My mouth was utterly dry. I could not speak; could not even swallow. I thought my bones would crack like dry branches as I stood up. Still, I stood up. The Abbot stretched to his full height. He followed me as I walked blindly out of the miseri, around its curve, to that unremarkable and ever-closed door.
The door opened.
The grey room.
It was small.
It was oval.
There was a table in it. A high table. Long. Narrow. Metal, faded to the softest grey. Worn leather straps at two corners, and at two midpoints. Wrists and ankles. Four buckles dangling.
Some kind of cage for the head.
The Abbot put his articulated hand on my shoulder, joint by joint.
“Don’t worry, Greta,” he said. “I am sure you will do fine.”
I walked out of the Precepture. As if on the arm of a Swan Rider, I walked out with dignity. I walked out well.
And then I just kept walking.
The Precepture sits above the loop of a river, with a ridge at its northern back; with a skirt of lawn and orchard; with terraced gardens above a little alfalfa field and edged by a bright ribbon of water. Across that water is the open prairie. From that direction, the Swan Riders come. We can watch them coming forever.
Everyone was at dinner, and the lawn was empty. I walked across it. The gardens buzzed with desperate insects, counting down to winter. I walked down through them. The alfalfa field was blooming purple. There were little huts for the leaf-cutter bees. There was a rick for the hay. A shed for scythes.
Why did they let us have scythes? Scythe blades are three feet long, and we keep them sharp. We could truly ruin the ceremony of Talis’s systems, if we were brave enough to do something with those scythes.
The alfalfa stems tangled and tugged at my knees. It was like walking through a crowd in Halifax, everyone reaching. They grasped and grasped at me, and I went slower and slower and at the river edge I finally fell onto my knees.
I was hot and I was cold. I was shaking.
The grey room had a table with straps. And some kind of cage for the head.
I was born to a crown. This was my crown—a cage for the head.
The soil under my hands was sandy. I could hear the river. This was as far as I could go, the edge of the Precepture, the edge of the world.
A proctor rose up from behind the bank.
And a foot hit it.
It happened suddenly: The proctor reared upright—a heavy proctor with a dome of eyes atop it—and even as it did so, Da-Xia skidded into place beside me, panting and crashing to her knees. With a stray foot she hooked the proctor under its body and tipped it backward. It fell.
There was a splash.
“Oops,” said Xie.
I meant to laugh, but what came out of me was a high-pitched sound, like a rabbit dying.
“Oh,” said Xie. “Easy, Greta. Easy.”
She picked me up and I staggered until I found myself leaning with my back to a huge and solitary cottonwood tree. Its stiff leaves rattled overhead like a taffeta gown.
The Panopticon was out of sight in the leaves, and the proctor was drowned. A blind spot. Leave it to Xie to find one, now, when we needed one so badly. “What happened?” she said.
“What?”
“Greta. What happened? What did he do to you?”
“I saw it,” I said. “I saw the grey room.”
Xie was facing me, her hand resting on the trunk beside my head. I heard her fingernails dig into the furrowed bark. “Did he hurt you?” she whispered. A blind spot, but we could not be sure nothing listened. “Did the Abbot hurt you?”
I tipped my head forward. The rough bark of the tree tried to stop me, tugging at little strands of hair.
“Greta?”
Had the Abbot hurt me? Yes. No. The Abbot had never, would never hurt me. But the tree was trying to hold my head back, and they were going to tie down my head.
Da-Xia’s gaze broke from mine for an instant. “They’re coming,” she said. “They’re looking for you, the others. Even Thandi.”
“Elián?” If they took him again—much more would kill him.
But Xie laughed softly. “Especially Elián. Come on.” She wrapped her arm around me and pulled me away from the tree. Her arm around my ribs was strong; her side against my side was warm. I wondered if I felt to her as Elián had to me. If she could feel me tremble. Against her stillness I could tell that I was trembling. It’s too much, Elián had said. They’re going to kill me.
I wanted to say that to Xie, but there was no innocent remark to hide it in, no blind spot big enough for such a conversation. I wanted to say it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Tears sprang into my eyes—and Xie smoothed them away with the pads of her thumbs.
My only friend, and I couldn’t talk to her. And she couldn’t answer me. We could not get close enough together.
Yet we could.
Xie took one step forward and I leaned backward, and I was against the tree again. Then hard against it. Xie’s hands pushed against my shoulders. Her knee hit the outside of my knee. She held me there— I felt as if she were gathering me. I looked at her. She eased off. She came up on tiptoe. And she kissed me.