Dust

2 they know all, that dwell in the silent kitchens

Some of the milk and porridge splashed out when Rien dropped the bowl. It spattered Perceval's ankle, and her chains writhed toward it, defensively. But once they tasted the spill, they withdrew again—Perceval could not help but think—nonplussed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I did not mean to startle you. Was that for me, Rien?"

The girl stammered, staring. She was small, fine-boned, with delicate features and a wild froth of frizzy black hair chopped off shoulder-long and clipped back with jeweled plastic spiders that spun a transparent hairnet between them—something cheap and pretty.

She looked nothing like her mother, but then, who did?

"It is for you," she managed, bending down to pick up the bowl. It hadn't overturned.

She picked the spoon off the floor as well, and scrubbed it on the hem of her tan blouse. As if a little dirt from the dungeon floor could discomfit Perceval now.

When Rien looked up again, Perceval spread her hands, a gesture of helplessness. She could not feed herself bound up in chains, the strain like dripped fire down her neck and shoulders, a hurt even sharper than the missing wings. Ariane Conn, Perceval promised herself, feeling a little ridiculous. She could say the name a thousand times. It would not free her, nor put her in a place where she could fight Lady Ariane.

And in any case, Ariane was the eldest living and acknowledged daughter of Alasdair Conn, who had been Commodore since the death of the last Captain. Nearly five hundred years, nearly since the moving times. She was out of Perceval's league.

Except here unlooked-for was the child Rien, sent to serve Perceval in her captivity, apparently in all innocence. An Engineer's miracle. It might mean that even somewhere here in Rule there was a friend.

Perceval arched up on the balls of her feet to ease her arms and shoulders as Rien fussed with the spoon.

"I will feed you," Rien said, as if noticing Perceval's gesture. She dug the spoon through porridge and held it up so Perceval had only to push her chin forward to take it.

Of course the stuff might be drugged, but they had her in nanochains. If they wanted to poison her, or kill her, or interrogate her, there were easier means.

And Perceval had no doubt those means would be used.

Even such a small motion made her want to gasp in pain, though she schooled herself to let only a little air hiss from her nose. Rien noticed, however, and after Perceval had her mouthful, Rien walked around her to ex- j amine her back.

Mere nudity could not make Perceval naked, but standing spread-eagled while a servant of the House of Rule gawked at her stumps was a true humiliation. She lifted her chin anyway, and chewed the porridge before she swallowed it. The stewed grains popped between her teeth. She could taste the flowers in the honey. Thyme and lavender, she thought.

A mercy, that Rien did not touch her. But she did say, as if she would like to touch, "So why is it that your wounds aren't healed?"

Perceval shuddered, as if Rien's words had been a hand brushed across the fine shaved stubble on her nape.

Her wounds weren't healed because she could not bear to heal them. She could not bear to admit that she would never fly again. And that was the darkest kind of foolishness.

She did not need to close her eyes to heal herself. She just reached into the symbiotic web that interleaved her brain, pumped through her veins, laced her flesh and muscle, willing the wounds to heal. There was a prickle and itch; she felt scabs writhing, the cells growing, the wounds sealing closed.

She let the chains take her weight again, though the pain was dizzying. Healing exhausted her.

Rien still stood behind. Perceval could picture her, mouth agape, watching the scars knit where the unblade had bitten deep. She wondered if she could actually feel the heat of the girl's palm hovering near her freckled back, or if she only imagined that Rien would want to touch, and barely restrain herself.

In any case, now Perceval needed food more than before.

"The porridge," she said, and Rien gasped an apology, scampering around to raise the spoon and bowl again.

Perceval ate it all, and drank the tea. And as Rien was leaving, Perceval stood up strong and stretched against her chains. If she had wings, they would have fanned for balance...

Instead, the tender healed skin broke, and blood trickled in quill-thin streams down her back once more.

Rien ascended the stairs, shaking. The empty bowl rattled on the plastic tray and her feet clicked on the transparent steps. The echo—through strangely silent halls—could have been the reverberation of Perceval's voice, as if the prisoner called after her: Rien, Rien, Rien.

When Rien came into the kitchen with the dirty bowl, Roger was there with Head, being trained to supervise the scrubbers. He was skinny and dark—a beaky, random-jointed man with a cleft chin, counterpoint to Head's stocky muscularity. Head glanced up as Rien came in, and with a flick of fingers gestured her closer. Rien leaned past Roger to slide the dishes into the scrubbers: pink and frothy, they reached up to cushion and coat each item as it dropped from Rien's hand.

Head stepped closer and pinched Rien's cheek to make her smile. "Why the worryface?"

Strange that sie should tease, when Head's own expression was taut. But that was Head. Sie had been castelan and householder to the Conn family since Tristen and Aefre were crawling babes, to hear hir tell it. Rule might have grown up around hir, as if sie were its rooftree.

Head had no need to prove hir authority through blows or remonstrations. And Rien, who was without family, could think of none she trusted more. "Head, she knew my name."

Head tched, and touched Roger's elbow to draw his attention to a place where the scrubbers were working over the same spot again and again, caught in a feedback loop. "They say demons know all sorts of things," Head said, without a glance at Rien. "And if what crawls out of Engine is not demons, why there are no demons in the world."

Rien snorted, and that did net her a jaundiced look. "You have opinions, Miss Rien?"

"No, Head."

