“A knitter—” began Talis.
“No,” I said, because a knitter meant Cumberland, it meant Burr, it meant— “No, Father, don’t let them touch me,” I whispered. The Abbot put his hand over my ear. I could feel him shaking. His fingers slipped between the plaits of my braids. My heartbeat echoed back from the shell of his palm.
“Fine.” Talis sighed like a twelve-year-old. “Fine. Where do you even keep the ice?”
And thus was the master of the world sent off like a bellhop, even as I folded my face into the Abbot’s hands and wept.
They packed my hands in ice. Numbness spread up my arms, strange sister to pain. Time stretched, became like a membrane. It wrapped me. I blurred and dimmed. And then—
And then Xie came. Of course she came. Pounding through the door at a run, a rabid look on her fine face. Slowly I became aware that she was babbling, begging, saying my name. “I’m sorry, Greta, I’m so sorry. There were too many of them. I would never have left you, Greta. There were so many of them—”
“Xie . . .” Her name was a thistle in my mouth.
“Oh, Greta. Did they—” She put a hand on my forearm. I flinched. She jerked away, tears springing to her eyes. “But they stopped. What happened? Did your mother—”
“Talis . . . ,” I whispered. “He came for me.”
“Talis? I— But— Talis?”
“Hi,” said Talis. He was sprawled on one of the memory foam cushions as if he’d never sat in a chair before. “With you in a tick.”
I watched Xie take him in—the shabby riding gear, the young woman’s body that was somehow male in the splay of the joints, somehow ancient in the set of the eyes. Her eyes widened; her face paled. “Lord Talis,” she whispered. “History walking . . .”
“Don’t bother him, Da-Xia,” wheezed the Abbot.
“I—” said Xie. She was trembling, caught in awe the way we were sometimes caught in electricity.
“Xie,” coaxed the Abbot.
A long, long silence. Then Li Da-Xia slowly and deliberately turned her back on the ruler of the world. She put her hands on my face. “Greta. What do you need?”
Her hands were warm. I could not think of what I needed.
“You,” I said, rasping. “I need you.”
“I can’t hack through it,” said Talis, furrowing his hair with hooked fingers. “Bloody hell.” He levered himself to his feet and kicked a book. It whirled across the floor like an outraged seagull. “Never mind ‘snowstorm’; it’s a damn blizzard.”
“But you got commands out initially. . . .” The Abbot’s eye icons drew together, a mime of puzzlement.
“They had a tight-pierce for piggybacking, but they shut it down. Even if they bring it back up for round two tomorrow, it will take me hours. Honestly. How am I supposed to destroy Pittsburgh if I can’t get a ping to my weapons platforms?”
“I’m sorry you’re frustrated, Michael.”
“Frustrated! I’m blind, is what I am. And the data push is giving me a headache.”
He’d been at it for half an hour, which is a long time for an AI to do anything. It is said that their quick minds make their time pass slowly, and that the ones who are mad are mad half from boredom.
“?‘Patience is someone else’s virtue,’?” Xie murmured. She was quoting from the Utterances.
“Ooo.” Talis raised one of those startling black eyebrows at her. “Quoting me at me, are we? You’ve got a bit of nerve.”
“Yes, my lord. So I’ve been told.”
“Li Da-Xia,” he named her.
“Lord Talis,” she answered. And then, “You were supposed to keep us safe.”
“Well,” said Talis. “Technically. It’s more the prerequisite to the mission than the actual mission, but technically, yes, I was supposed to keep you safe.” He nudged the seagull-book with his toe. “Did you know, the man who invented the atomic bomb once said that keeping peace through deterrence was like keeping two scorpions in one bottle? You can picture that, right? They know they can’t sting without getting stung. They can’t kill without getting killed. And you’d think that would stop them.” He gave the book another boot, and it flipped closed with a snick. “But it doesn’t.”
He looked up and his eyes were the color of Cherenkov radiation, the color of an orbital weapon. “You’ve got a bit of nerve, little scorpion. All I did was invent the bottle.” He took a step toward her, coming up onto the book, rising into the air like a cobra. “What do you—”
“Michael,” wheezed the Abbot. It was probably supposed to be soothing. It sounded strained and sick.
“Sorry,” said Talis. He stepped backward off the book and scrubbed his face with both hands. “Yes, Li Da-Xia, I was supposed to keep you safe. Go help your friend.”