"More what?"
"More of why you don't like angels."
Too much, too fast, maybe. She shrugged and drew inward. "Not right now." And then, at Jordan's fallen face, wondered; maybe she had been flirting.
"Maybe some other time," Rien continued, reopening the door. "It looks like the party is breaking up, and they'll have work for me."
Or for Hero Ng, which amounted to the same thing.
As if Gavin's departure had been a trigger, people were dispersing—to consoles, or out of the room. Rien stood, looking around for Benedick.
"Nice to meet you," Jordan said.
Rien gave her a slantwise smile. "Nice to meet you, also."
After the council of war, Rien's mother brought her cookies. She set the plate at Rien's elbow and sat down beside her at the console upon which Rien—or Hero Ng, more accurately—was working. Rien watched him, though, and she was learning.
Rien's left hand moved across the controls without pause as, with the right one, she selected a cookie.
"Thank you," she said, through a mouthful of sweet carbohydrates.
It was the first thing she'd eaten since they began their run through Inkling's cavern. She stuffed the other half in her mouth.
"You feel I abandoned you," Arianrhod said.
Rien mumbled something unintelligible, unbearably grateful for the excuse of snack foods. Sugar cookies. She could live on them.
Ng took her hand back while she chewed, and typed faster. She let him, watching her fingers dance.
Arianrhod cleared her throat. "I had to leave you, Rien. But I gave you my name for a reason. I didn't know—"
Her voice creaked.
"Gave me your name?" Rien asked, forgetting to watch her fingers.
"Rien," Arianrhod said. "It's a part of my name."
She licked her lips, and Rien became aware that she was staring. She looked quickly away. "Your name."
Arianrhod touched her arm. "I would have done more. But the contract was—"
"Contract." Surely Rien had something better to do than echoing everything Arianrhod said. Whatever it might be, however, she could not think of it. She was thinking, instead, of names. And not just her own name.
"How else are children born, between Rule and Engine?" Arianrhod shrugged, and appropriated a cookie. If appropriated was the right word, when she had provided them. Her hair fell over her blouse, a waterfall of silver that could not have been more different from Inkling's deadly river.
"I thought I was named for nothing," Rien said, and having said it, frowned. Arianrhod.
Rien.
Arianrhod.
Rien.
It was on the tip of her tongue. She bit her lip. To buy time, she corrected a faulty spectrograph of the waystars.
Rien.
Arianrhod.
Ariane.
"Tristen," she said, too quickly, stammering. "Is he out of the tank yet?"
"Not yet," Arianrhod answered. "Did you want to visit him?"
Rien let Ng have her hands back. At least it kept them from shaking. "Yes," she said. "After."
Ariane was her half sister. Maybe. Ariane was also Arianrhod's daughter, by Alasdair. Possibly.
Did it matter?
Did it matter that Perceval was her half sister?
No. It mattered that she loved Perceval.
"After?"
"After we talk about what we're going to do for Perceval."
Whatever the bonds of blood, Arianrhod was no more willing to help Rien reclaim her sister than anyone else might have been. When Arianrhod excused herself, Rien did not complain.
She'd intended the request as a test—a test that, if Arianrhod failed it, would give either of them a reason to end the conversation.
A game, yes.
Rien might not like these ruling monsters, but if playing their games was what it took, well, she would prove that she could learn. She would be a master manipulator in no time, among this crew. And her mind was spinning over those three names—Arianrhod, Ariane, Rien—and the implication that there were layers and layers of allegiances that she did not even begin to understand.
She was glad she had Hero Ng to keep her hands busy.
Because she was thinking about Tristen, and his claim on the Captaincy—not as good as Perceval's, perhaps, because of the archaic rules under which the world labored, but better than Ariane's, except Ariane had eaten their father—and she was thinking about the chamber of bats, and Tristen warehoused there until Ariane could get around to eating his mind and experiences. As Rien had eaten Hero Ng.
And she was thinking about the healing tanks.
Whether the Engineers trusted Hero Ng to keep her out of trouble—after all, he was one of their own—or whether they were too busy themselves to watch her closely, Rien found herself working alone. It wasn't as if she was invisible; the Engineers didn't look through her as they bustled around their operations center. Instead, it was as if she had been sprayed with a frictionless coating, or perhaps as if she sat in the visual equivalent of an electromagnetic bottle.
What do they know that 1 don't? she wondered.
She watched Hero Ng work, and she studied what he did, and she worried. She understood it all, at least—his knowledge was her knowledge, too. That was some comfort, though the familiar/unfamiliar texture of the control panel under her hands was disconcerting, if she let herself think about it.
He had taken on the task of calculating the modifications necessary to maintain the world's integrity when they caught the electromagnetic shock wave. If they caught the electromagnetic shock wave. Caitlin Conn and her people were working on that task, which was equally vital and slightly less ticklish. Ng was handicapped by outdated knowledge of the world; things had changed since he died. But that handicap was compensated for by a more complete knowledge than any of the modern Engineers. In the moving times, in Ng's time, there had been shipwide communication, and the angels had not been embattled.
He knew what was supposed to be there.
Still, he found the work stressful. And after Arianrhod's departure, their apparent coinvisibility meant that Rien was on her own with regard to refreshment. By the time Ng at last hit a snag in his calculations that wasn't amenable to a few moments of staring into space and flipping a light stylus, Rien suggested—no, it was her body, dammit— Rien enforced a walk.
Maybe they could find Benedick, and he could take them to get something to eat, and she could talk to him about reclaiming Tristen and then rescuing Perceval.
Them, Rien thought, her hand extended to the door release, and chuckled. She would never be alone again. Even if no one turned to see why she laughed.
The invisible girl.
She was willing to bet it was the dead Engineer in her head who made everybody so uncomfortable.
Conrad Ng expressed regret. Not really in words, more in a feeling of wry apologetic shame. Rien shushed him. It wasn't he who had forced the fruit upon her, and it was not he who had chosen to eat. While walking through the door, she looked down at her hands. And he certainly came in useful.
Samael, he suggested.
Behind it all, she agreed, smoothing her hands over the naked skin of her scalp. When her hair started growing back, she imagined it would itch terribly. Now, though, it reminded her of touching Perceval, and she did it again.
They—she—stepped through the door, and as Rien turned to ask the monitor where she might find Benedick, she nearly walked into him.
"We should work on your situational awareness," he said. "You nearly walked into me."
She looked up at him and managed not to say the first thing that came into her mouth. And then was startled that she'd even considered mouthing off to an Exalt. Not just to an Exalt.