And then I stilled.
The tray was low; I was hunched awkwardly, my tailbone as high as my shoulders. I took a deep breath, and I knelt. There was dignity in that. Tradition. A queen at the block.
I looked up.
The Cumberlanders had pulled me away from Da-Xia and Elián when Burr had summoned me. With desperate eyes I sought past the apple press, past the cameras, past Burr, to see what had become of them.
They were behind a line of soldiers, clear back by the top of the terraces. Thandi and Atta were holding Xie. She was struggling in their arms, shouting and kicking just as I had. Grego still had his arms full of pumpkin, and Han was gripping Grego’s arm, his mouth hanging open. Elián was standing with Armenteros. He had grabbed her by the arm and appeared to be spitting into her face. Armenteros’s aide-de-camp, Buckle, had Elián by the other arm. The blood was pounding in my ears; I could not hear them.
Burr was pacing away from the press, considering it from a few different angles, adjusting cameras and nudging diffusers, checking things off on his clipboard. I looked at the cohort, I looked at Elián, getting my breath back, trying to focus. None of the younger Children were in sight. Herded back into the Precepture hall? Probably best. This could make a mob of them. Someone could be hurt. I looked at my own hands, fingers tensed and bunched on the grey stone. Yes, indeed. Someone could be hurt.
“If you could just bring them over here,” said Burr to the soldiers guarding my cohort. “We’ll need them for reaction shots.” He consulted a clipboard. “There are supposed to be six. Where’s the last one?”
A gust of silence, and then Elián raised his hand like the well-mannered Child of Peace he most certainly was not. “Right here.”
“Elián . . .” Armenteros’s exasperation was well-worn. Clearly Elián’s ridiculous defiance was not a recently acquired trait.
Elián dropped his grandmother’s arm and drew himself up. He stepped away from Armenteros and Buckle.
Burr flicked two fingers up and down. “In uniform? No, no, he clashes dreadfully. Is this the grandson? Someone get him his whites.”
“I don’t want him in whites,” said Armenteros.
Elián started fumbling with buttons. “He doesn’t want me in chamo, you don’t want me in white—did anyone bring my bowling shirt?”
“Elián, you’re being childish,” said Armenteros.
“Childish!” He yanked off his soldier’s shirt and threw it at her. “Maybe I can grow up to be a famous torturer!”
“I’m trying to save our country, Elián,” she said blandly.
Elián stood there, bare-ribbed and shivering.
“There’s no denying he’s got something,” said Burr, absently framing Elián in a rectangle of fingers. “I’d love to have him to zoom in on, General. Those eyes could bring it all home.”
Armenteros ignored him. “Elián, there’s no point in a delay. Do you really think the princess wants to be kept in suspense?”
“Let’s ask her,” he said, and before anyone was sure it was right to stop him—he was the general’s grandson, after all—he had walked over to me. He smiled down. “Hi.”
I tried to speak, failed, swallowed, and croaked out, “Hi.”
“Greta,” he whispered, and knelt. He was across the apple press from me. I could see what Burr meant about his eyes: they were liquid, huge, showing whites. Terrified. I was sure we matched. He took a deep breath and put his hands on the stone. Our fingertips touched. “Told you I was Spartacus,” he said. Then he raised his voice to call to the Cumberlanders: “Now I think we’re set to go.”
Absolute silence. For the moment the only movement came from Tolliver Burr, who was leaning in a handheld camera.
“Shut that thing off!” Armenteros ordered. “Elián, get up.”
“Why?” snapped Elián. “You said I should learn to sacrifice for my country.”
Armenteros pressed her thumb between her eyebrows. “Buckle, please take my grandson inside and get him a shirt.”
“You’ll have to drag me,” said Elián. “And how’s that going to look, huh?”
Buckle looked at Armenteros, who gave a great sigh, then nodded.
“You’re a torturer,” Elián snarled at his grandmother. “A monster!”
Buckle gathered up a couple of men, and they dragged Elián off. He was still screaming my name.
“You’ll have to do without your reaction shots, Burr,” Armenteros said. “I want them all locked up.”
The soldiers closed in on my friends. A generalized shouting; swearing in several languages. Over the din I heard for a moment another voice—Da-Xia. “Greta!” she shouted. “There’s a plume, Greta! A plume!”
A plume of dust.
A Swan Rider. They were coming.
My friends—the passive and obedient Children of Peace—my friends fought like lions.