Dust

16 tasting of bitter sleep

Perceval hadn't lied. Exactly. She had been confident that Benedick would receive them. Hear them out. Help avert catastrophe.

She had not told Rien that this confidence was not due to recent acquaintance. She had not seen their father since she had six Solar, no more.

His domaine was not Engine. Benedick's house was not furnished to the standard of luxury to which Perceval was accustomed. The air held a bone-wearing rawness, and the great view screens on the walls hung dark, draped with wove-polymer tapestries that stirred in the draft. Benedick seemed impervious, as at home here as any medieval overlord in his keep of stone. Tristen relaxed in the dimness of the hall. The militia followed on, still silent, and as they entered the house, peeled away.

"Your men and women are the dead," Perceval said to her father. "Resurrectees."

Benedick nodded.

The Exalt dead were hard to keep dead. Their symbionts bonded their bodies, healed what was to be healed, knit bone and sealed spurting arteries. But if another Exalt skimmed off the cream, consumed their will and personalities and memories along with their colonies, what remained was only the mute resurrected. They did not speak. The spark, the anima—whoever had inhabited the fleshy carapace—was gone.

An unblade could have ended them, of course. But they were useful, and unblades rare.

When Perceval looked up, she saw Gavin perched equitably on Rien's fist, his swanlike head turning from side to side, crest fluffed and burning eyes sealed. She thought of the necromancer, Rien's lover whether Rien thought Perceval knew it or not, and shuddered. It would be foolish to think they were not observed.

"First we must find you accommodation," Benedick said, and it was done. The last of their honor guard broke apart. Benedick summoned his majordomo. For a few moments Perceval and Rien (with her attendant basilisk, head now tucked under his wing as if he had any need of sleep) and Tristen stood, flotsam adrift in the center of a great empty room at the front of Benedick's house, balanced over the yawning depths of holographic tiles of indigo blue. And Perceval noted Rien's inward smile.

"Sister?"

Rien shook her head as if shaking off a trance. "Just thinking."

Perceval nodded, waiting companionably. Tristen, she thought, was pretending not to listen. And Gavin lifted his head, stretched, and began to preen the hair behind Rien's ear.

Eventually, in the face of all their silences, Rien sighed and said, "In Rule, it would have been me making up the sleeping chambers."

"You miss your place," Perceval said.

"No." Rien glanced at her, at Tristen. Gavin tugged her hair; she reached up and placed a hand on his wing. "Yes. It wasn't much of a place."

"It was safe," Tristen said brusquely, "and you knew it."

Rien stared from him to Perceval, and Perceval thought she was expecting disapproval. She kept her own face neutral; she nodded slightly.

The corners of Rien's mouth ticked up. She stepped around Perceval, Gavin meanwhile executing a maneuver half-hop and half-slide down her arm to come to rest upon her hand like any bird at peace upon a swaying limb, except the three alabaster coils of tail looping her wrist.

"Father?" Rien stammered, before she had approached Benedick very closely at all. She said it so softly, as if she had never heard the word before, that she was obliged to say it again to turn his head. Perceval flinched for her, but Rien persisted. "Father."

"Yes, Rien?" He turned, raising one hand to stay his majordomo, without any show of impatience at the interrupted conversation.

"Perceval and I would like to stay together. And close by Tristen, please."

"Of course," Benedick said. "That simplifies things. Thank you, Rien."

As for Perceval, she watched, hoping she presented an air of impassivity. No doubt at all, she was in for it, and she deserved whatever she was going to get.

Pinion wrapped her protectively, whether in response to the chill or the quick hug she gave herself, she did not know. The translucent wings were warm; their touch made her shiver.

Who was this Dust, who spoke to her through the mechanical parasite that had grafted itself to the severed scars of her wings? Who was he to demand her hand in marriage?

She did not want to ask Benedick, and she did not see why Rien might know.

