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.
'Oh,' Perceval said. 'I wondered, when I didn't see you.' She sat down on the pallet, wrapping her arms around her knees, wincing when she moved. Somebody had made it up tight, and Rien did not think Roger would have done so.
Rien crouched beside her. There was enough cloth in the trousers to make a pair of skirts, and they puddled on the floor around her feet when she squatted. She laid her left hand on Perceval's arm, without looking at the prisoner, and was shocked to feel her skin so dry, crepey and hot.
'If you got back to Engine,' Rien said, 'do you think that they would stop the war?'
She hadn't understood her plan until she spoke it.
For a long time, Perceval did nothing. Then she turned, tendons stretching in the long line of her neck, and said, 'It depends, don't you think? Tell me what's going on.'
Quickly, softly, Rien told her. That Perceval's capture and mutilation had been the trigger of Lady Ariane's plan. That she had meant, no doubt, to overthrow her father and bring Rule to war with Engine, from the start.
That Engine had obliged.
Fever-bright, Perceval listened. And then she folded her bony forearms one over the other and rested them on her knees, the chains a long silver-blue sweep framing her on either side, her chin pillowed on her bony wrist. 'It doesn't matter,' she said, after chewing her lip a little. 'I'm never getting home, am I?'
Not believing what she was doing, Rien reached into her pocket, down into the depths of the soft swinging dark cloth, and drew out the control. 'But I don't know the way out of Rule,' she said, when Perceval's eyes finally focused on it.
'Oh,' Perceval said. 'That's all right. I do.'
When the chains slid from her wrists and ankles, Perceval thought the sting in her eyes would blind her. She shuddered, forehead on her arms, and almost wept.
And then she gathered her courage, tented her fingers on the pallet, and pushed to her feet. 'We'll go to Father,' she said, decisively. 'Rien, may I have the key?'
Rien hesitated, but seemed to have made up her mind. She gave Perceval the box, and Perceval used it to tweak the draped chains into a sleeveless column dress, something to hold heat against her skin. She shed the blanket without a glance, and though she winced when she raised her arms to wriggle in and the touch of the fabric made her skin crawl, it was good to have something between her and the world. 'Father,' Rien said. 'Lord Benedick.' 'Who else?' For a moment, Perceval considered crushing the controller, locking the dress into that shape unless and until the colony could be reprogrammed. But there was the risk that someone in Rule had another control for this colony, and it was far too useful a tool to abandon.
'Isn't that...' Rien, when Perceval turned back to her, stood with her face screwed up, seeking the right word. '... presumptuous?'
Perceval bit her lip. This was probably not the best of times for her to admit how distant her own acquaintanceship with Benedick was, but she would not lie. So she said only, 'For his daughters to call in time of need?'
There was a pause. A lingering contemplation. And then Rien shook her head. 'You meant it. That we are sisters.'
'Yes,' Perceval said. And when Rien just stood, staring and shaking her head, she grabbed the young woman's wrist and dragged her along.
Climbing was anything but easy. Perceval was fevered, and her blood—still shocked by the unblade and the amputation of her wings—was not fighting as it should. She must haul herself ten or fifteen spiral steps and then pause, resting one hand on the wall, reeling. But after the third time, Rien seemed both to understand and come back to herself, and begin steadying Perceval up the stairs.
It went faster then.
When they came to the courtyard level, everything was still the indigo of evening. Rien stopped Perceval with a hand on her shoulder and stepped forward first, just to the edge of the door. She glanced cautiously each way— about as nonchalant as a stalking cat, but Perceval wasn't about to tell her so—and then stepped forward.
If there was a night watch—as there would be in any sensible holde: who would wish to trust his breath
Or so she hoped, until they crossed between a massive tree that must have been planted when the world was made, turned down a side corridor, and found themselves face-to-face with a young woman with a stunner at her hip and a lightstick in her hand.
'Rien—?'
The girl was a Mean, pink of skin and slow to move. In pity, Perceval only broke her wrist and struck her once hard over the sternum to silence and disable her. She pushed past Rien—she had merely reached over her before —and snatched the stunner from the guard's belt. A quick reversal, the ozone scorch of a bridging spark, and the guard went down.
A good technology. So much safer than anything equally incapacitating Perceval could have done with her hands.
Briefly, she thought of murder. Her hands itched for the wash of blood. But this blood was not the blood she wanted.
'Run,' she said, and grabbed Rien's wrist again. 'Run! Lead me to an air lock.
Rien stared at her, blinked, blinked at the woman on the floor—then caught her hand in turn and pulled her on.
Good. Good, because Perceval needed it* Needed the hand and the tug, needed the other woman's strength to keep her moving. She had no momentum of her own. Every lifted foot was dragged as if through porridge. The gravity pulled like hands.
They had been running some ninety-three seconds by Perceval's atomic clock when the shriek of alarms began.
'Oh, space,' Rien swore, and then covered her mouth with her hand. Were they so strict of their speech in Rule, then? Perceval forced her feet to lift, fall, lift again as fluid soaked her bandages, slicked the inside of the imporous dress. 'They'll turn off the hydraulics. We won't be able to open the lock. And I can't go Outside anyway. I haven't a suit. We haven't a go-pack.'
'We've my dress,' Perceval said. 'It'll do.'
'I can't breathe vacuum.' Rien let go Perceval's fingers, slumped against the corridor wall.
