The Scorpion Rules (5 page)

My pillow grew hot. I turned it over. The other side grew hot. My hair spread out all around me. I had quite a lot of hair, which was entirely my mother's fault.
A queen does not cut her hair,
she often said. And once, the last time I saw her:
A queen cuts her hair on her way to the block.

Like all of the Children of Peace, I am sent home thrice annually, to maintain my bond with my parents. After all, if one is to hold royal children hostage on the premise that the prospect of their deaths will deter their parents from declaring war, it does not do to let parent-child bonds wither away. And they have not withered. My parents, I think, do love me.

I was last home months ago, at the warm end of spring. On the last day of my visit, my mother—the queen my mother—dismissed my maids and brushed my hair herself. Brushed it and brushed it, a thousand strokes. Then she did up the buttons on the back of my gown. There were three dozen of them, tiny things that went into tiny loops. One by one, she did them. One by one, and it took a long time.

Overhead the stars crawled. My pillow itched. Xie did not come back. Still I could not sleep. I counted goats, but they kept getting away from me, becoming those buttons. Becoming my mother, brushing my hair.

When I started to feel the phantom tug at my scalp and a tightness in my throat, I thrust myself upright. If I could not sleep, I chided myself, I would work.

I got up, I got dressed. I yanked my hair into braids so tight that they tugged at my temples and stung tears from the corners of my eyes. Then I went to the misericord.

The word “misericord” means “room of the pitying heart.” When the Precepture hall had been a monastery, centuries ago, the miseri would have been the one room where strictures were relaxed. Now it is lounge and library, a place of quiet and rest. The glass in the skylight is amber, warming the light, dimming the Panopticon's sharp outline. There are books, collected on tall, columnar shelves, like a grove of old trees. The books were my object, or at least my excuse: I needed the next volume of Epictetus for my paper.

There was light, as always, in the heart room. Little brass lamps, here and there, cast pools of gold. The Abbot is there when he is not required elsewhere, and though I suppose he does not technically need light, it is a comfortable thing to be able to see him.

The Abbot was not behind his desk. “Father?” I meant to be soft, out of respect for the hour, but my voice came out fluttering. The flutter surprised me.

The old AI came forward from the grove of bookshelves. The face monitor canted forward on his mainstem, like the head of a nearsighted old man. “Ah, Greta.” The icons of his eyes moved a fraction farther apart and opened a whisker wider—not a smile, but a listening, welcoming look. “You're burning the midnight oil, child. Couldn't sleep?”

“No, good Father. I came for a book.”

“Ah.” He puttered over toward the classical philosophy. “One of the Stoics, isn't it? Aurelius again?”

“Epictetus, Father.”

“That's right. I've seen your notes, my dear: impressive work, impressive work.” His voice was old and soft as a step that has been worn down in the center. That voice, and the amber light, made the room feel warm. My heart—odd, it had been racing—was slowing down. The Abbot led me deeper into the grove of bookcases. “Have you considered extending it? Perhaps something on the uptake of the Roman branch of Stoicism into early Christianity, or Western culture generally? After all, the very word ‘stoic' has come to mean calmness in the face of trying circumstance.”

“Oh, yeah,” came a voice from the darkness. “I can't
wait
to get started writing papers on that.”

My breath caught, because it was Sidney's accent, or nearly—Sidney's accent if the peaches in syrup had been laced with rough stones.

The Abbot sighed. “Greta, may I present Elián Palnik, who comes to us from the Cumberland Alliance?”

It was the boy—the boy with bound hands. He was slumped into the memory cushion at the back of the book grove, a shadow within a shadow.

My eyes went right to his hands, but they were not bound now. Even so it took me a moment to find my voice. “Hello, Elián,” I said. I found, to my horror, that I addressed him as I sometimes addressed our more skittish goats. He was just sitting there, but something about him seemed half-tamed.

“Hey, Greta,” said Elián. And to the Abbot: “Stoicism? I mean, seriously?”

He sat forward then, brushing his hair out of his face—he would need to get that trimmed. The bruising around his wrist had gone old and yellow. He looked at me blankly, and then seemed to recognize me. “Wait, you're Princess Greta.” And another layer of recognition. “It was you—the girl at the door, that day.”

