The Swan Riders (7 page)

Xie. Talis would take her, if he had to.

And he would have to. We had eight hundred miles to travel—eight hundred miles to run, with a smoking city at our back. With some unknown threat everywhere, cutting into us like wind chill. Eight hundred miles of Talis's balancing act. I had to stop remembering or memory would kill me. I had to stop remembering or Talis would take the memory from me. It would be one or the other. Those were the two abysses, on the left and on the right.

Somewhere in these miles he would peel open my mind, and I would lose whatever it was that I had found when Xie had taken my hand. The deep ache that was the foundation of human love. The pain that proved I was, underneath all the data, still human.

Talis lounged there in the dry grass, his eyes spooked, his hands aglow as if holding fire.

He would take my soul, out here. And I could think of no way to stop him.

T
a-da,” said Talis. “Secret base!”

“Oh, thank God,” I said—because now I could get off the horse.

And yet I did not see a base, secret or otherwise. It was deep twilight, almost dark. We had just crossed a dry creek and then had ridden up a draw, edged with sumac and rising into a little swelling of hills. We had stopped in front of one of these.

Even looking right at it, it took me another three seconds to spot it: there was a door in the side of the hill.

It was a plain wooden door, weathered grey and framed in grey and grey-gold grass. It seemed to lead into the hill itself. To human eyes, there would have been nothing else.

But my eyes could see the disruption to the structure of the hill, where framing had long ago been covered in turf. I looked around. The sheltered meadow at the foot of the hill bore traces of some big animal grazing, recently and often. That cluster of tall grass on the next slope wasn't grass at all, but a set of piezoelectric generators, drawing power from the smallest stir of wind.

A secret base.

“Secure it,” said Talis crisply.

“I'll take the inside,” said Sri, swinging to the ground. Her voice was cheerful, but she drew and cranked her crossbow. Francis Xavier reined his horse up and around. He too had a crossbow in his hands. The big horse peeled away from us, moving fast. Sri, meanwhile, opened the door and went in weapon-first.

“Did you see something?” I asked. “Is someone here?”

“Wouldn't think so,” said Talis, but he did not dismount.

Gordon Lightfoot went sideways like a crab, snorting and turning his head. I realized I was pulling back on his reins, and stopped. “What are they checking for?”

“Bombs. Assassins. Rabid badgers. Whatever might be there, really. You don't get to rule the world without a healthy dose of paranoia and some minions to take all the risks.” He scratched NORAD's neck. “Plus, you know, Calgary?”

Sri popped her head back out the refuge door. “All clear.”

Francis Xavier appeared on horseback on the hill above her, silhouetted dramatically against the sky. He made the Rider's salute. Talis waggled fingers at him and dismounted. I tried to copy him—the swing of his leg, the swirl of his long coat, expert grace—but when I did it my foot caught in the stirrup and my coat snagged on the saddle and my butt hit the ground with a puff of dust. Gordon looked at me over his shoulder, very much as if he could raise an eyebrow after all. Talis, laughing, freed my foot and hauled me to my feet. By then, Francis Xavier was there. Sri took charge of the horses, Francis Xavier took charge of me, and Talis went sweeping through the hidden door.

With somewhat less sweep—and somewhat more help—I followed. Francis Xavier's gentle hands were steady on my shoulders.

Inside the hill was a single room, whitewashed, low-roofed. It was split in two by a half-wall, into spaces for human and horse. The human side had a table and stools, and behind them a bit of open floor with an alcove on each side. A bed was set into one of them. The other alcove was empty. The side walls were lined with pegs, many with things hanging from them. A weapons rack. A shearling vest. A string of onions. Talis had said “secret base,” but this read more as . . . cottage. It was cozy. Homey. The bed was topped with a worn quilt in warm shades of saffron and poppy orange.

“Refuge Seven Ninety-Two,” said Talis.

And Sri offered: “Home sweet home.”

“You live here?” I asked.

“Not me,” said Sri. “I'm posted to a refuge on the other side of Saskatoon, about a hundred miles off. Before that I was on a conflict abatement mission, in the South Pacific.”

“Oh,” said Talis brightly. “I remember that.”

Sri's smile was positively uncanny. “I don't.”

“I strong-armed a four-way peace treaty with only one execution,” said Talis. “And then I got to swim with dolphins.”

“Calgary?” Francis Xavier reminded him. He was still holding my shoulders, and he spoke almost in my hair, but even so his voice was soft. Walking that edge between unquestioning obedience and fifty thousand questions.

“Ah, you're no fun,” Talis sulked. “The dolphins were awesome.” But he crossed to the back wall in three steps. There was something electronic—a screen and controls, a man-shaped hollow in the plasterwork—built in there, quiescent. The controls were a mix of touch surfaces and interface gelatin. Talis slapped the gel as if slapping a horse into a run. Lights flickered onto control surfaces. The man-shaped hollow began to glow. Along the hollow's edges were holes where retractable bars would thrust out, holding a person inside, like those gibbet cages in which criminals were once starved and displayed. An upload portal. I stood as far away from it as I politely could.

But Talis did not enter it. The smartwall produced a screen at his height, and it spun to life. He put one hand into the interface gel and with the other gestured at the screen like an orchestra conductor, sorting through options and control screens with bewildering speed. With five hundred years of practice behind him, he was faster than I could dream of. I could catch only the occasional word in the texts, the odd map whose familiar shape flashed into my brain like a puzzle piece finding its hole. I saw my mother's name, and mine. I saw—

“Halifax,” I said. “And Precepture Four.”

Sri glanced round at me. “You're fast.”

I hardly heard her. There was something creeping up my throat. Squeezing me just under my chin, like a hand closing.

