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27 black mercy

All lovers young, all lovers must

Consign to thee, and come to dust.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Cymbeline, 4.2

Rien's clothing had been recycled, but her personal belongings had been scrubbed and stored. She was required to sign for them, which she did, and retina and thumbprinted, too. The contents of her pack were there, including the plum.

She left everything else behind. Caitlin, who was more or less her size, had dressed her in sturdier clothes, and she didn't need a blanket here. She did check the somewhat battered fruit for excessive radiation, and was reassured. Both her symbiont and Ng agreed that any residue was within tolerance.

She slipped it into a pocket, threw away the rest, and within ten minutes has completed the forms to release her temporary locker back to the common pool.

Then, accoutered, she went to find Tristen and her father. And, incidentally, Caitlin Conn.

The same guide strips that had led her to the left luggage would bring her to the air-lock gateways. She walked through the bustling streets and the covered corridors, inevitably smaller and less flamboyant than whatever Engineer walked near. She thought she could vanish here, and the idea was attractive.

She missed being a Mean among Means. Even if it had been a lie, even then.

She thought the others would have a pack for her, gear, whatever was necessary for the long trip back to Rule. She didn't fancy another run through Inkling's chamber. She didn't think they could; there was no way to survive it without medical care waiting on the far end.

Gavin could not yet have returned from his errand, and Rien was both sad and grateful. She missed his weight on her shoulder, his malicious wit. But she could not trust him, and even though Samael himself would be with them, it was a cold comfort that Gavin was elsewhere.

Better the hand than the cat's-paw, perhaps?

No, of course not. Rien knew why.

She liked Gavin.

She would have hated to place herself on constant guard against him. She wanted to preserve the illusion of friendship.

And in the end, she was Samael's creature also, wasn't she? She, and all of Engine. And she had been a servant of monsters before. And worse monsters than Samael, who was after all only the Angel of Death.

"Well," she told herself, "if you live, you'll both be beholden to the same beast, and you'll have time to trade genial insults then." If Gavin wanted anything to do with her.

She could live with being a servant again. She told herself, firmly: you can live with being a servant again.

She would simply have to.

She was glad, though, to have had the illusion of freedom. Princesses had adventures. Princesses were taken as prizes of war. Princesses had to battle monsters if they were going to survive, and the monsters inevitably won. If not the monster you fought against, the monster you served.

Or the monster you became.

Except, she thought, the only lasting place in the world for princesses was deeply in denial, and the only important question in the end was, was it better to become the monster, or to become the servant of the beast? She thought of Gavin. She thought of Samael and Dust, and of the parasite wings. She thought she knew which monster she preferred.

Rien dodged other pedestrians and tried to calm herself with the comforting knowledge of Benedick and Caitlin's faith in her. They'd both been perfectly insouciant about allowing her to make her way to the lockers unguided.

The trust was flattering. It wasn't, as a nasty undermining conviction kept insisting, that they didn't care if they got her back. And Caitlin did not see her only as a placeholder for Perceval.

Still, when she rejoined them and Tristen at the gateway to the air locks as arranged, it took an effort of will not to coil her fists in the tails of her borrowed blouse. They were already armed and armored, standing three abreast. A brave sight, if ever she had seen one.

They had no pack.

They had a suit of power armor. Four suits, in fact, but three of those were in use already. Tristen wore shining white, Benedick the predictable black piped in golden-brown, and Caitlin, vermilion and gold. The armor that stood empty was teal and emerald, but where a device might have been blazoned on the chest was only an empty plate.

With them waited Samael, his colorless hair hanging in strings beside his face. He winked when he saw Rien. The others, helms open, watched her approach. Tristen and Benedick were bald and stubbled as Rien, Caitlin no bigger.

It was the angel who extended a hand to her, an arrogant gesture, a crook of his fingers.

She paused before him, and he placed a helmet in her hands.

Samael said, "The time is nigh. Put your armor on."

"How are we going to reach Rule in time?"

Maybe they should just stay here, and help to hold the world together. Hero Ng could be useful here, and so by extension could Rien. And whatever the monsters got up to, somebody still needed to do the work of the world.

Rien looked to Tristen. He gestured, with his eyes, to Caitlin, and she smiled. "We are Engineers," she said. "The lift to the bridge has been kept in working order, against this day of need. It will take us to the bridge in under an hour, barring disasters."

Rien considered it a major personal achievement that she didn't hurl the helmet at her new foster mother. Instead, she turned to her and said, "I've never worn power armor before."

Caitlin nodded. "I'll help you into it."

All three of them did, actually, deftly enough that they rarely seemed to be getting in one another's way. And once it had folded around her, Tristen adjusted the seals and Caitlin checked the latches, while Benedick, meticulous and silent, fixed the calibration of the pressure switches that would move the armor effortlessly with Rien's every gesture.

When she was garbed, her helm seated but not sealed, they stepped back and surveyed their work.

"Not bad," Caitlin said. "We'll make a knight of you yet."

Rien smiled. She swung her arms; they moved as lightly as if in microgravity. And because she had to know, she asked, "Did Arianrhod's arrest go well?"

"Fine."

Maybe it was the directness of Caitlin's gaze, or Hero Ng's experience, but Rien knew immediately that her foster mother was lying. She stopped, one hand raised to her helmet seal, and turned to Benedick. "She got away."

"She has a faction," Caitlin said, before Benedick could answer. "It's under con—"

"Don't lie to me," Rien said. "Don't treat me like a child, Father."

"Yes," he said. "She got away. No, I do not think she can elude us long."

She didn't think he was lying. Not exactly. But his worried glance at Caitlin told her that neither was he artless. "Chief Engineer," Rien said, "do you need to stay?"

Caitlin spread her hands. "I'm not the only Engineer," she said. "And Perceval is my daughter."

In the distance, Rien heard an alarm ringing. And then another. She thought of the resurrected in their come, of Oliver led through the streets on a leash.

Arianrhod had more than a few partisans, she understood.

She fixed Samael on a stare. And then Benedick. Inside the armor, her hands were cold. "What if you stayed, Father? You and Cat and Tristen. And Samael and I went for Perceval?"

He opened his mouth. She held up a gauntlet. "Can the two of us handle Dust?"

"I can handle Dust," Samael said. "If we were stealthy and few in number, it might even improve our chances of reaching her alive."

"Right," Rien said. "Then it's settled. The Engineers and tacticians are needed here."

"Without me, you don't have transportation," Caitlin said.