Dust jl-1

by Elizabeth Bear

  A benediction, she might have thought, if she were prepared to pun so terribly even in the privacy of her own mind.

  "Then how came I here?"

  "Servant in a great house?" Perceval's voice rasped, though, and when she coughed the pain in her neck and over her kidneys was unbearable. Rien brought her water, steadied her head to help her drink. "They've been kind to you?"

  "Head is fair, and generous," Rien said, which Perceval supposed was a sort of answer. "Tell me how."

  "Hostage," Perceval answered. "As I was hostage in Engine, you see. Your mother is a woman of Engine. We were born to be a set. A matched and balanced pair."

  Rien stroked her hair, and lowered Perceval's head to let it hang again. "And now?"

  Perceval could not shrug like this. Just the thought of it, reflexive, caught her breath in a sob. "Ariane wants a war despite you, doesn't she?"

  "Is that what you're for?"

  "Oh," Perceval said, "when word gets back to my mother how I died, don't you think it will suffice? Have you met our father, Rien?"

  "No," Rien answered. "He does not come to Rule."

  "Hmm," Perceval said, and did not trouble herself to say also, I do not wonder why.

  4 of course she fell

  The sceptre, learning, physic, must

  All follow this, and come to dust.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,Cymbeline, 4.2

  Rien awoke to the pulse of her coffin, surprised to find that she had slept at all. She released the catch and fumbled her way upright—still before her roommates— stripped down in one awkward elbowy motion and so was the first into the cleanser. It polished the dirt and dead skin away while the sonics made her teeth rattle, and then she stepped out and rubbed herself down with an astringent cloth.

  She took her time dressing, dawdling really, hoping that by the time she came into the kitchen, the execution would be over. Then she would have the cold comfort of nothing-she-could-have-done.

  Then she could tell herself, as orphans do, that she was a forgotten princess, that it was all a case of mistaken identity, and her real parents would be along momentarily to rescue her.

  But Head was looking for her, and there was a tray waiting, eggs and toast and coffee cooling by the door. "You're late," Head said, and thrust the tray into her hands.

  Rien balanced it, practiced and deft. "Must we feed her today?"

  "We must," Head said. "The execution is postponed. Lady Ariane has been called away." Sie hesitated, which was unlike hir, and scrubbed broad-palmed hands over the legs of hir white kitchen coveralls. Sie lowered hir voice and glanced over hir shoulder, stalling just long enough that Rien wondered why in the world sie was about to reveal whatever could be so dangerous. And then sie said, "You were right, child, and the old Commodore was right. Engine has come to avenge the prisoner. Ariane has brought us to war."

  Rien lowered her voice as well, and ducked her chin so her hair and shoulder would hide the shapes her mouth made. "So she'll let Perceval go."

  But Head's mouth was a hard line. "I do not think so. I think she'll... when she comes back, I think she'll do what she always meant to do. She means to rule, Rule, but more. She means to try to conquer the world, to become Captain as well as Commodore, if you ask me. And her brothers and sisters won't like that either, once they see what she's up to."

  Rien's mouth made an O, like her eyes. She felt them, felt the tissue stretch and shape itself, felt her lungs stretch around the deepness of her breath. "You said a war wouldn't touch us here. You said we were beneath it."

  "I might have been wrong," Head admitted. Sie patted Rien on the shoulder. "Now go. Feed the prisoner. She has to live until—"

  Until Lady Ariane wanted her.

  "Head," Rien said, before she turned away with the tray, "the chains have her in great pain. She can't sit down, or move from where she stands."

  Head—because Head was like that—thought about it carefully. Then sie nodded and reached into hir pocket and pulled out a control box and a key. Sie put the key into the box, and held it close enough to Rien that it could get a sniff. Then sie took the key out again and held the box over the tray.

  "Leave it outside the door," Head said. "Then even if she gets ahold of you, she can't make you release her."

  "Yes, Head," Rien answered.

  Head put the box down beside the coffee and the eggs.

