Dust

5 outside rule

The kitchen was tight and silent as they tidied after supper. There should have been lessons in the evening, but Head, fingers knotted about hir belt, instead dismissed the younger servants to their rooms. Rien had never, she thought, seen Head look frightened. She would not have believed such a thing, had it been told.

Later, in her coffin, Rien could not sleep. She turned and turned again, stretched on her back and curled on her side, pressed her hands against the spongy lid and felt it fill the spaces between her fingers. She counted backward from a thousand—or tried: she kept losing her train of thought in the eight hundreds.

And she kept snaking one hand over the top of the kit pouch that ran along the back edge of the coffin, groping out the sharp-cornered cube of the code box to Perceval's chains, and running her thumb across the controls.

It was her responsibility, wasn't it? Even if tonight Head had said that Roger could do it for her.

Roger couldn't even get the scrubbers to work right. Head didn't trust him to care for the ship cats. And Rien was worried about Perceval's wounds, which had been getting infected. Would Roger know to change the dressings?

If he knew, would he care?

She closed her fist around the key and counted twenty. Forward, this time, and this time she made it.

And then she unlatched her coffin-lid, disabled the light (just in case one of her roommates was awake in her own coffin), and opened it up with great stealthy care. She slid on soft full-legged black trousers, a hand-me-down stretch tank (she'd knotted the straps to make it fit), and a green cardigan. The night would be chilly, but she didn't dig out her shoes, which were safely tucked into the coffin's storage nets.

She didn't want to look as if she were going anywhere.

The chill from the decking made her arch her feet and mince, at first, until her soles and toes went numb. The lift would be too noisy; she just came up the stairs into the courtyard, limping slightly, the box in her pocket swinging against her thigh. Jodin had the night watch, and Rien waved as they crossed paths under the eucalyptus in the courtyard, its heavy breath scenting the air.

She could almost feel the sting of its astringent on her skin. She concentrated on that. She wasn't doing anything wrong. Just going down to check on the prisoner, who was her responsibility, and Jodin would know it. Jodin wouldn't think anything at all of Rien being up late and wandering. Once in a while, they even wandered together.

It was as dark as it ever got under the sky of Rule. The shadow panel was centered over the suns, its back side soaking up needful solar energy, its front side shading the world's windows for a time. In the latticework of the world, Rule was at the center of sunside, and it would have been bright-lit by day and by night if it weren't for the shadow panels. Instead, Rien moved through a blue kind of twilight, where shapes blurred together and edges grew indistinct.

She let her fingers trail through the broad leaves of grapevines as she passed along the wall, startling some small bird that shot away through the darkness. She'd heard that in the great Mall, swallows nested and sailed across its empty spaces in flocks and flights, but she had never seen such a thing.

She'd never been outside of Rule.

Two olive trees stood guard on either side of the door into the tower, the fruit on one green and on the other, ripening. She stroked the ropy gray trunk of the nearer, feeling it damp with condensation, and wiped her wet fingers on her nape.

She didn't believe at all what Perceval had said, about them being sisters. It was a child's fantasy, a prisoner's ploy. She held that thought as tight in her mind as she held the key in her hand, as she padded down the stair.

No ringing echoed this time. Bare feet made no sound on the polycarbonate, only adhering slightly with each step, the stickiness of moisture and skin oil. Rien paused at the bottom, though, for she heard rustling within.

She peered around the door frame, and found Perceval pacing, wearing a circle at the limit of her chains. She'd redraped the white blanket, and either Roger had changed the dressings or Rien had done a better job the second time, because no fresh matter stained the cloth. But when she turned her shorn head to the door, and bit her lip—apprehension, perhaps? Had she heard Rien on the stair?—Rien saw the blue shadows under her eyes, the skin stretched taut over the bones of her face.

And then she said, hesitantly, "Rien?"

"It's only me," Rien answered, understanding— abruptly—her fear. A silent observer in the early morning could mean many things, for a prisoner, and none likely to her benefit. Rien stepped into the light, tugging her cardigan straight, and went to Perceval.

"Oh," Perceval said. "I wondered, when I didn't see you." She sat down on the pallet, wrapping her arms around her knees, wincing when she moved. Somebody had made it up tight, and Rien did not think Roger would have done so.

Rien crouched beside her. There was enough cloth in the trousers to make a pair of skirts, and they puddled on the floor around her feet when she squatted. She laid her left hand on Perceval's arm, without looking at the prisoner, and was shocked to feel her skin so dry, crepey and hot.

"If you got back to Engine," Rien said, "do you think that they would stop the war?"

She hadn't understood her plan until she spoke it.

For a long time, Perceval did nothing. Then she turned, tendons stretching in the long line of her neck, and said, "It depends, don't you think? Tell me what's going on."