He had seen me disgrace myself, then. I hoped I wasn't blushing. “I apologize for reacting.” My voice was steady, at least.

He sketched a little bow, as much as one can while sitting on a cushion. “It's okay. I mean, where I'm from, it's traditional to ‘react' when someone gets dragged in in chains.”

“Elián,” chided the Abbot, his voice like dust. “That's hardly appropriate.”

“Sorry, Greta,” said Elián. “I'm having trouble telling what's appropriate.”

He did not sound sorry.

“That's enough, I think,” said the Abbot. His eye icons had pulled together. “Greta. Don't forget your book.”

I took my book. I did not flee. But I left, and my heart was no longer beating slowly.

I
t was ten days before I saw Elián again.

It's not unusual for a Child newly come to the Precepture to spend some time being tutored privately before joining his cohort, but Elián stayed away longer than any I could remember. And then, one day . . .

We were harvesting new potatoes. Han and I were forking over the rows, and the others of our cohort were gathering the tubers and laying them out on the wickerwork riddles. I looked up to blink the sweat out of my eyes and saw Elián coming down the slope toward us.

I felt a gasp catch in my throat. Elián had a proctor with him.

It was unusual to see a proctor outside at all, and this one was eye-catching. The proctors that swarm the school have a variety of adaptations, but mostly look like overgrown daddy longlegs—knee-high, spindly, and quick. Elián's proctor was as heavily built as a scorpion, high as my waist, its jointed legs easily clearing the churned places and raised beds.

At the edge of the potato trench, and with this thing beside him, Elián stopped.

He shot a round-eyed glance at the proctor, favored our group with a rictus of a smile, and said, “Hi. I'm Spartacus, and I'm here to lead you in a slave revolt against an unjust syst—”

The proctor touched his belly, and he went down screaming.

Or, to be fair, it was just one scream. But it was so loud, and so— I can hardly describe it. It was a sound a human might make if turned into an animal. There was nothing of dignity or tradition in it. It was not the kind of sound we Children heard often, and all up and down the garden terraces, white figures fluttered up like a startled flock.

Unprecedented, that's what the sound was. Unprecedented. We don't scream here.

Not out loud, anyway.

Elián had folded up with his head on one of the heaps of dirty potatoes. The scorpion proctor took two mincing steps toward him. He flinched, pushed up onto one hand. But his elbow gave way and he went sprawling.

I knelt to help him, my heart twisting—but as I moved the proctor straightened with the barest ticking of joints. I froze. Its iris clicked in and out. What did it expect? Was I meant to leave him? Or to help him? I held rabbit-still with one hand on Elián's shuddering shoulder. The proctor's head swiveled like a turret, taking in everyone.

Thandi and Grego were closest to Elián and me, but they were paralyzed. Thandi looked as if she'd been turned to wood. Grego's false eyes were completely black. The proctor's optical beam swept over them, and still they didn't move.

The proctor locked on to Da-Xia. And she, bless her, pressed her palms together and bowed to it. Then she came forward. She crouched on the other side of Elián. We took a shoulder each, and helped him sit, and then stand. They had indeed cut his hair, shaved it back nearly to the scalp. This close, I could see it prickle, see the convulsive tick in his throat as he swallowed, swallowed.

Elián hung between Da-Xia and me, wobbling. It was unsettling to be so close to a stranger. I could smell him, feel the heat off him. I could see all the secret nicks and scars of his scalp.

Across the top of Elián's bent head, my gaze met Xie's. What if he couldn't work? Couldn't stand? What should we do?

But even as I wondered, I felt him find his feet. “Hello, Greta,” he rasped, still sagging. “I'm still having some . . .” His voice gave way, came back, and he twitched a smile. “Some trouble with what's appropriate.”

“I can see that.” I put every ounce of Precepture dignity into my voice. A smile? Did he not understand what he had done? His behavior would cost us all. “What's appropriate now is for you to introduce yourself. Properly.”

