Dust

25 Vault

A little later, Rien sat alone except for Gavin, feeling small and lost behind a table in the corner. She watched the adults, whom she was still tempted to call the Exalt, performing their mysterious dances of conversation, moving from place to place around the big room like ants touching antennae and sharing pheromones, passing news of the death of an old queen or the ascension of the new. She had slipped away from Samael—or at least, from Samael's avatar—and Benedick was talking to someone she didn't know while ignoring Caitlin and being ignored right back.

Like two cats on a bed, she thought. She fiddled with her fingers and thought about what she knew through Hero Ng.

His plan might even work.

Samael, Mallory, and Gavin. She told herself she'd only been using Mallory, that she had never trusted or liked Gavin. The basilisk still roosted on her shoulder, baleful eyes tight shut. She poked him with a finger. "Wake up."

"Do I look plugged in to you? I'm not sleeping."

"Good," she said. "Because I'm sending you home."

"Rien—"

But she stopped him with a raised hand. A funny awkward gesture when one made it to someone whose head bobbed beside one's own. "Someone needs to fetch Mallory and the fruits of the library tree. And you are the obvious choice. Can you find your way EVA?"

"I can." He billed her cheek. She ordered herself not to be charmed and turned her face away. "You think I serve Samael," he said.

"Don't you?"

He shrugged, both wings. "Do you?"

"No." As flatly as she could say it. "I don't see the point in angels. Or in reuniting angels. Or in choosing one angel over another; it's like asking if you would rather be scourged or boiled in oil. They're all full of shit and self-importance."

She must have spoken louder than she intended, because her words made someone—other than Gavin— laugh. She craned her neck to see over his back.

A young woman somewhat smaller and slighter than even Rien stood against the wall. She'd call her a woman, anyway, though she was covered in a soft spotted coat of gray-gold fur. Her wings—folded tight, long-boned, with grasping fingers at the joint—were what caught Rien's eye and made her breath short, though, because in seeing them, she could imagine what Perceval's wings had been like.

It came to Rien that even if she got her sister back, she would never see her whole. In breathtaking unfairness, the Perceval-who-had-been was maimed before Rien had ever met her.

She wanted to reach out and rub one hand down the velvet-furred bones of the stranger's wing, to see if it felt— as it appeared—like the velour skin of a peach. Instead, Rien made herself look at her face, and register a fine nose and wide mouth, unbalanced by heavy brows.

"Rien," she said, by way of introduction. Her hands were cold, and she chafed them on her trouser legs.

"Jordan," the stranger answered, and held out a fine-boned hand. She was as slender as Perceval. Rien wondered if they were related.

Rien took her hand, reminding herself that falling for strangers simply because they looked a little like Perceval was stupid. Although Perceval would never want her, and wouldn't holding on be stupider, still?

There was no fur on the stranger's palms, or the backs of her fingers. The skin there was black, like the skin on her face where the fur did not cover, and Rien thought of the hands of lemurs. The fur made sense; Jordan had no apparent body fat, and she was small and thin. You'd need some kind of insulation.

"You don't like Samael," Jordan said.

"I don't like being manipulated." Rien gave her hand a squeeze and released it. "I guess that means I don't like angels."

Then she held up one finger for a moment of quiet, and tapped Gavin on the wing. "Will you do what I asked you to?"

"Your wish is my command," he said, with abject dryness, and kicked off with more force than was needful.

Heads turned as he swept across the room with long, rowing strokes of his wings, tail snaking behind. A tall man ducked, though Gavin never came with a meter of him. Samael, speaking quietly with Benedick, affected either boredom or oblivion; he didn't even lift his head.

Rien wanted to hit him.

And maybe Jordan noticed her clenching hands, as the door slipped open in front of Gavin and he vanished into the corridor beyond. Because she touched Rien's wrist lightly, and when she turned, smiled. "Tell me more."

"More what?"

"More of why you don't like angels."

Too much, too fast, maybe. She shrugged and drew inward. "Not right now." And then, at Jordan's fallen face, wondered; maybe she had been flirting.