But Head smiled, a quick flicker of lips, and Rien smiled back before she dropped her eyes to the scuffed toes of her shoes. And then Head dipped a hand into hir pocket and extended the closed fist to Rien.

What sie laid in Rien's cupped palms, though, was no gift, but a crumpled length of black crepe. "While you were in the dungeon, the Commodore struck Lady Ariane over the prisoner," Head said, "and the princess sent for a sharpening stone. You'll want to be ready with that."

At the sound of footsteps, Rien backed into the shadows of the portrait hall, wringing her rag between her hands. It was slightly greasy, aromatic of lemon oil.

If she closed her eyes and crowded the wall, she could convince herself that she smelled that, and not the acrid machine-oil scent of noble blood. She could convince herself that the burled gold-and-black ironwood frame of the Commodore's portrait—of the old Commodore's portrait—was deep enough to hide her, even as it shadowed the image of Alasdair I within.

There was no black sash across it yet, though the confrontation had been coming a long time. Rien had the crepe looped through her belt in the back, freshly pressed, and she had a hammer in her apron pocket also, and sixteen long framing nails.

Eight of the other twenty portraits in the hall were already crossed by mementos of mortality: those of the Princes Royal Tristen, Seth, Finn, Niall, Gunther, and Barnhard, and the Princesses Royal Aefre and Avia. Tristen and Aefre were the eldest, and Aefre had died in a war with Engine before Benedick or Ariane were ever born. There were songs about them, some of which Rien knew. They had been lovers as well as brother and sister, and Tristen was most recently lost, though he had been gone longer than Rien had been alive. So that was centuries of life without his true love, and Rien, who as a Mean could expect to live a hundred years if she were lucky, wondered what it had been like. Could you find other loves? Did you just endure alone, like in the songs?

That seemed, she thought, unnecessarily melodramatic.

Of the other twelve portraits, nine smiled or frowned from the wall, unmarked: Benedick, Ariane, Ardath, Dylan, Edmund, Geoffrey, Allan, Chelsea, Oliver. Oliver was Rien's favorite. She gave his frame especial attention. Three final portraits were turned to the wall and nailed there. Whoever they memorialized, Rien had never heard their names, but she knew they had rebelled and been cut down.

The blood smell wasn't fading, no matter what lies she recited. And the footsteps were growing closer. Crisp footsteps, a woman's hard small boots, and the shimmering of silver spurs. Rien forced her eyes open, untwisted the rag j in her hands, and began rubbing the scrolled edge of the frame, work smoothing the tremble from her fingers.

No gilt to concern her, just oil-finished wood from which a deep luster had been developed by centuries of polishing. Like the spider in the window, whose web had already been cleaned away when Rien went to see, she wouldn't look up, wouldn't pause, wouldn't seek notice.

Not until the jingling spurs drew closer. Then she put her back to the painting, lowered her eyes—closed her eyes, truth told—twisted that sorry rag in her hands again, and bowed so low she felt it in her knees.

The footsteps paused.

Rien held her breath, so she wouldn't sneeze on the I stench of gardenias and death.

"Girl."

"My Lady?"

"Your rag," the Princess Ariane said, her spurs ringing I like dropped crystal at the slight shift of her weight. Rien I knew she was extending her hand. She risked a peek to find it, and laid her greasy yellow chamois across the princess's callused palm.

Lady Ariane Conn of the House of Rule could never be mistaken for a Mean. Her hair was black-auburn, her eyes peridot. Her collarbone made a lovely line over the curve of her velveted ceramic power armor, and her cheek would have been smooth as buttermilk had the plum-dark outline of a gauntlet's fingers not been haloed in chartreuse upon it, pricks of scab night-colored against the bruising where sharp edges had caught her.

The scabs writhed as she repaired herself.

Lady Ariane laid the flat of her unblade on Rien's chamois and wiped first one side, then the other. She scrubbed a bit where forte joined hilt, angled it into the light for inspection, picked with a thumbnail—careful of the edge—and scrubbed again. The blood she wiped was scarlet, not cobalt. The unblade had already absorbed whatever noble virtue had been in it.

At last satisfied, she handed the rag back, then sheathed Innocence almost without steadying the scabbard.

"Will there be anything else, My Lady?"

Ariane's lips pursed, and then she smiled. It closed her more swollen eye, but she did not wince. "The Commodore is dead," she answered. "Stop polishing the old bastard's picture and hang up the crepe."

Rien tried to look only at the princess's hands, at the pale celadon flush coloring her skin. Had she consumed the old Commodore's blood already? Were his memories prickling through hers, influencing whatever it was that she saw through those modified eyes? Rien knew the House of Rule did not see or think as the Mean did. Their sight, their brains, their hearing was as altered as their blood.

Before she turned away, Rien cleared her throat.

"Yes?" the princess said.

"I'm ... Lady, it is I who is caring for the prisoner."

Silence. Rien sneaked a look through her lashes, but Lady Ariane gave her no help, only waiting impatiently with one hand on the hilt of her unblade.

Rien took a breath and tried again. "Lady, she knew my name."

"And what is your name, girl?"

"Rien."

Rien thought the princess tilted her head, as if surprised. And then her smile broadened, the swelling around her eye already diminishing as the bruise faded across her cheek. "Fear not, Rien. I'll eat her in the morning. And then after that, she can't very well bother you again."