“I recognize bits and pieces.” I swallowed, but it felt blocked, and my breath was too shallow. Something was wrong. “Talis, I can't follow at such a speed.”

Back to us, Talis shrugged. “Sorry. I'm just eager to get this . . . updated . . .” His voice drifted off, distracted.

Sri was still looking at me. “Talis. You're scaring her.”

Not him, not exactly. My country, flashing before my eyes at speeds too fast to follow, but even so falling piece by piece, falling apart. My country. I'd give my whole life in service to my country. It was why I was; it was who I was.

Talis had turned around, his fingers leaving the gel with a tiny pop. “Sorry,” he said, genuinely this time.

“What's happening?” I managed. “Calgary. I saw my mother—”

“Ah. Well. Turns out the PanPols are just the
teensiest
bit upset, on account of someone was mean to their princess.” The screens behind Talis were falling quiet. But my heart was pounding.

Me. That princess was me.

“A lot of talking heads questioning the value of the Precepture system, if it can't keep its hostages safe. A lot of rumblings in the government, which they probably don't know that I'm totally tapped into, basically on the same theme. Upshot is, the new king refused to turn over his son. Spirited him away to the royal apartments—”

“At Banff,” I said.

“So: Bamphf!” said Talis, spreading his hands in pure punnish glee. “Well, no, actually: seventy miles out, central Calgary. Far enough that the wee prince laddie wasn't hurt. Close enough to scare the pants off his daddy.”

“And big enough to make the point,” said Sri.

“See?” Talis grinned and flared his fingers. “All sorted. Told you I was on it.”

“But they're upset.” Pain was running in bolts from my hands to my shoulders. My words came out childish and small. “Because they saw—everyone saw.”

“Yeah, everyone saw,” said Talis, irritated. “The Cumberland broadcast shot right to the top of the charts.”

The Cumberland broadcast had been of an apple press. They had strapped my hands to the bottom block of an apple press. Then they'd lowered it.

Talis was still talking. “Not to mention your mother's abdication. She gave an unnecessarily moving speech about her daughter. Her brave and beautiful daughter, who had become AI.”

“They're—” But I found I could no longer speak. The feeling that squeezed around the corners of my jaws was stronger, tightening like a noose. It was fear, it was
shame.
I could feel it push my eardrums outward.

“Talis,” said Sri.

“Yeah, I see it. Easy, Greta. Come on. Deep breath.”

There were bands around my lungs.

Talis swept one finger along under my collarbone, up the side of my throat: the path of the affinity bridge, which connected the datastore to the webbing in the brain. A feather touch, a shiver. But it almost knocked me over.

I staggered.

Francis Xavier wrapped an arm around my chest and pulled me back against his body. I shut my eyes, but I could feel Talis stepping close to me. Sensors arcing out from his fingers like plasma from the surface of the sun.

“What is it, Greta? What are you remembering?”

“Oh,
guess.
”

He'd seen me being tortured. He shouldn't need me to say it.

“I know.” His thumbs moved under my cheekbones. “I know it was horrific. But Greta, you survived it. You're the person who survived it. Come on. You're still that person. Be that person.”

My face was flushed under his hands. My body shook. And I remembered, and remembered, and remembered. But it didn't feel like layers building up. It felt like a stripping away.

Skinning.

It meant: to be skinned.

“It's a lot to take,” said Talis. The electrical conductivity of his fingers was changing. “Patriotism. Royalty.”

“The who of me. The why of me.” It was almost nonsense but it made sense in my head. Too much. Everything. The muscles in my cheeks were firing, a series of small twitches.

I couldn't even stay on my feet without Francis but I threw up my hands, batting at Talis's chest. Ultrasound bounced around my sinuses. He was building a map. “Don't—”

“An event this big—”

“I know—”

“Category two, maybe even three. An event this big will kill you.”

My teeth were rattling. Beads on stone. Xie's headdress, coming apart. The click of gears as the apple press dropped.

“Hold her steady, FX,” said Talis.

Francis Xavier's voice, in my hair: “She said no.”

The world was breaking into strobes of itself. And I was on fire. Talis's fingers were points of light in my skin.

“Help,” I said. Or maybe “Stop.”

But nothing stopped.

Talis's fingers pushed into me.

There was a great rush of everything.

And then nothing at all.

I came up from—I did not know what. Nothing at all.

They'd laid me out on the bed and wrapped the quilts around me. I sat up, dragging blankets. I blinked three times. The Swan Riders' refuge, Refuge 792. Warm. Lit golden. They had a pellet stove going, a little box of heat. There were tears evaporating from my face in its heat, leaving trails of tightness, numbness. I could not quite remember why I had been crying.

I blinked again, and took inventory. Talis was nowhere in sight. Sri was sitting on the floor in the empty alcove, working on her carving. She had her boots off, and little curls of wood were falling onto her long brown bare toes.

At the table, Francis Xavier was taking apart a bridle, oiling and cleaning the pieces: intricate, delicate work. I could smell the neat's-foot oil and hear the click of the tack against the soft-worn metal of the tabletop. His hands moved together, not with frenetic energy, like Talis's dancing fingers, but with perfectly matched grace. Matched, despite their mismatch, like a pair of lovers, a team of horses. His left was such a dark umber that the black wing tattoo that cuffed it hardly showed. His right was translucent, pearly under the light fixture, metal bones inside it moving like trees in the fog.

“How did you lose it?” I asked.

I'd lost something.

“I was born without it,” he said.

“You didn't get ren-gen?”

He didn't answer. At length Sri filled in the blank. “We're not all born in royal courts, Greta.”