"Maybe some other time," Rien continued, reopening the door. "It looks like the party is breaking up, and they'll have work for me."

Or for Hero Ng, which amounted to the same thing.

As if Gavin's departure had been a trigger, people were dispersing—to consoles, or out of the room. Rien stood, looking around for Benedick.

"Nice to meet you," Jordan said.

Rien gave her a slantwise smile. "Nice to meet you, also."

After the council of war, Rien's mother brought her cookies. She set the plate at Rien's elbow and sat down beside her at the console upon which Rien—or Hero Ng, more accurately—was working. Rien watched him, though, and she was learning.

Rien's left hand moved across the controls without pause as, with the right one, she selected a cookie.

"Thank you," she said, through a mouthful of sweet carbohydrates.

It was the first thing she'd eaten since they began their run through Inkling's cavern. She stuffed the other half in her mouth.

"You feel I abandoned you," Arianrhod said.

Rien mumbled something unintelligible, unbearably grateful for the excuse of snack foods. Sugar cookies. She could live on them.

Ng took her hand back while she chewed, and typed faster. She let him, watching her fingers dance.

Arianrhod cleared her throat. "I had to leave you, Rien. But I gave you my name for a reason. I didn't know—"

Her voice creaked.

"Gave me your name?" Rien asked, forgetting to watch her fingers.

"Rien," Arianrhod said. "It's a part of my name."

She licked her lips, and Rien became aware that she was staring. She looked quickly away. "Your name."

Arianrhod touched her arm. "I would have done more. But the contract was—"

"Contract." Surely Rien had something better to do than echoing everything Arianrhod said. Whatever it might be, however, she could not think of it. She was thinking, instead, of names. And not just her own name.

"How else are children born, between Rule and Engine?" Arianrhod shrugged, and appropriated a cookie. If appropriated was the right word, when she had provided them. Her hair fell over her blouse, a waterfall of silver that could not have been more different from Inkling's deadly river.

"I thought I was named for nothing," Rien said, and having said it, frowned. Arianrhod.

Rien.

Arianrhod.

Rien.

It was on the tip of her tongue. She bit her lip. To buy time, she corrected a faulty spectrograph of the waystars.

Rien.

Arianrhod.

Ariane.

"Tristen," she said, too quickly, stammering. "Is he out of the tank yet?"

"Not yet," Arianrhod answered. "Did you want to visit him?"

Rien let Ng have her hands back. At least it kept them from shaking. "Yes," she said. "After."

Ariane was her half sister. Maybe. Ariane was also Arianrhod's daughter, by Alasdair. Possibly.

Did it matter?

Did it matter that Perceval was her half sister?

No. It mattered that she loved Perceval.

"After?"

"After we talk about what we're going to do for Perceval."

Whatever the bonds of blood, Arianrhod was no more willing to help Rien reclaim her sister than anyone else might have been. When Arianrhod excused herself, Rien did not complain.

She'd intended the request as a test—a test that, if Arianrhod failed it, would give either of them a reason to end the conversation.

A game, yes.

Rien might not like these ruling monsters, but if playing their games was what it took, well, she would prove that she could learn. She would be a master manipulator in no time, among this crew. And her mind was spinning over those three names—Arianrhod, Ariane, Rien—and the implication that there were layers and layers of allegiances that she did not even begin to understand.

She was glad she had Hero Ng to keep her hands busy.

Because she was thinking about Tristen, and his claim on the Captaincy—not as good as Perceval's, perhaps, because of the archaic rules under which the world labored, but better than Ariane's, except Ariane had eaten their father—and she was thinking about the chamber of bats, and Tristen warehoused there until Ariane could get around to eating his mind and experiences. As Rien had eaten Hero Ng.

And she was thinking about the healing tanks.

