Dust

father—and she was thinking about the chamber of bats, and Tristen warehoused there until Ariane could get around to eating his mind and experiences. As Rien had eaten Hero Ng.

And she was thinking about the healing tanks.

Whether the Engineers trusted Hero Ng to keep her out of trouble—after all, he was one of their own—or whether they were too busy themselves to watch her closely, Rien found herself working alone. It wasn't as if she was invisible; the Engineers didn't look through her as they bustled around their operations center. Instead, it was as if she had been sprayed with a frictionless coating, or perhaps as if she sat in the visual equivalent of an electromagnetic bottle.

What do they know that 1 don't? she wondered.

She watched Hero Ng work, and she studied what he did, and she worried. She understood it all, at least—his knowledge was her knowledge, too. That was some comfort, though the familiar/unfamiliar texture of the control panel under her hands was disconcerting, if she let herself think about it.

He had taken on the task of calculating the modifications necessary to maintain the world's integrity when they caught the electromagnetic shock wave. If they caught the electromagnetic shock wave. Caitlin Conn and her people were working on that task, which was equally vital and slightly less ticklish. Ng was handicapped by outdated knowledge of the world; things had changed since he died. But that handicap was compensated for by a more complete knowledge than any of the modern Engineers. In the moving times, in Ng's time, there had been shipwide communication, and the angels had not been embattled.

He knew what was supposed to be there.

Still, he found the work stressful. And after Arianrhod's departure, their apparent coinvisibility meant that Rien was on her own with regard to refreshment. By the time Ng at last hit a snag in his calculations that wasn't amenable to a few moments of staring into space and flipping a light stylus, Rien suggested—no, it was her body, dammit— Rien enforced a walk.

Maybe they could find Benedick, and he could take them to get something to eat, and she could talk to him about reclaiming Tristen and then rescuing Perceval.

Them, Rien thought, her hand extended to the door release, and chuckled. She would never be alone again. Even if no one turned to see why she laughed.

The invisible girl.

She was willing to bet it was the dead Engineer in her head who made everybody so uncomfortable.

Conrad Ng expressed regret. Not really in words, more in a feeling of wry apologetic shame. Rien shushed him. It wasn't he who had forced the fruit upon her, and it was not he who had chosen to eat. While walking through the door, she looked down at her hands. And he certainly came in useful.

Samael, he suggested.

Behind it all, she agreed, smoothing her hands over the naked skin of her scalp. When her hair started growing back, she imagined it would itch terribly. Now, though, it reminded her of touching Perceval, and she did it again.

They—she—stepped through the door, and as Rien turned to ask the monitor where she might find Benedick, she nearly walked into him.

'We should work on your situational awareness,' he said. 'You nearly walked into me.'

She looked up at him and managed not to say the first thing that came into her mouth. And then was startled that she'd even considered mouthing off to an Exalt. Not just to an Exalt.

To Benedick Conn.

'Were you coming for me?' she said instead.

And he smiled, half shyly. 'I'm no use to the Engineers,' he said. 'Not until it comes down to tactics and command decisions. I thought I'd see if you were hungry.'

She imagined she wasn't the only one who could hear her stomach grinding rocks. She turned to walk beside him, the press of traffic steering her close to his side. He took her elbow.

Something about the anonymity of all these people, the reaching city crawling up the walls on every side like creepers climbing for the light, made her bold. She stretched on tiptoe as they walked and said toward his ear, 'How did you wind up selling your daughters for peace tokens?'

He flinched, his fingers tightening on her arm. And then he appeared to decide that she deserved an answer, because he said, 'You're the reason Caitlin isn't speaking to me.'

'I guessed,' Rien said. 'The dates matched. Was it your father?'

'He wanted a hostage,' Benedick said. 'That the balance of terror be maintained.'

'May I assume you are not close to Arianrhod?'

It was a gamble even asking. But Arianrhod had said contract. And pretended affection so transparently that even Rien could see through her. And if she was such a crowning egoist that she'd name a daughter she never expected to see again with a portion of her own name, there was the matter of Ariane's name, as well.

'You would not be incorrect in such an assumption,' Benedick said, after considering. 'Of course I meant you to be raised as one of the family.'

'In that house,' Rien answered, 'it's as well I was not.'

He had been about to wince and dip his head, acknowledging her point, and she had been about to let him off the hook with a wry reference to Head. But she felt a tension come into him. Work on your situational awareness, he had said, and so she turned to follow the line of his gaze.

And tripped so hard Benedick had to catch her.

A coffle of resurrectees were led through the street, and Rien knew them. The one in the front, walking placidly, his glossy head bowed and his bright eyes half-lidded, used to be Oliver Conn.

'There's no way they got from here to Rule and back since we arrived,' Rien said. 'Somebody knew in advance, and was waiting to bring them back.'

'Ariane must be behind the influenza,' Benedick said. 'It makes too much sense. She brings in Perceval; she incapacitates her brothers and sisters with illness and consumes as many of them as possible.'

If Rien had not been standing beside him, she would have thought him unemotional at the death of his family, but she could hear the flutter of his breath, too fast. He glanced down at her, and she nodded at him to continue.

'She precipitates a war with Engine that she has no intention of fighting.' His throat worked when he swallowed. 'Like saving Tristen for later. She's like one of the angels: she's going to eat the whole family if she can get away with it.'

'Not just Ariane,' Rien said. 'She had to have an ally here. Somebody with resources. Somebody who could make sure she ran into Perceval at the right time, in the right place, when Perceval was already sickening.'

'Arianrhod,' he said. He held her arm too tightly, as the dead man who had been Oliver shuffled past them without so much as a flicker of attention.

Rien bit down on a sob. Not for herself. Not for Arianrhod, who was a stranger, nothing to her, and the ties of blood irrelevant—though she might have felt differently, had she not encountered Benedick and Tristen and Perceval, and found a place to stand. 'So, of course, she's going to impede anything we might want to do toward rescuing Perceval.'

'How are we going to find out where she's being held?'

'Dust has her,' Rien answered. 'Hero Ng knows where to go to look for Dust.'

She didn't say, we can't do this without Samael. Because Benedick knew it as well as she did, and she didn't want to say it out loud, as if that would make it real. Instead, Rien squeezed his fingers. 'First we need to go get Tristen. And I need my things that I came here with.'

'Right,' said Benedick. 'Let's find him.'

It was Hero Ng who finally located Tristen, hacking into the medical computers while Rien thought uncharitably of Samael and his barbed gifts, and even less charitably of Mallory. How convenient, she thought, how freeing to be able to embrace the role of necromancer, trickster, betrayer. How it must release one from the bounds of common courtesy and right behavior. What a romantic series of excuses.

Maybe she, Rien, should become a sorcerer. Or an angel. Then she could be an asshole, too, and if anybody commented on it, she could shrug and present her union card.