The Swan Riders (35 page)

And then she turned aside to watch the blast doors. “The Death Star has cleared the planet. . . . Come on now, sweetheart. That's your cue.”

And on that cue, the doors opened.

They did not boom open, twenty-five tons swinging on nine-hundred-pound hinges, with a blaze of light—satisfying as that would be. There was a little airlock in one of them, smaller than a man, like the portal into Oz. Through it came Francis Xavier, ducking to get under the lintel.

He was carrying a chair.

It was the chair that kept me from being sure instantly: it is hard to know anyone by their gait when they are descending a mountain staircase while carrying a five-hundred-year-old fiberglass-shelled school chair inverted over their head. Or perhaps I simply did not want to be sure. Did not want to be sure that this was not Francis Xavier. That he was dying now. That he was gone.

My uncertainty was a doubtful grace, and it did not last long. The figure in its familiar battered boots and swinging coat came striding through the Swan Riders without a glance at any of them. He flipped the chair down to make a fourth in our little circle—a bit awkward with one hand, in a way FX would never be. Then he flung himself into the molded seat as if only loosely aware of the principles on which chairs operated. He stuck his long legs out to nudge his counterpart's ankles.

“Hello,” said Two. “Having fun?”

“Always fancied going out with a bang,” said Michael. The voice was doubled, and the eyes were still transformed, still blazing with a new power that made me want to grin like a schoolgirl. But Two just
missed
it. Like the horse-and-rider carvings, like the hole in the datascape, it was his blind spot, and he missed it.

“What about you, Greta,” Two said. “Settling in okay?”

“Tolerably.”

“And you, my little Rider?”

Elián shrugged. “Oh, you know. Making friends. Surviving torture. Plotting your death. The usual.”

“Excellent!” said Two, and then opened his attention like a blast radius. “So, it turns out, a Rider's experience of being possessed can vary quite a bit, depending in part on how willing they are. It can be nearly without incident, or it can be deeply traumatic. I did not know that, and so I owe you folks a general apology.” He looped a hand through the air. “Though honestly, people, you might have mentioned.”

He leaned forward. “Now that that's cleared up. Greta, how do you feel about Turkey?”

“The country or the bird?”

“The country. There's this hand-dug cave city at Derinkuyu—going on three thousand years old, but don't think primitive: it's
so
cool. Can house twenty thousand, complete with stables and churches and the ever-important wine press. I have a data silo there. And a few presumably less traitorous hands on the ground.”

“Lord Talis,” I said. “I am not going anywhere with you.”

“Sure?” Two's smile had mania in it—a demonic flash of Francis Xavier's very white teeth. It flipped my heart to see Francis so—and to finally understand what Francis had seen when Talis had come striding out of the Precepture wearing Rachel's face. His heart must have been in free fall. But he had been so so quiet.

“You cannot order me,” I said. “And I think you'll find you're out of people who are willing to see me dragged.”

“You're so interesting,” said Two. “I would hate to write you off.”

“I know you would.” I leaned my weight on those words. I leaned hard. “In fact, I know you won't.”

“I like the Red Mountains,” said Michael suddenly. “I like the wind on the water. I like the ravens. I like—” A glance at Francis Xavier's hand, and the voice turned soft-edged, almost Rachel's purely. “I like the people. I don't particularly want to go to Turkey.”

“You're not going to Turkey,” said Two. “You're going to die.”

“I'm going to hear these people out first,” Michael answered. “They've given us their lives and their loyalty. And I'm going to hear them out.”

“You're not even AI anymore,” said Two. “You get that, right? You're not AI, and you're not in charge. Anything they tell you, any reaction you have, is going to last all of a week or two.”

I had once seen Michael and Rachel as teetering as if balanced on the edge of a knife. Now they were balanced—and still a knife. “You have no idea what I am.”

And Two finally saw it. Blade-sharp. Blazing. For an instant he looked knocked back. Then he said: “Well. Maybe we can find out.” He raised a hand like an orchestra conductor, and he snapped his fingers.

