The Swan Riders (28 page)

Only an AI could have opened that message. But only I could have read it. It spoke, almost in a voice, directly to me.

Xie. Talis had tried to take her from me—succeeded, but only briefly. I lay on the tatami at the edge of my endurance, with the world in my throat and three cities in ruins, and I remembered Xie. Curls and drifts of memory, Xie's kiss and slipping fingers, her low voice and little body. Four thousand dawns and evenings, drifts of memory like thick comforters.

I slipped free of the
UNDEAD.
Xie covered me.

And there, on Francis's floor, tucked in the curve of Elián's body, I slept, long and dreamlessly.

I didn't wake until Elián started screaming.

I
jolted back into myself.

Elián was lying on the floor beside me, and Two was standing over him, with one boot heel resting in the hollow of his shoulder. Francis Xavier was holding down his other hand.

“Hi, guys,” said Two, grinning down. “Anybody got a knife I can borrow?”

I was on my knees in a blink. “The datastore. You saw—”

“I saw, yes indeedy.” Two twisted his foot a little. Elián closed his mouth tight. “And I've got
lots
of questions.”

“Reykjavík,” I said. “Edinburgh.”

“Exactly. I've got a superpower in rebellion. And, I mean, riots and public defiance are one thing. I can answer them with smoking cities. But this kid murdered me.”

“Well,” said a voice from the doorway. “Not
technically
.”

Michael.

He ducked into the yurt, and two Swan Riders came in after him, flanking him as if he were a prisoner. “I've said it before and I'll say it again: Elián Palnik is a hotheaded pretty boy with strategic thinking deficiencies, but he's not a murderer.”

“Yeah,” gritted Elián, flat on the floor. “Thanks for the character reference, Mikey. Little help here? Under Greta's protection, and all that?”

“Two—” I said.

The AI blinked. “As in ‘version two'? Because it's actually four thousand, three hundred ninety-five.”

“
Two
is unambiguous,” I said. “I already know a Talis.”

“And I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Standing here,” said Michael. “Not dead.”

“But not Talis,” said Two.

“His datastore,” I began.

“Oh, it's a mess. The short off the affinity bridge was massive. It's flashes. It's fragments. There's no person there at all.” He flapped a hand in his other self's direction. “Whoever
that
is—”

It wasn't Talis.

“Greta calls me Michael,” said Michael. “And what was that about Reykjavík?”

Two twisted the corner of his boot heel into Elian's collarbone. “Greta, want to fill him in?”

“Um, guys,” Elián gasped, “aren't you forgetting something?”

“The Pan Polar rebellion is ongoing,” I told Michael. “And the new queen—she has no children.”

Michael blinked three times. An old habit, merely, but it gave him an AI-ish look, as if he were orienting, processing. He looked sideways at his other self. “At the week marks, then?”

“A city every Sunday evening,” said Two. He leaned over Elián, making his magician's flourish—and conjuring a knife into his hand. “But what I want to know right now is whether those rebels have found a way in. Because you, young man, got uncomfortably close.”

“Two,” I started—but Michael was faster, and picked a better target. “FX,” he said. “Let Elián go. He's a Swan Rider, and he's under Greta's protection.”

Francis Xavier let Elián go.

And Elián exploded into action. With his freed hand he feinted at Two's groin. The AI dodged, off-balance, and Elián hooked him around the knee and pulled him down. Two landed on top of Elián with a whoosh of breath. The knife went skidding off across the floor. Elián rolled Two and would have pinned him, except that the Swan Rider guards rushed in and grabbed him. There was a brief, furious struggle, and then the Swan Riders had Elián on his knees.

“Murderer, maybe not,” said Elián. “Sheep wrestler, definitely.”

The AI rose over Elián like thunder brewing.

“Two,” I said. “I have Elián Palnik under my protection.”

“Oh, new girl,” said Two. “I don't think so.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I've got reports of Swan Rider teams being attacked all over the Confederation. I've got Pan Polar troops massing on the Siberian border, and I still don't have their hostage. I might have to get involved in a
land war
in
Asia
. This is not the best time to push me.”

“Elián has nothing to do with any of that,” I said. “And he's under my protection.”

“Yeah, I know you've got a Romeo-and-Juliet thing going on,” said Two. “But the thing about that play, and people forget this, is that
everybody dies
.”

“It's not like that,” said Michael.

“Well, what's it like, then,” said Two. “Spit it out. Because this is not a personal indulgence. This is a global rebellion that's come damn close to home.”

“I'm not—” began Elián, and then yelped as one of the guards—it was Renata, the Dutch woman from last night—dug her fingers into the pressure point in his throat.

“Renata, if you'd be so . . . ,” I began, and suddenly saw her fingers with the fixation only an AI can manage. I saw their exact skin tone; the pattern of the folds around the knuckles, the shape of the nails.

“. . . kind,” I finished. I looked up. Renata's eyes were hard as marbles, and she was afraid.

“I'll do it,” I said.

Elián said: “What?”

Renata's cold eyes melted a little. Doubt. Hope.

“I love him,” I said. “I do love him, but—we need the information.”

“
Finally
.” Michael broke out a sunny grin. “Can I help?”

“No, I—it should be me. Only”—and here I feigned to look girlish and shy—”only, could we do it in private? It's . . . private.”

Two was looking at me. I was reluctant to call him Talis, but oh, I knew that microscope look, those quick calculations. I could see them bare for an instant, and then a chipper mask dropped into place. “Well, in that case.” He took a step back and made a half-bow. “Renata. Joel. If you could just give us a moment . . .” He tapped the side of his nose.

With some reluctance, the two Swan Rider guards let Elián go.

