“That’s right,” I said. “And you’re Elián.”
As if his own name had been his master password, he shook his head and stood up straight. His face reset, and those IQ points came back all at once. He looked cheerfully jaunty and willingly can-do and adorably dorky and I was absolutely sure that at least two of those were put on.
I looked to Xie and she answered me with two arched eyebrows: She didn’t know what to make of him either. None of us did.
Elián stood grinning in the middle of our stares. “So, hi,” he said. He reached for my dropped pitchfork, only to have Atta put his foot on it. None of us wanted this stranger to have a weapon.
Elián pretended not to notice. “Yeah. I’m Elián Palnik, from the Cumberland Alliance. Y’all want to show me how to dig potatoes?”
No one answered. We looked at him and his proctor, keeping our faces blank and our bodies ready, in the manner of carefully trained Precepture children under threat. In contrast, Elián stood affable and loose-jointed, at ease and utterly alien. Our silence—disturbed, disapproving—wasn’t making a dent. He turned to me. “So,” he said. “Stoicism.”
“So,” I answered, carefully. “Potatoes.” I bent and grabbed one of the riddle’s two handles. The big proctor backed off a couple of steps, off the wickerwork. Elián’s breathing paused subtly when the proctor moved—he had enough sense to be frightened, then. And enough dignity to hide it. Both those things were promising.
“Help me with this,” I said. It was in part a kindness to orient him, to cue him. It was in part selfish: We would all feel safer if we got to work. “This is called riddling. We shake the dirt through the wicker. Then we can store them without scrubbing. It saves water.”
“It’s always water,” he said, nonsensically. But he picked up the other handle. We raised the big flat basket between us. I was relieved that he did not have trouble with it. Fifty pounds of potatoes is not a huge load, but this close, I could see that his muscles were still twitching. Electricity, as all we Children have cause to know, can be a tricky thing to get through, and Elián either had little tolerance for it, or had taken a large dose.
“So,” he said. “This is what it’s like to be royalty.”
“Yes . . . ?” I was beginning to think I’d been right to treat him like a skittish goat. Like our goats he seemed vaguely to be Planning Something. The wickerwork shook between us and dust bloomed and stuck to my skin. I tried not to sneeze. “Yes. This is what it’s like to be a Child of Peace.”
“Somehow I thought there’d be air-conditioning,” Elián said. Grego swallowed a laugh, and Elián looked over his shoulder at him. “Look at me, though. I can’t believe I’m shaking out potatoes with Princess Greta.”
“Yes,” said Grego. “Greta is our best potato-shaker, no doubt. Perhaps tomorrow you will joint a goat with Thandi.”
“No,” said Elián—and the proctor at his feet flexed upward on its joints. Elián barely glanced at it. “I only mean— I’ve seen you in vids, is all.”
“You’ve seen my vids?” I was surprised. Of course I was in many vids. I was to be the ruler of my country one day, if I lived, and it was important that my people know and love me. They did, too. They loved me rather in the way they might love a child with cancer, because it was so sad, and I was so brave. Neither love—the cancer love or the hostage love—had much to do with the reality of life under threat, but it would serve. The vids made it serve. But I did not know that the vids reached beyond the Pan Polar borders.
“Sure. I’ve seen them all. That interview last Christmas? At the tree-lighting ball? You’re royalty, Greta. A celebrity. Like—like Guinevere.”
Da-Xia actually laughed aloud. “Guinevere!”
Elián shrugged, as well as one can when holding a potato riddle and shivering with recent shocks. “I think it’s mostly the hair.”
“My hair is fairly trivial, surely.”
“Weeeellll,” said Elián, drawing it out to about four syllables. “The hair and the stick up your royal . . . bearing.”