Talis reseated the other dislocated shoulder. For a moment I was in so much less pain that I thought I wasn’t in pain at all. Pain does not work like that, but there was a moment in which I didn’t know that. I stopped sobbing. The florid Cumberlander grabbed Talis by the back of the neck. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Talis turned on a pin. “Me?” He flashed with broad, false innocence. “Oh, you know. Trying out a body, staving off the boredom, wiping out a city. . . . My name is Talis. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
And there was the terror. The big man froze. They all froze. I will admit, shaming though it is, that I found their fear gratifying.
Talis smiled at the soldier. “Why don’t you be a good boy and pop out and ask your general about me? I don’t imagine she’d want you to get in my way.” He turned his back on them without checking to see if they were obeying. No one stopped him as he traced the cables that led from Tolliver Burr’s override box to the Abbot’s cracked casing. He hummed to himself, fiddled his fingers, and then started pushing buttons.
There was a whirr as the Abbot came back to life. His voder sounded three test tones, and then he coughed. His head swung toward Talis. His eyes turned back on.
“Hullo, Ambrose,” Talis said. “Long time, no see. Gone and lost your Precepture, have you?”
“Hello, Michael,” said the Abbot. “It shames me to admit it, but yes, I have.”
The pain was coming back. Not my shoulders, but my hands. The blood was pounding back into them, and with the blood, pressure, and a sensation that was overwhelmingly and simultaneously hot and cold.
Talis stuck on his glasses again, and peered at the Abbot’s hand, which was still fastened to the tabletop. “Oooo, that’s nasty. Got a thing for hands, this lot. All right otherwise?”
“I took some substantial damage from the EMP burst, actually. Whether it’s temporary remains to be seen.”
“Well, that’s the thing about healing.” Talis said “healing” as if it were a word in a foreign language. “It happens or it doesn’t.”
And they both turned and looked at me.
I did not like Talis’s bright regard. He had eyes like two cameras. I twisted aside. My hands felt as if they were breaking, slowly, the way a bottle breaks if you fill and freeze it.
Then I felt a touch on my cheek—cool, light ceramic. The Abbot’s fingers swept up my forehead and into the roots of my hair. “What happened to her, Michael?” he said softly. “What could do this to my Greta?”
“That man Armenteros hired—”
“Tolliver Burr.” The Abbot’s voice was pneumonia-thick.
“That’s the one. Crushed her hands in the cider press. Big long buildup, big psychodrama thingy. Not too much damage, though, in the end.”
Something went pop—Talis pulling the bolt out of the Abbot’s hand. The Abbot lifted it and light shone through the hole in his palm. I slammed my eyes shut.
“Our medical facilities here are so limited. . . .” I felt the Abbot put his damaged hand on my shoulder. “Ice wouldn’t be amiss, I suppose.”
“She’s just having a bit of a cry, Ambrose. Give me that back; I want to see if I can reattach that muscle.”
But the Abbot’s hands stayed steady on me. The pain kept rising. Was there a limit to how much it would rise? I was near the limit of what I could swallow down, and the Cumberlanders were still in the room.
“She needs her friends,” the Abbot said.
“Yes,” I croaked. I felt as if I’d spent an hour screaming: my throat was raw. “I need Xie.”
“And Elián?”
Elián’s fingertips on mine, his eyes like a wild deer’s. Told you I was Spartacus. “Yes.”
“Ambrose, really. She’s fine. And I’m just going to kill her later, when I get my room back online.”
“Michael . . .” There was just a hint of a rebuke, a not-in-front-of-the-children note in the hoarse, weary voice.
“Oh, fine,” Talis pouted. He pointed to one of the Cumberlanders, at random. “You, get some painkillers. And you”—another point—“go find Li Da-Xia and Elián Palnik. Tell them they’re wanted in the lounge.” None of them moved. “Come on,” Talis singsonged at them. “What did your nice general tell you about me? ‘Do what he says’? ‘Don’t make him angry’? ‘If you have family in Pittsburgh, call them now’? Snap to it!”
A second’s silence. Then they snapped.
“Or did I say Columbus?” Talis called after them, light as broken glass. “Honestly.”
The Cumberlanders were leaving—backing out, some of them. I was glad they were going. I was twitchy with pain. I could feel every knob of my spine wriggling against the table. I rolled onto my side and let my legs pull up, my body folding itself shut around my heart by pure instinct. My hands: I will not speak of them. I hoped only that Talis would heal them soon.
The last of the Cumberlanders left. The Abbot sighed. Talis was pacing, energy threatening to crack him like an egg.