Dust jl-1

by Elizabeth Bear

Tristen shook his head, his white hair shedding snowflakes as if it were made of snow itself. "The only way out is through."

  Gavin, who had been cruising in circles about the group, passed over Rien's head, his wings dusting snow from evergreen boughs. Rien stepped to the side, dodging a face-full of frozen water, wondering how it was manufactured. If she were to be Exalt, one of these arrogant cryptic beings, it seemed unfair that she did not have wings.

  And then with deep shame she thought of Perceval. But Benedick and Tristen weren't all that different from their siblings, were they? They decided for others with perfect high-handedness. They were only more polite to Perceval than they would have been to some random Mean.

  As if Rien's thoughts could command her as easily as Tristen did, Perceval cleared her throat. "And all that, to remind us how to live on a planet? So we don't get soft, and too bred to the indoors?"

  "All that," Rien answered, with Hero Ng's authority, "because it was a trivial exercise for them to do so."

  Benedick grunted. Rien could not tell if it was in respect or dismissal, and she was surprised by the ambiguity of her emotions in the face of those mutually exclusive possibilities. She did not fear, as she would have expected, nor worry for his power over her. Rather, she was caught on both hope of his approval and scorn of it.

  Maybe rebellion had gotten its teeth into her soul. But not enough, apparently. Because what was Benedick to her? This person, her father, existed. That was novel. But what was he to her? He'd abandoned her.

  Why should she care what he thought?

  She should care, of course, because logic had no more bearing on emotion than it ever had. But she was Exalt now and had other means at her command. She could choose not to care, and her symbiont would take care of the rest, editing neurotransmitters and shepherding serotonin.

  Benedick led them down a snow trail where the surface was packed in two parallel lines, and for now, she left it be. She scuffed the hard snow sideways with her boot. "Skis," Gavin said in her ear, by way of explanation, and looked unutterably smug when she almost jumped out of her boots in the partial gravity. She hadn't heard him complete his next great circle and sail up behind her.

  And as he dropped neatly onto her shoulder, she had the distinct sensation that he was laughing himself silently sick. She collected herself with what dignity remained, shook herself smooth like a ruffled hen, and ignored the snickers she was sure she heard, from her father's men and women all around.

  Before she could think of a comment, they broke out of the trees, and not even Hero Ng's phlegmatic presence could keep Rien from gasping a great mouthful of air so cold it burned her lungs. Benedick's house—it must be his house—-hunkered at the top of a long snow-covered bank, away from the trees of the wood. But her awe was reserved for what lay at the bottom of the hill: a night-black tarn.

  "Why doesn't it freeze?" Rien contemplated the logistics of a lake, even a small lake, on a spaceship without much hope of grasping it. And then Ng did the math for her, and she gaped even more.

  "It is frozen," Benedick said. "The wind keeps it clear, or my people do. You're looking at ice. On top, at least; the underside has to stay liquid for the fish. We can"— Rien could not be imagining the diffidence in his voice, surely, as if he brought her a gift he feared would be unwelcome— "go skating in the morning if you like."

  Rien swallowed so she would not gape like one of those fish. "I've never skated," she said, glancing at Perceval for support. Gavin's talons squeezed her shoulder; she leaned her cheek gratefully on his wing.

  From amid the razory throne of her parasite wings, Perceval winked, frozen water glinting on her eyelashes. And to Rien alone, Perceval mouthed the word Trivial.

  So Rien loved her.

  16 tasting of bitter sleep

  It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;

  The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.

  — CONRAD AlKEN, The House of Dust

  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 shive
r.

  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."