Dust jl-1

by Elizabeth Bear

  It beat away on heavy wings, ten meters along a bare root-raddled trail and then a pause, ten more and then another. Rien watched it.

  It never glanced back.

  Rien stood. She reached back among the parasite wings and took Perceval's limp hand, and stepped forward. The construct shivered, and seemed as if it would edge back. It leaned away from the basilisk like a cringing dog, she thought, hoping not to be noticed.

  She said, "Stop it. Hurry up. Come on." And the parasite wings—more spider legs now—reluctantly stepped with her, as if Perceval were a leash and she led them at heel.

  Another step, and another. And then, if she wanted to keep the basilisk in sight, she was committed. If you're walking, you might as well walk, she thought, and strode out as if she meant to get somewhere.

  Under trees and beside the vine-hung wall, following the blind monster. The pinions—Pinion, Rien told herself firmly; giving it a name of its own could only help to separate it from Perceval, and Rien wanted to keep them separate in her head—minced along, the girl dangling beneath them like an overripe fruit from the tree. In gravity, Perceval no longer floated in a loose fetal position. Now her arms and legs dangled, her head bouncing on her neck no matter how smoothly Pinion moved.

  The earth was level once Rien was on the trail, packed and warm, the bark worn from the roots by many soles. Still, bare feet were not the best for this, and the second or third time she stubbed her toe, she whimpered.

  And then bit her lip, as the basilisk turned back to her.

  Perhaps the stop had roused her slightly, but Perceval made a mewing sound and pushed petulantly at Rien's hand.

  "She's so sick," Rien said, as the basilisk stared with tight-shut eyes.

  It nodded. "Then please hurry." And set off again, twice as fast this time.

  Perceval still hurt: a different kind of hurting now. It was not the pain of ongoing injury, but the ache of abused muscles at rest, a reminder of recent damage rather than the thing itself. And she was warm in the mantle of her wings, and lying peacefully in shade.

  Vaguely, she remembered a march, dizziness and nausea and shaking chill. But not now; now there was a soft pallet and green leaves and the clean scent of air in a planted habitat.

  Rien must have brought them somewhere safe. The pain was almost pleasant, when Perceval thought of it that way.

  She rolled onto her back, and recalled doing so that the wings wrapping her weren't her wings. Her belly clenched. She wondered if it would ever stop hurting like that, every time she remembered.

  But she was dressed now, loose trousers and a long-sleeved halter top that tied at the waist and kept her blessedly warm for the first time in ... the first time since she had been captured. She was in a clearing, on a pallet on soft moss, and woven sunshades were suspended above her from cords strung to tree limbs. Chips of light fell through them. A cicada droned. Underneath it, Perceval heard faint strains of music, flute and guitar.

  And Rien was nowhere in sight.

  Heart pounding, Perceval sat up. And almost vomited, a thin flavor of bile filling her foul-tasting mouth. Her eyes were crusted and gummy, her teeth disgusting. She couldn't imagine what might keep her symbiont colony so busy as to neglect hygiene. Her skin was clean, though, and she smelled soap; someone had bathed her. And there was water beside her, a pitcher on a low tray, room temperature but—by the smell—laced with crushed mint leaves.

  She dabbed her fingers in the water and scrubbed her eyes, her face, the crusted lips. She picked out the mint leaves and chewed them, and then, crosslegged and hunched between the straggle of her parasite wings, she cradled the pitcher on her shins and bent forward to drink from the edge until she'd gotten enough out of it to lift the entire thing and drink. It was heavy, the metal surface dewed with condensation.

  The water inside didn't taste of aluminum, though; the pitcher was lined in glass. It all went into her* except rivulets that ran down her chin on each side and spattered her shirt.

  She could have drunk more.

  Feeling better, Perceval set the pitcher down. She gathered herself and stood, feeling attenuated and rickety. When she wobbled, the wings fanned and caught her.

  Strange, to realize that they did so and caused no pain. Perceval reached over her shoulder and felt the root of the stump, where her own warm wings had grown. They seamed imperceptibly into her flesh, flexible at the point of contact, only growing cool and hard by stages as she ran her fingers as high along the leading edge as she could reach.

