The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

could do to this place.”
    The next second, of course, he was on his knees—shocked, but still rather misty-eyed with the thought of pipe bombs.
    Out among the visitors, one of the adult women had a baby bound to her back. While we watched, a nursery spider climbed up the outside of the papoose board and perched on the baby’s head. It was presumably scanning, though from this distance that could only be inferred. Thandi looked away, and Da-Xia looked sick. To be honest, the whole business struck me, too, as intrusive and excessive. They had only come to breed goats. Elián climbed back to his feet and expressed his unease with a slow drawl. “Gosh. Do you think we’re safe here?”
    â€œThe Preceptures are safe,” said Han. What a handicap, in this place, to be bad with subtext. “Talis defends them. Remember Kandahar.”
    â€œIt is hard to forget,” said Grego, deadpan, though there was no joke. Truly, we remembered Kandahar. Two hundred years ago, a nation called the Kush had struck against Precepture Seven in an attempt to fetch back their young hostage king. Talis had responded by erasing their capital from orbit. There was not a stick left of Kandahar, not a single survivor.
    Shouldn’t take an oracle to interpret that one, said the Utterances. These Children are mine. Touch them and people will be talking about you for centuries.
    Grouuuuuu, Charlie howled, and the Royal Visitor sounded his trumpet: Graaallll! The woman holding the visiting billy took a few stumbling steps forward as the goat surged—and the lead broke.
    The Royal Visitor was a good-size animal, a black buck with white blazing, and fine curved horns. He took off for us with his head down, fast. Bonnie Prince Charlie bellowed, Han yelped, Grego grabbed Han, Thandi shouted, Xie raised her hands as if in divine dismissal, Atta stepped in front of Xie, and Elián—well, Elián, of course, gave an earsplitting yell and ran forward. He caught the Royal Visitor in a flying tackle. Goat and boy and proctors went spinning in a tumbleweed of black and white.
    When the dust cleared, Elián was sitting on the goat’s back, with his hands tight around one horn. He was sporting a bruised eye and a ridiculous grin, and laughing.

    With his heroic credentials as goat-catcher firmly in place, Elián introduced himself to the family of trommellers, and was shortly fast friends with them. That evening saw them sitting together in the refectory, where Elián did a routine about the differences between sheep and goats that had our visitors—frightened and subdued as they were, to be caught in the strangeness of the Precepture—laughing into their roasted cauliflower. The old woman had a laugh that ended with a snort like a deer blowing. Uncivilized, certainly, but a free and wild sound. She laughed until she had to push her plate away and lay her head on the table.
    We lingered over dessert—we children did not often have visitors who had not come to kill us, so we had the urge to feed them well, though it would mean later reduced rations of honey—and Elián’s conversation grew deeper and quieter. I could not get close enough to hear, because the trommellers were in awe of me. To them I wasn’t just a hostage. I was the daughter of their queen. The adults kept glancing at me with reverence and a kind of knowing pity. One of the little ones had actually curtsied, spreading her bright and tattered skirts. When she called me princess, it sounded like a thing to be cherished.
    So I was reduced to watching them from across the room. I noticed that Elián’s hair was growing out. It made small curls at his collar and behind his ears. Don’t do anything stupid, I thought, trying to beam the thought at him. Though, frankly, it seemed too much to ask.
    Xie saw my gaze, and gave me a smile I could not quite read— Was it indulgent? Sad? She took my hand, and drew me out of