The Swan Riders (20 page)

“Is your bow reparable?” I asked.

Sri's bolt had cracked one of the arms, and Francis's attempt to fire had snapped it. Francis Xavier looked down the string that curled down toward his boot. “I doubt it.”

“Then we can overdose him,” I said. And repeated what FX had said about the execution of the trommeller woman, Alba. “We can make it very quick.”

Silence. A count of one, two, three, four. And then Francis Xavier looked up—far, far up, at the sky, as, with exquisite slowness, it started to snow.

“All right,” he said. “Go get the kit.”

I went to get the kit.

It took me a little time—we'd made such a jumble of our gear, in this chaotic night—and by the time I had found the syringe and the morphalog it was snowing heavily, wandering flakes big as feathers.

I came back and found Talis still sleeping, and Francis Xavier seated beside him, holding one limp hand. It had grown a little warmer—snow is exothermic; it gives off heat as it freezes—and very quiet. There seemed to be no sound in all the world, except a little wind, and the horses breathing.

A snowflake fell on the corner of Talis's mouth and he came fluttering half awake. His head tipped toward me, eyelids flickering as if in a dream.

It would be rather wrenching, killing him.

Another snowy touch and his eyes opened.

And it wasn't him. I was face-to-face with Rachel.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” she said. And squeezed the hand that held hers. “Francis? What's happening?”

“It's nothing,” Francis Xavier answered. “Go back to sleep.”

“But it's snowing,” she said nonsensically, then blinked, vanishing into sleep for a moment. When her eyes opened again, the person looking out of them was a mix of Talis and Rachel and some drowsy, sleep-addled child. Another blink, another dipping out of view. Then surfacing again. “Greta?”

“Rachel?”

“No, I—” Talis slurred. “It gets muddled, when I sleep.” His eyes fluttered closed again, and his voice came softly. “
It's changing
.”

It certainly was. I was not sure if it was him, or Rachel.

I was not sure which I wanted for him. In this last moment.

“Just rest, then,” said Francis Xavier. “Just . . .” He raised the pale, dirty hand and pressed it against his lips.

Talis opened his eyes. He looked from one to the other of us, and his gaze suddenly sharpened from bleary to raven-bright. “What's happening?”

“Francis Xavier and I have been discussing our course of action,” I said. “How to minimize our exposure, given that our enemies know where we are.”

A three-pronged dilemma: to stay here was untenable. To move Talis was impractical. To leave him was unthinkable.

But in every dilemma, one prong must give, and so I was thinking the unthinkable. I was prepared to explain, but Talis was smart. Far less so than he had been, of course, but still: he was smart. I watched his face as he worked it through, at human speeds. And I saw the point where he began thinking it too.

He reached out for me. I lifted the hand and checked his pulse: still a bit faint, and suddenly fast. It trembled like a bird. “We would never leave you.”

“Thank you,” he said.

We never would. To slip away would be emotionally easier for us, perhaps, but much, much uglier for him. I opened my fingers to show him the syringe. “We would never leave you. I have painkillers.”

He looked grateful for an instant, then realized what I was saying. “Oh, to hell with
that.
”

“Talis—” I was ready to lay out the case.

He cut me off. “Greta, honey: you know the guy who wrote ‘Do not go gentle into that good night'? I once shanked him in a bar fight.”

“Dylan Thomas wrote that. He died in 1953.” They could not possibly have met.

“Metaphorically, Greta,” he said. “Metaphorically.” I think he would have sighed if he could have managed the rib movement. “I'm saying that dying quietly's not in my . . . idiom. I'm not letting you overdose me.”

“It's not up to you,” I said. “And it's already decided.”

“Oh, don't be ridiculous.”

“I'm not.” Talis had never had any trouble reading faces: he would know I was serious.

“Okay, then:
do
be ridiculous. Didn't I leave you with anything ridiculous?”

He hadn't. He knew he hadn't.

Talis yanked free of both of us and tried to push himself up. I saw his wrist lock, his arm tremble. Sweat sprang up on his face. Then his elbow buckled and he fell. Just a few inches, but hard. He was suddenly so pale that he had freckles I'd never seen before.

“Easy,” Francis murmured. “Easy.” He slipped his hands under the narrow shoulders and helped Talis settle back against the bed we'd built him.

“Et tu, Francis?”
said Talis, gulping down pain. “Come on. You're the most loyal person I know. You wouldn't sign off on this.” The snow melting on his face gave the illusion of tears.

“Can you hold him, FX?” I asked.

Francis Xavier's face was stiff as leather. “Hold him how?”

“Just the arm. Straight out, so I can reach the interior of the elbow.”

“Now?” said Francis Xavier. His voice cracked.

I had dragged out a syringe—so old-fashioned, but still the best way to move things intravenously—for a reason. If I needed to inject Talis against his will, then I wanted to hit a vein. It was by far the most efficient way to do it: the venous system would bring the blood and the drug quickly to the heart's right side. From there it would hit the lungs, and then be pushed by the more powerful left side of the heart up into the aorta. It would be in the brain ten seconds after it left the needle. He'd be groggy in fifteen seconds, unconscious in thirty.

I wanted to minimize any terror he might feel.

“FX,” I prompted.

“You cannot be serious,” said Talis, his eyes wide. “You're not serious.”

“Just the arm, Francis,” I said.

Francis Xavier took Talis by the wrist. He lifted the hand gently, kissed the palm. Then, slowly, he pulled the arm out straight.

“Don't you dare,” snarled Talis. He tried to lunge up, and went pale. His EM spiked and dipped, and then—

He vanished.

“Francis?” said Rachel.

I paused in the act of pushing up Talis's sleeve.