Whether the Engineers trusted Hero Ng to keep her out of trouble—after all, he was one of their own—or whether they were too busy themselves to watch her closely, Rien found herself working alone. It wasn't as if she was invisible; the Engineers didn't look through her as they bustled around their operations center. Instead, it was as if she had been sprayed with a frictionless coating, or perhaps as if she sat in the visual equivalent of an electromagnetic bottle.

What do they know that 1 don't? she wondered.

She watched Hero Ng work, and she studied what he did, and she worried. She understood it all, at least—his knowledge was her knowledge, too. That was some comfort, though the familiar/unfamiliar texture of the control panel under her hands was disconcerting, if she let herself think about it.

He had taken on the task of calculating the modifications necessary to maintain the world's integrity when they caught the electromagnetic shock wave. If they caught the electromagnetic shock wave. Caitlin Conn and her people were working on that task, which was equally vital and slightly less ticklish. Ng was handicapped by outdated knowledge of the world; things had changed since he died. But that handicap was compensated for by a more complete knowledge than any of the modern Engineers. In the moving times, in Ng's time, there had been shipwide communication, and the angels had not been embattled.

He knew what was supposed to be there.

Still, he found the work stressful. And after Arianrhod's departure, their apparent coinvisibility meant that Rien was on her own with regard to refreshment. By the time Ng at last hit a snag in his calculations that wasn't amenable to a few moments of staring into space and flipping a light stylus, Rien suggested—no, it was her body, dammit— Rien enforced a walk.

Maybe they could find Benedick, and he could take them to get something to eat, and she could talk to him about reclaiming Tristen and then rescuing Perceval.

Them, Rien thought, her hand extended to the door release, and chuckled. She would never be alone again. Even if no one turned to see why she laughed.

The invisible girl.

She was willing to bet it was the dead Engineer in her head who made everybody so uncomfortable.

Conrad Ng expressed regret. Not really in words, more in a feeling of wry apologetic shame. Rien shushed him. It wasn't he who had forced the fruit upon her, and it was not he who had chosen to eat. While walking through the door, she looked down at her hands. And he certainly came in useful.

Samael, he suggested.

Behind it all, she agreed, smoothing her hands over the naked skin of her scalp. When her hair started growing back, she imagined it would itch terribly. Now, though, it reminded her of touching Perceval, and she did it again.

They—she—stepped through the door, and as Rien turned to ask the monitor where she might find Benedick, she nearly walked into him.

"We should work on your situational awareness," he said. "You nearly walked into me."

She looked up at him and managed not to say the first thing that came into her mouth. And then was startled that she'd even considered mouthing off to an Exalt. Not just to an Exalt.

To Benedick Conn.

"Were you coming for me?" she said instead.

And he smiled, half shyly. "I'm no use to the Engineers," he said. "Not until it comes down to tactics and command decisions. I thought I'd see if you were hungry."

She imagined she wasn't the only one who could hear her stomach grinding rocks. She turned to walk beside him, the press of traffic steering her close to his side. He took her elbow.

Something about the anonymity of all these people, the reaching city crawling up the walls on every side like creepers climbing for the light, made her bold. She stretched on tiptoe as they walked and said toward his ear, "How did you wind up selling your daughters for peace tokens?"

He flinched, his fingers tightening on her arm. And then he appeared to decide that she deserved an answer, because he said, "You're the reason Caitlin isn't speaking to me."

"I guessed," Rien said. "The dates matched. Was it your father?"

"He wanted a hostage," Benedick said. "That the balance of terror be maintained."

"May I assume you are not close to Arianrhod?"

It was a gamble even asking. But Arianrhod had said contract. And pretended affection so transparently that even Rien could see through her. And if she was such a crowning egoist that she'd name a daughter she never expected to see again with a portion of her own name, there was the matter of Ariane's name, as well.

"You would not be incorrect in such an assumption," Benedick said, after considering. "Of course I meant you to be raised as one of the family."

"In that house," Rien answered, "it's as well I was not."

He had been about to wince and dip his head, acknowledging her point, and she had been about to let him off the hook with a wry reference to Head. But she felt a tension come into him. Work on your situational awareness, he had said, and so she turned to follow the line of his gaze.

