Grail - Elizabeth Bear [37]
Perceval didn’t need the roll of Tristen’s eyes to tell her the process of interviewing the Deckers would be complicated and likely unproductive—she and Rien had had an encounter with them when escaping Rule, shortly after they first met—but that didn’t stop her from being grateful when he said, “I’ll go after we eat.”
“Eat?”
Nova’s voice chimed from everywhere and nowhere. “Samael is en route with a picnic, compliments of Head. He should arrive in thirty seconds.”
“Thank you,” Perceval said, reflexively. “Picnic?”
“You can linger here fretting,” Tristen said, with all the soothing ice of his imperturbable calm. As if to create an ironic contrast, he threw himself backward on the grass like a boy, spreading his arms until she heard his spine crackle with release. “Or you can come with me, clear your head, and have some time to think while we wait for the Fisher King to answer.”
Of course the leader of the people of Grail would be the Fisher King. Perceval’s mouth bowed, despite herself, into her first real smile since the hideous events of the morning. As soon as she remembered why that was, it fell off her lips again—but for a moment there was a drift of relief.
Whether he’d learned it supporting his father or his wife, Tristen was very good at taking care of people. And she couldn’t fault the wisdom of experience when it came to dealing with grief. “So how did Head get involved?”
Head was the chatelaine of Rule—Cook, Butler, Housekeeper, and petty household god. Cynric had built hir to the task more than five hundred years previous, and sie was still at it. Sie had no equals.
“I petitioned hir for some snacks,” Tristen admitted. “Head’s idea of what constitutes a snack—”
Perceval snorted. “I can imagine.” She wondered if there was any kind of message in it that Head sent the food to the Bridge care of Samael, a small but independent and self-aware remnant of the Angel of Biosystems, also called the Angel of Poisons for his association with mutagens.
Samael knocked on the thick Bridge door, polite as a golem, the acorns and beetle shells of his knuckles rattle-rasping. Nova amplified the sound and transmitted it inside, leaving Perceval to wonder at the ancient mores imbedded in Angel code.
Once upon a time, it had made sense to knock on almost any door, because the people inside could simply hear it. Now, though, it was a kind of elaborate politeness, a formality with no social purpose. She knew who it was and what he carried—oat cakes, cashew butter, noodles in a salty savory sauce with garlic and ginger, sliced treecarrots and peaches, olives and oysters in brine, mushrooms and eggplants sliced thick and fried, and all tucked into a cleverly folded paper basket. Nova would not conceal such information from her, even if Tristen had asked, especially when the arrival was an angel.
Perceval summoned him with a gesture. When Samael stepped over the threshold to the Bridge, Tristen went to meet him, rising from that sprawled, languid pose to a standing position with a fluid strength that Perceval found heartening.
He was better. It had taken years of recovery and reconstruction, but in recent years he had begun to move as if he were comfortable in his body. Perceval wanted to say again, but the truth was she didn’t know. He’d been crippled when she rescued him; she hadn’t known him unwounded. And from everything she had heard, she might not have wanted to know him unwounded.
The most he’d confessed on the subject was “It was beneficial to me, in the long run, to spend some time alone with my sins,” pronounced with a wry sideways twist of his lips that could have been mistaken for a smile.
Time was the great closer of wounds, so even a maiming of the soul could heal over and quit seeping if you lived long enough. Although (thinking of Rien) Perceval wasn’t sure if the amputated bits ever grew back again, or even truly stopped aching. Perhaps they just became more impervious to careless blows.