He didn't believe himself any less worthy than the rest of his clan. He was just nicer about it.
Ardath sat alone, at the foot, and seemed most inclined to argue with Ariane's insistence that it was time—time the Conn family took back Engine, time they captured and consumed the Engineers. Time for a Remaking, time to bring all the Exalt back into the Family. Time, Ariane said, to get the world under way again.
Rien thought Ardath raised good objections. What about the moral issues of conquest? What about the logistical issues—which of the House of Rule would serve as the locus of the Remaking? Who, in other words, would devour the enemy, take on the responsibility of consuming their memories and program and keeping that online? And what about the free elementals, the wild nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, or artificial life? Who would track all that down, and how would they capture and collect it? There were domaines and holdes and anchores all through the world, some inhabited, some not, and no reliable communication or passage between most. They would have to fight chamber to chamber, cabin to cabin.
They would have to conquer the entire world.
What would happen if they won, when they had collected everyone? How then would they heal a world that even the first Engineers and the first Conn had declared unrepairable? How would they reconcile the angels, without whose assistance they stood no chance at all of getting the world moving again?
How would they choose a destination, when all was said and done? Wars had been fought over that in the past, as well.
These were excellent questions.
But Ariane answered each one. And in the end, when Ardath asked her last and hardest question—how can we fix something even the Captains of old could not mend?—Ariane smiled, and shrugged, and said, "We'll see what our resources are when we come to it. Perhaps they simply were not ruthless enough. In any case, we have no choice."
"No choice?" Ardath asked, leaning on her elbows, over the damask tablecloth.
"No," Ariane answered. "We go to war whether we want to or not, dear sister. You see, Engine is marching already."
5 outside rule
Tell it not in Gath; weep not at all.
In the House of Dust roll yourself in ashes.
The kitchen was tight and silent as they tidied after supper. There should have been lessons in the evening, but Head, fingers knotted about hir belt, instead dismissed the younger servants to their rooms. Rien had never, she thought, seen Head look frightened. She would not have believed such a thing, had it been told.
Later, in her coffin, Rien could not sleep. She turned and turned again, stretched on her back and curled on her side, pressed her hands against the spongy lid and felt it fill the spaces between her fingers. She counted backward from a thousand—or tried: she kept losing her train of thought in the eight hundreds.
And she kept snaking one hand over the top of the kit pouch that ran along the back edge of the coffin, groping out the sharp-cornered cube of the code box to Perceval's chains, and running her thumb across the controls.
It was her responsibility, wasn't it? Even if tonight Head had said that Roger could do it for her.
Roger couldn't even get the scrubbers to work right. Head didn't trust him to care for the ship cats. And Rien was worried about Perceval's wounds, which had been getting infected. Would Roger know to change the dressings?
If he knew, would he care?
She closed her fist around the key and counted twenty. Forward, this time, and this time she made it.
And then she unlatched her coffin-lid, disabled the light (just in case one of her roommates was awake in her own coffin), and opened it up with great stealthy care. She slid on soft full-legged black trousers, a hand-me-down stretch tank (she'd knotted the straps to make it fit), and a green cardigan. The night would be chilly, but she didn't dig out her shoes, which were safely tucked into the coffin's storage nets.
She didn't want to look as if she were going anywhere.
The chill from the decking made her arch her feet and mince, at first, until her soles and toes went numb. The lift would be too noisy; she just came up the stairs into the courtyard, limping slightly, the box in her pocket swinging against her thigh. Jodin had the night watch, and Rien waved as they crossed paths under the eucalyptus in the courtyard, its heavy breath scenting the air.
She could almost feel the sting of its astringent on her skin. She concentrated on that. She wasn't doing anything wrong. Just going down to check on the prisoner, who was her responsibility, and Jodin would know it. Jodin wouldn't think anything at all of Rien being up late and wandering. Once in a while, they even wandered together.
It was as dark as it ever got under the sky of Rule. The shadow panel was centered over the suns, its back side soaking up needful solar energy, its front side shading the world's windows for a time. In the latticework of the world, Rule was at the center of sunside, and it would have been bright-lit by day and by night if it weren't for the shadow panels. Instead, Rien moved through a blue kind of twilight, where shapes blurred together and edges grew indistinct.
She let her fingers trail through the broad leaves of grapevines as she passed along the wall, startling some small bird that shot away through the darkness. She'd heard that in the great Mall, swallows nested and sailed across its empty spaces in flocks and flights, but she had never seen such a thing.
She'd never been outside of Rule.
Two olive trees stood guard on either side of the door into the tower, the fruit on one green and on the other, ripening. She stroked the ropy gray trunk of the nearer, feeling it damp with condensation, and wiped her wet fingers on her nape.
She didn't believe at all what Perceval had said, about them being sisters. It was a child's fantasy, a prisoner's ploy. She held that thought as tight in her mind as she held the key in her hand, as she padded down the stair.
No ringing echoed this time. Bare feet made no sound on the polycarbonate, only adhering slightly with each step, the stickiness of moisture and skin oil. Rien paused at the bottom, though, for she heard rustling within.
She peered around the door frame, and found Perceval pacing, wearing a circle at the limit of her chains. She'd redraped the white blanket, and either Roger had changed the dressings or Rien had done a better job the second time, because no fresh matter stained the cloth. But when she turned her shorn head to the door, and bit her lip—apprehension, perhaps? Had she heard Rien on the stair?—Rien saw the blue shadows under her eyes, the skin stretched taut over the bones of her face.
And then she said, hesitantly, "Rien?"
"It's only me," Rien answered, understanding— abruptly—her fear. A silent observer in the early morning could mean many things, for a prisoner, and none likely to her benefit. Rien stepped into the light, tugging her cardigan straight, and went to Perceval.
"Oh," Perceval said. "I wondered, when I didn't see you." She sat down on the pallet, wrapping her arms around her knees, wincing when she moved. Somebody had made it up tight, and Rien did not think Roger would have done so.
Rien crouched beside her. There was enough cloth in the trousers to make a pair of skirts, and they puddled on the floor around her feet when she squatted. She laid her left hand on Perceval's arm, without looking at the prisoner, and was shocked to feel her skin so dry, crepey and hot.