Grail

12

carried bright scars



Christ, what a night! how the sleet whips the pane!

What lights will those out to the northward be?

—MATTHEW ARNOLD, “Tristram and Iseult”





Tristen Conn was a tiger, and no hound. Mysteries were not his métier. His strength lay in the subtlety of war. But for his Captain’s sake, he would attempt what he did not well understand, and solve the murder of Perceval’s mother.

Before the world was made anew and a Captain sat upon the Bridge, a knight-errant had often been called upon to resolve crimes, to serve as investigator and judge as well. But the crimes of simple folk were often simple as well, unsophisticated, the culprits apparent when the knight-errant applied logic and interview skills to the case. Here, there was no one to interview. The only witnesses were Nova and Perceval, and what Nova had seen was spotty and suspect.

He was fortunate to have assistance in his inquiry. The necromancer Mallory might be a better detective than Tristen, as necromancers were without a doubt temperamentally suited to the investigation of death. He was fortunate as well that he could frame Caitlin’s death as an act of war. That—the shadowy realm of sabotage, spycraft, assassination, espionage—was a paradigm with which Tristen felt comfortable.

In the privacy of Tristen’s insulated bedchamber in Rule, he and Mallory commenced with the facts they knew. Those facts were comfortingly simple—if frustratingly few. Five persons in armor had entered the corridor outside the Bridge, somehow undetected. They had made off with an antique paper book which had held great religious and symbolic significance to the Builders, and was still sacred to some—perhaps many—of the folk of the Jacob’s Ladder. Two of them—the ones Perceval had killed—had been Deckers, and possibly so had the remainder.

But one of those former two had been skilled enough to put Perceval to the test, and at least one of the latter three had been the equal—or the better—of Caitlin Conn, hard as that was for Tristen (who had ranked Caitlin along with Benedick as one of the few warriors nearing to his own skill) to accept.

It was possible that Caitlin’s killer had gotten the drop on her somehow, a possibility that Tristen was cautious in regarding as more plausible because it was more comforting.

It would be nice to think Caitlin had made a mistake. But that was the sort of logic that got a man killed through underestimating the threat posed by his adversaries.

It was more likely, Tristen knew, that the person who killed Caitlin had been, like her, a Conn, Exalt and well seasoned to the arts of war.

The three remaining trespassers had made good their escape, successfully using Caitlin’s death to distract Perceval and once again blocking the attention of the ship’s Angel. They had taken with them the paper New Evolutionist Bible, still sealed in its protective case, and Caitlin’s unblade Charity—the last unblade in the world, as far as anyone knew—which had once been Tristen’s before it was shattered and then remade.

Tristen’s chamber lay high up along the curve of Rule’s architecture. He could have had one larger and lower, nearer the courtyard and generally considered more desirable, and in being honest with himself, Tristen admitted that he would have preferred the basement. Dark, tight spaces still felt safe to him. One might anticipate claustrophobia as a consequence in someone who had spent decades immured in a living crypt, but the result for Tristen had been the opposite. Expanses seemed too open now, space without walls something you could fall into forever and never escape.

Agoraphobia was a common ailment among those who grew up among the coiled passages and close anchores of the world. The Enemy lay always close enough to fall into—breath-suckingly close, and personally malevolent. Wide-open spaces could kill, and it was only sensible to fear them.

But Tristen had long ago learned that when confronted with fear, he dug in his heels and became stubborn. And so he had chosen quarters far up along the arch of Rule’s bulkhead, arm’s length from the great transparent panels of the sky. He had chosen quarters that floated a hundred meters above the olive trees and grass of the courtyard. A long panel opened out on that side, revealing the gardens and the other wall beyond. On the other side he had a bottomless vista of the skeleton of the world, flattened and distinct against the coffin velvet of the Enemy’s bosom.

Mallory stood now in the narrow point of the room, where interior and exterior panels came together. One hand was pressed palm-flat to each window, as if the necromancer established a current between positive and negative, between warm living atmosphere and the coldest dark of all. Tristen schooled a spontaneous smile, but his warmth at seeing Mallory’s slender silhouette would not be hidden.