And as for Rien—as she requested, so it was done. Within the quarter-hour, Perceval and her sister were ensconced in a small chamber with twin couches. It was warmer here, the walls heavily draped except alongside the wide, glazed window. There was a big desk and a fainting bench, and a dresser and a wardrobe for all the things they did not own. The furnishings were russet and brown accented here and there with white and yellow, pleasant and durable. A small heater glowed in the corner, making the room cozy.

Rien set Gavin on the back of the desk chair and sank down on the couch closer to the door. Perceval crossed to the window and pressed her hands against it. The glass was the same temperature as the air inside: double or triple glazed, then, and if she angled her head she could see light reflecting off the other panes. Where her shadow blocked the interior lights, she could see through. She stared down the long snow-frosted bank to the black lake below, the ice-sheathed trees beyond shimmering in the first gray mirrored light of morning, and waited for Rien's wrath to crest.

"You lied to me," Rien said.

"I edited," Perceval admitted. "But it came out well enough, didn't it?"

"You implied you knew him, that he would take us in."

Rien had not had her symbiont yet when the conversation occurred. She could not possibly recall it accurately. Perceval herself did not remember what it had been like to live solo, but she knew enough Means to have an idea of their confusion, the muddy imperfection of their thoughts. She wondered if that was already receding for Rien, if Rien had noticed how crisp new memories were in comparison. "I said it was not presumptuous for his daughters to call on him in time of need."

"Space you," Rien said, and Perceval laughed. And then Rien caught on and laughed, too. "Already done, huh?"

"Yes, rather." Perceval put her back to the polycarbonate and leaned against it. With a shudder, she realized she could feel the glass against the feathers of the parasite wings. They were infiltrating her nervous system. Becoming part of her in truth.

There was a twinge of pain. She looked down. She was twisting a shadow feather between her fingers; the feather tore free, and its edges sliced her hand. "Dammit."

She dropped the feather on the floor and licked the blood from her thumb. The cut sealed itself, a thin blue line in her flesh, and she let her hands fall and knot in the fabric of her trousers.

"So," Rien said, sliding off the couch, "you said that when you challenged Ariane, it was because she was behaving villainously."

Perceval imagined the taste of blood. Ariane's blood. They were safe now, more or less. They had escaped, and if anyone could prevent total war, it was Benedick Conn. It was time to think of other things again. "I'll pay her back, one of these days."

Rien crouched and picked up the feather from the floor. Still hunkered, elbows on her knees, head bent, she said, "So tell me of her villainy."

Perceval stood and stared at her, folded arms and folded wings. And then the hard line of her mouth crumpled, and she smoothed both palms across her stubbled scalp.

"It'll grow," Rien comforted.

"I was thinking of keeping it shorn," Perceval said. "It was vanity." With her head still bowed, she continued. "The story you wish to hear is not in all things a flattering one."

"I don't need to hear Ariane flattered—"

"What about me?" Perceval stared, then, dark eyes and dark lashes in her pale, square face.

And Rien swallowed. The warmth of a flush stung her cheeks. She looked down quickly, as if studying the translucent feather in her hands. A smear of blood stained the tip of the pen azure. She smoothed the vanes; they were unlike any bird's feather she'd ever held.

"Trust in my love," she said, and heard the rustle of Perceval's nod.

"I made a lot of errors." Perceval's voice went thready.

"I forgive them," Rien said. "You said you were on errantry."

"Yes. I don't know what you know of Engine—"

"Nothing," Rien said. She thought of stories, of demons and angels, of cannibals and terrorists. "Nothing upon which I can rely. I have an Engineer in my head now—"

"Hero Ng."

Who was, Rien thought, somewhat shocked and bashful to be called Hero. But then she reminded him that he'd earned it with his death, and his embarrassment subsided. "I will not find it tiresome if you explain."