  Wounds dealt by an unblade were not amenable to regeneration, and they were not supposed to take a prosthesis. They healed only with difficulty, and often bled like stigmata intermittently for years. Sometimes, a deeper amputation would provoke better healing. Sometimes.

  The unblade's program was designed to disrupt symbionts. They were colonies themselves, and from what Perceval had heard, ones with dark and aggressive personalities. She was lucky the wound hadn't become toxic.

  The thought triggered a contrary memory. Poison had gotten into the wound, hadn't it? She'd been fevered. There had been a gunfight. She couldn't actually recall.

  That would explain why she felt so achy and sluggish, like a Mean the morning after a beating, and why her symbiont had failed her.

  Trailing her inexplicable wings behind her, either still thirsty or thirsty again, she went in search of the musicians. She would panic later. She would remain calm, now.

  The trees bore bud, flower, and fruit on the same branches. She recognized peach, olive, almond, the tallest more than twice her height. The trunks were thicker than those at home. Gravity here was heavier, and as she craned her head back to stare up through the leaves at the crystal panels far above that let the suns shine in, she wondered if she would be able to fly here, even with mechanical wings. The holde would be big enough.

  The sound of the flute carried better, but it also echoed more. The guitar told her where its player sat. Perceval followed the music until she saw a camp identical to the one she'd left, only occupied by two figures.

  No, she realized. Two humanoid figures, and a big white bird.

  One of the humans, cross-legged on a pallet like the one Perceval had left, was Rien. She held a guitar in her arms, her fingers sliding up and down the neck half awkwardly. She lifted her head as Perceval's motion caught her peripheral vision, and flubbed a chord.

  Beside her sat the person with the flute. Perceval had a confused image of mahogany hair, as curly as Rien's but softer, all twisted in ringlets instead of wooly and wiry with frizz, of slender arms and narrow shoulders. And then the flautist stood, turning to her, and she saw bare feet and bony ankles, an ankle sheath on the left. The face was a woman's—angelic and sweet and rounded—with great dark eyes that looked kohled. But though small breasts stood from a boy's shirtless chest, tight trousers left Perceval in no doubt as to the masculine arrangement of the more intimate anatomy.

  She tried not to stare.

  The flautist balanced on each foot in turn, slipping on soft boots. Rien was not rising. She did let the guitar fall silent, though, as the stranger said, "Perceval, this is Mallory, who helped us. Mallory, this is—"

  —my sister, Perceval coached, inside her head, but she could not force the sense of the words into Rien's head or the shape of them into her mouth.

  "Sir Perceval Foucaulte Conn," Perceval said. "Of Engine. I am trying to reach my father, with urgent tidings."

  Rien gave her a look, and from it Perceval gathered that Rien had not, perhaps, told this person everything.

  Or even much of anything. Perceval bit her lip; of course, they were fugitives, and anyone could be in the pay of Rule.

  She thrust out her hand, and waited for the mahogany-haired flautist to take it. But before that could happen, a voice spoke from the stump on the other side of the clearing.

  "A pleasure to meet you in better circumstances," the white bird said, and when Perceval glanced up she saw that it was not a bird at all, bu
t a basilisk.

  It was worrisome, to find herself missing details. "Oh," she said. And then she sat down hard on the moss as her knees failed her.

  Rien did jump to her feet then, almost tripping over the guitar. And sat back down hard herself. Mallory crouched, sliding the flute into a boot, and laid hands on her face. "You're both sick, children. And exhausted. Stay where you are."

  Even the voice was androgynous, not for neutrality, but for flexibility. One moment, Perceval imagined it echoed a man's deep sonorous tones of authority, then a woman's chiding.

  She did as she was told and sat.

  A little later, as their host fussed with a self-heating kettle and water and pills and packets of herbs, she gathered her energy enough to take an interest. Deft hands sorted and sifted and poured. Perceval was fascinated.

  "Are you a healer, Mallory?"

  "No," Mallory said, and lifted a pair of cups. "I am a necromancer. Here, drink up."

  9 what it means to be a princess

  This dust was once the Man.