It came out in his posture, he thought, the way his chin and shoulders lifted. Mallory brought energy into any room.

Mallory spoke softly. “So where do we go now?”

“They will expect us to invade the Decks in force. They have arranged that we would invade the Decks by force. Why else leave two fighters behind to be slaughtered—one weak, one just good enough to distract Perceval—and steal the things they must imagine we will come after though Hell bar the way?”

“The attack does seem machined to provoke just that response.” Mallory frowned, so Tristen allowed that smile out after all, and offered it in return. “The Bible. Why would they think we’d care for that?”

“I asked myself that question also,” Tristen said. “It is very old; it is historic. But we know the Builders’ creed. We have lived it.”

“We have ejected it.” Mallory made a dismissive gesture right-handed, fingers flipping back and forth like a swinging door. “And what if we refuse the manipulation into war? What if we go alone? Under a flag of truce, to parley?”

“We? You and I? As knights-errant, Necromancer?”

“A knight-errant and a magicker,” Mallory corrected. “It’s a traditional pairing, is it not? Of course, if you’d rather, you could take Cynric—”

“Two of us would be easy to kill, and then Perceval would be without Chief Engineer, First Mate, and Mallory.”

“And is Mallory so precious as to be named by name?” Mallory dropped hands to thighs and turned around. Fingertips half concealed in the pouf of flame-colored sleeves rubbed against snug black trousers, a gesture that might be nervousness or irritation—or even amusement, given the evidence of arched eyebrows.

“Mallory is certainly unique enough to be named by name,” he said. “Like Head, or Surgeon, or Gardener. Where there is only one of a thing, its function is a name.”

Mallory’s expression melted into a smile. “If Tristen Tiger scents a conspiracy meant to entice him to war, who am I to gainsay? War is your art, Conn.”

“You provoke me, Necromancer.”

Tristen dipped his head and brushed his mouth against the necromancer’s cool lips. Mallory kissed back, lightly, affectionate, until Tristen pulled away. If it was not the great passion of Tristen’s youth, well. Great passion led so easily to great tragedy.

He said, “Pack your things, then, if you’ll risk it. Though I lead you unto death.”

The necromancer smiled. “Death is my middle name.”


These days, the AE decks were accessible by a simple lift. A lift which functioned properly, which zipped them dramatically around the inside curve of the world from Rule (complete with panoramic and perhaps unsettling views), and which delivered Tristen and Mallory neatly to the Deckers’ port of entry. As it was settling into the docking cradle, the door lights blinking yellow-to-blue one by one, Mallory whispered, “Don’t you ever miss the adventure of the old days?”

“Almost as much as I miss the romance and glamour of epidemic fratricide,” Tristen said out of the corner of his mouth as the lift doors opened. He just caught a glimpse of Mallory’s answering smirk as the mirrored interior surface slipped aside.

It wasn’t love, thank all things holy. But they understood one another, and sometimes that was enough. More than enough.

They came out of the lift with their helms open, a display of blatant confidence, into a surprisingly barren stretch of corridor. Little of the world was not blanketed in biosphere. Throughout her holdes and corridors, her domains and anchores, spiders spun and air mosses hung from every stanchion; lichens crept along the corners where footsteps rarely fell, to be groomed up again by hungry ship cats; apparent shadows dissolved at a motion into flocks of black-blue butterflies. But here, the deck gleamed dully through scratchy polish; the bulkheads were stark, the trim painted white and the fittings glistening.

“Sterile,” Tristen murmured, just loud enough for his armor’s collar mike to pick up the word and transmit it to Mallory.

“Dead,” Mallory answered, running both hands through tight dark curls. The gesture displayed that they were not immediately armed without offering any hint of appeasement or lessened status, and Tristen admired it.

Voice raising, the necromancer called, “Hello? I am Mallory, and this is Tristen Conn. We come on the Captain’s business, as you were informed! Is there someone here to greet us?”

