sword, but he held her hand peaceably and he also would not be shifted from her side.
Perceval felt odd talking around him, but as he would not speak, she didn't see an option. 'If he couldn't get out, what makes you think that we can?'
The bats had finally quieted.
Rien, appearing to notice this, said, 'The bats get out somewhere.'
'You are bigger than a bat.'
Rien scratched the basilisk on her shoulder under the hackles. 'I know where the door is,' she said. 'Also, we have lights. And a cutting torch.'
And with the assistance of those things, to Perceval's inexpressible wonderment, they escaped the realm of the bats without further incident.
Abandoned crew quarters lay beyond, overgrown with kudzu. In daylight, the stranger cringed and covered his eyes until Perceval took pity and bound a blindfold over them. As they walked, she picked the tender leaves from the end of the kudzu shoots and shared them with the others. They were good, spinachy, and if they were to have a third, Perceval thought anything that might stretch the food budget should be investigated. The stranger— blindfolded—sniffed them, and then with his smeared and crusted hands stuffed them into his mouth, one- fisted.
She looked at Rien while he ate, and Rien nodded. 'You were right.'
Perceval smiled at her, and handed her another serving of kudzu leaves. Rien rolled them into tubes and gnawed, chewing as if the sharp green taste could drive the flavor of ammonia from her throat. 'Space,' she said, softly as if that meant that only Perceval would hear her, 'how long do you think he was locked in there?'
'Let's get clean,' Perceval answered, and Rien began circumventing locks.
It took them three hours to clear the overgrowth away from enough washrooms to find a working shower, but as soon as they found it, they looked at each other and at their new companion, and sighed. Perceval coaxed his blindfold off—he held onto it at first, emaciated fingers wrapped through the band—and Rien adjusted the sonics and the fine, warm fog in the stall.
'It's even hot,' she said, trying not to sound envious.
'You'll get your turn,' Perceval answered without rancor. 'Let's see if we can find him something to wear.'
They were not the only things that rustled among the kudzu, but whatever might have lived there was shy and wary of predators. They could hear little animals skip-hopping ('mice,' Perceval said, but Rien said, 'toads') and there were insects, which Perceval caught when she could, remembering that they were rich in protein.
As they rummaged through abandoned, vacuum-sealed closets, they found many good things, including unfashionable but warm clothing that would fit a tall, thin man. 'Perceval,' Rien said after they had given up looking for shoes and sat side by side near the washroom door, 'how many of the habitats in the world are deserted?'
'Oh,' Perceval said, 'I would suppose most of them.'
'Where are all the people?'
'Dead,' Perceval said. Rien's fingers tightened on her wrist, driving nails into the skin, and Perceval flinched and tried to find an honest way to soften that news. As if she had meant to, she continued, 'Or congregated in a holde, more rarely a domaine. There were a lot more of us, in the moving times.'
Behind the door, the sound of sonics stopped.
'Are we dying?'
'Yes,' Perceval said. She stood, as the door opened, and extended an armload of soft shirts, underthings, and coveralls to the man—
She stopped short, her arms bent under the flat-palmed offering.
She'd thought his skin chalky with layered guano and lack of sun, his hair white and caked with the same limy excrement.
But no.
Clean, he was whiter. Blue-skinned in the filtered light through the overhead, his hair sculptured from ice- white curls, his beard still long but washed now. Perhaps he had not found a depilatory, but he had found a comb, and an elastic. He wore a towel wrapped at his waist, and the stub of his sword protruded from it.
His hair, braided, still hung most of the way down his back now that it was clean. Looking at it, thinking of what it must have taken to clean it, Perceval was grateful for the loss of her own. The stubble would be easier to scrub out.
He smelled not at all of ammonia.
And the eyes that met Perceval's were ice-blue, faintly luminescent with the same blueness that stained her own veins, in his case unalloyed by pigment.
'Thank you,' he said, his voice creaky and cracking but perfectly intelligible. He reached out to take the heap of clothing. His warm, moist fingertips brushed Perceval's.
'Lord Tristen,' Rien said. Stammered, really. 'You're meant to be dead.'
And while Perceval looked at Rien in disbelief, Tristen Conn said, 'Do I... know you?' and Rien reached out to steady herself against the wall.
That night, they camped in a kitchen with a stove, and they had hot soup for dinner. The cooking surface didn't work at first, but thanks to her spontaneous mechanical knowledge, Rien repaired it. Gavin curled up in the corner, the tip of his tail in an electrical socket, though Perceval thought he was only pretending to doze.
As for Tristen, once he'd determined who they were, where they were going, and why, he remained quiet— painfully so—but it turned out he could cook, so Rien and Perceval sat shoulder to shoulder, wrapped in Pinion's warm but worrying embrace, and watched. There was something tremendously comforting in having an adult appear and take care of things, Perceval admitted, watching the tall white man stir dinner with curious focus.
She was fascinated by that. And by how very white his hair was, and the soft translucence of his skin. She could see the blue veins where his salvaged clothes did not cover, and she was surprised that not only was his symbiont apparently healthy, but that it had managed to keep him so. She was also amazed by his resilience; she had only been captive a few days, and she thought she would lie staring at ceilings the rest of her life. She could not feel safe.
But there was Tristen Conn, singing to himself as he tasted broth and stacked and rolled tender kudzu leaves into long tubes for chiffonade. And he made her feel safer, his broken sword tucked into his belt and a knife from a magnetic rack inside one of the mouse-rummaged cabinets rocking in his left hand. Perceval hadn't seen a wild mouse, but she knew that all the mice in the world were as white as Tristen, albinos. They would have red eyes, though—natural mammal blood color—not stained blue by the symbiont blood-marker.
She and Rien sat and watched Tristen cooking, and she tried not to let herself feel too safe. But that was hard, when he brought them plastic mugs of salty broth full of shredded rehydrated mushrooms and soy protein, the delicate rags of sliced kudzu floating on top, a soft and saturated green.
She cupped the mug in both hands, first undraping her arm from around Rien, and sipped. It tasted fantastic. The tightness across Perceval's shoulders—where the weight of her wings wasn't—eased at the warmth. They sat in an uneven triangle, eating in silence.
When Perceval had finished, she flicked Pinion shut— even the brief breeze was warm and welcome—and got up to get more, collecting Rien's cup as well. Tristen placed his hand over his mug when she reached for it. He'd only gotten through a little more than half, and was taking it slowly.
Too much food in a hurry might not be good for him.
As she ladled more soup into the cup, she spoke. It was easier, somehow, when you were not looking. 'Rien, do you think we're being maneuvered into finding things?'
Rien made a noise. Startled, rather than affirmative. 'I hadn't thought of it.' In the stainless-steel trim around the backsplash, Perceval saw Rien press three fingers to the side of her head.
'Lord Tristen,' Perceval hastened to add, 'no offense. I did not mean to insinuate that you were a
'Considering how you met me, I could hardly be offended if you did,' he said. His voice was returning, but it was still soft and weary; she wondered how it felt for him to be clean and clothed and full of salty soup after the
