Dust jl-1

by Elizabeth Bear

  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."

  3 the mute resurrected

  Lear: Nothing will come of nothing, speak again.

  Cordelia: Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth: I love your Majesty according to my bond, no more nor less.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, King Lear, 1.1

  Before anyone came down to the dungeon again, a shadow panel had passed between the world and the suns, and Rule chilled in the twilight between days. For Perceval, unclothed and wounded and as necessarily slender as all her winged kind, the cold was a hardship. She could not even cloak herself in the warmth of her wings, nor curl her knees into her chest and trap some ghost of heat.

  She had spent her attention earlier on memorizing each detail of her dungeon cell, figuring the steps to the top of the tower by counting Rien's footsteps when she came and went. Even here in the darkness, Perceval could conjure the image and space into her mind. It was a spatial gift that accompanied her wings, but which had not left her with them.

  So she stood, shoulders hunched and head bowed, shivering with everything in her, teeth clenched so they would not clatter. She heard the footsteps descend, and tried to lift her chin, but the locked muscles in her neck would not allow it.

  This could be the Commodor
e coming for her, or Ariane again. Ariane, who had met Perceval as an equal on the field of combat, and then when Perceval surrendered, struck her wings away. Ariane was without honor, without mercy.

  Perceval tried to believe that she would ever have the opportunity to teach her, at least, humility.

  She sagged against her chains and tried not to cringe.

  But the visitor was the girl Rien, with bandages—and food and drink that Perceval was not at first strong enough to take. The girl—a girl or a young woman; Perceval knew not how they figured such things in Rule— first touched on the lights, and then bathed Perceval's shoulders with warm water and stinging soap, and tched over the cracking, futile scabs. "I thought you healed these," she said.

  "What's the use?" Perceval asked, surprised how a few short hours in chains had wearied her spirit. "Your Commodore's only going to consume me. And soon; he can't keep me chained like this forever."

  Rien giggled, wringing out her rag. "There is no Commodore," she said, and hiccuped. The hiccup was the clue Perceval needed: Rien's laughter was not nervous, but repressed hysteria.

  There is no Commodore.

  "But I saw him when I was brought in."

  The soft cloth scrubbed at the tender edges of Perceval's wounds. And Perceval dropped her head down and tried to stretch out her neck, tried to soak up the warmth of that water and stop shivering for a little, until it would start to dry on her skin and more chill follow.

  "He's dead," Rien said, in a tone that indicated she understood she'd already said too much. She dropped her rag into the bucket with a plop. Then Perceval felt warm towels drying her back, warm hands measuring tape and gauze.

  Perceval breathed deep to steady her hearts, racing in sudden terror in her deep, broad chest. If Alasdair was dead, it was because Ariane had killed him. And if Ariane had killed the Commodore, there was no chance at all that Perceval would ever go free again.

  "Don't bother," Perceval said, flinching away from the bandaging.

  But Rien ignored her protest, or such protest as she could manage, and continued salving, measuring, taping. There was something possessive in the touch, and Perceval thought she understood it, and Rien's awkward kindness, too.

  Perceval sighed. "How long before she comes for me, then?"

  "She said in the morning."

  Against the protest of her aching neck, Perceval arched back and glanced at the high window. More torment than darkness, that she could see her life slipping away like the ticking of a clock. The edge of the shadow panel was a limned knife-line, the sky behind still black, but alleviated.

  Rien patted her on the back below the bandages, and came around to face her again. Using her numb and burning arms for leverage, Perceval forced herself to stand tall. "But you waste food on me anyway? And air and bandages and water?"

  "Air is cheap," Rien said, incredible arrogance for a i serving-girl, a sentiment to make an Engineer sign herself and shudder. "And sometimes the Lady doesn't get around to things as soon as she means to."

  Meaning she might not get around to destroying Perceval in a timely fashion.

  "Can you lengthen my chains?" Perceval asked, when Rien had at least given her the soup and was cleaning the chamber while it worked its restorative magic. "So I may sit upon the floor, or else lie down?"

  If Ariane truly was so distracted—and she might be, if she was attempting to wrest control of her father's government—Perceval might linger here in chains, in growing pain, for days upon days, while Rien stolidly washed her filth from the floor and down the gutters with a steam hose. There would be no interrogation; no point, if Ariane meant only to consume her, with due ceremony.

  Perceval almost wished it over with.

  "I will ask," Rien said. At least the room was warm now, and moist from the cleaning. Rien draped a blanket over Perceval's shoulders, tucked it around her, and clipped it across her chest. It was soft and white. It would show the blood.

  There was bread and oil in addition to the soup, and soy cheese. Rien broke it all carefully into bite-size pieces and fed it to Perceval, and Perceval ate like a tame bird from Rien's fingertips. If she was to die, then let her die in whatever comfort she might take.

  When Rien gave her another fragment of food, Perceval kissed her fingertips in thanks.

