To Benedick Conn.
"Were you coming for me?" she said instead.
And he smiled, half shyly. "I'm no use to the Engineers," he said. "Not until it comes down to tactics and command decisions. I thought I'd see if you were hungry."
She imagined she wasn't the only one who could hear her stomach grinding rocks. She turned to walk beside him, the press of traffic steering her close to his side. He took her elbow.
Something about the anonymity of all these people, the reaching city crawling up the walls on every side like creepers climbing for the light, made her bold. She stretched on tiptoe as they walked and said toward his ear, "How did you wind up selling your daughters for peace tokens?"
He flinched, his fingers tightening on her arm. And then he appeared to decide that she deserved an answer, because he said, "You're the reason Caitlin isn't speaking to me."
"I guessed," Rien said. "The dates matched. Was it your father?"
"He wanted a hostage," Benedick said. "That the balance of terror be maintained."
"May I assume you are not close to Arianrhod?"
It was a gamble even asking. But Arianrhod had said contract. And pretended affection so transparently that even Rien could see through her. And if she was such a crowning egoist that she'd name a daughter she never expected to see again with a portion of her own name, there was the matter of Ariane's name, as well.
"You would not be incorrect in such an assumption," Benedick said, after considering. "Of course I meant you to be raised as one of the family."
"In that house," Rien answered, "it's as well I was not."
He had been about to wince and dip his head, acknowledging her point, and she had been about to let him off the hook with a wry reference to Head. But she felt a tension come into him. Work on your situational awareness, he had said, and so she turned to follow the line of his gaze.
And tripped so hard Benedick had to catch her.
A coffle of resurrectees were led through the street, and Rien knew them. The one in the front, walking placidly, his glossy head bowed and his bright eyes half-lidded, used to be Oliver Conn.
"There's no way they got from here to Rule and back since we arrived," Rien said. "Somebody knew in advance, and was waiting to bring them back."
"Ariane must be behind the influenza," Benedick said. "It makes too much sense. She brings in Perceval; she incapacitates her brothers and sisters with illness and consumes as many of them as possible."
If Rien had not been standing beside him, she would have thought him unemotional at the death of his family, but she could hear the flutter of his breath, too fast. He glanced down at her, and she nodded at him to continue.
"She precipitates a war with Engine that she has no intention of fighting." His throat worked when he swallowed. "Like saving Tristen for later. She's like one of the angels: she's going to eat the whole family if she can get away with it."
"Not just Ariane," Rien said. "She had to have an ally here. Somebody with resources. Somebody who could make sure she ran into Perceval at the right time, in the right place, when Perceval was already sickening."
"Arianrhod," he said. He held her arm too tightly, as the dead man who had been Oliver shuffled past them without so much as a flicker of attention.
Rien bit down on a sob. Not for herself. Not for Arianrhod, who was a stranger, nothing to her, and the ties of blood irrelevant—though she might have felt differently, had she not encountered Benedick and Tristen and Perceval, and found a place to stand. "So, of course, she's going to impede anything we might want to do toward rescuing Perceval."
"How are we going to find out where she's being held?"
"Dust has her," Rien answered. "Hero Ng knows where to go to look for Dust."
She didn't say, we can't do this without Samael. Because Benedick knew it as well as she did, and she didn't want to say it out loud, as if that would make it real. Instead, Rien squeezed his fingers. "First we need to go get Tristen. And I need my things that I came here with."
"Right," said Benedick. "Let's find him."
It was Hero Ng who finally located Tristen, hacking into the medical computers while Rien thought uncharitably of Samael and his barbed gifts, and even less charitably of Mallory. How convenient, she thought, how freeing to be able to embrace the role of necromancer, trickster, betrayer. How it must release one from the bounds of common courtesy and right behavior. What a romantic series of excuses.
Maybe she, Rien, should become a sorcerer. Or an angel. Then she could be an asshole, too, and if anybody commented on it, she could shrug and present her union card.
Hero Ng, without quite interrupting the stream of cynicism, nudged her. She shook her head and pulled herself together, a little shamed. If it was bad for her, what was it like for him, trapped in a strange body, resurrected to deal with a crisis he'd been half glad to avoid by dying? He'd no more asked for this than she had, even if it was Mallory and Samael who had tricked them into each other.
She couldn't call Ng a coward. And she couldn't fail him by being a coward either. Nor could she fail Tristen, or Perceval, or even Benedick.
She let Ng show her the map. And sighed. "I don't know what we're going to do," she said. "We found Tristen" — she tried not to notice Benedick's worried glance when she said "we"— "but he's in a private ward. He's tanked."
"For a grown man," Benedick said, "he needs a lot of rescuing. All right. I'm going to have to talk to Caitlin."
Rien rubbed at her throat. "Would it be better if I did?"
"The least fun part of being an adult is facing your own mistakes." Benedick patted her shoulder. "But if she won't hear me, then yes, you're on."
Rien sucked on her lip, unsure if what she felt was relief at being let off the hook, or outrage over being patronized. Maybe you could feel both at once.
Maybe you could feel all sorts of things, all of them mutually contradictory.
Rien said, "After you, Father."
The monitor lead them to Caitlin. One must be able to find the Chief Engineer. And Caitlin, to Rien's surprise, was immediately accessible. She sat in an office that was little more than a collection of chairs and interfaces, screens and keyboards and holographic panels bristling from every surface and each wall. The door was a slider rather than an iris, and it was open wide.
Caitlin Conn looked up when they entered, lips thinning. And she stared not at Benedick, but at Rien. Her left hand moved slightly, pinky and ring finger stretching as she blanked her screens, but not before Rien saw schematics of the Jacob's Ladder. And knew, through Ng, that they were in significant part completely speculative.
We have no idea, anymore, what the world even looks like.
"Chief Engineer," Benedick said, "I need to talk to you about our brother, and our daughter."
To her credit, Caitlin only nodded, and gestured them inside the door. It shut as soon as they cleared the entry, the sudden silence disconcerting. Rien found herself crowding back against the panel, which did not slide open from the pressure. Caitlin must have locked it.
Quickly, Benedick outlined their suspicions about Arianrhod and Ariane, while Caitlin steepled her fingers and listened. Rien had to admit, she was impressed by how well Caitlin listened. Active listening, intent and focused.
Rien found herself staring back, fascinated by the freckles on the back of Caitlin's hands, the ones speckling her face and hairline. Still, Caitlin's expression gave away nothing. Even when Benedick explained that they thought it was Arianrhod and Ariane, colluding, who had arranged for Perceval's maiming and abduction.
But when Benedick got to Tristen, she stopped him momentarily with an upraised finger, and Rien thought she checked something through her symbiont. Of course it could bring her any information she needed. The screens were merely a way of organizing, externalizing, and categorizing. Like writing lists.