But then Benedick turned to Rien, and she could not think of anything except how tall he was, and how he was looking straight at her, and that his hand that still held hers was very strong. The heavy lines from his nose to his mouth-corners made it look as if he never smiled. His hair was black as lacquer.
"I am sorry," he said. "It was my father's choice that you be raised in ignorance, Rien, and I did what I could do to see that you received the best guidance available."
"Head," she said, understanding. "Head was working for you."
"Head works for no one except by choice," he said. "But I call hir a friend. Come along, please. Come home with me."
Perceval had never seen a winter before.
Benedick's domaine was a Heaven, bigger than Mallory's, full of stark black-limbed trees, twigs rimed in ice. They came out on a high ledge overlooking a valley, of sorts, the whole thing dark with true night and frozen cold.
"You're on the bottom of the world," Rien said, craning her neck back. Gavin—who had rejoined them—huddled against her throat under her hair. Perceval copied her. Far, far overhead, through panes frosted at the edges, she could see the sharp brilliance of stars.
The gravity was very light; Rien bounced on her toes. "It gets dark here."
"Mirrors," Perceval said, wondering to whom, exactly, she thought she had to prove herself. She would not glance at Benedick, or Tristen either, and see if they looked approving. Behind her, the harness on the militia jingled as they breathed. "There are mirrors on darkside, to reflect light. As there are shadow panels on sunside."
"My house is below," said Benedick. Perceval could make out the lights, and thought house an inadequate term for what might better be termed a castle. Now she did glance left, at Rien and Tristen, and saw their breath smoking on the air.
It fascinated her. She reached out and put her hand into it, watching Tristen's breath, as blue-white as his skin, curl between her fingers. He shot her a look, and then pursed his lips and blew to make her laugh.
And then he was receding, abruptly, falling away from her. Reaching out—lunging—until Rien and Benedick caught him by the arms and hauled him back. She was airborne—effortlessly, without strain—pulled away on beating wings. "Pinion!" she said, but Pinion did not listen.
Last time, it had ferried her and Rien to safety. This time, there had been no evident danger, but nevertheless she was carried helplessly into the air and away. She shouted—uselessly, the words snatched off her lips by the wind of her motion—and even reached up over her own shoulders to pluck at the roots of the beating wings.
They were so much stronger than her fingers.
The air whistled across her scalp, tugged her halter. Flying with her own wings had taken concentration, the cooperation of her entire body. These just bore her along, sizzling through the air, nothing but a passenger. She crossed her arms over her chest to try to fight the wind.
And had an idea.
Both hands clawed over her right shoulder, fingertips battered by Pinion's leading edge. She stretched and caught, one hand then both, holding on, hauling with all the strength in her strong arms.
She pulled the wing down.
Fluttering, into a spiral toward the treetops, ice-sheathed fingers reaching, brittle splintering as she fell among them. Pinion folded around her, cushioned her fall, so the impacts of shattering branches that would have also shattered her bones only knocked the wind out of her.
At the bottom of the tree, she sprawled in the snow, gasping. Pinion folded about her, as if to protect her from the cold, and she shrieked and shoved at the shadowy wings. "Get of me. Get off!"
They gave under her clawing and pushing. They folded open. She'd seen a photograph of a falcon's wingprint in snow, elegant and perfect, each feather showing clean and sharp as a razor cut, blood at the center from a kill.
When she arose, this would not look like that.
She rocked forward, rolled onto her knees. Her breath flowed around her face on the still air. The parasite wings weighed almost nothing, but she felt them stir—in the wind, or with their own will. Meltwater soaked through her knees. Her hands ached in their bones from the cold. She heard shouts and crashing, but distant still.
And then Pinion caressed her face on the right side, and someone said, like an echo ...
—Perceval.—
She shot to her feet, snow creaking under her boots, and stood in the silence of the forest, arms spread, breathing hard.
—My love.—
"Who are you?" Whispered, at first, ragged on a gasping breath. And then, when there was no answer, louder, a soldier's demand. "Who are you?"
—One who will protect you. One who will keep you always safe.—
"Get off me," she said. She grabbed at the wings and hauled on them, but here, on the ground, they were not constrained to an aerodynamic shape. Pinion melted away under her fingers, slipping like water through the gaps, and she was left back-arched, scrabbling after smoke. "Who are you, damn you?"
—Pinion.—
The name a breath across her cheek. Wings and chains, she thought. "Rien named you that. Who are you?"
—It is my only name.—
She would get a lawyering parasite. "Mutant. What are you?"
—Nothing named me. 1 am a messenger. 1 come from dust.—
The footsteps crunching closer. Cries, lights, sounds of floundering. She heard Tristen cursing the snow. Rien called her name. "Here!" she called back, and Pinion fanned and flared around her, like a cloak caught by the wind, like a falcon mantling its kill.
"Dust?" It sounded religious to her. We come from dust. We are Stardust. We are dust in the wind.
Were these not words from ancient hymns?
—Dust sends his love for you, Sir Perceval. And his antici' pation of the wedding. I am your guard and warden. 1, Pinion. His wedding gift.—
She gagged. "Get off me."
—I shall not.—
But then Tristen burst through the trees, running toward her, his skin and hair lost against the snow. Behind him, running in his footsteps, Rien, with her basilisk companion swimming heavily through the air alongside. And ranged behind them, Benedick and his militia, a staggered search line to find her among the trees. Perceval turned to Tristen, held her hands out, pleading. She had not plead with Ariane, but Tristen ... she did not believe that Tristen meant her harm.
"Get them off," she said. "The wings, you have an un-blade. Tristen, get them off me now."
He stopped, a controlled sliding some five meters away. There came a ratcheting sound from her back; the shadows all stretched away. Tristen flinched in the sudden light.
Pinion opened like a flower—four wings, six, nine—all of them alight in stark blue radiance and folded forward, bent on Tristen as if he were the focus of a parabolic dish. The light shone brightest from their razor edges.
They gleamed with the will to do murder.
Tristen spread his hands. He held that silly boot knife in the left one. He said, "It's shattered, Perceval."
"You carry it. The stump still has an edge. Get them off me."
"I could have cut free of the corridor were that so."
Rien drew up behind, stepped to his right side, away from the knife. Gavin fluttered down to a branch beside her. And Benedick arrived on Tristen's left, leaving him plenty of room to swing that blade. "You're asking him to cripple you. Again."