Free Chill by Elizabeth Bear Page B

I.” Apologetically, as though he would make it not be so, were that in his power. “Some of it. Some is Ariane, and Alasdair. And the Conns before them: Gerald, Felix, Sarah, Emmanuel.”
And all those of Rule who Ariane murdered and consumed, and who Perceval had consumed in her own turn when she destroyed Ariane
. While there was no doubt Ariane had deserved destruction, Perceval was nevertheless less than overwhelmed with joy to have her murderous half sister whispering in the back of her mind all the while. “You are my Captain. My thoughts are yours, to implement as you see fit.”
    His
thoughts
—surely far too simple a word for the braided flood of data coursing along the edge of Perceval’sawareness: the world’s functions, memories, the echo of words spoken by voices now silenced—made her cringe. There was too much there. Too much she’d loved and lost, or feared and had forced upon her. She knotted her fists in the fall of the nanocolony dress that hung from a halter about her neck, leaving her sore wing-stubs free to move in the bitter air. She knew the bridge was cold, but she did not feel the chill.
       “Captain,” the angel said, so desperate that she turned and looked into his eyes. “Only let me know your desire, and I shall fetch it for you. Only give me a name, and I will answer to it whenever it crosses your thoughts.”
    Dust never would have let himself sound so desperate. Nor Samael. Angels did not plead.
    Rien would have pleaded.
    Perceval tasted machine oil and sulfur when she bit down on that thought. A tooth cracked under the weight. No matter. It would heal.
    “I have no right to name you,” she said.
    “You have the only right,” he insisted. “I need a name, Captain. I need to become what you wish.”
    What she
wished
was her life back, Rien her sister-wife, the quiet of her soul. To be a knight again, on Errantry, and not a Queen in a tower. She wished the angel silenced, the world as it had been, familiar and stable and safe, spinning in the orbit she knew. She wished her mother’s busy house, and her father’s silent strength.
    When she accepted her role as Captain, she had thought she would have Rien beside her, a comfort and strength. She had not realized she would be both alone and beset by voices.
    She wished anything but the responsibility she found mantling her shoulders, the weight of the angel’s regard. His need for her gnawed the margins of her soul, a hunger she could feel as her own. A hunger that scouredthe hollow places where her own losses lived, eroding them more deeply. She wished that gone as well.
    None of this was, in the final analysis, an option. But though she knew herself childish for wishing it, and she meant to act as if she had never wanted anything but what she had, the wishing would not stop for the knowledge.
    What she wanted she could not have. And it would only injure the angel to share that—although if he knew her as she knew him, there was no hiding it. It didn’t matter. There was work at hand, and Perceval was Captain.
    She would force herself to do it, and eventually it would come easy—or at least less bitterly. That was the way of the world.
    Perceval lifted her chin. “You need a name,” she said.
    “Rien promised me one.” It hesitated over the name as Perceval herself might have, as if it hurt too much to want to say it at all, but there was too much to savor in the memories it raised to be able to say it quickly.
    In the braided web of the angel’s consciousness, Perceval saw that what it said was a simplification. Because the angel was Rien as well. And what Rien had promised to name was a new suit of armor, freshly wrought, an unmapped personality.
    And there it was, innocent and bright, like a thread of silver in a tapestry braid. One note drawn long in the symphony. It was not the angel’s fault he existed any more than it was Perceval’s. Perceval could give him something he needed, and it would be an act of