Later, as they sat waiting for Tristen to cook dinner, Rien searched toiletry drawers until she found a cracked tube of conditioner. It had dried into a solid, oily cake, but it smelled all right. She rubbed it between her hands to oil the palms, stroked it into the drying frizz, and began picking through the tangles curl by curl with a heavy wide-toothed comb. It broke into ringlets, damp, but even with the oil on it, it would never stay that way.
Tristen was still flipping pancakes when they heard the voices. He set the spatula aside, turned down the induction plate almost as far as it would go—there was a click when it shut down—and glanced up at the overhead light. Turning it off would of course be incredibly obvious.
It didn't matter, Rien suspected. The smell of cooking was all through the air.
"Space," she said, without breath, as the tromp of heavily shod feet approached. She slipped her comb into her pocket and crouched, wishing she had something on hand to use as a club; she'd feel far more comfortable with that sort of weapon than anything with a point.
But across the room, Tristen's hands were like bones on the black hilt of his appropriated blade, and that was reassuring. And it was reassuring as well that when Perceval stood, Pinion flaring like a cloak, and squared her shoulders, her face was as serene as any angel's. With only a glance between them, she and Tristen went to flank the door.
Rien could see the people advancing in her head. There was a sort of Y-intersection ten meters down the corridor, and they were coming along the left-hand path. She could tell from the echoes and the map in her head, and that was a very strange thing indeed. She strained, trying to pick out words, voices, but all she heard was a marching cadence, and it didn't sound familiar.
Not of Rule, then, and that was something. But it might be whoever had locked up Tristen, and it might be whoever in Engine had sent Perceval to die in Rule.
Gavin hunkered on the back of a chair, wings half up and neck elongated, as if he scented the air. And then Tristen's chin came up and a little smile lifted the corner of his mustache that Rien could see in profile. He slipped the knife back into its sheath on the belt he used to cinch his too-big trousers, raised his hands beside his head, and stepped out into the corridor, beckoning Rien and Perceval after with a tilted head and an arrogant little cup of his hand.
Perceval looked at Rien.
Rien shrugged.
Perceval shrugged right back, and turned to follow.
Maybe we shouldn't just waltz out into the line of fire after him, Rien started to say, but maybe there was something in the knightly code of conduct that also said you had to be fucking stupid all the time, because that was exactly what Perceval did. And then Rien wasn't going to skulk behind a plastic chair so somebody could scruff her like a kitten and drag her out.
She stayed Gavin with a hand gesture. She'd given up trying to figure out how he maneuvered when his eyes were always closed, but in any case he was more effective backup than she. He froze in place, those fanning wings uplifted, for all the world like an alabaster sculpture. And Rien jumped up and hustled the three steps to catch up with her sister, and as a result almost tripped over Pinion's trailing edge. Somehow she managed to enter the corridor, third in line but dripping all the dignity she could muster, and perversely glad she'd smoothed her hair.
Like Tristen—like Perceval—she raised her hands. And faced a corridor full of armed men and women, ten or more arrayed in ranks, all dressed in black and golden-brown.
The one in the front wore plain black, trousers and a constructed uniform jacket. He was of a height with Tristen, black hair hanging razor-cut to the edge of a lantern jaw, his eyes a dark-ringed hazel that caught the light. Rien's eyes widened—she'd known they were close, but not so close—and her hand darted out to close on Perceval's wrist and drag her down on one knee as Rien herself genuflected.
"Tristen," said Benedick Conn, his gloved hand resting on the grip of his pistol. "I thought you were dead."
"I'm back," said Tristen, and Rien did not think that anyone except she or Perceval was close enough to see him shaking like a leaf. "And these are your daughters."
15 sweet things grow in the cold
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.
Benedick Conn both was and was not what Rien had expected. She knew him only as a portrait, as she had known Tristen—though Benedick's image in Rule did not wear black crepe. And now he stood before her and stared at Tristen, his lips moving on three syllables. He looked past Tristen, from Rien to Perceval and from Perceval to Rien.
"My daughters," he said, out loud this time, and then extended his right hand to Tristen. "Thank you."
They clasped. And then Tristen grasped Benedick by the wrist and pivoted, bringing him around.
The men and women behind Benedick shuffled and stomped, but Rien saw the man—her father, not that she believed it in her heart any more now than she had in the dungeon when Perceval told her—make some gesture that quieted them. And then Tristen's impelling grasp became a propelling one, a firm push against Benedick's shoulder. Rien had a strong sense that even as Benedick allowed Tristen to move him, he was considering his options, and some of them were violent.
And then they had stepped apart, and Benedick ex-tended both hands, one each to Perceval and Rien.
His daughters allowed him to draw them to their feet.
Perceval looked as Rien imagined she must have when she'd just been knighted. Her face held a kind of tense wonder, and Rien thought back to her casual bravado— we'll just go and see Father—and bit her lip.
It was easy to forget that Perceval was, more or less, only her own age. That resemblance was there again, Benedick's eyes both paler and clearer than Perceval's, but set as deep. And his face was so obviously stamped on hers that Rien again had no doubt of the relationship.
But whom did Rien look like? It wasn't any of these tall, rangy creatures with their hands like spades and the weapons on their hips.
"Father," Perceval said, "do you remember me?"
She squeezed his fingers and let go of them. Rien couldn't, just yet, and Benedick did not seem inclined to make her. Still, Rien caught herself stepping left and crowding Perceval, as though she were the only reliable thing in the universe. And Perceval didn't seem to mind, or at least, Pinion draped around Rien's shoulders warmly.
And meanwhile Benedick, with the knuckles of his one free hand, reached out and brushed Perceval's shaved head. He touched Pinion on the proximal strut, close to where it joined Perceval's body. "Who did this to you?"
Arms folded across her rib cage, chin lifted, Perceval could have been a statue labeled defiance. "Ariane Conn," she said. "After accepting my honorable surrender."
His face gave away nothing, but Rien was still holding his hand. She felt the tendons tighten, and then the moment when he asserted control. "That's a message to me," he said. "I am terribly sorry it was you who absorbed the blow, Sir Perceval, and I will do what I can to make it right."
The calmness of his tone made Rien want to strike him. How dare you take responsibility for her? she wanted to say. Noblesse oblige is lovely, but Perceval does not belong to you; she is her own person, and more a sister to me than you have even been my father. Has she no right in your eyes even to her own mutilation?