Mallory’s phrasing granted them a right to be there. Someone less experienced might have asked permission, presented themselves as envoys, or begged truce.

But for this, that would not do. Tristen and Jordan had not conquered these people in blood and fire for Tristen to walk among them in supplication, no matter how fraught the situation had become.

Besides, it was just as possible that, other than one or two mercenaries or radicals, the Deckers had had nothing to do with the attack on the Bridge. It was easily possible that the Deckers and the Conn family and its allies were being maneuvered into fighting one another—a conflict that could only bring blood and destruction on them all, and leave the victor weakened even if it didn’t create a patent power vacuum for some mutual enemy to exploit.

Yet show of strength that it was, it received no answer.

“Nova?” Tristen said.

“The holde beyond the next gate shows every sign of being normal, fully functioning, and inhabited,” the Angel answered. “Shall I announce you, First Mate?”

“No, thank you.” That would be just what would endear them to the Deckers—an Angel appearing wreathed in flame and glory midair, bringing word that the Conns had dropped by to ask a few questions and borrow a cup of sweets. “We’ll let ourselves in the back door. Although if you could override the locking mechanism, Nova—”

“I would,” the Angel answered, “but somebody else has already overwritten it. The door’s been hacked. I am afraid you will have to open it manually.”

“You mean by force.”

“I do.”

Tristen slipped Mirth from its sheath. It wasn’t an unblade. It could not slice the door from its moorings, scramble the colonies and programs within on a single pass, and cut the metal from the bulkhead as cleanly as a quantum wand. But in this instance, it would suffice—and Tristen thought he might prefer the repairable outcome to the permanent carnage left by an unblade.

But he did hope that nobody on the other side of the door was waiting for him with Charity naked and deadly to hand. Mirth wouldn’t stand up to fencing an unblade for long—if it stood at all. “Prepare to repair the door behind us, please.”

“Of course,” Nova said, and Tristen raised his daughter’s sword.

When he brought it down, it rent metal, filling the corridor with the hiss of escaping air as pressure equalized through the tight gap. Tristen’s ears popped, and based on Mallory’s grimace, his were not the only ones.

“Sorry,” he said, and swung Mirth up again. Two more strokes made a gap wide enough for them to step through, and Tristen had no fear that Nova would seal up the damage behind them. He was still sparing in using his sword as a door-opening technique, but at least it was possible now. Fifty years before, he would have run the risk of spacing entire holdes. Nova was much more in control of herself than she had been.

—except perhaps not. Because when Tristen slipped through the gap, he was met by the evidence of carnage.

No one had tidied the bodies. They lay where they had fallen, or where they had dragged themselves—several close enough to the entrance that Tristen had just cut through that he had to step over outflung arms and legs to clear the passage for Mallory. “Seal up,” he said, his armor responding instantly. As the helm telescoped up to lock him within, he heard the answering whirr of Mallory’s device.

He also heard the click of Mallory’s footsteps descending the path within the door. There was no point in turning; the necromancer was quite capable of self-defense, and would be dogging Tristen’s heels anyway.

Inside, the holde was just as he remembered, other than being full of dead people. The Deckers preferred—had preferred?—a more regimented approach to ecobalance than most of the world, and their holde was divided into close, tidy rooms lined with hydroponics tanks and workstations. Hanging baskets under full-spectrum lights dripped strawberries and cherry tomatoes. Tristen suspected that, as one spiraled closer to the exterior of the holde, there would be panels allowing natural light in, as much of this would have been built or renovated while the world lay becalmed in the orbit of the shipwreck stars.

But now, this pleasant, gardened, orderly workspace stank of vomit and evacuated bowels. Stringy-haired corpses slumped in corners or draped over chairs. “Your readouts, Nova?”

“I am listening,” the Angel said at his side. “And through your colony I see what you see. But I cannot perceive it directly. Within these walls, my awareness has been edited.”

“Just like old times,” Tristen said bitterly. “Are you having any trouble healing the door?”

