“I know,” said Xie. Her hand was warm and steady.
“But my mother is inured to the idea of my death,” I said. “So it won’t be death.”
“I know,” said Xie.
Thandi put her hand on my other leg. Warm weight, on each of my knees. Steadying. “Something public,” I said. “Something—”
I tried not to look at Elián, standing in the line of men and women who were going to do something— That ugly word Grego had used. Something damaging.
15
UPLINK
That night it rained. Rain at last, rain too late, rain just when I was all set to get myself tortured over water rights—rain. As if I needed further proof that the fates have a black sense of humor.
Not merely rain, either—a storm. It rolled in from the northwest, tall as a spaceport, black as a mountain range, a huge prairie thunderstorm. Xie and I pulled our mats and blankets onto the floor and lay side by side to watch it billowing and flashing.
For almost an hour we lay there, watching the storm roll in, slow as a Swan Rider. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. I could feel the warmth of Xie’s body against my side.
“It stormed the first night you came here,” she said, when the thunder was nearly on top of us. “Do you remember?”
I remembered. I’d been five and she’d been six. It had been my first prairie storm. I had been sure that the prickling feeling in my skin meant that lightning was coming for me. Sure I was going to be struck and catch fire and die.
I’d been paralyzed, but little Da-Xia had been bouncing on her cot in plain delight. It’s a big one!
Then she had looked at me. Are you scared?
And I had said, No.
All my life I’ve been scared. And all my life I’ve been telling people I was not. Almost—oh, almost—I believed it was true.
Overhead the clouds were bubbling, lightning crawling across their bellies. A strange green feeling thickened the air, as if everything were building a charge, about to be magnetically levitated.
It was not true, what I had always said. It was not true that I was not frightened.
I reached sideways and Xie took my hand.
The stone floor was hard, even through my mat. Hard under the points of my shoulders. Hard under each knob of my spine. Lightning flash-cracked and lit the room like—
“Xie,” I said. “Do you think they’ll kill me?”
Da-Xia’s fingers stroked the pulse point in my wrist. There weren’t five people in the world who would have answered me honestly, but Xie was one of them. She said, “Not right away.”
The clouds burst. Hail crashed against the glass. It made a huge noise, and Xie and I twisted against each other, hiding in each other’s arms, for a moment that startled. Then we both gathered ourselves, though the noise continued, loud enough that no one could possibly have known whether I was crying.
Finally the rain fell—only gusts and spatters, after all that—and slowly I shook myself to sleep.
When I woke it was late, well after dawn. Someone had turned off all the rota bells. Not hearing them made me feel as if I were floating in time. The sky had the blank, bruised look of someone freshly beaten.
Above the muddle of mats and blankets, Xie was sitting on the bare ropes of her cot. She nodded to me, and for a few moments I lay there, watching her long fingers fold cranes out of silvery candy wrappers the soldiers must have discarded. The room smelled faintly of chocolate. A Halifax smell: it made me queasy.
There was, surely, not much more time.
I got up.
I took more care than usual scrubbing up, braiding my hair. I ended up making the braids too tight; they pulled at my temples like electrodes.
I was just considering whether to redo them when the door opened, revealing, not the soldiers we had half expected, but a different sort of man. He was middle-aged, middle-height, and tawny everywhere—leathered skin and flyaway hair, eyes that were almost yellow. Tawny, and scrawny, like a lion who’d been kicked out of the pride. He stood alone in the doorway, a smile on his face and a clipboard in his hand.
“Ah, Princess Greta,” he said. “Your Royal Highness. And this must be”—he checked his clipboard—“the Daughter of the Heavenly Throne?”
“I am Greta,” I said. “I am a blood hostage to this Precepture, and a Child of Peace. We don’t use our titles here.”
“Ah,” he said. “Well, the Precepture is changing, as you’ve probably gathered. But, of course, I’m glad to follow your preferences. I’m Tolliver Burr.” He extended a hand to shake. I had nearly forgotten that people did that. When I didn’t take his hand, he turned to Xie. “And you. Should I call you ‘Da-Xia’?”
Xie looked down her nose at him. “Do you know, I think ‘Daughter of Heaven’ will do nicely.”
“Your Divinity,” he said. “Of course.”
“Mr. Burr—” I said.
“Tolliver, please.”
“Mr. Burr,” I said. “What did you need from us?”