Dust jl-1

by Elizabeth Bear

  He glanced down, his lashes thick and ivory against his blue-tinged cheek, and drew the dead man's sheath and knife from his boot. There was a holster for a sidearm, but the pistol was not in evidence. Tristen, however, did pull two clips of caseless ammunition from his pockets.

  Silently, he offered bullets and knife to Perceval.

  "You take it," she said, without looking at his hands.

  They continued on.

  They made camp when they grew tired, in another abandoned section of crew quarters. The irrigation system had failed here, and nothing but crisped brown stems grew in the beds and wall boxes. The air could have been fresher, for it—but there was running water from the taps, though it was cold only, and Rien, whose menses had started, took the opportunity to scrub herself with a soapy rag and wash her hair. Gavin stood on the edge of the basin and studied a cracked dry valve from the irrigation pipe, turning it over and over in his claw, before eventually putting it in his beak and swallowing it, like a chicken gagging down pea gravel for its crop.

  Later, as they sat waiting for Tristen to cook dinner, Rien searched toiletry drawers until she found a cracked tube of conditioner. It had dried into a solid, oily cake, but it smelled all right. She rubbed it between her hands to oil the palms, stroked it into the drying frizz, and began picking through the tangles curl by curl with a heavy wide-toothed comb. It broke into ringlets, damp, but even with the oil on it, it would never stay that way.

  Tristen was still flipping pancakes when they heard the voices. He set the spatula aside, turned down the induction plate almost as far as it would go—there was a click when it shut down—and glanced up at the overhead light. Turning it off would of course be incredibly obvious.

  It didn't matter, Rien suspected. The smell of cooking was all through the air.

  "Space," she said, without breath, as the tromp of heavily shod feet approached. She slipped her comb into her pocket and crouched, wishing she had something on hand to use as a club; she'd feel far more comfortable with that sort of weapon than anything with a point.

  But across the room, Tristen's hands were like bones on the black hilt of his appropriated blade, and that was reassuring. And it was reassuring as well that when Perceval stood, Pinion flaring like a cloak, and squared her shoulders, her face was as serene as any angel's. With only a glance between them, she and Tristen went to flank the door.

  Rien could see the people advancing in her head. There was a sort of Y-intersection ten meters down the corridor, and they were coming along the left-hand path. She could tell from the echoes and the map in her head, and that was a very strange thing indeed. She strained, trying to pick out words, voices, but all she heard was a marching cadence, and it didn't sound familiar.

  Not of Rule, then, and that was something. But it might be whoever had locked up Tristen, and it might be whoever in Engine had sent Perceval to die in Rule.

  Gavin hunkered on the back of a chair, wings half up and neck elongated, as if he scented the air. And then Tristen's chin came up and a little smile lifted the corner of his mustache that Rien could see in profile. He slipped the knife back into its sheath on the belt he used to cinch his too-big trousers, raised his hands beside his head, and stepped out into the corridor, beckoning Rien and Perceval after with a tilted head and an arrogant little cup of his hand.

  Perceval looked at Rien.

  Rien shrugged.

  Perceval shrugged right back, and turned to follow.

  Maybe we shouldn't just waltz out into the line of fire after him, Rien started to say, but maybe there was something in the knightly code of conduct that also said you had to be fucking stupid all the time, because that was exactly what Perceval did. And then Rien wasn't going to skulk behind a plastic chair so somebody could scruff her like a kitten and drag her out.

  She stayed Gavin with a hand gesture. She'd given up trying to figure out how he maneuvered when his eyes were always closed, but in any case he was more effective backup than she. He froze in place, those fanning wings uplifted, for all the world like an alabaster sculpture. And Rien jumped up and hustled the three steps to catch up with her sister, and as a result almost tripped over Pinion's trailing edge. Somehow she managed to enter the corridor, third in line but dripping all the dignity she could muster, and perversely glad she'd smoothed her hair.

  Like Tristen—like Perceval—she raised her hands. And faced a corridor full of armed men and women, ten or more arrayed in ranks, all dressed in black and golden-brown.