“Given current circumstances,” Mallory suggested, “I think I shall turn around and check.”

The necromancer vanished between leaves, only to return, nodding, a moment later. “The door is cured.”

“Unlike this place.” Tristen crouched to check another set of life-signs, knowing the gesture was futile.

“Someone cleaned up after himself,” Mallory said. “They were Exalt, these Deckers. But they were new to it and untrained, and they were not Conns. Whatever was unleashed on them, you or I might have known how to defend against, but here it was like nerve gas in a kindergarten.”

“Indeed,” Tristen answered. “Why does this remind me of something?”

“Shhh.” Mallory raised a hand.

Tristen had opened his mouth to ask the question before he realized that, no matter what he said, it would be stupid. He held his tongue and watched as Mallory crossed the holde to crouch, then crawl, peering under the edge of a hydroponics tank full of lush, burgundy-veined beet greens and tiny purple beets no bigger than marbles.

“Prince Tristen,” the necromancer said, “I suspect I have found a survivor.”


Dust should have known it was all going wrong as soon as his patron shrugged her appropriated body into a more comfortable arrangement—which included locking up the Conn personality who usually animated the borrowed form—and allowed Dust to lead her through the world. He was surprised that she would come to Dorcas as a penitent, but he supposed, as it was his patron who had desired this meeting, it was incumbent upon her to travel. And Dorcas had shown no desire to step forth from her Heaven and explore the possibilities presented her. She might hear supplicants from her own domaine and holdfast, like any Queen, but that was different than going to see someone.

Dust’s patron had always been the sort to enforce her rights and insist upon her privileges. She took status seriously and used it as a tool to get her will. Dust knew it rankled in her like a shard under the skin that she had fallen so far as to be going before Dorcas—an Engineer and a Go-Back—to beg assistance. But he’d also seen how ruthless she was, which left him wondering if there were any way this proposed alliance could end without another heap of bodies.

His patron had never been quite sane.

But he was her angel, now, and she was his Conn, and he would do as she bid. It was in the nature of angels to serve.

He accompanied her into a lift—her body’s trusted status in Engine let them travel freely—and from thence into one of the great arterial trunks that served commuters around the world. The paths from Engine to Rule were long, but they had been among the first ones Caitlin Conn and Captain Perceval had ordered repaired once the resources were available.

Though Dust and his patron were not going all the way to Rule, the same arterials would make the trip to the Heaven of the Edenites much more practical given their limited window for travel and negotiations.

They traveled in silence. His patron did not invite him to ride on her shoulder, as another might, so he sat by her ankles and tucked his tail around his toes to present an appearance of tidiness. When they arrived, Dust could tell that his patron was insulted that no entourage awaited them—only Dorcas in her clean robes, embroidered about the collar, with her hat hung down her back under the thick yellow coils of her hair.

“Hello,” Dorcas said. “Your pardon if I seem surprised; your messenger did not explain you had been rebodied in the form of a Conn.”

Dorcas’s confession of surprise did nothing to smooth the patron’s prickles.

“Who did you think you would be meeting?” the patron asked, sweet reason and imperiousness mixing in a tone that Dust knew was every reason for caution. Surely he had not been so timid when he was a larger angel?

But now he was a toolkit only, a small and cowardly beast, and not the black-mirrored dragon of yore. You changed; you adapted; you made the most of what you were and strove to become more. He would survive. Though we are not now that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth—

“I try to assume nothing,” Dorcas said. “Come, be welcome. Let me make you comfortable and bring you refreshment.”

She turned and moved on, gesturing the patron to follow. She took the lead, since she obviously knew where they were going. The toolkit scampered at her heels, too small to manage even a semidignified trot.

This was not the sort of society where anyone waited on anyone else, and Dust could sense his patron’s disapproval of this, too. She hid it well, though. The momentary stiffness of spine melted into calm dignity, and the smile on her lips even seemed to touch her eyes. She carried herself like the princess she had been, and part of the training of a princess was graciousness. She even managed to seem pleased when Dorcas showed her the white-painted vine-woven table and chairs set under the shade of a glossy-leafed coffee tree heavy with bright red berries. Dust could only read the exasperation rising in his patron by that head-tilt and the little smile—the one that said to anyone who knew her well: I am going to eat your liver.

