from her heart on either side, stroking down the rail. The sound-absorbing carpet crumbled to powder under Perceval's feet, and only by standing very still could she stop the puffs of dust
'And it is bitter,' he answered. She didn't laugh, just flicked her eyes at him curiously, turning her shaven head.
He could see the structure of her neck and skull in the visible light, and it was beautiful to him.
'I give you my heart,' he said.
He walked his avatar into the center of the room—not vast, not by the standards of Dust, who contained multitudes—and turned in the light, his arms spread wide. The wind of his moving stirred dust and spiderwebs; the entire bridge was draped in their spinnings. Dust stroked a ragged web, his fingers parsing powdery softness where his other senses reported protein chains, crystalline patterns joined by amorphous linkages.
Perceval lifted her chin. The light from the bridge's single still-brilliant lamp cast shadows stark across her face. 'I do not want your heart.'
'Yes, you do,' he said, because he could make her want it. 'Don't lie to me, Perceval. It's demeaning.'
She would not look at him. 'Open the panels,' she said. 'Show me the suns.'
He stood below her and looked up. Of course, while he was below, he was above and to each side as well, but sometimes when dealing with nondistributed intelligences, it helped to focus down and mimic their thought. He wondered if she knew she'd just given him a command, and what passed for his heart leaped.
He opened the panels, and let the light of the waystars in. They hung there, at the bottom of their gravity well, hearthfire and furnace and inferno.
'We never named them,' Perceval said. 'Just the way-stars. A and B.'
'They were never meant to be permanent,' Dust said. 'Naming would have been a covenant.'
'They could have called it Wheelbroke.' Perceval smoothed her hands along the rail again. This time there were no webs to stick to her fingers. 'It wouldn't be the first time.'
Dust imagined the delight he felt at her wit was the sort of thing that would make a human lover burst into fond laughter, so he tried. But she only looked at him strangely, and folded herself tight in her wings, seeming to forget they were his wings as well.
'If you love something mortal,' he said, 'it will only destroy you. How much better to love the world—'
She shook her head, long throat working, and stared out at the suns. Dust could have told her everything she cared to know about them; his inward perceptions might be erratic and fragile, but the external ones were maintained and precise. He'd fought that war with his brothers centuries before, and they had divided up the spoils.
His captain of desire said, 'Everything's mortal, angel. Even you.'
'More mortal every minute,' he said. With a thought, he dimmed the panels and brought up the screens. 'In defying me, you know you are also killing Rien. And everyone else within my holdes and hallways.'
Her jaw worked. She looked down, but it did not matter. Wherever she turned her eyes, he could project his images, even to the inside of her head if she covered her face with her hands.
He didn't have to go that far, though. Because once she saw what he had to show her, she was wide-eyed and avid. Because he had not lied; Ariane was coming, arrayed in her powered armor for battle, shields chattering and
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sparking around her and her unblade black upon her hip. She climbed, or the armor climbed for her, from Rule and through the Enemy.
The waystars cast their light upon her. Her magnetic boots and gauntlets locked her to the skin of the world.
She was not alone. Asrafil walked beside her, in all his edgy frailty, his collar raised as if against the chill he could not feel. With a relentless determination, a strength beyond hope or despair, together they climbed the world.
Dust briefly admired their cleverness. Even if he could wrest a weapon from Asrafil's control, he could not shoot at Ariane. Not without risking his own metal skin. And even if he blocked her at the air lock, Ariane in her armor could tear her way inside.
'Open the gate,' he murmured. 'Throw down the bridge. Or it will go ill in the end for those within.'
Perceval's hands tightened on the railing, paling across the knuckles, a blue flush visible between. The metal creaked under her grasp.
'She'll come to us,' Dust said. 'And if you do not join me, we will die at her, or her angel's, hand.'
'You're the devil of the stairs,' Perceval said. 'And if I begin climbing at your word, Jacob Dust, I will never climb to the end.'
That devil smiled: a slight man, unassuming, his hands knotted in the pockets of his beautiful coat. 'Would that be so terrible? It's a purpose, after all. To climb and climb in pursuit of the stars. To climb in pursuit of God.'
'It's a terrible purpose,' she said, but he noticed that her fingers curled open atop the rail.
There was something to be said for the word of the Chief Engineer. Caitlin spoke, or sent a message, and mysteriously things got accomplished. The warrant for Arianrhod's detention was an example. Caitlin summoned a functionary, the thing was sworn out and thumbprinted, and then it was sent to be set before a judge.
Likewise, once Tristen was found, they reclaimed him in short order. Caitlin insisted on coming with them in the flesh, so he might see her with his own eyes, now that the corneas were healed. That accomplished, Benedick went with his brother to find clothing, and the women were left in a waiting room.
And so Rien found herself alone with Caitlin Conn. And because she could, she sat against the wall and watched the Chief Engineer stare at her hands and pick at her thumbnails, vanishing the way Means learned to vanish.
Or so she thought.
But Caitlin glanced up, and caught her staring, and with a hesitant smile got up and came across the floor to settle beside Rien. 'We'll get her back,' she said, and put a hand not on Rien's knee, but beside it.
Rien thought she was speaking to comfort herself as much as to comfort Rien, and found that, in itself, strangely ... well, comforting. Someone else was worried for Perceval. Someone else was invested in bringing her home.
Perceval had people. Which was something for Rien to envy.
She looked over at Caitlin, who was staring at her knees, and blurted entirely the wrong thing. She knew it was the wrong thing when she said it, and the words hung in front of her mouth, so bright she could almost see them, shimmering beyond recall. 'Your picture is nailed facing the wall in Rule.'
Caitlin looked up, licked her lips, glanced down, and finally met Rien's eyes square. 'How many such portraits are there?'
'Three.'
'Then yes, one of them is mine.'
'And the other two?' Rien knew she was pushing her luck. But Caitlin seemed inclined to let her, just watching her face alertly, her eyebrows pushing toward a furrow in the center. Self-consciously, Rien smoothed her palms over her denuded scalp. It felt odd, the skin slightly sticky. Tristen had looked the oddest, like a boiled egg, even his milk-white eyelashes missing.
'Cynric,' Caitlin said, after a long pause. 'And Caithness. My sisters.' She looked around for an escape, or failing that a pot of coffee. 'Dead,' she said, when her eyes were no longer on Rien.
'How?'
'Does it matter?'
'I don't know,' Rien answered. 'You tell me. They don't teach us history in Rule.'
'Especially not the history of the Conn family.' Caitlin
stood, and began to pace. She had a jerky, bobbing stride,