"Just so," Perceval said, and sat down on the floor with a flumph and a fluttering, her long legs bent every which way. "It is incumbent upon the knights of the realm to patrol, to keep peace and enforce the rule of law as far as our domaine's influence stretches. We also go out looking for damage, and mend it where it can be mended. We do not travel the same route in the same order always, so none may know too far in advance when or where we shall be, and so that we may provide maintenance to little-habited areas. But by the same token, it is good to know the inhabitants, who can be trusted and who will look for any advantage. Some of them ..." She bit her lip, as if remembering suddenly that Rien had been a Mean herself, a week since. "Rien, would you reach me down a drink, please? If I am meant to talk through to supper?"

"Hardly so long," Rien said. But she stood, and tucked the feather into her pocket, and from a decanter on the desk poured two squat cups of wine, darker red than her own blood had been until recently. "Here."

She sat again, closer this time, and Perceval took the drink with gratitude. "In this case, I came upon something that demanded an intervention."

"Ariane was doing something horrible."

"Ariane was disciplining one of her followers."

"And you intervened?"

"It's a funny thing," Perceval said into her wine cup. "I was led upon her. By a man of Engine, who said the person she was preparing to space was his paramour, and thus through conjugal rights, at least in technicality, under my protection."

"And you challenged her to protect this person." Rien stuck her free hand under her thigh, so that she would not give in to the urge to reach out and stroke Perceval's.

Perceval seemed oblivious. "It seemed like a good idea."

"Yes," Gavin said from his perch on the chair back. "Until your neurons fired."

Perceval flinched and then laughed. "You're not easy to like, Sir Cutting-Torch."

"How fortunate that I have so many other uses." "Your story," Rien reminded, when Perceval's smile had dropped away and she sat again, staring into her cup as if engrossed. She didn't look up this time, but Pinion bowed forward, and the flight edges of trailing primaries brushed her face, as if in comfort. Perceval did not seem to notice, but the gesture made Rien shudder.

She would not care to be comforted by such a thing.

Or would she? Because there in her head was Hero Ng; aware, willing, his colony subservient to hers. The set of him had become encompassed in the set of her. Was this what Ariane had felt when she consumed her father, soul and memory?

Rien could only imagine it was so.

But surely that was different than Pinion.

"It was only after I'd challenged her that I realized I'd been lured into combat. And with whom." Perceval shrugged. "The battle is not always to the just."

She fell to swirling her wine moodily, and Rien thought she might have said more, but the door rattled under a tap and the moment was lost.

"Come in," Rien said. She hadn't even tasted the wine; she did so now, making a face at sour and tannin and then surprised by the flush of round flavors that followed. It went to her head, too, as if the fumes alone were intoxicating. She was still blinking when the door cracked open, and then fell wide.

It was Benedick. More casually dressed now in plain trousers and a pullover; his feet enormous in black slippers sporting skew eyes and draggled bunny ears. "May I come in?"

"I'll get you a glass," Rien said, standing. Not yet unsteadily; at least her dizziness was fleeting.

"No," he said. "Please. Actually, I must speak to my, to ... Sir Perceval. Rien, you have the freedom of the grounds—"

"Alone," she said. "Of course. I'll just give myself a little self-guided tour. And find the facilities."

"Thank you," he said, in a manner that turned it into an apology. He glanced at the basilisk pretending to sleep on the chair, and then back at Rien. "If you don't mind—"

"Come on, Gavin," she said. "We're being evicted."

He rose into the air with a shaking of wings made more imposing by the confined space. The impact of his landing on Rien's fist drove her arm down as if she had been struck, but then he settled himself quite prettily and flipped his feathers into order.

She took the glass with her. Neither she nor Gavin had spilled a drop. And as the door shut behind her, she wondered where in her father's house he meant her to go.

She rather thought this was a test.

Rien recollected the way back to the entrance hall. Her newly perfect recall laid it out for her like a map. But who would she find there, except her father's mute servitors, and perhaps—if she wandered far afield—the major-domo? She sipped wine and thought.

"Go find the kitchen and steal breakfast," Gavin suggested.