  —WALT WHITMAN

  So that's what it is to be a princess, Rien thought, watching the perfect unconscious arrogance with which Perceval gave away her name and their goal, as if it were nothing. Or—arrogance was the wrong word, wasn't it? Because arrogance was by its nature unjustified.

  And nothing about Perceval was unjustified. Her self-assurance was the product of capability and experience, a warrior's knowledge of her body and her surroundings. She sat cross-legged, her elbows on her knees once she had accepted the mug, and watched Mallory seemingly without curiosity. "What's in the tea?"

  "Salicylic acid," Mallory said, "capsaicin, licorice, chamomile, some other things. You had a nasty systemic bacterial infection, and a debilitating virus on top of it."

  Still, Perceval sniffed warily. Rien, conscious of her own aches and the thickness in her throat, could not imagine how much worse her friend might feel.

  It was so much easier to think of Perceval as her friend than as her sister. Perceval was Exalt—well, Rien was now, too, but she didn't feel Exalt, she didn't have the privilege and entitlement that dripped off Lady Ariane or Perceval or even Oliver. Even her politeness, her air of the obligations of nobility .. . were just that.

  The Exalt Rien knew were monsters as much as Lords and Ladies. If Rien was Exalt, would she become a monster, too?

  "Drink it," Mallory said. "If I'd wanted you drugged or poisoned, Engineer, I would have done it when you were on the IV."

  Perceval's suspicious glance at the crook of her arm was another paradigm shift for Rien. For a moment, Perceval's deportment changed. The abrupt turn of her head was almost a cringe.

  A crack in the facade.

  Which meant it was a facade, this air of the stern but smiling knight-errant. A character. A role. Or, Rien reassessed—the warm mug in her own hands almost forgotten, as she watched Perceval first swallow dry and then raise her mug to her lips with quiet bravado—not a facade, not exactly. But not the whole story either.

  Rien drank her tea and let the silence stretch. Even Mallory sat still, wrists draped over knees, and watched the girls sip bittersweet, spicy fluid.

  When Perceval and Rien had drained the dregs and set their cups aside, the necromancer said, "I imagine everybody in Rule will be sick quite soon."

  "I beg your pardon?" Perceval's courtesy was perfect once more.

  "Your illness." Mallory knelt up to collect the cups, not rising, small breasts moving softly as the necromancer came to hands and knees. Rien shifted on the earth, fingers worrying the neck of the borrowed instrument that now lay on the blanket beside her. She was not accustomed to finding someone with such obvious male attributes attractive. But the eyes and the throat and the breasts were all woman, if the long hands and torso and crotch were all wrong.

  Deft hands wiped cups dry and stowed them in a ragged-edged coarse-woven pack, but Mallory's voice never paused. "You are recovering; Rien is sickening. It's an engineered influenza, and you both are fortunate that I happened to have a stock of the appropriate antiviral on hand."

  "Convenient," Perceval agreed, and Rien shot her a sideways glance. If she were better acquainted with Perceval, she'd know if those were tones of irony.

  Mallory seemed to think so. And by the smile that flickered across plush lips, seemed also unoffended.

  Rien wondered if she would ever get used to the Exalt, and the way they cheerfully assumed that everyone around them was neck-deep in conspiracy. Then she wondered if she would ever get used to the way they usually seemed correct in that assumption.

  "You think I was meant to be captured?" Perceval could apparently be as blunt as anyone. "That I was a vector?"

  "I can't speak for Engine," Mallory said. "Those aren't my politics." On his branch at the edge of the clearing, Gavin made a noise uncannily like one of Head's unimpressed snorts.

  Mallory gave him the finger. "Why are you going to your father, Perceval Conn?"

  "To stop the war," Rien said, when Perceval did not seem to have a ready answer. She shivered, pushing the guitar farther away so she could draw up her knees and huddle under the blanket. The moments when you knew you were sickening were the worst; you could feel the virus establishing beachheads, enemy camps defined by sniffles and muscle aches and growing nausea. "Engine and Rule fighting, that could kill so many."

  "And endanger the walls of the world," Perceval said, and was right. Collateral damage, structural damage, was a bigger fear than direct murder. It had been impressed on Rien all through her childhood how fragile the habitable sphere was, and how much functionality had been lost through accident, negligence, malice, and the simple gnawing of entropy.

