The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow Read Free Book Online Page A

nation. They had not seen him tied up and screaming.
    As we faced each other over the riddle, Elián kept trying to catch my eye. There was something magnetic about him, something that made it hard to look away. He was not a prince—they didn’t have princes, the Americans, so he was just some general’s kid, some politician’s kid—but . . . Spartacus, he’d called himself. Spartacus had been a slave who’d become a hero. A general who’d become a martyr. Elián was joking and laughing, but his eyes were desperate. He looked like someone who’d been told he was going to die.
    I gave the riddle a last hard shake, and then tipped the potatoes into the basket in Atta’s arms. Dust bloomed. I dragged the cuff of my samue across my forehead and squinted the sweat out of my stinging eyes. The day was hot. I could practically feel my freckles drawing together to form city-states.
    Elián swung the empty riddle in one hand and looked from Atta to Grego. “If she’s Guinevere, that makes you two Lancelot and Arthur. Which one’s which?”
    Atta said absolutely nothing. He looked down on Elián with eyes you could fall into, like wells.
    â€œAtta’s quiet,” murmured Xie. She slid herself between them. She is just a slip of a thing, but it is amazing how much protection her body can give. “Don’t tease.”
    â€œFirst,” said Grego, “you are overlooking Han, which, frankly, is too common a thing. Second, I am certainly Arthur. Only slightly more Lithuanian, and interested in engineering.”
    â€œSpeciality?” said Elián. “Please say ‘munitions.’ ”
    At Elián’s feet the big proctor clicked—a sound like a bone breaking. The thing was standing close to us, and still. Dust moved across the nanolubricants on its ball-and-socket joints; they gleamed like oily eyes.
    â€œDon’t,” warned Thandi. She was watching the proctor, but she sounded more angry than frightened.
    â€œIt’s cybernetics, isn’t it, Grego?” said Han, oblivious, as always.
    â€œMostly.” Grego had gone cautious and still. “Cybernetics and mechatronics more generally.”
    â€œThat’s a shame,” said Elián, his face slowly opening up into a huge grin. “I was hoping you could help me blow this place to kingdom come.”
    The proctor brought him down.
    The shock caught Elián in the knee and the groin. He didn’t even get out a scream. His eyes rolled up and he tipped backward. Atta dropped the bushel and lunged to catch him, but I was closer. Elián fell into my arms, and I fell. Potatoes tumbled around us. For a moment his eyes were white moons behind his tangled lashes, but he came around quickly. He was sobbing, gulping air—
    No. He was laughing.
    On the ground, desperately hurting, should-be- humiliated, and laughing . He shook his head as if to rattle whatever was loose in there—his dignity, his sense of self-preservation, perhaps some small rocks. . . .
    â€œAre you all right?” Xie knelt beside us.
    â€œAwww, peachy,” he gasped. “This is way more fun with company.”
    Fun?
    Surrounding us, my cohort stood astonished. For a moment there was no sound but the wind, making sage-green and sere ruffles in the prairie grass.
    And in that moment—that farseeing, dry moment—I was absolutely sure. I was going to die. My mother herself had brushed my hair because the Great Lakes were under threat, because my nation was going to go to war.
    It didn’t matter that Cumberland would be the aggressor, that the PanPols would be defending their own. Play nice, kids, said the Utterances. Work it out. I won’t be picking sides.
    No, Talis would make no judgements about who was in the right. He would not choose sides. I could practically hear him, that unknowable, alien thing, saying: I love you all the same. He would