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
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—
'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
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, its 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