Francis Xavier closed his eyes as if hiding from something. “Please, Talis: Don't.”

“Don't talk to him,” said Rachel softly. “Talk to me.”

Had Talis—could Talis—let Rachel surface as a strategic move? If it
was
a strategy, it was a good one. Even I was forced to consider: Talis might only be a copy, but Rachel was not.

Mitigating that was the fact that she was already doomed.

Still. I could see the veins of the anterior forearm beneath the skin. All three were visible, the basilic, medial, and cephalic coming together into a runic W inside the elbow. Rachel had good veins, for this sort of thing. I did not know when I had ever seen a body held so open, so vulnerable. In any normal person, it would evoke pity.

Francis Xavier held Rachel's wrist clamped and his eyes squeezed fiercely shut.

“Francis,” said Rachel. “Look at me.”

“Talis,” Francis Xavier hissed. “
Don't.
”

“It's not him. It's not, I promise it's not. Look at me.”

Francis Xavier opened his eyes. And for a moment the two of them just looked at each other. There are only seven basic microexpressions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise, and contempt. Oddly enough, there is no facial expression that unambiguously shows love. Or grief. Or regret. Or duty. They are not ancient enough, not animal enough, to have become involuntary.

They are too human.

“You know my carving's almost finished,” said Rachel.

He looked down to where his hand was locked around her wrist, hiding her Rider's tattoo. “I know.”

“And yours . . . ?”

Francis Xavier shook his head.

“You've still never been ridden,” Rachel said.

“Still a virgin.” Francis Xavier gave a very small laugh and turned his face aside, blushingly. “And with this one you can't help me, my small girl. . . .”

“You're frightened,” she said. “It's not so bad. It's like dreaming.”

Francis Xavier shot a look in my direction. “She's AI,” he warned Rachel. “She'll record . . .”

Then it was true: the Riders were keeping something secret.

Rachel too looked at me. A Talis-like blue intensity came out of those eyes, but the set of the face was not his. It was strange, to see Talis so transformed and yet be unable to pinpoint the difference. There must have been something human left in me after all, something that could look into the eyes and see the soul, not look into the database and assign the probability.

When Rachel looked at me, I was sure of what she was. What made the hair come up on my scalp was that for a moment I was not sure of what
I
was.

Her glance and my prickle of fear lasted only a moment. Talis sometimes had eyes only for me. Rachel,
in extremis
, had other fish to fry. I saw the fingers of her trapped hand curl, as if she'd hold on to FX—but if that was her intent, it didn't work. His hand was rigid as a shackle at her wrist. “Francis,” she whispered. “Why are you doing this?”

“I—” In the silence I watched the snow fall onto the little swirled knots of his hair, the nape of his neck, vanishing into his warmth as if falling into water. It was a long moment before he lifted his head and looked at Rachel again. “I can't watch you die, Rachel Jean. When it's not even
you
.”

“And this is better?”

“No.” Francis Xavier's voice cracked and the word seemed to break something inside him. He let go and folded up, as if around pain. He put the heel of his hand to his eye, banged the blunt top curve of his pincer between his eyebrows.

For a moment Rachel and I both watched him shake.

Then he said, blindly: “I will carry you. As far as it takes.”

He uncovered his eyes. And it was Talis who met them. The AI drew out a smile as if it were a knife and said: “Good.”

W
ell.” I frowned at Francis. “If we're not going to kill him, what are we going to do?”

Francis Xavier did not seem to be listening. He looked as if someone had kicked him in the stomach. Talis scrubbed at his eyes. “Let me think: I'm thinking. Don't kill me while I'm thinking.”

“I wasn't asking
you
 . . .” It still seemed to me that killing Talis was a reasonable option, but it would be hard to do without Francis's obedience, and a glance at the Swan Rider told me I wouldn't have it.

“There's a refuge,” said Talis. And then paused. “Isn't there? I can't . . .”

If you want to know,
he'd said to me, over and over,
just know.
And now he couldn't. That must be very strange for him.

“Thirty-six point five miles, if we take the southern ford. A bit more if we backtrack, but the terrain is more even. Francis?” I wanted his evaluation, but he was looking at me blankly, as if he hadn't heard a thing. “Francis!”

He flexed his shoulders to reset himself. His pincer went
clink
. “A hard day's ride. Two, in the snow.”

“Three or four days, then . . .” A reasonable estimate, given that Talis couldn't even sit up. “That's a long way to go to no purpose. Is there a plan?”

“Sure,” said Talis. “My short-term plan is not to die.”

“Is there a long-term plan?”

“Peace on earth, goodwill toward men,” said Talis, with a stagger in his breath that should have been a sigh. “See, it's only the middle bit that's always giving me trouble.”

The snow was falling faster now, heavy and thick and straight down. The horses, bunched together by the wall, were like shadows cast on a scrim.

“Going to the refuge seems predictable.” I glanced at Francis Xavier. Emotional turmoil aside, he had a fine military mind.

“Yes.”

I flipped my hand at him, the inverse of a Swan Rider's salute.
Give me more.

“Yes,” said Francis Xavier, who was very definitely not crying. “Of course it's predictable. There's nowhere else to go.” He swallowed.“On the other hand, they hardly need to ambush us.”

True. If Sri and her people had plans for a next step, there was little we could do to outrun or evade it.

“Look,” said Talis. “We could at this point be defeated by a pair of determined goats, or a toddler with a stapler. The refuge gives us options. A tissue knitter.” He tapped his chest. A tissue knitter could repair the torn muscles, give him some relief for what must be overwhelming pain. “There's heat. Weapons. Communications. We could call in a shuttle.”