  Rien jerked her hand back and jumped a step away. She stared at Perceval, and Perceval stared back. The difference was, Perceval could feel herself smiling faintly. She licked her lips to get the last of the herbed oil.

  Rien said as if through a tight throat, "How did you know my name?"

  Perceval blinked, and knew she looked just as taken aback. "And why should I not? Are we not sisters?"

  It was not Rien who carefully set the plate of bread and oil aside. Nor was it Rien who dabbed Perceval's lips with a damp cloth and brushed the crumbs from her cheek. Some other did it, some other who wore Rien's body.

  Some other whom the demon of Engine called sister.

  She didn't speak, but she could not leave, and eventually Perceval cleared her throat and spoke again. "Rien? Are you angry? I would not mean to presume . .."

  Rien was not angry. She was nothing, chill and breathless as if a stone sat in her throat.

  "Well? Are you struck dumb, are you resurrected? They cannot speak either."

  Rien had heard such legends, but she had never met a resurrectee. She was not certain she believed in them.

  She busied herself, staring at her hands, and when the tray was ordered and the dirty towels folded, she gulped twice and made herself turn to face Perceval. "You lie."

  "I do not," Perceval answered, and her affronted dignity—as if she did not stand in a dungeon, nude and stretched and hollow-eyed with pain—was convincing. "You are the daughter of my father. How in the world is it that you don't know that?"

  Rien fled. Without dignity, without grace, leaving the tray on the rack beside the door and finding her way up the stairs in the dimness only by the luminescent strips of edge-lighting.

  Supper was over, thankfully. Rule lay quiet under the shadow of evening, and there was nothing expected of the Mean, these eight hours, except sleep.

  Rien did not think she would sleep.

  But she could retire to the cell she shared with Jodin and Shara and the woolly-haired scullery girl who almost never talked, and clamber into her own unsealed coffin-bunk—the others were closed up tight, the women within sleeping or seeking their own little privacy—and pull the lid down close. The light was on a timer, in case she drifted off while reading or playing games, but she set it to the longest interval and folded her hands behind her head and stared at the whorled greeny-blue translucence of the coffin-top.

  Of course there were reasons for Perceval to lie; Rien was Perceval's keeper. Not that Rien could do anything to save her. Or would, even if she could.

  What was Perceval to her?

  But she thought of the freckled back, the bloody wounds, and the dark hollows under Perceval's brown transparent eyes, and wondered. What was Perceval to her?

  Not a friend. Not a sister, whatever Perceval said.

  No, but...

  ... but what else did she own? It was like finding a wounded bird, which Rien had done. And binding its wings with yarn so it could not flap and injure itself, and bedding it in fleece beside the hearth until it either died, or was fit to fly again.

  Except the odds of one of those straggly wrens or juncos ending up in the stew pot had been slim.

  There was no profit in dwelling on it. Perceval was condemned. She would die in the morning, and all her lies would die with her. And so, too, would Rien's fantasies of possessiveness and protectiveness.

  It was the way of the world.

  Still, she stared at the roof of her coffin until the light clicked off, and then she stared into the dark.

  The darkest part of night was not very dark in Rule. Even in her dungeon chamber with its lone high window, enough light filtered past the shadow panels to let Perceval pic
k out the outlines of things, once the timed light flicked off in Rien's absence. Whatever her jaunty words about air, they did after all think of conservation here.

  And as she had suspected and intended, her words brought Rien back to her. In the coldest hour, when even i the white blanket thrown over her shoulders could no longer defeat her shivers and her slow-dripping blood clotted and cracked down her rib cage and thighs, she heard a hesitant step on the stair.

  Not the purposeful click of the daylight hours. This was a hurried, scuttling movement, soft-soled and shoeless. But still Perceval knew it. She'd heard it descend twice already, and that was enough.

  "Hello, Rien," she said, softly, before Rien rounded the corner at the bottom of the stair.

  "Don't you think they're watching you?" Rien asked, without stepping through the door. "I mean, don't you think they're observing everything you do and say?"

  "Of course they are," Perceval answered. Her chains had not been loosened, and she could no longer stand. She slumped, knees bent, her slight weight all pulling on her shoulders and her wrists. She did not lift her head.

  It would be over in the morning.

  Maybe.

  "What does it matter? I will tell them nothing they do not already know."

  Until Ariane ate her. Then Ariane would know anything Perceval could not purge before she was consumed.

  Rien stood framed in the doorway, a small awkward shape, one hand reaching for support. "What did you mean when you called me sister?"

  "I meant that we are sisters," Perceval replied. "I am the daughter of Benedick Conn. And so are you."

  The stick-narrow shape came through the darkness, and though Perceval could not bear the pain to lift her head, she saw the gray-on-gray shape of Rien's hand come up to touch her cheek quite plainly. The touch was human and soft, a kind of blessing.