He lifted his head and looked at me, big-eyed. He was still clinging to me, and his look made me feel as though I'd hit a puppy. I suppose from his point of view I'd changed sides. He would not understand why. I knew all the complications, knew I was doing right. And yet his bewildered, betrayed expression still made me look away, which gave me a close-up view of his forearm. His muscles twitched. His skin was goose-bumped and shivery.

And he still hadn't answered. Xie tried to prompt him. “I'm Li Da-Xia. From Yunnan, the Mountain Glacials.”

“Da-Xia,” he echoed.

“You may call me Xie,” she said, which was generous of her.

“
Z
? Like the letter?”

“It's
zed
in this kingdom,” said Grego, looking sideways at me. “They are touchy about it.” He told the joke carefully, as if he were defusing a bomb.

And Elián missed it. He looked blankly from Grego to Xie, as if the proctor had shocked thirty IQ points off him. Maybe he was just a bit slow. “Xie is
Z
; got it. Xie and Atta and Gregori and Thandi and Greta and Han.” He recited it as a list, by rote. He turned to the proctor, and added, “Is that right?” As if he expected the thing to answer him.

“That's right,” I said. “And you're Elián.”

As if his own name had been his master password, he shook his head and stood up straight. His face reset, and those IQ points came back all at once. He looked cheerfully jaunty and willingly can-do and adorably dorky and I was absolutely sure that at least two of those were put on.

I looked to Xie and she answered me with two arched eyebrows: She didn't know what to make of him either. None of us did.

Elián stood grinning in the middle of our stares. “So, hi,” he said. He reached for my dropped pitchfork, only to have Atta put his foot on it. None of us wanted this stranger to have a weapon.

Elián pretended not to notice. “Yeah. I'm Elián Palnik, from the Cumberland Alliance. Y'all want to show me how to dig potatoes?”

No one answered. We looked at him and his proctor, keeping our faces blank and our bodies ready, in the manner of carefully trained Precepture children under threat. In contrast, Elián stood affable and loose-jointed, at ease and utterly alien. Our silence—disturbed, disapproving—wasn't making a dent. He turned to me. “So,” he said. “Stoicism.”

“So,” I answered, carefully. “Potatoes.” I bent and grabbed one of the riddle's two handles. The big proctor backed off a couple of steps, off the wickerwork. Elián's breathing paused subtly when the proctor moved—he had enough sense to be frightened, then. And enough dignity to hide it. Both those things were promising.

“Help me with this,” I said. It was in part a kindness to orient him, to cue him. It was in part selfish: We would all feel safer if we got to work. “This is called riddling. We shake the dirt through the wicker. Then we can store them without scrubbing. It saves water.”

“It's always water,” he said, nonsensically. But he picked up the other handle. We raised the big flat basket between us. I was relieved that he did not have trouble with it. Fifty pounds of potatoes is not a huge load, but this close, I could see that his muscles were still twitching. Electricity, as all we Children have cause to know, can be a tricky thing to get through, and Elián either had little tolerance for it, or had taken a large dose.

“So,” he said. “This is what it's like to be royalty.”

“Yes . . . ?” I was beginning to think I'd been right to treat him like a skittish goat. Like our goats he seemed vaguely to be Planning Something. The wickerwork shook between us and dust bloomed and stuck to my skin. I tried not to sneeze. “Yes. This is what it's like to be a Child of Peace.”

“Somehow I thought there'd be air-conditioning,” Elián said. Grego swallowed a laugh, and Elián looked over his shoulder at him. “Look at me, though. I can't believe I'm shaking out potatoes with Princess Greta.”

“Yes,” said Grego. “Greta is our best potato-shaker, no doubt. Perhaps tomorrow you will joint a goat with Thandi.”

“No,” said Elián—and the proctor at his feet flexed upward on its joints. Elián barely glanced at it. “I only mean— I've seen you in vids, is all.”

“You've seen my vids?” I was surprised. Of course I was in many vids. I was to be the ruler of my country one day, if I lived, and it was important that my people know and love me. They did, too. They loved me rather in the way they might love a child with cancer, because it was so sad, and I was so brave. Neither love—the cancer love or the hostage love—had much to do with the reality of life under threat, but it would serve. The vids made it serve. But I did not know that the vids reached beyond the Pan Polar borders.