Dust

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, but 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,