Dust

laugh. She craned her neck to see over his back.

A young woman somewhat smaller and slighter than even Rien stood against the wall. She'd call her a woman, anyway, though she was covered in a soft spotted coat of gray-gold fur. Her wings—folded tight, long- boned, with grasping fingers at the joint—were what caught Rien's eye and made her breath short, though, because in seeing them, she could imagine what Perceval's wings had been like.

It came to Rien that even if she got her sister back, she would never see her whole. In breathtaking unfairness, the Perceval-who-had-been was maimed before Rien had ever met her.

She wanted to reach out and rub one hand down the velvet-furred bones of the stranger's wing, to see if it felt— as it appeared—like the velour skin of a peach. Instead, Rien made herself look at her face, and register a fine nose and wide mouth, unbalanced by heavy brows.

'Rien,' she said, by way of introduction. Her hands were cold, and she chafed them on her trouser legs.

'Jordan,' the stranger answered, and held out a fine-boned hand. She was as slender as Perceval. Rien wondered if they were related.

Rien took her hand, reminding herself that falling for strangers simply because they looked a little like Perceval was stupid. Although Perceval would never want her, and wouldn't holding on be stupider, still?

There was no fur on the stranger's palms, or the backs of her fingers. The skin there was black, like the skin on her face where the fur did not cover, and Rien thought of the hands of lemurs. The fur made sense; Jordan had no apparent body fat, and she was small and thin. You'd need some kind of insulation.

'You don't like Samael,' Jordan said.

'I don't like being manipulated.' Rien gave her hand a squeeze and released it. 'I guess that means I don't like angels.'

Then she held up one finger for a moment of quiet, and tapped Gavin on the wing. 'Will you do what I asked you to?'

'Your wish is my command,' he said, with abject dryness, and kicked off with more force than was needful.

Heads turned as he swept across the room with long, rowing strokes of his wings, tail snaking behind. A tall man ducked, though Gavin never came with a meter of him. Samael, speaking quietly with Benedick, affected either boredom or oblivion; he didn't even lift his head.

Rien wanted to hit him.

And maybe Jordan noticed her clenching hands, as the door slipped open in front of Gavin and he vanished into the corridor beyond. Because she touched Rien's wrist lightly, and when she turned, smiled. 'Tell me more.'

'More what?'

'More of why you don't like angels.'

Too much, too fast, maybe. She shrugged and drew inward. 'Not right now.' And then, at Jordan's fallen face, wondered; maybe she had been flirting.

'Maybe some other time,' Rien continued, reopening the door. 'It looks like the party is breaking up, and they'll have work for me.'

Or for Hero Ng, which amounted to the same thing.

As if Gavin's departure had been a trigger, people were dispersing—to consoles, or out of the room. Rien stood, looking around for Benedick.

'Nice to meet you,' Jordan said.

Rien gave her a slantwise smile. 'Nice to meet you, also.'

After the council of war, Rien's mother brought her cookies. She set the plate at Rien's elbow and sat down beside her at the console upon which Rien—or Hero Ng, more accurately—was working. Rien watched him, though, and she was learning.

Rien's left hand moved across the controls without pause as, with the right one, she selected a cookie.

'Thank you,' she said, through a mouthful of sweet carbohydrates.

It was the first thing she'd eaten since they began their run through Inkling's cavern. She stuffed the other half in her mouth.

'You feel I abandoned you,' Arianrhod said.

Rien mumbled something unintelligible, unbearably grateful for the excuse of snack foods. Sugar cookies. She could live on them.

Ng took her hand back while she chewed, and typed faster. She let him, watching her fingers dance.

Arianrhod cleared her throat. 'I had to leave you, Rien. But I gave you my name for a reason. I didn't know —'

Her voice creaked.

'Gave me your name?' Rien asked, forgetting to watch her fingers.

'Rien,' Arianrhod said. 'It's a part of my name.'

She licked her lips, and Rien became aware that she was staring. She looked quickly away. 'Your name.'

Arianrhod touched her arm. 'I would have done more. But the contract was—'

'Contract.' Surely Rien had something better to do than echoing everything Arianrhod said. Whatever it might be, however, she could not think of it. She was thinking, instead, of names. And not just her own name.

'How else are children born, between Rule and Engine?' Arianrhod shrugged, and appropriated a cookie. If appropriated was the right word, when she had provided them. Her hair fell over her blouse, a waterfall of silver that could not have been more different from Inkling's deadly river.

'I thought I was named for nothing,' Rien said, and having said it, frowned. Arianrhod.

Rien.

Arianrhod.

Rien.

It was on the tip of her tongue. She bit her lip. To buy time, she corrected a faulty spectrograph of the waystars.

Rien.

Arianrhod.

Ariane.

'Tristen,' she said, too quickly, stammering. 'Is he out of the tank yet?'

'Not yet,' Arianrhod answered. 'Did you want to visit him?'

Rien let Ng have her hands back. At least it kept them from shaking. 'Yes,' she said. 'After.'

Ariane was her half sister. Maybe. Ariane was also Arianrhod's daughter, by Alasdair. Possibly.

Did it matter?

Did it matter that Perceval was her half sister?

No. It mattered that she loved Perceval.

'After?'

'After we talk about what we're going to do for Perceval.'

Whatever the bonds of blood, Arianrhod was no more willing to help Rien reclaim her sister than anyone else might have been. When Arianrhod excused herself, Rien did not complain.

She'd intended the request as a test—a test that, if Arianrhod failed it, would give either of them a reason to end the conversation.

A game, yes.

Rien might not like these ruling monsters, but if playing their games was what it took, well, she would prove that she could learn. She would be a master manipulator in no time, among this crew. And her mind was spinning over those three names—Arianrhod, Ariane, Rien—and the implication that there were layers and layers of allegiances that she did not even begin to understand.

She was glad she had Hero Ng to keep her hands busy.

Because she was thinking about Tristen, and his claim on the Captaincy—not as good as Perceval's, perhaps, because of the archaic rules under which the world labored, but better than Ariane's, except Ariane had eaten their