"I do not," Perceval answered, and her affronted dignity—as if she did not stand in a dungeon, nude and stretched and hollow-eyed with pain—was convincing. "You are the daughter of my father. How in the world is it that you don't know that?"
Rien fled. Without dignity, without grace, leaving the tray on the rack beside the door and finding her way up the stairs in the dimness only by the luminescent strips of edge-lighting.
Supper was over, thankfully. Rule lay quiet under the shadow of evening, and there was nothing expected of the Mean, these eight hours, except sleep.
Rien did not think she would sleep.
But she could retire to the cell she shared with Jodin and Shara and the woolly-haired scullery girl who almost never talked, and clamber into her own unsealed coffin-bunk—the others were closed up tight, the women within sleeping or seeking their own little privacy—and pull the lid down close. The light was on a timer, in case she drifted off while reading or playing games, but she set it to the longest interval and folded her hands behind her head and stared at the whorled greeny-blue translucence of the coffin-top.
Of course there were reasons for Perceval to lie; Rien was Perceval's keeper. Not that Rien could do anything to save her. Or would, even if she could.
What was Perceval to her?
But she thought of the freckled back, the bloody wounds, and the dark hollows under Perceval's brown transparent eyes, and wondered. What was Perceval to her?
Not a friend. Not a sister, whatever Perceval said.
No, but...
... but what else did she own? It was like finding a wounded bird, which Rien had done. And binding its wings with yarn so it could not flap and injure itself, and bedding it in fleece beside the hearth until it either died, or was fit to fly again.
Except the odds of one of those straggly wrens or juncos ending up in the stew pot had been slim.
There was no profit in dwelling on it. Perceval was condemned. She would die in the morning, and all her lies would die with her. And so, too, would Rien's fantasies of possessiveness and protectiveness.
It was the way of the world.
Still, she stared at the roof of her coffin until the light clicked off, and then she stared into the dark.
The darkest part of night was not very dark in Rule. Even in her dungeon chamber with its lone high window, enough light filtered past the shadow panels to let Perceval pick out the outlines of things, once the timed light flicked off in Rien's absence. Whatever her jaunty words about air, they did after all think of conservation here.
And as she had suspected and intended, her words brought Rien back to her. In the coldest hour, when even i the white blanket thrown over her shoulders could no longer defeat her shivers and her slow-dripping blood clotted and cracked down her rib cage and thighs, she heard a hesitant step on the stair.
Not the purposeful click of the daylight hours. This was a hurried, scuttling movement, soft-soled and shoeless. But still Perceval knew it. She'd heard it descend twice already, and that was enough.
"Hello, Rien," she said, softly, before Rien rounded the corner at the bottom of the stair.
"Don't you think they're watching you?" Rien asked, without stepping through the door. "I mean, don't you think they're observing everything you do and say?"
"Of course they are," Perceval answered. Her chains had not been loosened, and she could no longer stand. She slumped, knees bent, her slight weight all pulling on her shoulders and her wrists. She did not lift her head.
It would be over in the morning.
Maybe.
"What does it matter? I will tell them nothing they do not already know."
Until Ariane ate her. Then Ariane would know anything Perceval could not purge before she was consumed.
Rien stood framed in the doorway, a small awkward shape, one hand reaching for support. "What did you mean when you called me sister?"
"I meant that we are sisters," Perceval replied. "I am the daughter of Benedick Conn. And so are you."
The stick-narrow shape came through the darkness, and though Perceval could not bear the pain to lift her head, she saw the gray-on-gray shape of Rien's hand come up to touch her cheek quite plainly. The touch was human and soft, a kind of blessing.
A benediction, she might have thought, if she were prepared to pun so terribly even in the privacy of her own mind.
"Then how came I here?"
"Servant in a great house?" Perceval's voice rasped, though, and when she coughed the pain in her neck and over her kidneys was unbearable. Rien brought her water, steadied her head to help her drink. "They've been kind to you?"
"Head is fair, and generous," Rien said, which Perceval supposed was a sort of answer. "Tell me how."
"Hostage," Perceval answered. "As I was hostage in Engine, you see. Your mother is a woman of Engine. We were born to be a set. A matched and balanced pair."
Rien stroked her hair, and lowered Perceval's head to let it hang again. "And now?"
Perceval could not shrug like this. Just the thought of it, reflexive, caught her breath in a sob. "Ariane wants a war despite you, doesn't she?"
"Is that what you're for?"
"Oh," Perceval said, "when word gets back to my mother how I died, don't you think it will suffice? Have you met our father, Rien?"
"No," Rien answered. "He does not come to Rule."
"Hmm," Perceval said, and did not trouble herself to say also, I do not wonder why.
4 of course she fell
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Rien awoke to the pulse of her coffin, surprised to find that she had slept at all. She released the catch and fumbled her way upright—still before her roommates— stripped down in one awkward elbowy motion and so was the first into the cleanser. It polished the dirt and dead skin away while the sonics made her teeth rattle, and then she stepped out and rubbed herself down with an astringent cloth.
She took her time dressing, dawdling really, hoping that by the time she came into the kitchen, the execution would be over. Then she would have the cold comfort of nothing-she-could-have-done.
Then she could tell herself, as orphans do, that she was a forgotten princess, that it was all a case of mistaken identity, and her real parents would be along momentarily to rescue her.
But Head was looking for her, and there was a tray waiting, eggs and toast and coffee cooling by the door. "You're late," Head said, and thrust the tray into her hands.
Rien balanced it, practiced and deft. "Must we feed her today?"
"We must," Head said. "The execution is postponed. Lady Ariane has been called away." Sie hesitated, which was unlike hir, and scrubbed broad-palmed hands over the legs of hir white kitchen coveralls. Sie lowered hir voice and glanced over hir shoulder, stalling just long enough that Rien wondered why in the world sie was about to reveal whatever could be so dangerous. And then sie said, "You were right, child, and the old Commodore was right. Engine has come to avenge the prisoner. Ariane has brought us to war."
Rien lowered her voice as well, and ducked her chin so her hair and shoulder would hide the shapes her mouth made. "So she'll let Perceval go."
But Head's mouth was a hard line. "I do not think so. I think she'll... when she comes back, I think she'll do what she always meant to do. She means to rule, Rule, but more. She means to try to conquer the world, to become Captain as well as Commodore, if you ask me. And her brothers and sisters won't like that either, once they see what she's up to."