Elizabeth Bear - Dust

contents

This book is for Jaime, Leah, Steve, and Roger.
And you.

acknowledgments

It would be physically impossible for me to thank everyone who needs thanking for the construction of this novel. However, I would like to thank my writers group/online chat gangcollectively known as the Bad Poets Society, a monicker thats becoming less and less convincing as they wrack up the Rhysling and Pushcart Prize nominationsfor unrelenting moral support, butt kicking, and revision notes; my agent, Jenn Jackson, who is also a fabulous first reader; J.K. Richard and Ian Tregillis, for going over my physics homework and coming up with all the cool ideas I stole; Asha Shipman, who drags my sorry self to the gym and explains biology to me; my mother, who first inflicted Roger Zelazny, Mervyn Peake, and Upstairs, Downstairs upon me; my editor, Anne Groell, who keeps letting me get away with writing very odd little books and then works her butt off to make them work; my copy editor, Faren Bachelis; the approximately umpty-eleven people in the production department whose names I will never know, who work very hard to make nice books on tight schedules; my writing partner, Sarah Monette, for service above and beyond the call, because they wont let me award her a medal even though she richly deserves one; and Stephen Shipman, because.

light from a high window

To know all is not to forgive all. It is
to despise everybody.

QUENTIN CRISP

At the corner of the window, a waxen spider spun.

Riens trained eye noticed the spider, the way her spinning caught the light. But Rien did not move her rag to break the threads and sweep the cobweb down. She pressed to the wall between that window and the door and held her breath, praying like the spider that no eye would fall on her, as Lady Ariane Conn and her knights brought in the naked prisoner from Engine.

Rien knew the prisoner was of noble blood by her chains. They writhed at her wrists, quicksilver loops of nanotech. An ancient colony, costlier than rubies and more rare, but forestalling any untoward transformations.

Nobody would waste chains like that on a Mean when cheap extruded would serve. And then there was the way the prisoner bore herself, strong shameless steps that swept the nanotech across the floor behind like silken swags, and there was the buttermilk blue of her complexion.

The girl was tall, almost sexless in her slenderness and anything but sensual, though she was naked except for streaks of indigo blood, and dirt, and manacles. Her bony face was square, and tired sweat stuck her dirt-brown hair to her cheeks and shoulders. The only breadth on her, other than across the jaw and cheekbones, was in the wiry muscles of her shoulders and her chest. Even her bare feet were narrow and elegant.

Rien could not see the prisoners hands through the twisting chains, but judged they must be the same. Furthermore, she was escorted in by a half-dozen of Arianes knights, beam weapons slung across ablative armor carapaces, faces concealed under closed and tinted helms. The girlno older than Rien, though far more imposingwas Family.

Rien drew back among the other upstairs maids, twisting her polishing cloth between her hands, but started when Heads hand fell on her. Rien craned her neck around, catching a comforting glimpse of Heads craggy profile, the long furrows beside hir nose, and whispered. Will there be war?

Head squeezed. The pain was a comfort. When isnt there? Dont worry, girl. Were beneath soldiers. It never touches us .

Riens mouth made an O. Whos she then?

Heads hand slid down Riens sloping shoulder and brushed her elbow when it dropped. Thats Sir Perceval. Theyll want her well fed once shes in her cell.

The chained girls eyes swept the room like searchlights. Rien lowered her gaze when the stare seared over her.

Head cleared hir throat. You can do it.

Care for the prisoner . Not a job for an upstairs maid. Not a job for a mere girl. But

Hush, said Head.

And Rien had run clear of words anyway. For when the girl knight, Sir Perceval, passedback still straight as a dangled rope, chin lifted and eyes wideRien saw what she had not before.

From long gashes between her shoulder blades, two azure ropes of blood groped down her back, across her spine. They writhed when they touched each other, like columns of searching ants.

Fruitlessly. The wings they sought had been severed at the root. And if Rien were to judge by the Lords daughter Ariane striding beside the captive, her unblade bumping her thigh, the maiming would be permanent.

That swords name was Innocence, and it was very old.

Rien raised her hand to her mouth and bit at the skin across the bones as the mangled demon of Engine was led through the hall, down the stair, and away.

At first Perceval thought the tickle in the hollow of her collarbone was the links of a silver necklace she always wore, kinking where they draped over bone. Then, as she came awake, she remembered that she was a prisoner of the House of Rule, and they had taken her necklace along with her clothes, so it must be a trailing strand of hair.

But she turned her head, and nothing slid across her nape and shoulders. Theyd shaved her headone more humiliation, not remotely the worst.

Percevals arms were chained over her head, and as her shifting weight fell against them, sensation briefly returned. The chains were not cold and hard, but had stretch and give, like oiled silk. Fighting them was like fighting the River, like a child wrestling adult power.

But she must fight anyway.

She bent her elbows, dragged at the bonds, tugged the sheets of nano that chained her feet to the floor. It hurt, though her weight was halved now, though her shoulders were shorn as naked as her scalp. Rule set the gravity high. Her muscles hardened reflexively, across her shoulders and her deep-keeled breast, and where translucent blood-warmed membrane should have cupped air, instead she felt the clean-cut rounds of bone twist in her new-scabbed wounds.

The tickle at her throat was a forlorn tendril of blood, still groping for the severed wing.

At least there was light here, light from a high window, falling warm and dusty across her scalp and shoulders. Perceval knew it was only to taunt, like the breeze that ghosted between the bars, but she found it a small mercy anyway. If she were to die, at least she would die in the sight of the suns, their strength soaking her bones.

She wrapped her fingers around the sheets of nano, straining to close numb hands, working her fists to move the blood inside. They came back to her in pins and needles, bursts of static along chastened nerves. The effort broke her scabs, and more blood ran from her wounds, dripped along her spine, outlined a buttocks curve. The blood was hotter than the sunlight.

She would not weep for her wings. She would not weep here at all. Not for anything.

She pulled at her chains again, and again, and only stopped when she heard the echo of a footstep on the stair.

Rien came down spiraling polycarbonate steps, one elbow brushing the wall for balance as she steadied a tray on her hands. Sunlight falling through the stairs cast her shadow on the welded floor seven stories below. Her shoes tinkled on the high-impact plastic, the sound ringing back from roof and walls.