"It's better to be crippled and free."
But Pinion hissed, if you could name it so—the rasp of feather on feather, the scraping of blade on blade.
"Perceval," Rien said. "I don't think that thing is going to let us get close enough."
Perceval could not be crying, because Perceval did not cry. But something shining froze on her face as she strode at the center of the group, her parasite wings flared about her like a nest of barbs. She looked severe and resolute— no one could look pale, standing next to Tristen—and Rien admired her desperately.
Such a strange being. Such a strange thing, having a sister. Being a sister. And even stranger, to be a sister to such a sister as this.
And to have a father, Rien forced herself to think, watching Benedick's glossy black hair swing as he broke trail through the snow. That, she was entirely unready for. As unready as she was to be Exalt, or lugging Hero Ng around between her ears.
All Benedick's men and women arrayed about them, some following and some cast out on the sides, many bear' ing lanterns so they made a jeweled procession. For now, Rien could distract herself with the texture of an alien night and the cold trees, ice and snow and the stars smeared behind a frosty sky.
"What is the cold for?..." she asked. The lights that must illuminate Benedick's house shone between bare trees, casting confusing shadows.
He turned to her, and the word Sir died on her lips, though he seemed to feel no lack. "Apples and cherries," he said. "You've tasted some?"
"Yes, sir."
She managed that small coin of respect this time, and even managed not to squeak. But all she purchased with it was a frown—concern, or disapproval?
"Well," he said, with a half-smile to Tristen that Rien thought she was not meant to notice, after the fashion of adults before children and Exalt before Mean, "a lot of sweet things grow in the cold. Temperature differentials promote air exchange. And what good is the world to anyone if, when it brings us safe to another Earth, we have forgotten how to live on the ground?"
"Another Earth." Funny how Tristen's voice—nasal, a bit rough still though regaining its strength—had the power to comfort her.
"You're not a Go-back, brother?"
Tristen shook his head, his white hair shedding snowflakes as if it were made of snow itself. "The only way out is through."
Gavin, who had been cruising in circles about the group, passed over Rien's head, his wings dusting snow from evergreen boughs. Rien stepped to the side, dodging a face-full of frozen water, wondering how it was manufactured. If she were to be Exalt, one of these arrogant cryptic beings, it seemed unfair that she did not have wings.
And then with deep shame she thought of Perceval. But Benedick and Tristen weren't all that different from their siblings, were they? They decided for others with perfect high-handedness. They were only more polite to Perceval than they would have been to some random Mean.
As if Rien's thoughts could command her as easily as Tristen did, Perceval cleared her throat. "And all that, to remind us how to live on a planet? So we don't get soft, and too bred to the indoors?"
"All that," Rien answered, with Hero Ng's authority, "because it was a trivial exercise for them to do so."
Benedick grunted. Rien could not tell if it was in respect or dismissal, and she was surprised by the ambiguity of her emotions in the face of those mutually exclusive possibilities. She did not fear, as she would have expected, nor worry for his power over her. Rather, she was caught on both hope of his approval and scorn of it.
Maybe rebellion had gotten its teeth into her soul. But not enough, apparently. Because what was Benedick to her? This person, her father, existed. That was novel. But what was he to her? He'd abandoned her.
Why should she care what he thought?
She should care, of course, because logic had no more bearing on emotion than it ever had. But she was Exalt now and had other means at her command. She could choose not to care, and her symbiont would take care of the rest, editing neurotransmitters and shepherding serotonin.
Benedick led them down a snow trail where the surface was packed in two parallel lines, and for now, she left it be. She scuffed the hard snow sideways with her boot. "Skis," Gavin said in her ear, by way of explanation, and looked unutterably smug when she almost jumped out of her boots in the partial gravity. She hadn't heard him complete his next great circle and sail up behind her.
And as he dropped neatly onto her shoulder, she had the distinct sensation that he was laughing himself silently sick. She collected herself with what dignity remained, shook herself smooth like a ruffled hen, and ignored the snickers she was sure she heard, from her father's men and women all around.
Before she could think of a comment, they broke out of the trees, and not even Hero Ng's phlegmatic presence could keep Rien from gasping a great mouthful of air so cold it burned her lungs. Benedick's house—it must be his house—-hunkered at the top of a long snow-covered bank, away from the trees of the wood. But her awe was reserved for what lay at the bottom of the hilclass="underline" a night-black tarn.
"Why doesn't it freeze?" Rien contemplated the logistics of a lake, even a small lake, on a spaceship without much hope of grasping it. And then Ng did the math for her, and she gaped even more.
"It is frozen," Benedick said. "The wind keeps it clear, or my people do. You're looking at ice. On top, at least; the underside has to stay liquid for the fish. We can"— Rien could not be imagining the diffidence in his voice, surely, as if he brought her a gift he feared would be unwelcome— "go skating in the morning if you like."
Rien swallowed so she would not gape like one of those fish. "I've never skated," she said, glancing at Perceval for support. Gavin's talons squeezed her shoulder; she leaned her cheek gratefully on his wing.
From amid the razory throne of her parasite wings, Perceval winked, frozen water glinting on her eyelashes. And to Rien alone, Perceval mouthed the word Trivial.
So Rien loved her.
16 tasting of bitter sleep
It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.
Perceval hadn't lied. Exactly. She had been confident that Benedick would receive them. Hear them out. Help avert catastrophe.
She had not told Rien that this confidence was not due to recent acquaintance. She had not seen their father since she had six Solar, no more.
His domaine was not Engine. Benedick's house was not furnished to the standard of luxury to which Perceval was accustomed. The air held a bone-wearing rawness, and the great view screens on the walls hung dark, draped with wove-polymer tapestries that stirred in the draft. Benedick seemed impervious, as at home here as any medieval overlord in his keep of stone. Tristen relaxed in the dimness of the hall. The militia followed on, still silent, and as they entered the house, peeled away.
"Your men and women are the dead," Perceval said to her father. "Resurrectees."
Benedick nodded.
The Exalt dead were hard to keep dead. Their symbionts bonded their bodies, healed what was to be healed, knit bone and sealed spurting arteries. But if another Exalt skimmed off the cream, consumed their will and personalities and memories along with their colonies, what remained was only the mute resurrected. They did not speak. The spark, the anima—whoever had inhabited the fleshy carapace—was gone.