As if reading the situation, Dorcas pulled out the patron’s chair and the patron sat. A moment later, Dorcas seated herself. Dust hopped up the bole of the coffee tree and vanished among the branches, careful not to knock twigs or leaves on the humans’ heads as he found a position from which he could observe in comfort and concealment. As the foliage closed around him, he felt the hammering of his tiny animal heart cease. This was safety, cover—protection—and his instincts rewarded him for seeking it.

The patron waited patiently while Dorcas poured coffee and passed around almond milk and agave syrup. Then she lifted her salvaged-materials cup, touched it to her lips, inhaled the steam—eyes closed briefly as her colony analyzed the composition—and set it down again.

“It’s safe,” Dorcas said, and tasted her own coffee to demonstrate. When her eyes closed, Dust thought it was in appreciation. The almond milk made little swirls and shimmers of fat on the surface, and small curdled patches, but to his body’s organic nostrils it certainly smelled good.

When she set the coffee down, she smiled. “You wanted to speak to me.”

“I want to take the ship,” the patron said, with the boldness that had always been hers. “I do not know yet if this is feasible, but I do know that the current Captain’s policies will lead us to death and disaster. Those who hold Grail will not share or surrender it without a fight, and we—” She sighed. “We have come too far to be turned away. We will not survive another long passage in the dark.”

Dust watched Dorcas swirl her coffee in the cup, the curling edge of the wavelet she made leaving a ring of froth and wetness behind. “You are forthright,” she said. “I like that.”

The patron smiled and sipped her drink. From her expression, it pleased her better than everything else about the day. “We are talking about the people who contaminated your preserve with symbionts against your will. Who engineered the colonies to begin with, and tortured and murdered innocent life-forms to do so. Cynric Conn and her minions respect no boundary; they adhere to no ethical compass beyond what I want, I shall have.”

“A stiff dick has no conscience,” Dorcas said.

The patron grinned. Humans, Dust thought, were so … erratic.

“Exactly,” the patron said. “And a Conn dick is doubly blind to consequence.”

Dorcas smoothed one hand across her hair. Her lips thinned. She drew in a deep breath and said, “And what are the consequences of your conquest of the world? We’ll descend on Grail and take what we want of her? We’ll abandon negotiation in favor of force?”

Dust saw the flicker of frustration cross the patron’s face, heard the skip of her elevated heart rate. “We’ll survive,” she said, “by whatever means necessary. Cooperation, of course, is to be preferred, as is a nonviolent solution.”

Dorcas smiled. It was not a friendly smile, or even one of complicity. When she set her cup down on the table, it made so little sound against the woven vines that even Dust’s honed ears could scarcely detect it. “I find that reprehensible,” she said.

Dust had not expected his patron to be rocked back in her chair, but amid his bower of leaves he nevertheless—if asked—must have confessed himself gratified that she frowned. Fleetingly, so fleetingly a Mean might have missed it, though Dorcas most assuredly did not.

“You would find me a very bad enemy,” the patron said. “I think it would be wise to reconsider. There are elements among your people that are already in sympathy with me.”

“I said I found it reprehensible,” Dorcas said. “I did not say I would under no circumstances cooperate. I know who you are and I know who you were. I know what you stand reduced from, and I know what you did in Rule and among the Deckers who allied with you last. You are a Conn through and through, Ariane, and rotten with it. But it’s also possible that you are our only hope for survival.”

Dorcas stared calmly at the patron. The patron stared too, seeming taken aback for the first time in Dust’s experience.

There was a sound when the patron set her cup down, and a louder one of scuffed turf and tearing grass when she shoved her chair back from the table. Her hand fell on the freshly machined hilt of the blade she wore over her clothing, a common enough affectation among Engineers. “How dare you speak to me like that?”

