“In point of fact, I think I might be falling in love with Li Da-Xia. But I promised Elián I would save him.”
“Xie.” He flipped the name with the tip of his tongue. “Hot Asian roommate. Kinky.”
It was not worth a retort.
“Sorry,” he said, fitting it around his smile. “Sorry. I’m a prude.”
“I doubt that.”
“Old-fashioned, then. Or just old.” He reached out with both hands and touched my face, tracing the eye sockets with his index fingers, then letting them sweep backward toward my ears.
Talis held my face gently cupped. “I think it’s old. I think I’m very old, Greta. And I think you should be more frightened.”
“I am very frightened,” I said, with as much dignity as I could manage.
“It isn’t easy,” he said, softly. “It hurts—more than you can imagine.”
Prickling, shivering sweat crept up my spine. “The Abbot told me.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t stop there.” His eyes had that quick-winged doubt again—Rachel dreams. “You cannot do this at a whim. You gain more than you can imagine. But you give up more than you can guess.”
His thumbs sculpted the corners of my jaws, as if I were clay. I sat a long moment, looking at him. Feeling the touch that should have belonged to Rachel, but did not. The blood between my toes was dry now, and both very different and not so different from dried mud. Through the stone walls I could hear the dawn of birds.
“Don’t do this for Elián. Don’t do it for Pittsburgh, Louisville, all those abstract cities. It won’t be enough. It won’t hold you together.” For once he didn’t smile. “Do you, Greta Stuart, do you consent to this?”
It put pressure behind my eyes just to look at Talis. I was that frightened. But I said, “I— If you will let them go, I will consent.”
“Once there was a boy,” he said, as if to himself, “named Michael.” And then his face did another flip-shift, as if his mind had been wiped blank and another mind installed. He popped to his feet, struck a fencer’s wide-leg stance, and stuck out his hand for me. “Join me, Greta, and we shall rule the galaxy as father and son!”
The galaxy? Son? There was too little air in that small room. There was too much heat in my skin. I was losing track of things.
“I cannot take your hand, Talis.”
He folded up the pose, but kept the wild grin. “Right-o.” He bent his knees and grabbed me around the waist like a man lifting a barrel. “Let’s go see what exactly those sandbags are for, okay? Because that has to be fun.” It seemed as if he were genuinely seeking permission. Or at least company—someone to play with. “And share the news, of course! Old Ambrose. He’s had his eye on you for a while.”
What the Abbot wanted was a successor. He was a teacher who wanted his best student, a master who wanted an apprentice. What Talis wanted was . . . a daughter?
Grinning at me, he waved at the sensor, and the door opened.
We found ourselves looking down gun barrels. The two soldiers out there were kneeling behind the sandbags, weapons ready. I did not particularly want to be shot, but it was hard to fear them. And besides, I had not yet heard Talis agree to my terms. “Talis? You will let them go?”
“Except for Wilma,” he said. “Now, her I want. Tell her it’s a deal-breaker. Do people still say that? Tell her to look it up.”
“She—” She’d guessed this. “Armenteros asked me to offer her personal surrender.”
“Wilma Armenteros.” Talis spun the name into a laugh. “You’ve got to give that gal points, just for the stones.” We’d reached the Cumberland fortification. “Hi, boys!” Talis reached out to ruffle the nearest one’s hair. “Having fun?”
“So you’ll—” I pressed him.
“Wilma’s offer is a sop. It’s a steak for the guard dog. Well, it worked. This dog is happy.”
Talis dipped down so that he was crouched between the two soldiers, face-to-face. “Already notified them, have you? The monster’s loose?”
Both of the soldiers had their gazes locked straight ahead, their faces frozen.
“Scurry off, then,” Talis ordered. “You can fetch some folks for me. I want Armenteros, and the Abbot. Let’s get Tolliver Burr out of his sickbed, just for kicks. And arrange a virtual presence terminal for my queen’s mum, here.”
“Um,” said the boy, the one who’d turned so green.
“Her Majesty Queen Anne,” I translated for him, “of the Pan Polar Confederacy.” My mother. At any point during the descent of the apple press, she could have said one word and saved me. I understood exactly why she hadn’t. I didn’t blame her, I told myself. I did not.
It would be good to see her, even. One last time.
“Tell them, on the lawn, at dawn,” Talis said. “Hey, that rhymes!” He popped to his feet and put an arm around me, and we swept past them. Halfway down the hall he twirled round and called back, “Oh, and tell them not to take that cider press down.”
24
TERMS