The Scorpion Rules Read Online Free PDF Page B

It was rare to hear him laugh—but somehow Han, who was as far from deadpan as one could imagine, could always make him. I envied them their ability to laugh together. Somehow Xie and I could rarely manage it.
    â€œYou know,” said Xie, “it would be all right, if you were thinking about him.”
    â€œWho?” I said, because I did not know what else to say. Under the dairy roof we were not in the line of sight of the Panopticon, but some kind of eavesdrop bug could be assumed. We all took greater liberties under roofs, but they could not be infinite.
    â€œWho?” Xie echoed. Her mood, maybe infected by the laughter outside, seemed playful. “Sidney, obviously.”
    â€œOh. Sidney.”
    â€œYes, Sidney,” said Thandi. “I know you two weren’t off playing coyotes, but . . .”
    â€œPlaying coyotes” was school euphemism for meeting outside, after dark—one presumed it was for sex.
    â€œCertainly not,” said Xie. “But still. He liked you. And you didn’t mind. All things are relative, and from you, Princess of the Icy Places, not minding is nearly a declaration of undying love.”
    I turned my back on them both, and looked to my own, slightly riper, cheese tray. The smell of it—sour as baby spit-up—suddenly turned my stomach. “My marriage will be dynastic.”
    â€œSo will mine,” said Xie to my back. “But in the meantime, I have eyes.”
    â€œYes,” said Thandi, whapping her way back out the door. “We noticed.”
    I blushed. Eyes were the least of what Xie had. Playing coyotes? She was the queen of the pack, whereas I had my sexuality filed under “further research is needed.”
    Sidney. We’d been hostaged together for eleven years. I knew every curve of his accent, every lilt of his laugh. I knew he hated zucchini, as do we all. But the shameful truth was I was not thinking about Sidney at all. He was, after all, already dead.
    I looked at Xie. We were alone. A roof was over us.
    â€œSo,” she said, softly. “Sidney?”
    â€œSidney,” I said, but it was a lie. “No. I’m thinking more of this new boy.”
    Da-Xia’s eyebrows folded up, and then she gave a faint, faint nod, letting me know she’d followed my switch to speaking in code.
    â€œI wonder—I just wonder how long he’ll be with us.”
    â€œSo fickle!” Xie said, as if teasing, as if we were still talking about boys. She meant wars were fickle too. I’d been ready to die with Sidney, and I hadn’t. And maybe I wouldn’t, even now.
    â€œJust remember,” she said. “There’s time yet between you and that dynastic marriage.”
    â€œI hope so.” Sixteen months was not so long.
    Da-Xia put her hand—well known, work hardened, hot from the pitchers—on the back of my neck. I leaned into her.
    â€œMe too,” she said.

    And in the five days after I first saw the Cumberland hostage, I didn’t sleep well.
    I have never been a good sleeper. If I could choose a blessing it would perhaps be the ability to put my head on the pillow and drift off, quietly, reliably, without fuss. Instead my brain takes exhaustion as its cue to review every stupid mistake I’ve ever made, and then (like the crowned princes in Shakespeare) I have bad dreams.
    Xie sleeps. I don’t.
    By the fifth day I had had quite enough of it.
    I was alone that night. Da-Xia had gone out to play coyotes. The room was too quiet without her breathing in it. Above me the glass ceiling was a dark gleam—glass, to let the Panopticon watch over us. I lay there and looked up at it. Xie had a habit of folding cranes from whatever paper she could scavenge, and hanging them from the glass. Their small angles shifted slowly, dully, though the room seemed airless. Through their dapple I could see the spill of the Milky Way, and the insect twist of the Panopticon mast