  Mallory fiddled fingers on folded arms. "You think your father can do something about that?"

  "He's Benedick Conn," Perceval said, as if that settled everything. And Rien had to admit, it was a phrase to conjure with.

  Mallory made a noise that was open to interpretation. "It's a long way to his anchore, and not through friendly territory. There is no direct communication. We could try radio, but I'm hesitant to speak of such things in uncoded broadcast. And if anyone is seeking you—"

  "Yes," Perceval said. "It could lead them here."

  Rien edged a little closer to her, twisting her fingers, and as if unconsciously Pinion flicked out to drape across her shoulder. Rien jumped, and would have withdrawn from the touch of the parasite wing—but she remembered in time, and the thought of what it must be like to be Perceval, and have the alien limb sealed to one's own body, kept her still.

  "Mallory, you're not actually considering sending Rien and Perceval on errantry when one of them is weak and recovering and the other will be blind with fever inside the day?" The basilisk swung his head side to side. His thick tongue was blue-black; with beak opened, it tasted the air like a snake.

  As if to illustrate his point, a wave of sweating dizziness overcame Rien. She laid her forehead against her knees and pulled the borrowed shawl tight over her shoulders. The warmth of the wing was welcome, after all.

  "It's true," Mallory said. "Rien will soon be too sick to trayel. And Perceval, you could relapse—"

  Rien turned her head so she could face Perceval, who said, "I could go without her. I could leave her in your care."

  "And when the fever comes back, and you rot in a ventilation duct? Your resources are exhausted. Your symbionts barely managed to keep you alive, even under my care."

  Perceval frowned magnificently.

  Mallory sighed and looked at Rien. "Rest here. I'll treat your illness. In a day or two, Gavin will guide you to your father."

  "A day or two might make a difference," Perceval said.

  "Yes," Mallory answered. "And it also might let you survive to get your message there."

  Mallory was right. Within the hour, Rien was curled under blankets moaning, only barely responsive when Perceval unearthed her to drip water on cracked lips from the corner of a soaked rag. She would have ba
thed Rien's face, but Rien batted at her hands, and so instead she made a pad and sat against a tree with her sister's head cradled in her lap. That, Rien permitted, and it made it easier to keep her hydrated.

  Mallory brought the water, steeped with herbs in it, and—for Perceval—porridge and soy milk. The basilisk rested on a branch overhead, perhaps dozing and perhaps keeping watch. While Perceval was waiting for honey to drip off the spiral honey dripper—as it was wont to do— she tilted her head back to watch his feathers fluff and settle. Exactly as if he breathed, which of course he did not.

  Cool fingers touched the back of her hand. She looked down, let Mallory relieve her of the dripper. Perceval licked the honey from her nail and then, with only residually sticky fingers, smoothed the hair from Rien's brow. The curls were dank with sweat, but Perceval heeded them not. She shook the salty moisture from her fingers and picked up her spoon.

  "You're very devoted to your sister," Mallory said.

  Perceval chewed carefully, her mouth abruptly full of saliva. She swallowed; the second spoonful was already on its way when she spoke. "I barely know her," she said, leaving out for now the fact that Rien had tended her, rescued her, cast in her lot with her, and now somehow brought her here. "You're very helpful for a necromancer."

  "So you don't trust me? Or you don't believe I'm a ; necromancer?" Mallory had a bowl of porridge, too, and was doctoring it with margarine and almond milk and salt. Among the almond blossoms, Perceval heard the drowsy drone of bees.

  Rien, thrashing, arched her shoulder blade into Perceval's knee.

  "Ow," Perceval said. "Sweetie—" She stuffed another spoonful into her mouth and set the bowl aside. Hands on Rien's shoulder and forehead seemed to calm her a little. "Should I trust you?"

  "Trust no one," Mallory said, stirring idly. The necromancer's eyebrows were very expressive, especially when the rest of the face was pretending blandness. It was a lovely face, oval and far more angelic than Perceval's own. "Unless you have to. And today you had to." "You knew who I was before I told you." "I did. I am after all a necromancer. And they shall know you by your trail of dead, Perceval Conn."