  The dungeon had begun to stink, and Rien was at a loss, at first, on how to proceed. She left the tray by the door, of course, but if she just lengthened Perceval's chains, the Engineer would fall in her own filth, and with the un-healed wounds, Rien did not want to risk being able to scrub them clean enough. She did not think that even Head in hir kindness would waste antibiotics or intravenous fluids on the enemy.

  Rien closed her eyes. She was thinking, she realized, as if Perceval would live out the week.

  But by the way Perceval hung in her chains, Rien did not think she would live out the day. And if Rien could not come close to her while holding the key, Rien could not cushion her fall.

  She would clean the cell first, she decided, and bring in bedding. If it meant leaving Perceval in suspension a little longer ... well, Rien wasn't entirely certain that she was conscious.

  Perceval did lift her head while Rien was cleaning, and tried to stand straight. She wept, though, when she got her feet under her and straightened, and the weight came off her shoulders. "I am fortunate I am, I was a flyer," she said, licking the tears from her mouth. "I am not as heavy as some. Have you come with my last supper, Rien?"

  "Just your breakfast," Rien answered. She had to go back up two levels to get bedding when the floor was clean, but that would give it a chance to dry and it wasn't as if the food could get any colder.

  Still, she hurried.

  Perceval watched with a faintly puzzled expression as Rien laid an open-celled foam pad and fiber-filled comforters at her feet, but seemed either willing to trust, or too befuddled by pain and exhaustion to question Rien's action. "I'm going to put you down," Rien said, returning to the door for the key. "Try to fall on the mattress."

  Perceval spread her feet as wide as the chains would allow and centered herself. "I won't fall," she said.

  But of course she did. The nanotech relaxed, the chains stretched, and Perceval went down like a sack of wet laundry. She fell across the mattress, and got her hands before her to break her fall, though Rien didn't think the joints were working as they should.

  Blue blood and yellow pus, leaking from under the clipped white blanket, had matted its edge to Perceval's skin, and Rien flinched to see it. But she came to her and carefully lifted the blanket away, though Perceval moaned and stirred. The bandages under were saturated with seepage, and when she peeled them back, all the scab and tender proud flesh was torn.

  "Your bones keep moving," she said. "This hasn't healed at all." But at least if it was infected it was open, and not abscessing. And once she got the bandages off and the wounds aired, the smell was less awful.

  She disinfected the wounds and irrigated them, thinking it was useless if they wouldn't scab. And Perceval bore it all stolidly. Or perhaps she was lost in some hallucinatory fever-dream, her arms stretched uselessly, awkwardly at her sides. The chains trailed like swags of drapery now, rather than stretching taut with her weight.

  Rien had brought clean bandages, too, and with Perceval's muscles soft she could do a better job of it this time. By the time she had finished, Perceval was strong enough to sit, and with Rien's help to steady the spoon she managed her breakfast half by herself.

  "I am surprised to be alive," she said at last, between sips of cold coffee. She rubbed her lips together, as if working the fat from the creamer into the chapped skin. "Why are you wasting food on the condemned?"

  Rien didn't know, exactly. And she could have lied, to comfort Perceval, and told her it wasn't certain that she would be condemned. But after she thought of that, she shook her head and said, "Because Head is softhearted."<
br />
  "So I see she is," Perceval answered, and after setting the molded cup aside, stretched out on her side on the pallet.

  "Sie," Rien said. "Head is a kant. Ungendered." "Sie," Perceval echoed. "Softhearted. And so is Rien." "Rien is known for it," Rien said. Her own stomach grumbled; she would have missed breakfast by now, but she could probably beg something from Head, or—if Head were not in the kitchen—from Roger, or whoever was. Rien stood, just as Perceval reached out, as if by accident, and brushed fragile fingertips across her knee. "Come back, Sister?" Perceval asked, very softly. Rien bit her lip until she thought she could speak without her voice cracking, but it turned out she was wrong. "If you live to suppertime," she said, "I'll be back to care for you."

  But she wasn't.

