“Ah. I was hoping you’d come with me.”
“Both of us?” Da-Xia continued her down-the-nose thing. I needed to learn that from her. It is an impressive trick when you’re only five feet tall.
“Well, the crown princess, specifically, Your Divinity. She’s needed in the library. But of course you’re welcome to come.” He opened his arm in the direction of the miseri. Xie glided magnificently past him, leading the way.
“And what did you want with the crown princess?” asked Xie. “Specifically.”
“Oh, I’m a . . . specialist. A communications specialist.”
“Communications,” I echoed, uneasy.
There were two guards outside the miseri. Burr nodded to them, and they stepped aside. The door slid open.
Books still lay where they’d been knocked down by the sonic boom. Daylight fell through the broken ceiling, and I could smell the sharp, sad scent of dust after rain.
Beside the map table stood the Abbot.
He turned as we came in. His face was back on its screen. “Marcus Aurelius says that the best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury. I admit I’m struggling with that. Good morning, Da-Xia. Good morning, Greta. I am relieved to see you looking well.”
“Good Father,” I said, and my voice came out husky. I’d thought the EMP might have killed him. I was more pleased to see him than I could easily say.
“I see you’ve met Mr. Burr.”
“Tolliver, please,” said Burr again.
As I came closer to the Abbot, I saw that one of his hands was pinned to the table. Beside the hand rested a small box with a twinkling touch screen. A filament bundle ran out of the box, coiled on the table like a baby snake, and ran up to the Abbot’s head. I looked from the Abbot to Burr and back again.
“Mr. Burr and I have been having a disagreement,” said the Abbot. There was a funny little wheeze in his voice. “I’ve been explaining to him that I am a Class Two Artificial Intelligence, with full rights of personhood under the Bangalore Convention, and not, in fact, a communications terminal.”
“But you can uplink,” said Burr.
“Of course I can,” said the Abbot. “Your question should be whether I will.”
“Oh,” said Burr, as if the matter were merely technical. “I think our box will work all right.” He leaned past me and did something to the touch screen.
The Abbot jerked like Elián under shock, and then—he died. It was exactly like seeing the life drain from a human’s eyes. One moment the Abbot was there, and then it was just a body, a hunk of parts. “Father!” I cried. But he did not come back.
Da-Xia’s hand was on my arm—I could feel her shake. But none of the Cumberlanders reacted.
“Father Abbot?” I said. Nothing.
“Is it working, Burr?” Wilma Armenteros came out of the shadows behind the Abbot’s desk.
“Yes, General.” Burr squinted at the screen. “We’re go for uplink.”
“Good,” Armenteros grunted. She pulled out a chair opposite the Abbot. “Your Highness. Have a seat.”
Slowly I circled the table to her. I sat. I stared at the dead thing that had been my Abbot. The general patted my shoulder, her hand heavy. I could feel my pulse in my temples, tugging at the fine hairs where my braids were too tight. Armenteros loomed behind me. The chair was hard.
Da-Xia came and stood beside the Abbot. Her eyes said, Hold on. I wished I might hold her hand. I looked at it, splayed out beside the Abbot’s on the table. The Abbot’s hand had a screw driven through it, piercing the external rubber muscles and forcing a new opening between the metacarpal nuts. The table was narrow—I could have touched that lifeless hand. I didn’t. I felt the back of the chair notch under my shoulder blades: I must have been leaning away.
Tolliver Burr came bustling round the table to my side. “That’s perfect, hold still a moment.” He held some sort of meter next to my face, and then flipped it around to read it. He nodded at the general, satisfied. “This is fine. If I had a scatter box, I could smooth out some of the shadows—but really, you don’t want it to look too polished. She just needs to be clearly recognizable.”
Armenteros nodded. “Thank you, Burr. Please patch us through.”
“Of course, just let me get out of the shot.”
Out of the— His words echoed in my head. Was someone about to shoot me?
I looked up at the Abbot. His facescreen was blank. Only a few scattered pixels showed where his eyes and mouth had been when he’d . . . gone.
“And . . . go.” Burr lifted a hand from his touch screen with a little ta-da flair of his wrist.
And suddenly, in the place of the Abbot’s face, there was my mother.
Queen Anne was not wearing her wig.
That shocked me, shocked me almost as if she’d met us disrobed. Her hair was short, mussy, more ash than fire. For a moment she didn’t look at me. Clearly I had not come into focus for her. I heard the whirr of a lens moving somewhere, and then her eyes met mine. “Greta,” she said.