The Swan Riders Read Online Free PDF Page B

hair appearing, a shy and lopsided smile on her face. Her undone robe swung open and she stepped toward me through the air.
    I dreamt Xie, and my narrow bed, and the ropes that held the mattress strained and creaking. And I dreamt her touch.
    I moaned, and Xie said: “Greta?”
    Her touch, my face. My face was numb where Talis had stripped my memories, and he would take her, he would take Xie. He would destroy her from orbit, he would strip her out of my heart. Xie touched me and I made a sound—rough and hoarse, fear and sex.
    There was a slap against my cheek.
    â€œGreta!”
    I blinked and light hit my eyes. Real light. My eyelashes were gummed together, sandy with drugged sleep. Someone was leaning over me. Hands on my face. Someone.
    It was the Swan Rider woman, Sri.
    Her face was so close. I felt my body tighten back into my bedroll as I struggled to wake up, to pull the real world together around me. My teeth were chattering. They clicked together like beads falling. There was a blush all over my body, adrenaline and more surging through me, feedback currents sucking on my fingers.
    I shivered.
    â€œYou were moaning,” said Sri. “I thought you were having a nightmare.”
    â€œIt . . .”
    â€œ. . . wasn’t?” she supplied. Delicately. Teasingly.
    I had been a student of classical rhetoric for more than a decade. I said: “Ummm . . .”
    Sri grinned. She was holding a little knife in one hand, and she made it sashay in the yellow light. I swallowed. My mouth was hot and sticky. Sri dropped back to where she’d clearly been sitting, on a rock by my side.
    â€œDo you dream much?” She picked up a heart-sized lump of wood and began—resumed—whittling it. It already had a recognizable shape, a horse and rider. As I watched, she set to work on the rider’s breastbone. She seemed impossibly to have muscles in her fingers, and the blade flashed and turned like a retractable claw. She looked . . . competent, I decided, though I really wanted to think dangerous . “Sleepwalking? Nightmares? If I’m going to save your life, that’s the sort of thing I ought to know.”
    â€œI don’t sleepwalk. And I can save my own life, thank you.” It came out crisp, but I was less than sure. It was full morning, October light slanting through the grass, the sky high and blue, no longer full of crawling radiation. Real, I reminded myself. I dreamt Xie but Calgary was real. Talis had blown it up.
    Talis was—nowhere in sight. Both he and Francis Xavier were missing.
    I tried to sit up, and failed. Despite the muscle relaxants I had stiffened in the night. My body felt like drying leather. My muscles yelped when I moved. “Where are—”
    â€œThey’ve gone to water the horses. Everything’s packed but you.”
    â€œOh,” I said. Classically. It didn’t help that I was flat on my back, with only a sheet to cover me. A crinkle sheet, it was called: a smart material that could both hold and disperse heat. My body was warm enough but my face was cold and exposed. A novel sensation. Princesses of the realm do not do a lot of camping.
    â€œWe’ll need to get some distance today,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
    Frankly, even getting up from the bedroll sounded like it was going to take an act of will. And possibly a small winch. “Stiff,” I admitted. “Are we in danger?”
    Sri hmm ed, noncommittal. “There are two sure ways to call down the wrath of Talis. To interfere with the Preceptures, or to interfere with Swan Riders. Someone fairly nearby is doing one or the other. And between us, we’re both.”
    She was a Swan Rider and I was a Precepture child. Well. Ex.
    Sri tucked her whittling into a pocket and folded her knife closed with a snick. “What about your thighs?” she said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIf you don’t need