She knows that.”

The hand cupped over my ear, the pain roaring in my hands, made the next words echo dully. “So, not all of them, but some . . . ?”

The AI shrugged. “Tell you what, if they come looking for kids to line up against the wall, give them someone young and cute. I don't think Armenteros has the stomach for it.”

“But you do.”

“To save the Preceptures? Absolutely. Call it the morality of altitude. I'm an awfully long way past my snot-nosed days. Now quit nattering at me. I need to punch a hole out through this snow so I can wipe out Louisville.”

“You were human, once, Michael.” The Abbot spoke in his most gentle, teacherly voice. “I know you remember.”

But Talis didn't answer.

I
lay on the map table. My hands pounded in time with my heart. They seemed to have a second skin, a swollen, stretched-tight skin made out of pain itself.

S
hock,
I thought.
I'm in shock.
The world was going grey. Then suddenly the Abbot was leaning over me. I jerked with surprise, then froze.

“It's only—” The icon of his mouth narrowed, as if with sorrow. “Anti-inflammatories and a local anesthetic. The soldiers brought it, but I have examined it. Would you trust me?”

I knew he was seeking a response, but I didn't understand what his question was. I did not understand anything at all. The Abbot opened his damaged hand, and I caught the glass-glitter of a syringe. An injection? Injections, a bullet to the head. We were at war.
The grey room.

“Greta?” The Abbot's voice echoed oddly. “Greta, do you want—” But I still couldn't answer. Insectile, the Abbot took a scuttling sideways step down the table. He slipped a needle into the vein on the back of my left hand.

Injections, then.

Numbness bloomed out from the needle, and in seconds it was a third skin—a skin of no-feeling between the skin itself and the skin of pain. The Abbot did the other hand, and then the pain was gone. He wasn't murdering me. Of course he wasn't. I was only in shock.

The Abbot lifted one of my hands in his damaged one, and used his good hand to softly trace the lines of bones. I felt the pressure of his touch but not its sensation—a strange thing. I was unbecoming myself, unraveling.

“I think there is some chipping fracture in the trapezoid carpal, and perhaps also the metacarpophalangeal joint of the index finger,” he said. “But I am no doctor.”

Talis scrunched his nose. “Broken? Really? Thought I was in time.”

The Abbot glanced at him sidelong.

“Don't look at me like that. What was I supposed to do, blow the place up with my hostages still in it? I came as fast as I could. Took a trickle download to the nearest Riders' refuge. My brain still feels like toothpaste, and I probably killed my horse.”

Another beat.

“And I'm not apologizing. It's
your
Precepture. What were
you
doing?”

“As it happens, I had a tokamak shackle around my mind and a bolt through my hand.”

“
Toka
— I'm
so
blowing up Pittsburgh. I'll tell them you said hi.”

The Abbot hmm'd. “Please, don't go to trouble on my account.”

“Broken?” It was my own voice, though it seemed to come from somewhere else. “Are they broken?”

The Abbot tipped his face down toward mine, tinting it a gentle shade. “They're minor, Greta. The breaks are minor.”

“A sonic knitter would fix you right up,” said Talis. “Amish here objects to all that tech stuff, but the Cumberlanders will have one.”

“No,” I rasped. “The Cumberlanders—”

“Barring that,” said the Abbot, “I think ice. Would you?”

Another pause.

“I'm not fetching you ice,” said Talis, when it became clear even to him that he was the only person the Abbot could possibly be asking. “I don't fetch.”

My hands seemed to lose contact with the table, like balloons. Time drifted.

“A knitter—” began Talis.

“No,” I said, because a knitter meant Cumberland, it meant Burr, it meant— “No, Father, don't let them touch me,” I whispered. The Abbot put his hand over my ear. I could feel him shaking. His fingers slipped between the plaits of my braids. My heartbeat echoed back from the shell of his palm.

“Fine.” Talis sighed like a twelve-year-old. “Fine. Where do you even keep the ice?”