Elián scrambled up. I was afraid he might bolt, might fight, but for a moment he was only stunned. Francis Xavier took that moment to twist one arm behind his back and lift him onto tiptoe. He locked the crook of his other arm around Elián's throat.

Two retrieved his knife, flipped it round his fingers a couple of times, and handed it to me.

I looked down at it and made a couple of passes in the air. It was very sharp. It shimmered in my hand like a shard of light. I saw Renata's eyes catch it—and Elián's eyes catch it. Elián was helpless, trembling, locked in place as Talis had once been.

As for Michael himself, he strode in and tossed his coat at the bedpost as if he'd done it a thousand times before. And maybe he had, or Rachel had, because it caught. It hung there swinging.

“Greta,” Elián gulped. “You're not—you won't—”

The Swan Riders were going, then gone.

“I need you to start screaming in a moment,” I told him. “It's part of a plan.”

Michael started to laugh. “Oh, Elián, you should see your face.”

“Greta,” said Two. “What did you just see?”

“Those men who helped Sri, at the church,” I began.

“The Pan Polar rebels,” said Michael. “The trommellers.”

“No,” I said. “They were Swan Riders.”

Together, and in exactly the same tone, Two and Michael said: “
What?
”

“Renata was the woman who held me back when Talis was stabbed.”

“You're sure,” said Two.

“I'm sure about Renata.”

Two looked as if someone had hit him in the stomach. The Swan Riders helping the Pan Polars? It didn't go. It didn't fit.

And, as he'd already noted, it was far too close to home.

“Can I get down now?” said Elián.

But Two shook his head, and Francis Xavier tipped Elián further off his feet. The AI stepped close. “Please believe that I will dig confirmation of this out from under your fingernails if I need to.” He turned to Michael. “What do you think?”

“They . . . ,” Michael began. He pushed at his wound as if by reflex. When he wrinkled his shirt I could see that there was a dip missing from him, as if someone had scooped into him with a melon baller. The unplanted datastore. “They hit me with an EMP weapon. I could hardly see. And of course it was on my mind—we saw Calgary. Had this run-in in Saskatoon. I assumed, but I don't—I can't replay it. I'm not sure, and I can't replay it.”

Two paused, then blinked. “I can't either. The record's shredded.”

“The Swan Riders can hardly look at me.” I ticked my thoughts off, like points of evidence, on my fingers. “And Elián can hardly look at them. And their shirts—”

They'd come out from the graves in such bright shirts, so unlike what Swan Riders usually wore, so unsuitable for ambush. So fastidiously buttoned at the wrist, against ticks, yes, but also covering any traces of wing tattoos.

“Trommellers don't keep horses,” said Francis Xavier. “Not in any number.”

Two suddenly closed the distance with the helpless Elián—embraced him so that they were forehead-to-forehead, close enough to kiss, with his hands against Elián's spine. “This is your cue,” he said with a murmuring smile. “Start screaming.”

And then he yanked Elián forward with huge force, enough to send him to the ground, except that his arm was still wrenched behind him and pinned. Elián's shoulder came unseated with a pop.

Elián screamed. Just once, a heart-wringing cry.

“Two!” I shouted.

Michael pulled me back. “Easy. We have to make this look good, remember?”

Two didn't even glance at me. “Drop him,” he ordered FX.

Francis Xavier dropped Elián's wrist, and Elián crashed to his knees, his good hand clutching his hurt shoulder, his body curling up. He gulped down a moan.

Two crouched in front of him. “The Swan Riders,” he said. “I've heard enough to put each and every one of them up against a wall.”

“Not all of them,” Elián gasped. “It's not all of them.”

Not Francis, for instance. I would bet my life on it. Then I shivered, realizing: I already had.

“Which, then?” said Two. “Who?”

“I d-don't—” Elián stuttered. “I—no names.”

“Why would they tell him their names?” I asked. “It would be a completely unnecessary risk.”

“Hmmm.” Two rocked back on his heels. “Well then, how many? By the way, I put that back in its socket and the pain vanishes pretty much instantly.”

“Half that nice,” grunted Elián to Michael. “Is all I'm saying.”

“Elián,” I said. I wasn't sure what I wanted from him, but it wasn't to see him in pain. Which is what I got. Two lunged and knocked Elián to the ground, which didn't take much. He grabbed Elián's wrist and pulled.

Elián set his teeth, but a whimper leaked through them.

“This is good,” said Michael. “I'm sure this sounds very realistic.”

“It's some of them or all of them,” said Two. “So how many? How many were they when you met?”

“Two,” said Elián. “There were just two. I was—I was lost; I was out of water; I was going to die. They found me.”

Two was the number in a standard Swan Rider away team. But it was also the minimum number of people Elián could implicate—and in the end, there had been fourteen.

“Swan Riders to the rescue.” Two relaxed the pull on Elián's wrist, but he didn't let it go. “Keep talking.”

“You told them about me,” I guessed, because I knew that Elián would
not
keep talking. “They asked who you were, and you told them, and then you told them what you were doing out there. You told them about Talis, and you told them about me. And they said they had a way to make an AI human again.”

“Ewwww . . . ,” said Two, like a child who's been asked to eat worms. “That would never work.”

“It would never work for Greta,” said Michael.

“It would never work, full stop,” said Two, cross. He rocked back onto the balls of his feet and ran his hand through his hair, raising it into spikes. “Okay, enough. We need to move.”

“Two,” I said. “His shoulder.”

“I'll do it,” said Michael, kneeling beside Elián. He braced a knee against Elián's rib cage and found the pressure points in the shoulder. “Hey?” He touched Elián's face to get his attention. “Don't fight me, okay?”

Elián squinted at him through tears. Surprise, said the expression, beneath the pain, the tears. “Okay,” he whispered.