Rien set Gavin on the back of the desk chair and sank down on the couch closer to the door. Perceval crossed to the window and pressed her hands against it. The glass was the same temperature as the air inside: double or triple glazed, then, and if she angled her head she could see light reflecting off the other panes. Where her shadow blocked the interior lights, she could see through. She stared down the long snow-frosted bank to the black lake below, the ice-sheathed trees beyond shimmering in the first gray mirrored light of morning, and waited for Rien's wrath to crest.
'You lied to me,' Rien said.
'I edited,' Perceval admitted. 'But it came out well enough, didn't it?'
'You implied you knew him, that he would take us in.'
Rien had not had her symbiont yet when the conversation occurred. She could not possibly recall it accurately. Perceval herself did not remember what it had been like to live solo, but she knew enough Means to have an idea of their confusion, the muddy imperfection of their thoughts. She wondered if that was already receding for Rien, if Rien had noticed how crisp new memories were in comparison. 'I said it was not presumptuous for his daughters to call on him in time of need.'
'Space you,' Rien said, and Perceval laughed. And then Rien caught on and laughed, too. 'Already done, huh?'
'Yes, rather.' Perceval put her back to the polycarbonate and leaned against it. With a shudder, she realized she could feel the glass against the feathers of the parasite wings. They were infiltrating her nervous system. Becoming part of her in truth.
There was a twinge of pain. She looked down. She was twisting a shadow feather between her fingers; the feather tore free, and its edges sliced her hand. 'Dammit.'
She dropped the feather on the floor and licked the blood from her thumb. The cut sealed itself, a thin blue line in her flesh, and she let her hands fall and knot in the fabric of her trousers.
'So,' Rien said, sliding off the couch, 'you said that when you challenged Ariane, it was because she was behaving villainously.'
Perceval imagined the taste of blood. Ariane's blood. They were safe now, more or less. They had escaped, and if anyone could prevent total war, it was Benedick Conn. It was time to think of other things again. 'I'll pay her back, one of these days.'
Rien crouched and picked up the feather from the floor. Still hunkered, elbows on her knees, head bent, she said, 'So tell me of her villainy.'
Perceval stood and stared at her, folded arms and folded wings. And then the hard line of her mouth crumpled, and she smoothed both palms across her stubbled scalp.
'It'll grow,' Rien comforted.
'I was thinking of keeping it shorn,' Perceval said. 'It was vanity.' With her head still bowed, she continued. 'The story you wish to hear is not in all things a flattering one.'
'I don't need to hear Ariane flattered—'
'What about me?' Perceval stared, then, dark eyes and dark lashes in her pale, square face.
And Rien swallowed. The warmth of a flush stung her cheeks. She looked down quickly, as if studying the translucent feather in her hands. A smear of blood stained the tip of the pen azure. She smoothed the vanes; they were unlike any bird's feather she'd ever held.
'Trust in my love,' she said, and heard the rustle of Perceval's nod.
'I made a lot of errors.' Perceval's voice went thready.
'I forgive them,' Rien said. 'You said you were on errantry.'
'Yes. I don't know what you know of Engine—'
'Nothing,' Rien said. She thought of stories, of demons and angels, of cannibals and terrorists. 'Nothing upon which I can rely. I have an Engineer in my head now—'
'Hero Ng.'
Who was, Rien thought, somewhat shocked and bashful to be called
'Just so,' Perceval said, and sat down on the floor with a flumph and a fluttering, her long legs bent every which way. 'It is incumbent upon the knights of the realm to patrol, to keep peace and enforce the rule of law as far as our domaine's influence stretches. We also go out looking for damage, and mend it where it can be mended. We do not travel the same route in the same order always, so none may know too far in advance when or where we shall be, and so that we may provide maintenance to little-habited areas. But by the same token, it is good to know the inhabitants, who can be trusted and who will look for any advantage. Some of them ...' She bit her lip, as if remembering suddenly that Rien had been a Mean herself, a week since. 'Rien, would you reach me down a drink, please? If I am meant to talk through to supper?'
'Hardly so long,' Rien said. But she stood, and tucked the feather into her pocket, and from a decanter on the desk poured two squat cups of wine, darker red than her own blood had been until recently. 'Here.'
She sat again, closer this time, and Perceval took the drink with gratitude. 'In this case, I came upon something that demanded an intervention.'
'Ariane was doing something horrible.'
'Ariane was disciplining one of her followers.'
'And you intervened?'
'It's a funny thing,' Perceval said into her wine cup. 'I was led upon her. By a man of Engine, who said the person she was preparing to space was his paramour, and thus through conjugal rights, at least in technicality, under my protection.'
'And you challenged her to protect this person.' Rien stuck her free hand under her thigh, so that she would not give in to the urge to reach out and stroke Perceval's.
Perceval seemed oblivious. 'It seemed like a good idea.'
'Yes,' Gavin said from his perch on the chair back. 'Until your neurons fired.'
Perceval flinched and then laughed. 'You're not easy to like, Sir Cutting-Torch.'
'How fortunate that I have so many other uses.' 'Your story,' Rien reminded, when Perceval's smile had dropped away and she sat again, staring into her cup as if engrossed. She didn't look up this time, but Pinion bowed forward, and the flight edges of trailing primaries brushed her face, as if in comfort. Perceval did not seem to notice, but the gesture made Rien shudder.
She would not care to be comforted by such a thing.
Or would she? Because there in her head was Hero Ng; aware, willing, his colony subservient to hers. The set of him had become encompassed in the set of her. Was this what Ariane had felt when she consumed her father, soul and memory?
Rien could only imagine it was so.
But surely that was different than Pinion.
'It was only after I'd challenged her that I realized I'd been lured into combat. And with whom.' Perceval shrugged. 'The battle is not always to the just.'
She fell to swirling her wine moodily, and Rien thought she might have said more, but the door rattled under a tap and the moment was lost.
'Come in,' Rien said. She hadn't even tasted the wine; she did so now, making a face at sour and tannin and then surprised by the flush of round flavors that followed. It went to her head, too, as if the fumes alone were intoxicating. She was still blinking when the door cracked open, and then fell wide.
It was Benedick. More casually dressed now in plain trousers and a pullover; his feet enormous in black slippers sporting skew eyes and draggled bunny ears. 'May I come in?'
'I'll get you a glass,' Rien said, standing. Not yet unsteadily; at least her dizziness was fleeting.
'No,' he said. 'Please. Actually, I must speak to my, to ... Sir Perceval. Rien, you have the freedom of the grounds—'
'Alone,' she said. 'Of course. I'll just give myself a little self-guided tour. And find the facilities.'
'Thank you,' he said, in a manner that turned it into an apology. He glanced at the basilisk pretending to sleep on the chair, and then back at Rien. 'If you don't mind—'
'Come on, Gavin,' she said. 'We're being evicted.'