And tripped so hard Benedick had to catch her.

A coffle of resurrectees were led through the street, and Rien knew them. The one in the front, walking placidly, his glossy head bowed and his bright eyes half-lidded, used to be Oliver Conn.

"There's no way they got from here to Rule and back since we arrived," Rien said. "Somebody knew in advance, and was waiting to bring them back."

"Ariane must be behind the influenza," Benedick said. "It makes too much sense. She brings in Perceval; she incapacitates her brothers and sisters with illness and consumes as many of them as possible."

If Rien had not been standing beside him, she would have thought him unemotional at the death of his family, but she could hear the flutter of his breath, too fast. He glanced down at her, and she nodded at him to continue.

"She precipitates a war with Engine that she has no intention of fighting." His throat worked when he swallowed. "Like saving Tristen for later. She's like one of the angels: she's going to eat the whole family if she can get away with it."

"Not just Ariane," Rien said. "She had to have an ally here. Somebody with resources. Somebody who could make sure she ran into Perceval at the right time, in the right place, when Perceval was already sickening."

"Arianrhod," he said. He held her arm too tightly, as the dead man who had been Oliver shuffled past them without so much as a flicker of attention.

Rien bit down on a sob. Not for herself. Not for Arianrhod, who was a stranger, nothing to her, and the ties of blood irrelevant—though she might have felt differently, had she not encountered Benedick and Tristen and Perceval, and found a place to stand. "So, of course, she's going to impede anything we might want to do toward rescuing Perceval."

"How are we going to find out where she's being held?"

"Dust has her," Rien answered. "Hero Ng knows where to go to look for Dust."

She didn't say, we can't do this without Samael. Because Benedick knew it as well as she did, and she didn't want to say it out loud, as if that would make it real. Instead, Rien squeezed his fingers. "First we need to go get Tristen. And I need my things that I came here with."

"Right," said Benedick. "Let's find him."

It was Hero Ng who finally located Tristen, hacking into the medical computers while Rien thought uncharitably of Samael and his barbed gifts, and even less charitably of Mallory. How convenient, she thought, how freeing to be able to embrace the role of necromancer, trickster, betrayer. How it must release one from the bounds of common courtesy and right behavior. What a romantic series of excuses.

Maybe she, Rien, should become a sorcerer. Or an angel. Then she could be an asshole, too, and if anybody commented on it, she could shrug and present her union card.

Hero Ng, without quite interrupting the stream of cynicism, nudged her. She shook her head and pulled herself together, a little shamed. If it was bad for her, what was it like for him, trapped in a strange body, resurrected to deal with a crisis he'd been half glad to avoid by dying? He'd no more asked for this than she had, even if it was Mallory and Samael who had tricked them into each other.

She couldn't call Ng a coward. And she couldn't fail him by being a coward either. Nor could she fail Tristen, or Perceval, or even Benedick.

She let Ng show her the map. And sighed. "I don't know what we're going to do," she said. "We found Tristen" — she tried not to notice Benedick's worried glance when she said "we"— "but he's in a private ward. He's tanked."

"For a grown man," Benedick said, "he needs a lot of rescuing. All right. I'm going to have to talk to Caitlin."

Rien rubbed at her throat. "Would it be better if I did?"

"The least fun part of being an adult is facing your own mistakes." Benedick patted her shoulder. "But if she won't hear me, then yes, you're on."

Rien sucked on her lip, unsure if what she felt was relief at being let off the hook, or outrage over being patronized. Maybe you could feel both at once.

Maybe you could feel all sorts of things, all of them mutually contradictory.

Rien said, "After you, Father."

The monitor lead them to Caitlin. One must be able to find the Chief Engineer. And Caitlin, to Rien's surprise, was immediately accessible. She sat in an office that was little more than a collection of chairs and interfaces, screens and keyboards and holographic panels bristling from every surface and each wall. The door was a slider rather than an iris, and it was open wide.