Rien narrowly avoided snorting wine out her nose, positive that it had been his intention. "It'll be at least a week before I'm that high-handed in Benedick's house." She glanced down the hallway. "But I think I can find Tristen's room. Wasn't he led off this way?"

"Two down," Gavin said. "I can smell him."

"Thank you." Rien squared herself before the door in question, and realized too late that she hadn't a hand free for knocking. She was about to perform some complicated dance with cup and basilisk, but Gavin's head darted out on its long smooth neck and the curve of his upper beak hammered the door precisely, thrice.

And a moment later, the door swung open. Tristen stood before her, a pair of scissors in one hand, his beard cropped raggedly on one side. "Rien," he said. "Come in."

"Benedick threw me out so he could talk to his daughter," she said, and stepped inside before Tristen shut the door.

He sighed. "I'm sorry. I was in the middle—"

"Carry on." His room was smaller than the one she shared with Perceval, the color scheme cool blues. There was only one daybed. She sank down upon it. Gavin hopped off her hand and went to perch on the footrail, the mattress dimpling under his talons as he waddled across the spread. He looked completely ridiculous.

Rien drank her wine and made herself watch Tristen peering in the mirror. He had scissors and a bowl of water that steamed a little, a ceramic-bladed plastic razor no different from any razor Rien has ever used, and he was fastidiously trimming the coarse chalky spirals of his beard close to his chin.

When that was done, he wet the ragged remainder with a soaked towel, then rubbed soap into it, rinsed his hands in the water, and picked up the razor. While he inspected the edge, without turning, he said, "There's more wine on the credenza."

"Thank you," she said. "I'm good."

"Would you pour me a glass?"

"It is my lot in life to serve," she said. But then, he wouldn't understand the irony at all, would he? She got up, realizing that she had grown unsteady, and brought him a glass. Apparently, Benedick thought Tristen rated the good crystal.

She set the glass at his elbow while he scraped the razor along his jaw, pausing long enough to smile at her in the mirror before she backed away. She sat back on the bed, dizzy with the unaccustomed alcohol. "Well," she said, "we're here."

"And in good order," he said, between swipes of the blade. He turned his face to inspect his cheek in the light, and gave it one more pass.

"What are we going to do?"

"Coming here was your plan, wasn't it?"

"Perceval's." Although Rien had been party to it, throughout. "And mine."

Tristen set the blade down, picked up the towel again, and buried his face in it. Through steaming cloth, he said, "We're going to stop the war. And remove Ariane from power."

Rien drew her knees up, sitting bent forward between her legs with her arms wrapped. "How are we going to do that?"

"I am eldest." Tristen set the towel down. He had a fair sharp face, now that it was revealed. Planes and angles, pointed ears and a pointed chin. He looked less like Benedick without the beard, though the sameness remained around the eyes. "While I live, I am rightfully Commodore, now that Father is gone."

"But Ariane ate your father. She has his memories. She's taken his place."

"I know," Tristen said, and touched the hilt of his broken blade. "I think Perceval will have something to say about that, don't you?"

"Well, maybe." Rien bit her lip, wondering how much to tell him. And then he turned and offered the scissors, handle first.

"Come cut my hair," he said. "Please."

"I'm drunk," she said, and he laughed.

"Just take twenty centimeters off the bottom and try to get it straight across. And tell me what you mean by maybe, brother's daughter."

She took the scissors and studied him. "You'll have to sit. You're too tall." The last of her wine went down with a gulp as he turned the chair around, and then she gave him the glass to set aside and took the comb he gave her in exchange. Carefully, she began to comb out his hair. It was softer than it looked, its weight pulling curls that might otherwise have been as tight as her own into waves. "What I mean by maybe, is, I think we're being mani. .. manipulated."

"You're not that drunk," he said. In the mirror, she could see his eyes were closed.

His hair was as smooth as she could make it, and with the curl and the braid, it wouldn't matter too much if she made the edges ragged. She laid the comb on his thigh, tugged a section of hair taut with her left hand, and halfway up his back began to snip. "Perceval fought with Ariane, and Ariane took her prisoner."