  Lady Ariane had called her brothers and sisters home, and they arrived with entourages, or at the very least Dylan, Edmund, Geoffrey, Allan, and Oliver did. Ardath came alone, tall and well muscled, her black hair twisted into a single long queue and a pirate emerald winking in her lobe. Chelsea was nowhere in evidence, and—though Rien held her breath—neither was there any sign of Benedick. She only knew him from his painting: a hollow-cheeked man whose hair hung lank and black to frame a lantern jaw.

  That space-black hair and the piercing eyes were the look of all the Conn family, except Tristen, who had a mutation. Of course, they were Exalt, and could look exactly as they chose. That they chose, within certain limits, a resemblance to their father, was a telling thing. As telling, Rien supposed, as that the eldest son and the youngest daughter wanted nothing to do with Ariane and her I games.

  The family reunion was also a council of war, and so there was to be a feast. Preparations took up the after- I noon. And Rien was better at table than Roger, so it was Roger who was sent to tend Perceval. Rien knew better 1 than to protest; it could only make Head suspicious, and then Perceval would be taken away from her for her own good.

  She tried not to think of that happening anyway, as she tried not to think of Perceval's wounds. Instead she waited table, and pretended not to hear what the House of Rule said as they dined.

  Ariane sat the head of the table, not in her father's chair—not yet—but with his chair pulled aside and draped in red velvet so none would sit there, and a smaller one set in its place. On her left was Dylan, the second-eldest present, a tall man and strong. His titanium exoskeleton lay flush to his skin, an elaborate filigree of rainbowed gilt. It made no sound at all when he moved, but loaned an eerie floating grace to his movements, as if he had no more substance than Perceval.

  Then, down each side of the table were the middle and younger brothers: Edmund in his brown and crimson, a beard cropped close to his cheek; Geoffrey slender and small and debonair, eating with skewers and a knife; Allan in a white jersey shirt under a blue embroidered vest, his hair cropped close to show the delicate bones of his skull; and Oliver, the youngest. Oliver winked at Rien when she placed his plate in front of him, and Rien winked right back. He'd still been home when Rien grew old enough to work outside the kitchens and realize who it was they served, and he'd also always been dismissive of any boundary between Exalt and Mean.

  He didn't believe himself any less worthy than the rest of his clan. He was just nicer about it.

  Ardath sat alone, at the foot, and seemed most inclined to argue with Ariane's insistence that it was time—time the Conn family took back Engine, time they captured and consumed the Engineers. Time for a Remaking, time to bring all the Exalt back into the Family. Time, Ariane said, to get the world under way again.

  Rien thought Ardath raised good objections. What about the moral issues of conquest? What about the logistical issues—which of the House of Rule would serve as the locus of the Remaking? Who, in other words, would devour the enemy, take on the responsibility of consuming their memories and program and keeping that online? And what about the free elementals, the wild nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, or artificial life? Who would track all that down, and how would they capture and collect it? There were domaines and holdes and anchores all through the world, some inhabited, some not, and no reliable communication or passage between most. They would have to fight chamber to chamber, cabin to cabin.

  They would have to conquer the entire world.

  What would happen if they won, when they had collected everyone? How then would they heal a world that even the first Engineers and the first Conn had declared unrepairable? How would they reconcile the angels, without whose assistance they stood no chance at all of getting the world moving again?

  How would they choose a destination, when all was said and done? Wars had been fought over that in the past, as well.

  These were excellent questions.

  But Ariane answered each one. And in the end, when Ardath asked her last and hardest question—how can we fix something even the Captains of old could not mend?—Ariane smiled, and shrugged, and said, "We'll see what our resources are when we come to it. Perhaps they simply were not ruthless enough. In any case, we have no choice."

  "No choice?" Ardath asked, leaning on her elbows, over the damask tablecloth.

  "No," Ariane answered. "We go to war whether we want to or not, dear sister. You see, Engine is marching already."

  5 outside rule

  Tell it not in Gath; weep not at all.

  In the House of Dust roll yourself in ashes.

  —MICAH 1:10, New Evolutionist Bible

  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, i
ts 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.