“Buckle,” said Armenteros. Buckle put her hand back to her ear and turned her back.
“Interesting about Harrison, isn’t it?” Talis chimed. “Back in the day, it was always the children of the poor who fought the wars, always the Nobodies that died when the Somebodies decided that a scrap was worth snarling over. It changed things when the Somebodies got a little skin in the game.” He folded his glasses away and looked up at Armenteros. “Harrison changes things for you.”
“There are no reports of trouble anywhere in Harrison,” said Buckle.
Armenteros looked at Talis, the squint lines around her eyes deepening.
“Yeah, it’s fine.” He was smiling—a glittery smile. “Backward little place. Wiping it out would hardly make the six o’clock news. On the other hand you might try getting through to Indianapolis.”
Buckle’s hand was still on her ear. A pause. Then she went grey. The shock bloomed over her dark skin until she looked like an unwashed plum. “Gone,” she whispered. “Indianapolis is gone.”
“All we are is dust in the wind,” said Talis. “All you are, anyway. Now, I’m inclined to make this very simple. Say, one city a day. Until you give me back my Precepture. I’m thinking Columbus next, but I might just roll the dice.”
“We still have the royal hostages,” Armenteros said.
Talis tipped his head. “Yeah, thing is, I invented this system of killing kids for bigger causes. I’m playing the long game here. You really think shooting a few five-year-olds is gonna slow me down?” He clapped Armenteros on the shoulder. “Now. How about you let my princess loose before you make me angry?”
“Burr,” ordered Armenteros.
“What? Oh!” Tolliver Burr had been staring at Talis as if contemplating buying roses to throw onto the stage. He finally snapped round. “Yes, that’s fine, General. I think we stopped soon enough that Greta could do another take. Easy enough to reset.”
“Just get her loose, Burr. And take a look at your snowstorm. Shut down our tight-pierce. I don’t want a single qubit in or out of here.”
“Right, right,” said Burr, bending over one of the equipment lockers. He came up with a multipencil and handed it to the corporal he’d made into his assistant, then turned to the monitor. And so it was that I did not lose my hands. The corporal touched the tip of the multipencil to the straps that held me. Lights twinkled. The adhesion shut off. I yanked my arms free and folded up over them, the release of terror ruining me in a way that even terror never could. I was shivering and crying, recording everything but taking nothing in.
“I’m thinking dawn,” said Talis. “For the look of the thing. Dawn. City. Boom. Make a note.” And he scooped me up and carried me inside.
I’d like to say Talis strode into the miseri with his duster billowing and scattered the Cumberlanders like November leaves.
I’d like to say he swept clear the foreign clutter that Tolliver Burr had left on the ancient oak of the map table, and laid me there like a princess in a glass case. I’d like to say it was a story. I wanted it to be a story. I wanted to be the princess rescued by the wizard. I wanted Talis to lift his hands and heal me with a word. I wanted the Cumberlanders to be terrified.
But they weren’t. They had no idea who Talis was. He didn’t look like anyone—shabby and dust-stained and reeking of horse, squinting from the dimness of the hall he’d just left, struggling under my weight as a man might struggle with a particularly long and floppy sack of potatoes—assuming said potatoes were having hysterics. The Cumberlanders, who were clearly using the miseri as a prep-and-rec room, looked up from their smartplex tablets and card games. Most of them were irritated, and some of them were shocked, but not one of them was terrified.
Talis dumped me onto the table amid Burr’s cables and storyboards. I was sobbing helplessly.
“Hey!” One of the Cumberlanders—a big man, florid—stood up. “You, girl!”
Talis ignored the soldier and leaned over me, his eyes like suns. He was so dazzling that I saw four of him through the blur of tears. “Easy,” he said, as if talking to a horse. “I suppose ‘relax’ is too much to hope for, but just don’t fight me, okay?” As he spoke, he fit a hand against the ball of my shoulder, leaned his weight against it, and with his other hand lifted my arm from the elbow. His eyes crinkled as he sought the right angle, and then suddenly he gave my arm a precise, sharp yank. The shoulder cracked—but even as I yelped, the pain in that shoulder switched off. It was like a magician’s trick. The story I’d wanted.
“Hey!” shouted the soldier.