"And treated her dishonorably."

"But Ariane was exactly where Perceval would find her. And doing something that would ensure Perceval would challenge her. And just to ensure the action—she was led upon the crime."

"Suspicious," Tristen admitted. His hair was damp; it made the cutting easier.

Rien parted out another section and drew it straight, measuring it against the first cut. "It gets better."

He lifted his chin, and even when speaking kept his neck straight and his head still. Another lock as long as her forearm dropped to the floor. "Elaborate."

"Perceval was carrying a virus when she was captured. One that incapacitated her after we escaped. And that I also caught."

"Not a deadly virus."

"Very deadly," Rien said, finally articulating the thought she'd not quite been able to force herself to accept. She wouldn't think of Jodin, or of Head. "To a Mean. It laid both of us out, even with treatment. I think it was an influenza."

"Someone used her as a vector."

Rien nodded, her jaw muscles aching with the strain of holding back tears, and severed another lock of Tristen's hair. "Half of Rule could be dead by now."

"I understand." He snaked a hand back, caught her wrist, and squeezed. "Rien, I believe you."

"It's a conspiracy," she said, between small snips to get the edge even. She stepped back. He shook his hair out, and it fell around his shoulders like a rippled cloak.

"Yes," Tristen answered. "I do believe you are right. And I also believe we should have some more wine now. Don't you?"

"If you'll tell me how you got locked away," she said, greatly daring to lay a hand on his shoulder.

He met her eyes in the mirror.

It was full light when Rien returned—alone, for Gavin had gone out exploring. Perceval slept curled tight around a pillow, sheathed in Pinion as if in a clamshell, both fists pressed against her chin, the blankets draped haphazardly. She wore an open-backed nightgown Rien had never seen, too white to have come traveling with them.

Her father must have brought it for her.

Rien wrapped her arms around herself. The flush of alcohol was already fading; she didn't know if that was because it had taken so little to intoxicate her or because her symbiont filtered her blood. She thought of Tristen, the glide of his razor along the edge of his jaw, and reached out and stroked Perceval's scalp, the soft stubble prickling her fingers.

She felt Pinion watching, but the parasite wings permitted her touch.

It was a kind of opposite, wasn't it? Tristen couldn't wait to shave the beard away, and here was Perceval, all shorn like a sheep, and defiant with it. Rien thought she could shave Perceval's head for her, too. If Perceval would let her.

With a rustle, Pinion unfolded. But not violently. Rather, like the wings of the sleepy pigeons Rien had once tended in their cote, before the job was handed down to a younger Mean. Perceval's head moved under Rien's hand. She turned and blinked drowsily, brown eyes made enormous by the unrelieved bones of her face.

"Is it time to get up?"

"No," Rien said, and kissed her.

She looked hard, but her mouth was tender. Rien cupped her face in both hands, feeling skin—soft, with rough patches, the hard oval of a blemish. Perceval's mouth was wet, resilient. So much more yielding than Mallory's.

The kiss tasted of bitter sleep, the sourness of the wine. Something brought by each of them.

Rien's heart pounded as if she had just walked out of a sauna. Perceval's long hands lay flat against her shoulders; without touching, Pinion unfolded, arched over them and crossed behind Rien's back, a sort of bower. For an instant, Perceval kissed her back, and the beating wings were in Rien's bosom.

And then Perceval slid her hand around, pressed her fingertips to Rien's chest beneath her collarbone, and gently levered her away. "No," she said, softly. "Rien, I'm sorry. I'm fallow. Asexed. I don't want this."

"You're female." Not like Head, Rien meant to say. But Head might be dying or already dead, half the world away. And somebody had used Perceval to do it.

She had kissed Rien back. And so Rien leaned down, as if she would kiss Perceval again, because she hurt so, and was so lonely, and because she loved Perceval as she had not known that she could love. And was stopped by no more than the pressure of Perceval's hand.

