The Swan Riders (41 page)

And I said, “Grace.”

“Get Francis,” she said.

I went to get Francis.

Francis Xavier had been born on the banks of Lake Tana: dark water starred with white pelicans, the green weir over which spilled the Blue Nile. From him, I had learned what all fishermen should know: what drowning looks like, truly.

Drowning is quiet.

The thing itself, quiet. There is thrashing, shouting, reaching for any solid thing, but that comes first, and it is not part of drowning. Once there is water in you, once the liquid touches the feathery interior of the lungs—once that happens, things are quiet.

Talis sat up as if he could not help it, as if his muscles were all contracting in some tremendous current. But extensor muscles are universally stronger than contractors, and the next moment he was thrown open, resting almost on tiptoes and the crown of his head, caught in my arms and in Francis Xavier's, while Elián took one step backward, then two, then three. There was one last moment of fighting, of shouting, of reaching for any solid thing.

And then it was quiet. For three seconds. For five. Talis took a breath, and it was as if he had finally breathed in the water. He breathed again and each slow breath seemed to fill him a little more. His body got heavier. The sensors of his crown were shining like stars.

“Changed my mind,” he said. “About the kissing.”

Francis Xavier pressed his lips between one of the eyebrows—those black, startling, quizzical eyebrows—and the sensors. I had Talis's fingers tangled in my fingers. I raised his knuckles to my lips.

Talis sighed. And drowned.

T
here was then the matter of the body.

For the mind, for the datastore and the AI-self that was still Talis, I knew what to do. I oversaw the upload. I monitored the integration. Whatever of Rachel that was not her body—whatever could be caught in the net that was the upload—that had survived. But something had ended, too. And for that something, we needed a grave.

Rachel's body spilled out when we opened the upload portal—cooling already; grey as the grey room. Elián caught it. And then Francis Xavier, who I think could lift anything in the world, lifted it and laid it back on the bed.

It did not look as if it were sleeping. Death looks nothing like sleep.

We had, of course, remembered our digging spades: the Swan Riders are a practical people. Francis Xavier was still not crying when he picked his up.

“Greta,” he said. “I would like—”

“I will not let you do this alone.”

His face tightened and he looked to the floor. “Don't order me.”

“I'm not. But I would never let you do this alone.”

His hands seemed so steady, but the blade of the shovel trembled above his boot tops. Elián took it from him. He would need his strength.

The Swan Riders buried their dead in the sky.

In the Red Mountains, they could. All those dry, high places. All those ravens. (“I like them,” Talis had said—but I wondered if she still would.) Here we needed a grave, and a different ceremony. We did not know what. All the libraries of the world inside us, but we did not know what.

Francis Xavier had strapped his prosthesis back on: shoveling, like using a crossbow, is hard to do one-handed. We went out of the refuge and down the draw toward the dry creek, out of the wind. There were little curls of snow, like ripples, in the silvery sage bushes. There was a bank of bare sumac, curved black branches with rusty crowns. We found a sheltered spot beneath them. I sat and held the body while FX and Elián dug and dug in the sandy soil. It was easy to cut into; hard to keep open. It didn't make a straight-sided grave. It made a sloped and shallow pit. As if the ground had cupped its hand.

We wrapped the body in Talis's favorite coat and laid there, curled up, where the sumac would arch over it. It was a pretty spot, as these things go. It was very quiet.

Francis Xavier went back to the refuge and brought a pillow for under the head.

Then Elián drew something from inside his coat. “I thought,” he said. He was having trouble looking Francis Xavier in the eye. “Will she need this?” And he held out the tiny, half-finished carving of the horse and rider. “When I was getting the ship, I went back to—I thought she might need this.”

Rachel's carving.

Sri's carving had been symmetric and elongated, the faces, horse and human, perfect as blades. Rachel's was . . . plump. Lopsided, because Rachel was no artist. Unfinished, because Talis had never worked on it. And yet it was everything we needed. I could see the way the horse had cocked an ear. I could see that the rider had a splint on her leg, and a smile.

Francis Xavier took the carving, delicately. He stood looking at it, silently. And then he slid down into the pit and bent over the body. He bent there awhile. I could hear that he was saying something, but not what he was saying. Only the rise and fall of his voice, the lullaby hum of it.

Then he stood up, and reached for help. Elián hauled him over the edge of the pit.

The body held the little carving in one loose and stiffening hand.