Quickly, softly, Rien told her. That Perceval's capture and mutilation had been the trigger of Lady Ariane's plan. That she had meant, no doubt, to overthrow her father and bring Rule to war with Engine, from the start.

That Engine had obliged.

Fever-bright, Perceval listened. And then she folded her bony forearms one over the other and rested them on her knees, the chains a long silver-blue sweep framing her on either side, her chin pillowed on her bony wrist. "It doesn't matter," she said, after chewing her lip a little. "I'm never getting home, am I?"

Not believing what she was doing, Rien reached into her pocket, down into the depths of the soft swinging dark cloth, and drew out the control. "But I don't know the way out of Rule," she said, when Perceval's eyes finally focused on it.

"Oh," Perceval said. "That's all right. I do."

When the chains slid from her wrists and ankles, Perceval thought the sting in her eyes would blind her. She shuddered, forehead on her arms, and almost wept.

And then she gathered her courage, tented her fingers on the pallet, and pushed to her feet. "We'll go to Father," she said, decisively. "Rien, may I have the key?"

Rien hesitated, but seemed to have made up her mind. She gave Perceval the box, and Perceval used it to tweak the draped chains into a sleeveless column dress, something to hold heat against her skin. She shed the blanket without a glance, and though she winced when she raised her arms to wriggle in and the touch of the fabric made her skin crawl, it was good to have something between her and the world. "Father," Rien said. "Lord Benedick." "Who else?" For a moment, Perceval considered crushing the controller, locking the dress into that shape unless and until the colony could be reprogrammed. But there was the risk that someone in Rule had another control for this colony, and it was far too useful a tool to abandon.

"Isn't that..." Rien, when Perceval turned back to her, stood with her face screwed up, seeking the right word. "... presumptuous?"

Perceval bit her lip. This was probably not the best of times for her to admit how distant her own acquaintanceship with Benedick was, but she would not lie. So she said only, "For his daughters to call in time of need?"

There was a pause. A lingering contemplation. And then Rien shook her head. "You meant it. That we are sisters."

"Yes," Perceval said. And when Rien just stood, staring and shaking her head, she grabbed the young woman's wrist and dragged her along.

Climbing was anything but easy. Perceval was fevered, and her blood—still shocked by the unblade and the amputation of her wings—was not fighting as it should. She must haul herself ten or fifteen spiral steps and then pause, resting one hand on the wall, reeling. But after the third time, Rien seemed both to understand and come back to herself, and begin steadying Perceval up the stairs.

It went faster then.

When they came to the courtyard level, everything was still the indigo of evening. Rien stopped Perceval with a hand on her shoulder and stepped forward first, just to the edge of the door. She glanced cautiously each way—about as nonchalant as a stalking cat, but Perceval wasn't about to tell her so—and then stepped forward.

If there was a night watch—as there would be in any sensible holde: who would wish to trust his breath only to automatic alarms?—it was elsewhere.

Or so she hoped, until they crossed between a massive tree that must have been planted when the world was made, turned down a side corridor, and found themselves face-to-face with a young woman with a stunner at her hip and a lightstick in her hand.

"Rien—?"

The girl was a Mean, pink of skin and slow to move. In pity, Perceval only broke her wrist and struck her once hard over the sternum to silence and disable her. She pushed past Rien—she had merely reached over her before—and snatched the stunner from the guard's belt. A quick reversal, the ozone scorch of a bridging spark, and the guard went down.

A good technology. So much safer than anything equally incapacitating Perceval could have done with her hands.

Briefly, she thought of murder. Her hands itched for the wash of blood. But this blood was not the blood she wanted.

"Run," she said, and grabbed Rien's wrist again. "Run! Lead me to an air lock. Run!"

Rien stared at her, blinked, blinked at the woman on the floor—then caught her hand in turn and pulled her on.

Good. Good, because Perceval needed it* Needed the hand and the tug, needed the other woman's strength to keep her moving. She had no momentum of her own. Every lifted foot was dragged as if through porridge. The gravity pulled like hands.

They had been running some ninety-three seconds by Perceval's atomic clock when the shriek of alarms began.

"Oh, space," Rien swore, and then covered her mouth with her hand. Were they so strict of their speech in Rule, then? Perceval forced her feet to lift, fall, lift again as fluid soaked her bandages, slicked the inside of the imporous dress. "They'll turn off the hydraulics. We won't be able to open the lock. And I can't go Outside anyway. I haven't a suit. We haven't a go-pack."

"We've my dress," Perceval said. "It'll do."

"I can't breathe vacuum." Rien let go Perceval's fingers, slumped against the corridor wall.

Perceval staggered two steps past her, turned, and caught herself on a twist of ductwork when she almost fell. But she lifted her eyes to Rien's and met them. "Where's the bck, Rien?"