  The one in the front wore plain black, trousers and a constructed uniform jacket. He was of a height with Tristen, black hair hanging razor-cut to the edge of a lantern jaw, his eyes a dark-ringed hazel that caught the light. Rien's eyes widened—she'd known they were close, but not so close—and her hand darted out to close on Perceval's wrist and drag her down on one knee as Rien herself genuflected.

  "Tristen," said Benedick Conn, his gloved hand resting on the grip of his pistol. "I thought you were dead."

  "I'm back," said Tristen, and Rien did not think that anyone except she or Perceval was close enough to see him shaking like a leaf. "And these are your daughters."

  15 sweet things grow in the cold

  Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.

  —JOHN 8:44, King James Bible

  Benedick Conn both was and was not what Rien had expected. She knew him only as a portrait, as she had known Tristen—though Benedick's image in Rule did not wear black crepe. And now he stood before her and stared at Tristen, his lips moving on three syllables. He looked past Tristen, from Rien to Perceval and from Perceval to Rien.

  "My daughters," he said, out loud this time, and then extended his right hand to Tristen. "Thank you."

  They clasped. And then Tristen grasped Benedick by the wrist and pivoted, bringing him around.

  The men and women behind Benedick shuffled and stomped, but Rien saw the man—her father, not that she believed it in her heart any more now than she had in the dungeon when Perceval told her—make some gesture that quieted them. And then Tristen's impelling grasp became a propelling one, a firm push against Benedick's shoulder. Rien had a strong sense that even as Benedick allowed Tristen to move him, he was considering his options, and some of them were violent.

  And then they had stepped apart, and Benedick ex-tended both hands, one each to Perceval and Rien.

  His daughters allowed him to draw them to their feet.

  Perceval looked as Rien imagined she must have when she'd just been knighted. Her face held a kind of tense wonder, and Rien thought back to her casual bravado— we'll just go and see Father—and bit her lip.

  It was easy to forget that Perceval was, more or less, only her own age. That resemblance was there again, Benedick's eyes both paler and clearer than Perceval's, but set as deep. And his face was so obviously stamped on hers that Rien again had no doubt of the relationship.

  But whom did Rien look like? It wasn't any of these tall, rangy creatures with their hands like spades and the weapons on their hips.

  "Father," Perceval said, "do you remember me?"

  She squeezed his fingers and let go of them. Rien couldn't, just yet, and Benedick did not seem inclined to make her. Still, Rien caught herself stepping left and crowding Perceval, as though she were the only reliable thing in the universe. And Perceval didn't seem to mind, or at least, Pinion draped around Rien's shoulders warmly.

  And meanwhile Benedick, with the knuckles of his one free hand, reached out and brushed Perceval's shaved head. He touched Pinion on the proximal strut, close to where it joined Perceval's body. "Who did this to you?"

  Arms folded across her rib cage, chin lifted, Perceval could have been a statue labeled defiance. "Ariane Conn," she said. "After accepting my honorable surrender."

  His face gave away nothing, but Rien was still holding his hand. She felt the tendons tighten, and then the moment when he asserted control. "That's a message to me," he said. "I am terribly
sorry it was you who absorbed the blow, Sir Perceval, and I will do what I can to make it right."

  The calmness of his tone made Rien want to strike him. How dare you take responsibility for her? she wanted to say. Noblesse oblige is lovely, but Perceval does not belong to you; she is her own person, and more a sister to me than you have even been my father. Has she no right in your eyes even to her own mutilation?

  But then Benedick turned to Rien, and she could not think of anything except how tall he was, and how he was looking straight at her, and that his hand that still held hers was very strong. The heavy lines from his nose to his mouth-corners made it look as if he never smiled. His hair was black as lacquer.

  "I am sorry," he said. "It was my father's choice that you be raised in ignorance, Rien, and I did what I could do to see that you received the best guidance available."

  "Head," she said, understanding. "Head was working for you."