The door in the mountain opened. Out of it came two machines, carrying a stretcher. The machines were automatons shaped like insects, like praying mantises, and I'd seen such at the Precepture, often enough. But the stretcher—there was a human form on it, wrapped in an orange quilt. Hanging off one side was a bony brown hand. Stretcher and robots crossed the meadow and the Swan Riders parted for them as if watching a bride go by.

Lying on the stretcher was Sri.

I saw Michael's shoulders tighten, his mouth fall open.

“I think you called dibs,” said Two. He leaned forward like a man trying to tell diamond from glass by the fog of his breath. And this was every bit that much a test.

“There's nothing you can do to her that's worse than the palsy,” said Renata. Her voice was tight, furious and frightened.

“I wouldn't bet on that,” murmured Michael, glancing at me. I could see the grey room in his eyes. Yes. There were always worse things. He wobbled to his feet and took steps to come into striking range of the stretcher.

Sri looked as if she hadn't eaten in weeks, hadn't had a drink in days: her skin was dull and pulled mummy-tight across the sharpness of her bones. Her bright hair had gone fine as spiderwebs, dulled and matted. But her eyes were open. Huge in her sunken face, filmed with pain, but open, and aware. Michael leaned over her and she tracked the movement, hypnotized.

I'm going to gift wrap you
, he'd told her,
before I send you to hell
. His hand fell on the edging of the quilt by her throat, his fingers rubbing the little red silk heart that was embroidered there.

“Hey,” he said. “You made it home.”

“Hey . . .” Sri's voice was a whisper, made hoarse by screaming. “So did you.” Her eyes went to me, and then to the body of Francis Xavier. She'd told FX to get out before it was too late. But he hadn't. And now it was. “You all made it.” She swallowed, incompletely—there was drool at the corner of her mouth. “Michael, please . . . they made me leave my horse.”

Penned in a refuge somewhere? Tied out to graze? Two must have sent machines after her, because no Swan Rider would ever, ever doom a horse like that.

Michael scrunched his nose. “We'll fix that,” he answered, and then he shuddered. The ten minutes I'd bought us: time was up. “Could—” Michael asked Sri. “Could you hold my hands a moment?” And the seizure struck him, hard.

Sri lost control of the flailing hands in less than a second, and Elián dove in from behind to catch the tumbling body, and things ended up with Michael bent forward, head on Sri's stomach, waist circled in Elián's arms. Sri put her arm around the shoulders, wrapped her fingers in the hair as if into the mane of a runaway horse. She couldn't see the face, but I could, and I could see Sri picturing it. The blood from the bit tongue. The fight not to scream.

Mirrors and mirrors.

Francis Xavier's body stood silently over the scene. Very black and very beautiful, with his head bare and one sleeve fluttering empty, his coat stirring.

And all around us the wind blew through the wings of the Swan Riders, a sharp sound, like a scythe being sharpened.

“Did anybody want to take this moment to state their demands?” said Two.

I glanced at him, and read him at the glance. I'd been a Precepture child, and I knew well enough the look of someone distracting themselves from the unpleasantness of larger truths. Two was a towering paradox of glee and calm in Francis Xavier's body—but it couldn't be easy, to watch yourself die.

I let him stew.

He stewed awhile.

And it really did seem that the new Michael, just born, was dying, sobbing soundlessly under Sri's helpless hands.

“We want—” said Renata—unwisely. Unwisely, because silence was always the best way to negotiate with Talis, and unwisely because it made Two turn and target her.

“You want to do
that
to all of us,” he snapped, for a second genuinely furious, out of control, terrifying.

“Not quite,” I murmured.

“Well, what then? Someone walk me through it.” Two pulled back into himself and attempted to spike up Francis Xavier's knotted hair. He gave up on that and turned from the scene in disgust. “Come on, people.”

“Hard to watch?” Elián guessed. “Different when you've got some skin in the game?”

“It's not
my
skin,” Two snapped. “And I honestly don't get why I haven't killed you.”

“Yeah,” said Elián. “You say that a lot.”