"Being male or female has nothing to do with desire."

"You don't want me."

"I don't want anyone," Perceval said. Rien stepped back, still half drunk and groggy with wakefulness, and watched Perceval rise. She crossed to the window and threw the drapes open with a flick of wingtips. "Desire is a distraction from duty. I prefer to be celibate."

Rien pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. Her lips still tingled. "But you could get it fixed."

Fixed. Like a cat. Rien was ashamed as soon as she'd said it.

"I could," Perceval said. "But then I would not be me."

"I love you," Rien said, hopelessly. And Perceval turned back, framed between the patterned russet drapes, and grasped and squeezed Rien's hand.

"I love you," she answered. Then she tugged Rien's arm, bringing her around to the window, where they could stand side by side, watching the suns' reflected light filter through the black trees beyond. "Where did you go?"

"To see Tristen," Rien said. She leaned against Perceval's side, and Perceval let her. She had been the strong one; she had been the savior. And now they were in Perceval's place, and any salvation would have to be Perceval's. "What did your father want?"

Perceval turned to her, and Rien already knew her well enough to hear the conversation they let pass unspoken. "Our father," Perceval could have said, and Rien could have answered, "He doesn't think so," and that would not have been exactly true, any of it.

And so Perceval said, "To apologize." When she shrugged, her parasite wings brushed the ceiling. She jerked her eyes at the arch of them, a gesture that managed to include her maiming, her shorn hair, and maybe the world.

Rien could not imagine a member of the Conn family seeking forgiveness. Even if she had seen a portion of Benedick's apology with her own eyes.

Well, perhaps Tristen. But Tristen was different.

And Tristen was theirs. Hers and Perceval's. After a fashion. "Tristen and I think the whole thing was planned. That you were meant to be a sacrifice."

"Father agrees. He said he wondered what might have happened if Ariane had killed and devoured me. If there was another virus in me; if I am poisoned more ways than one."

She said it so plainly, as if the words sent no pang to her heart. Perhaps the pain they caused Rien was pain enough for both. Rien was still considering that when Perceval continued, "Did you and Tristen have any suspicion who might be behind it?"

"Somebody who hates Rule," Rien said. "And doesn't like you very much either."

"Or doesn't like Benedick."

"He's had longer to collect enemies," Rien admitted, and was glad when Perceval laughed. "Tristen told me about the .. . about how his blade got broken. Twenty years ago, he thinks."

"What can shatter an unblade?"

"Another unblade," Rien said.

"But there aren't that many—oh. Ariane." She paused. "But why trap him there? Why not kill him? Why not.. ."

"Eat his colony, then?"

Perceval nodded, her throat working as she swallowed.

"If she had him in her head, the old Commodore might have noticed. And she wasn't ready to take him on."

"So she hoarded him," Perceval said, sickly. "Like a wasp hoards paralyzed spiders."

"It's amazing that he's as sane as he is."

"We're a tough family." Perceval fiddled with her fingers. "There's something else. When Pinion kidnapped me"—the shadow wings rustled—"it, or someone speaking through it, professed love for me. Someone named Dust claimed me."

Rien thought about what Perceval had just said, about celibacy and duty. She felt Perceval's tension, the loathing she would not let show in her face but couldn't keep out of the set of her shoulders. "I won't let that happen."

"Still," Perceval said. "If you need to keep secrets from me, so the wings don't hear, I understand—what's that?"

She pointed. Outside, the day grew brighter. Achingly bright. Eye searing, red-white, like staring into the unfiltered suns. When Rien raised a hand to draw the drapes, she saw the bones of her hand.

"Shit." Shutters would be gliding over windows on the dayside, even now. It was just a flare, she thought. Or Hero Ng thought for her, and even in the midst of her fear she wondered how long it would be before she stopped remembering that.

And if it wasn't only a flare, they would know soon enough, and there was nothing she could do about it.

"These suns were never stable," Rien said, with Hero Ng's conviction. "And they are dying now."