  "Head works for no one except by choice," he said. "But I call hir a friend. Come along, please. Come home with me."

  Perceval had never seen a winter before.

  Benedick's domaine was a Heaven, bigger than Mallory's, full of stark black-limbed trees, twigs rimed in ice. They came out on a high ledge overlooking a valley, of sorts, the whole thing dark with true night and frozen cold.

  "You're on the bottom of the world," Rien said, craning her neck back. Gavin—who had rejoined them—huddled against her throat under her hair. Perceval copied her. Far, far overhead, through panes frosted at the edges, she could see the sharp brilliance of stars.

  The gravity was very light; Rien bounced on her toes. "It gets dark here."

  "Mirrors," Perceval said, wondering to whom, exactly, she thought she had to prove herself. She would not glance at Benedick, or Tristen either, and see if they looked approving. Behind her, the harness on the militia jingled as they breathed. "There are mirrors on darkside, to reflect light. As there are shadow panels on sunside."

  "My house is below," said Benedick. Perceval could make out the lights, and thought house an inadequate term for what might better be termed a castle. Now she did glance left, at Rien and Tristen, and saw their breath smoking on the air.

  It fascinated her. She reached out and put her hand into it, watching Tristen's breath, as blue-white as his skin, curl between her fingers. He shot her a look, and then pursed his lips and blew to make her laugh.

  And then he was receding, abruptly, falling away from her. Reaching out—lunging—until Rien and Benedick caught him by the arms and hauled him back. She was airborne—effortlessly, without strain—pulled away on beating wings. "Pinion!" she said, but Pinion did not listen.

  Last time, it had ferried her and Rien to safety. This time, there had been no evident danger, but nevertheless she was carried helplessly into the air and away. She shouted—uselessly, the words snatched off her lips by the wind of her motion—and even reached up over her own shoulders to pluck at the roots of the beating wings.

  They were so much stronger than her fingers.

  The air whistled across her scalp, tugged her halter. Flying with her own wings had taken concentration, the cooperation of her entire body. These just bore her along, sizzling through the air, nothing but a passenger. She crossed her arms over her chest to try to fight the wind.

  And had an idea.

  Both hands clawed over her right shoulder, fingertips battered by Pinion's leading edge. She stretched and caught, one hand then both, holding on, hauling with all the strength in her strong arms.

  She pulled the wing down.

  Fluttering, into a spiral toward the treetops, ice-sheathed fingers reaching, brittle splintering as she fell among them. Pinion folded around her, cushioned her fall, so the impacts of shattering branches that would have also shattered her bones only knocked the wind out of her.

  At the bottom of the tree, she sprawled in the snow, gasping. Pinion folded about her, as if to protect her from the cold, and she shrieked and shoved at the shadowy wings. "Get of me. Get off!"

  They gave under her clawing and pushing. They folded open. She'd seen a photograph of a falcon's wingprint in snow, elegant and perfect, each feather showing clean and sharp as a razor cut, blood at the center from a kill.

  When she arose, this would not look like that.

  She rocked forward, rolled onto her knees. Her breath flowed around her face on the still air. The parasite wings weighed almost nothing, but she felt them stir—in the wind, or with their own will. Meltwater soaked through her knees. Her hands ached in their bones from the cold. She heard shouts and crashing, but distant still.

  And then Pinion caressed her face on the right side, and someone said, like an echo ...

  —Perceval.—

  She shot to her feet, snow creaking under her boots, and stood in the silence of the forest, arms spread, breathing hard.

  —My love.—

  "Who are you?" Whispered, at first, ragged on a gasping breath. And then, when there was no answer, louder, a soldier's demand. "Who are you?"

  —One who will protect you. One who will keep you always safe.—

  "Get off me," she said. She grabbed at the wings and hauled on them, but here, on the ground, they were not constrained to an aerodynamic shape. Pinion melted away under her fingers, slipping like water through the gaps, and she was left back-arched, scrabbling after smoke. "Who are you, damn you?"

  —Pinion.—

  The name a breath across her cheek. Wings and chains, she thought. "Rien named you that. Who are you?"