Dorcas seemed unimpressed by the threat of unblade, or Conn. She did not rise, but a needler appeared in her hand, shivering slightly but accurately aimed. The patron gave no sign that she had noticed it. Her weapon remained in its sheath, ready on the instant to be drawn. And in the leaves of the branches behind her, Dust saw something heavy, shining, and silk-black coil and tongueflicker, ready on the instant to strike.

“Ariane,” she said. “Really. I was dead before you were out of diapers, and you expect fear? I have said I will help you. I will promise not to reveal what I know to the Captain or her dogs.” Her mouth bent in a moue of disgust. “But don’t expect me to lick your boots into the deal.”

Inside his bower, the frail remnant of Dust huddled close to a branch. He would leap if he must, join the fray in defense of his mistress. Worthy or not, despised or adored, she was his, and he was hers. Even Dorcas’s synbiotic monster-snake would not intimidate him into remaining in hiding if Ariane were to draw her blade.

And she might have, except Dorcas smiled, showing teeth. In that expression, Dust glimpsed the woman she had not been, the woman whose body she now inhabited. He remembered Sparrow Conn, and he could imagine it was her voice that said, “Though you grind my bones for bread, Commodore, you will not make me grovel.”

She did not stand. She sipped her coffee. She did not lower the barrel of her weapon. She raised her head to regard the patron and she smiled.

“You know,” she said, “combat reflexes live in the muscle memory more than they do in the mind. Do you know who wore this body before me, Ariane?”

The patron did not step back, though Dust saw the shiver through her calf muscles as she fought the reflex and won.

“Allies?” she said.

“After a fashion,” Dorcas agreed. “Please, drink your coffee. It would be a pity to waste.”


Tristen felt his armor shift to support his weight as he rocked back on his heels. “A survivor? Are you sure?”

“Living things are not my specialty,” Mallory admitted, “but it seems likely. That’s what a pulse and breathing generally mean, isn’t it?”

“When you’re right, Necromancer,” Tristen said, “you’re usually right.”

“Here, bring me more light.”

Mallory’s helm lights already illuminated the underside of the table with a dim glow. It radiated up through the water and the roots of the plants encapsulated in the transparent table, casting eerie, watery ripples of luminescence and shadow on the bulkheads and the ceiling. Tristen leaned down to bring his own units under the edge, where they could contribute a more indirect illumination. When he could see around Mallory—and his sensors could pick up what the necromancer’s body obscured—he grunted into his helm. Breath fogged his faceplate for a moment before the moisture controls cleared it, but what vanished behind the mist did not change when it emerged again.

Mallory cupped something the color and size of a lime in armored palms. It was warm; a tiny heartbeat shook it. Tiny breaths lifted its feathers and then let them fall smooth again. Its wings were no longer than Tristen’s middle finger. They stretched across Mallory’s hands, delicate primary feathers splayed as if they were fingers, too.

“Cynric’s pets look like that,” Tristen said. He backed up, allowing Mallory to scuff out from under the hydroponics table on armored knees that grated against the floor. Mallory stood, still cradling the minute casualty. “A stunning coincidence.”

“She didn’t do this,” Mallory said, turning to survey the dead.

“She wouldn’t have left behind evidence if she did,” Tristen agreed. Cynric did not make merely human errors. Her mistakes were more on the epic scale, her failings those of demigods. “So the question is, who did it, and how was it done, and what is the purpose in making it look like Cynric?”

Mallory’s head moved inside the armor—not argument, but distaste and bitterness.

Tristen said, “Nova, are you receiving this?”

“Your feed only,” the Angel said. “I’ll have to propagate into this space. A moment, please.”

Tristen felt nothing as the Angel reclaimed AE deck, colonies moving into the vacated areas. The Angel’s presence was as imperceptible to him as her absence had been to her own senses. He heard the chime in his head when she had accomplished it, though, and her soft voice saying, “There are no survivors in this area. The bulk of AE deck appears unaffected, but this cluster of anchores has been sterilized.”