And thus was the master of the world sent off like a bellhop, even as I folded my face into the Abbot's hands and wept.

They packed my hands in ice. Numbness spread up my arms, strange sister to pain. Time stretched, became like a membrane. It wrapped me. I blurred and dimmed. And then—

And then Xie came. Of course she came. Pounding through the door at a run, a rabid look on her fine face. Slowly I became aware that she was babbling, begging, saying my name. “I'm sorry, Greta, I'm so sorry. There were too many of them. I would never have left you, Greta. There were so many of them—”

“Xie . . .” Her name was a thistle in my mouth.

“Oh, Greta. Did they—” She put a hand on my forearm. I flinched. She jerked away, tears springing to her eyes. “But they stopped. What happened? Did your mother—”

“Talis . . . ,” I whispered. “He came for me.”

“Talis? I— But— Talis?”

“Hi,” said Talis. He was sprawled on one of the memory foam cushions as if he'd never sat in a chair before. “With you in a tick.”

I watched Xie take him in—the shabby riding gear, the young woman's body that was somehow male in the splay of the joints, somehow ancient in the set of the eyes. Her eyes widened; her face paled. “Lord Talis,” she whispered. “History walking . . .”

“Don't bother him, Da-Xia,” wheezed the Abbot.

“I—” said Xie. She was trembling, caught in awe the way we were sometimes caught in electricity.

“Xie,” coaxed the Abbot.

A long, long silence. Then Li Da-Xia slowly and deliberately turned her back on the ruler of the world. She put her hands on my face. “Greta. What do you need?”

Her hands were warm. I could not think of what I needed.

“You,” I said, rasping. “I need you.”

“I can't hack through it,” said Talis, furrowing his hair with hooked fingers. “Bloody hell.” He levered himself to his feet and kicked a book. It whirled across the floor like an outraged seagull. “Never mind ‘snowstorm'; it's a damn blizzard.”

“But you got commands out initially. . . .” The Abbot's eye icons drew together, a mime of puzzlement.

“They had a tight-pierce for piggybacking, but they shut it down. Even if they bring it back up for round two tomorrow, it will take me hours.
Honestly.
How am I supposed to destroy Pittsburgh if I can't get a ping to my weapons platforms?”

“I'm sorry you're frustrated, Michael.”

“Frustrated! I'm blind, is what I am. And the data push is giving me a headache.”

He'd been at it for half an hour, which is a long time for an AI to do anything. It is said that their quick minds make their time pass slowly, and that the ones who are mad are mad half from boredom.

“ ‘Patience is someone else's virtue,' ” Xie murmured. She was quoting from the Utterances.

“Ooo.” Talis raised one of those startling black eyebrows at her. “Quoting me at me, are we? You've got a bit of nerve.”

“Yes, my lord. So I've been told.”

“Li Da-Xia,” he named her.

“Lord Talis,” she answered. And then, “You were supposed to keep us safe.”

“Well,” said Talis. “Technically. It's more the prerequisite to the mission than the actual mission, but technically, yes, I was supposed to keep you safe.” He nudged the seagull-book with his toe. “Did you know, the man who invented the atomic bomb once said that keeping peace through deterrence was like keeping two scorpions in one bottle? You can picture that, right? They know they can't sting without getting stung. They can't kill without getting killed. And you'd think that would stop them.” He gave the book another boot, and it flipped closed with a
snick
. “But it doesn't.”

He looked up and his eyes were the color of Cherenkov radiation, the color of an orbital weapon. “You've got a bit of nerve, little scorpion. All I did was invent the bottle.” He took a step toward her, coming up onto the book, rising into the air like a cobra. “What do you—”

“Michael,” wheezed the Abbot. It was probably supposed to be soothing. It sounded strained and sick.

“Sorry,” said Talis. He stepped backward off the book and scrubbed his face with both hands. “Yes, Li Da-Xia, I was supposed to keep you safe. Go help your friend.”