  —It is my only name.—

  She would get a lawyering parasite. "Mutant. What are you?"

  —Nothing named me. 1 am a messenger. 1 come from dust.—

  The footsteps crunching closer. Cries, lights, sounds of floundering. She heard Tristen cursing the snow. Rien called her name. "Here!" she called back, and Pinion fanned and flared around her, like a cloak caught by the wind, like a falcon mantling its kill.

  "Dust?" It sounded religious to her. We come from dust. We are Stardust. We are dust in the wind.

  Were these not words from ancient hymns?

  —Dust sends his love for you, Sir Perceval. And his antici' pation of the wedding. I am your guard and warden. 1, Pinion. His wedding gift.—

  She gagged. "Get off me."

  —I shall not.—

  But then Tristen burst through the trees, running toward her, his skin and hair lost against the snow. Behind him, running in his footsteps, Rien, with her basilisk companion swimming heavily through the air alongside. And ranged behind them, Benedick and his militia, a staggered search line to find her among the trees. Perceval turned to Tristen, held her hands out, pleading. She had not plead with Ariane, but Tristen ... she did not believe that Tristen meant her harm.

  "Get them off," she said. "The wings, you have an un-blade. Tristen, get them off me now."

  He stopped, a controlled sliding some five meters away. There came a ratcheting sound from her back; the shadows all stretched away. Tristen flinched in the sudden light.

  Pinion opened like a flower—four wings, six, nine—all of them alight in stark blue radiance and folded forward, bent on Tristen as if he were the focus of a parabolic dish. The light shone brightest from their razor edges.

  They gleamed with the will to do murder.

  Tristen spread his hands. He held that silly boot knife in the left one. He said, "It's shattered, Perceval."

  "You carry it. The stump still has an edge. Get them off me."

  "I could have cut free of the corridor were that so."

  Rien drew up behind, stepped to his right side, away from the knife. Gavin fluttered down to a branch beside her. And Benedick arrived on Tristen's left, leaving him plenty of room to swing that blade. "You're asking him to cripple you. Again."

  "It's better to be crippled and free."

  But Pinion hissed, if you could name it so—the rasp of feather on feather, the scraping of blade on blade.

  "Perceval," Rien sai
d. "I don't think that thing is going to let us get close enough."

  Perceval could not be crying, because Perceval did not cry. But something shining froze on her face as she strode at the center of the group, her parasite wings flared about her like a nest of barbs. She looked severe and resolute— no one could look pale, standing next to Tristen—and Rien admired her desperately.

  Such a strange being. Such a strange thing, having a sister. Being a sister. And even stranger, to be a sister to such a sister as this.

  And to have a father, Rien forced herself to think, watching Benedick's glossy black hair swing as he broke trail through the snow. That, she was entirely unready for. As unready as she was to be Exalt, or lugging Hero Ng around between her ears.

  All Benedick's men and women arrayed about them, some following and some cast out on the sides, many bear' ing lanterns so they made a jeweled procession. For now, Rien could distract herself with the texture of an alien night and the cold trees, ice and snow and the stars smeared behind a frosty sky.

  "What is the cold for?..." she asked. The lights that must illuminate Benedick's house shone between bare trees, casting confusing shadows.

  He turned to her, and the word Sir died on her lips, though he seemed to feel no lack. "Apples and cherries," he said. "You've tasted some?"

  "Yes, sir."

  She managed that small coin of respect this time, and even managed not to squeak. But all she purchased with it was a frown—concern, or disapproval?

  "Well," he said, with a half-smile to Tristen that Rien thought she was not meant to notice, after the fashion of adults before children and Exalt before Mean, "a lot of sweet things grow in the cold. Temperature differentials promote air exchange. And what good is the world to anyone if, when it brings us safe to another Earth, we have forgotten how to live on the ground?"

  "Another Earth." Funny how Tristen's voice—nasal, a bit rough still though regaining its strength—had the power to comfort her.

  "You're not a Go-back, brother?"