"Aren't you listening?"

"Rien."

Rien rolled her eyes, shoved her frizzing tangles off her face, and jerked her chin down a side corridor. "Here."

"Come on." Perceval was dragging Rien again, but once she turned the corner she could see the massive vault door of the air lock. It gave her strength. They were alone in the corridor, though the wail of the siren and the thump of emergency lights on her retinas made her shudder with adrenaline.

Perceval grabbed the great old use-polished wheel on the air-lock door and twisted. Rien, surprising her, grabbed and strained as well. "Told you," she said, when the weight resisted them. But then she gasped, and leaned into it harder, as—under Perceval's strength, even without mechanical assistance—the lock began to turn.

Perceval might be light as a ghost, made of twigs and wire. But she was Exalt, daughter of Engineers and the House of Conn, and there was machine strength in her blood. From behind them, she heard running footsteps. She ducked her head and covered Rien with her body as a needle-gun sprayed the bulkhead.

The flesh of her palms broke open on the steel. But that steel yielded and, by inches, the door—thicker than her waist—cracked open. She dropped one arm around Rien and pulled her through and in.

Sealing the door was easier. She thought she felt hands fighting her as she dogged and locked it, but there was an emergency override, and she slapped it. Spring-loaded, ceramic bolts shot home, the impact shivering through the walls of the world.

One would need to cut through to open the interior door.

"Safe," Perceval said, and sagged against the wall for a moment. The pain of the contact shocked her back to her feet; she had forgotten the wounds. When she lurched forward she tripped and would have fallen if Rien had not steadied her. Without her wings, she was awkward and easily overbalanced.

"Trapped," Rien replied, turning to look at the exterior door. Her shoulders hunched. She knotted her hands together. "We don't keep suits in the locks. I told you."

"You won't need a suit," Perceval said, "if you will trust me."

"Trust you to what?"

"Exalt you." Perceval stroked Rien's arm. The flesh felt cool under the cardigan, but Perceval thought that was just her own fever.

"Infect me?" Rien turned, abruptly, light on the balls of her feet, and backed away from Perceval's touch. "You want to colonize me."

Perceval shrugged. "You've the blood to sustain it. You're old enough. You should have received a colony years ago. And it will keep you alive"—a gesture at the exterior air-lock door—"Outside."

Rien had put her back to the Outside. And on the inside door, Perceval now heard rhythmic hammering.

"What if I'm not?"

"Not?"

"Not your sister." She shook her head, her hair moving on her neck the way Perceval's once had. "Not Benedick's daughter."

Perceval could not help herself. She spread out her hands, palms toward Rien, and tilted her head. "Then it will kill you, Mean."

Rien gestured over Perceval's shoulder. "And so will they."

"Yes."

"Fine then," Rien said, all hollow bravado, and stepped forward into Perceval's arms.

Rien thought it would hurt. She imagined it would be hard, the initiation, that there would be some sense of transformation or wildfire intimation of change.

Not so.

Perceval embraced her, and she smelled the blood and the antiseptic, and when she lowered her mouth over Rien's, Rien tasted the faint sourness of uncleaned teeth. One would think her colony would take care of that for her, but then, it had perhaps been busy.

The kiss was long and soft, fever-hot and gentle, although holding Perceval in her arms was not unlike embracing a rope ladder. Her lips were soft and cracked over the firmness of her teeth, and it seemed as if Rien expanded on her breath like a blown balloon. Rien was reminded that she had always preferred young women.

She giggled, embarrassed, and stepped back—

—and felt, of a sudden, not outside herself, but rather inside herself as she had never felt before. It snapped in, as a whole, abrupt and perfect, the image and awareness of every nerve and every cell. She felt the colony engage her, accept her, rush with each beat of her heart on oxygenated blood to every extremity.

It felt curiously natural.

"Oh," she said.

"Breathe deep." Perceval was fiddling with the key, reshaping her dress into something else. A propulsion pack.

"Let the colony get as much oxygen as it can. We should have about fifteen minutes. I can get us out of Rule in fifteen minutes, and safe back inside."

If it was bravado, Rien would rather not know. "What about the cold?" she asked. "And ebullism?"

"Don't worry; your colony can maintain pressure. It will keep your eyeballs from freezing or your fluids from boiling until long after we run out of oxygen."

"Oh. Good to know."

Perceval laughed. "Hold onto my harness. I'm going to break the door open now. I won't be able to talk to you once we're outside, so just—-for the love of all your ancestors, when we get out there—hang on."

Hold on. Breathe deep.

Simple enough.

When the massive door swung open, though, and the puff of escaping air sailed them grandly into the crooked sunlight between the world's vast webworked cables, Rien forgot anything but the cold black fire-pricked vault of the universe stretching out forever, and the wheeling world that framed it on each side.