With our hands, we pushed the sand back into the pit. We let it slide down on top of the body until its outline was softened. Then until it was gone.

“If I had let you go alone,” I said, “would you have come back?”

Francis Xavier looked down his elegant nose at me. He was still not crying, but there was shining in his eyes. “Probably not,” he said.

He would not stay. I could see it in him. But the moment where he might have walked onto the dry prairie with nothing but a spade—that moment was gone.

“Francis Xavier, do you remember when you promised to protect me?”

“I do.”

“I wish someone had promised to protect you.”

“I am a Swan Rider,” he said.

He turned away then, and walked back to the refuge one more time. When he came back he was holding Rachel's ceremonial wings.

He held the wings up in front of him, as if they were growing from his heart. And then he gave a huge, violent, broken, amazed shout, and wrenched them apart.

Aluminum squealed and leather squeaked, and the two wings separated at their roots, like a wishbone. Francis Xavier handed one to me. And we tore the feathers off one by one, and let each one lift and tumble down into the endless grasses, or up into the glittering sky.

We went back to the refuge. Elián and I went arm in arm, leaning on each other. Francis Xavier was leaning on no one. On an empty space in the air. He went through the door, crossed to the stable, and started packing his saddlebags.

I stood at the half-wall and watched.

“Where will you go?” I asked.

A Swan Rider could not stop being a Swan Rider. They were marked, tattooed, as the hand of Talis. No one would take him in.

And even a Swan Rider needed to be taken in.

Francis Xavier shrugged, which made his pincer click open and closed. “I just can't—”

“I know.”

Somewhere in these wide, wild weeks, Elián had picked up the trick of silence. He sat on the doubled bed and let me do the talking. I could feel him watching.

I could feel the room watching.

“Help me saddle NORAD?” asked Francis Xavier.

He didn't need help but was willing to let me give it. I held NORAD's bridle while FX put on her tack. The refuge was warm, dim, alive. FX put saddlebags and a lead on Heigh Ho Uranium as well, and paused to scritch the big horse behind the ear. “Yuri is a better fit for me,” he said. “But NORAD would be unhappy as the packhorse.”

“Takes after her rider?”

“She—Rachel was an eagle.” His eyes were glowing. “I will not say much. But—she was an eagle. A lioness. Such a little thing. But always my lioness.
She
kissed me.”

I had seen that. After she fell off her horse. While her leg was broken and her eyes were running with tears and the laughter was tumbling out of her. She'd kissed him.

“You were very surprised.”

“Yes.”

“She liked that,” I said. “She liked surprising you. She liked to make you smile.”

And Francis smiled. So rare and so sweet. Like spring coming.

“Leave us Gordon,” I said. “And Roberta, for Elián.”

“They'll be hard to load on the ship,” FX warned. “Without NORAD—”

“We'll manage,” I said.

“Open the gate?”

The horses had their own door out of the hill, lower and broader than a human door, double hung. Francis Xavier didn't need help to open it, but was willing—again—to ask for help. To ask, in this oblique way, for my permission.

I opened the doors.

Francis started to get on NORAD.

And the room said: “Wait.”

FX froze. “Not yet,” he said. “I can't—not yet.”

I could feel the sensors around us humming. The voice from the wall said softly: “I would settle for
not yet
.”

That synthesized voice, I knew now, had been Michael's voice, centuries ago. Of course there were not enough rich recordings to mock up Rachel's. But the way Talis used Michael's voice now was . . . altered. Slower. Softer.

“Where are you going?” said the wall. Not a demand. The softness in it said,
Be safe.

Francis Xavier had no answer. I think, in that moment, he still didn't know where he was going. But finally—
finally—
he was crying. Tears were dripping off his nose.

“I only wanted to say,” said the wall. “I'm not dead. And I might need— Don't leave me, Francis.”

Don't push
, I thought.
Don't take too much
.

“Come home,” said the voice. A hiccup that was pure heartbreak.

What is love but a pain we choose?

“Not yet,” said Francis. “But. The long way. I'll bring the horses in.”

A slow and listening silence. Then Talis answered him softly: “Then I'll leave on a light for you.”

Francis Xavier nodded to the empty air and wiped his face with the tail of his head scarf. And then he led the horses out the door. Elián and I climbed the hill that covered the refuge and watched his plume for an hour as he rode away. South and west, toward the setting sun. Toward the Red Mountains, toward Rachel. The long way around.