Suddenly the episode of the palsy climaxed, and Michael arched backward as if caught in a current. Elián kept hold and Michael sagged back against him, barely conscious. They were both on their knees in the ashes. Elián looked around. “Go on, guys. Someone tell him what you want.”

“We want to save you, Talis,” said Sri. She was propped up on one elbow on the stretcher, between the motionless machines. It was clearly all she could manage, and it was surprising that she could manage even that. She looked like a figure in a morality play: Dissolution, say. Or Pestilence. The saffron-orange quilt slid down her body.

Two looked her up and down, raised an eyebrow, and echoed Michael unknowingly: “Funny way of showing it.”

“The AIs are dying,” she said. “They're falling apart. You've got most of them in boxes, and they are not going to come back out. You're losing them.”

“And you can help?”

“We can try,” said Daji. “Our research says the read/write properties of the datastore can be changed. We can help you be more human.”

“Yeah,” said Two, looking down at Elián and at his other self. “Human looks fabulous. So tempting.”

“My lord—” said Daji.

“No,” Two interrupted. “Definitely, no. Obviously, no. Honestly, what on earth made you think I'd go for this? There's nothing you can do to force me. A little blade in the right place, sure, but the bigger truth is that me and mine could be in Derinkuyu or any one of a dozen other silos in one point seven seconds. Whereas this place.” He whirled one finger in the air, reminding us all of the weapons platform that was holding position directly overhead. “You have just spectacularly bad timing, gang. The world is sliding toward war, and you're the only army I have.”

“So,” said Renata. “Go to war with the army you have.”

“Oh, I will,” said Two. “Right after I destroy all the problematic parts with beams from space.”

Renata's face flushed and tightened, but Daji bowed his head and made the Rider's salute. “Our lives are yours, Lord Talis.”

“Uh-huh,” said Two. “Just at the moment, they very much are.”

“Except Sri's,” wheezed Michael. He was rousing in Elián's arms, and his tone—pure Talis—made me look at him sharply. To my surprise, Elián was helping him, supporting him as he climbed to his feet and stood there as if his knees were untrustworthy. He looked up at Two. “Dibs, remember?”

Yes, that was Talis. What had happened to that shining, newborn strangeness? It seemed entirely gone.

I tried to get it back: “Michael,” I said—having no other name to call. “Wait.”

“I'm
busy
, Greta.” There were weird flares all over his aura; so many signs of pain/desperation/deception/anticipation in his physiology that it was as if he'd grown spikes. He smiled up at the very tall Two. “I've always liked ironic symmetry, so I'm assuming you have a knife.”

“
The
knife, in fact,” said Two, bumping back his coat and drawing Elián's dagger from the sheath at his belt. He was frowning a little, presumably at all that spikiness, but he handed over the blade. “I knew that was still you. Spot of therapeutic revenge?”

“Yes, I am still me.”

And yet. I watched the movements microscopically: the hand fiddling to settle the dagger, the fingers closing one at a time. The head tipped downward, staring at the knife, as if fascinated.

“I am still me. But—it changes you. Caring for someone. Being cared for. It changes you.”

Michael raised the knife as if to look at it. But if he really wanted to look at it, he was holding it backward: the handle facing inward, the blade pointed at Two.

My jaw dropped open. Michael—but it wasn't Michael—caught my eye. And I saw it. I saw all the masks fall away. There was a person there, smooth and shattered, broken and blazing. She was still facing Two and the toes of her boots were digging into the ash.

She looked up.

Two blinked.

He started to dodge, and Daji shouted and dove, but it was too little, too late.

The shining figure sprang forward, like a fencer's flèche, like a hawk striking, and drove the knife into Two's chest.

It struck him hard and true.

Infraclavical, and in the second intercostal space.

Francis Xavier bellowed and toppled, and the new person caught him and fell with him and they both went down. I could see Francis Xavier's eyes over her shoulder, huge and watering and wild and
his
.

“Rachel?” whispered Francis Xavier.

“
Francis,
” she said.

T
he knife was sticking out of Francis Xavier's chest.