Caitlin Conn looked up when they entered, lips thinning. And she stared not at Benedick, but at Rien. Her left hand moved slightly, pinky and ring finger stretching as she blanked her screens, but not before Rien saw schematics of the Jacob's Ladder. And knew, through Ng, that they were in significant part completely speculative.

We have no idea, anymore, what the world even looks like.

"Chief Engineer," Benedick said, "I need to talk to you about our brother, and our daughter."

To her credit, Caitlin only nodded, and gestured them inside the door. It shut as soon as they cleared the entry, the sudden silence disconcerting. Rien found herself crowding back against the panel, which did not slide open from the pressure. Caitlin must have locked it.

Quickly, Benedick outlined their suspicions about Arianrhod and Ariane, while Caitlin steepled her fingers and listened. Rien had to admit, she was impressed by how well Caitlin listened. Active listening, intent and focused.

Rien found herself staring back, fascinated by the freckles on the back of Caitlin's hands, the ones speckling her face and hairline. Still, Caitlin's expression gave away nothing. Even when Benedick explained that they thought it was Arianrhod and Ariane, colluding, who had arranged for Perceval's maiming and abduction.

But when Benedick got to Tristen, she stopped him momentarily with an upraised finger, and Rien thought she checked something through her symbiont. Of course it could bring her any information she needed. The screens were merely a way of organizing, externalizing, and categorizing. Like writing lists.

"He should have been released," Caitlin said. "I'll see to it. Continue. Once you have him back, what then?"

"We're going after Perceval," Rien said.

"With Samael."

"I don't see a way around it." Benedick put his hand on Rien's shoulder, and she allowed him to take up the thread of conversation again. "We'll need an angel. And we need to choose an angel to support, if Rien—"

"Hero Ng," Rien corrected, and then blushed blue as she realized what she'd just done.

"Hero Ng," Caitlin echoed, "is correct that we'll need a unified A.I. to hold the world together."

"He is confident in his assessment. And he knows where Perceval is. Or he is nearly certain," Rien said, the phrasing not her own.

Caitlin seemed to know it. She smiled bitterly and stood, bouncing on her toes, radiating vibrant energy. She came around the desk. She wasn't much taller than Rien, but her arms and neck showed evidence of muscle. A black-hilted unblade bumped at her hip.

"I should stay here," she said. "And direct the preparations."

"And watch over Arianrhod."

She bit her lip. "I can have Arianrhod detained. And questioned. If you two are willing to stand surety."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning if she proves innocent, you could be sued for false accusation." Caitlin's hand rested, Rien thought unconsciously, on the unblade's hilt. Her thumb caressed the pommel. She turned over her shoulder and glanced at the blanked-out screens. "I wish we still had Susabo," she said. "That was a no-nonsense sort of angel. I'd back him over Samael."

"Was it Samael who killed him?"

"It was the stone that killed him. Or weakened him. But yes, it was Samael who ate what was left. And I couldn't defend him. So now we have Inkling, who is fierce, but small. As angels go. And we have Samael."

"And Rule has Dust?"

Caitlin shook her head, arms folded, head cocked to one side consideringly. "Rule has Asrafil. The Angel of Battle Systems. Or maybe Asrafil has Rule, and Samael has us."

"And Dust has Perceval," Benedick said, and Caitlin nodded.

"Yes," she said. "Come on. If we're going to choose, we need to be about choosing."

"I thought you were staying here," Benedick said.

Rien drew a breath. She hoped not. She wanted Caitlin to leap to the defense of her daughter.

"Making the ship ready for flight is a vital undertaking," Caitlin said, and Rien's heart fell, as it had fallen when she looked at Arianrhod and saw something about as genuine as the gift of sugar cookies. And then Caitlin uncrossed her arms, letting them swing from the shoulders, and continued, "So is retaking the command center. And there are a lot of Engineers here."

"Cat?" Benedick asked.

She looked up at him, not quite a glare but also not forgiveness, and said, "Let's go decant our brother."