“Except the bird.”

“Except the bird,” Nova confirmed.

“Cynric could conceal this area from Nova’s senses,” Mallory said, playing devil’s advocate. “If she wanted a private preserve in which to foment revolution and conquer the world.”

“Who knows why Cynric does anything?” Tristen said. He would set no manner of ruthlessness beyond her, but the carelessness still seemed out of character to him. “If she wanted to read the Bible, though, all she had to do was ask Perceval.”

He moved past Mallory, back into the corridor where they had entered. Storage lockers were keyed to other hand and voice prints, but Nova was in them now, and Tristen was her First Mate. They opened to his glance, not even so much as his command.

They contained the sorts of things you would expect from storage cubbies near an air lock. Emergency gear, rescue equipment, recyclables awaiting attention—and three rows of suits of armor standing arrayed in the deepest cabinet. The first rank of these were personalized—bright colors, varied sizes, the kinds of modifications and attachments that armor grew when partnered with one worker for a long period of time. But the suits behind those were disused, grayed-out, awaiting reawakening.

And two of them carried bright scars, as if from a deflected needle or a hard contact with some sharp stationary object. “These suits of armor,” Tristen said. “They have not repaired themselves.”

“Their colonies are not awake and autonomous,” Nova said. “And as I was locked out of this area, I could not oversee repairs.”

“Check them for DNA residue,” Tristen said. “In fact, check all the suits in here. There were three incursionists who got away. So either there’s a suit missing, along with the paper Bible and an unblade—or the third person took absolutely no damage at all.”

“In any case,” Nova said, “if there’s DNA in these suits of armor that does not belong to any of the dead, it may lead us to identify survivors.”

“Indeed,” Tristen said. “It’s possible none of the killers died here, and all this death is to cover up their escape.”

“That’s worthy of your father,” Mallory said over the comm.

Tristen frowned, both stung and grateful that Mallory could not see his response. “That I can recognize the possibility does not mean that I advocate the act.”

The necromancer made a rough sound of constrained laughter. “Indeed. Tristen, come see this?”

Tristen left the storage cubby open and returned to the charnel house of the hydroponics lab. As he walked, he heard Jordan’s voice in his helm, relayed by Nova.

“Hello, Tristen.” Strange to have his former apprentice treating with him as an equal now. Strange, and satisfying. After his return greeting, she continued, “It looks as if the colony-entity that invaded this space disguised itself as pieces of Nova, broadcasting the usual surface signals—and totally bogus data. Nova didn’t know a parasite was masquerading as a portion of her own body. When it retracted, it simply withdrew its presence and wiped its program from the infected units and left them vacant. There is not even a line of physical retreat to follow.”

“That also explains how it kept her out of the Bridge access,” Tristen said. “That suggests a crafty and experienced angel or djinn.”

“It suggests somebody in particular to me,” Nova said, “but I ate him. Also, if there was DNA residue in the suits, it’s been consumed. Somebody’s colony was careful.”

“Well, crap.” Tristen opened the hatch and stepped back into the Decker farm. Mallory, helm open and gauntlets retracted, crouched beside the body of a young woman who had fallen back in the chair she’d died in, a yellow line of bile dried down her jaw and staining the front of her blouse. The parrotlet, still breathing softly, lay amongst wadded fabric on the desktop.

Tristen cleared his throat. “Is it safe to have your helm open? You might contract the agent of death. You might transport it outside this sealed environment.”

“Can’t kiss a corpse with sealed lips,” Mallory said. “Nova says it was a poisoned program, wiped along with the presence that spawned it. We’re as safe here as we are anywhere.”

Assuming the Angel’s not being fooled by the enemy’s camouflage again. Tristen bit his lip. “It seems like there are a lot of familiar modi operandi at work here. And all of the individuals those tactics suggest are supposed to be dead.”

“Well, death,” Mallory said. “I wouldn’t use that to rule out suspects. Death is my specialty, and you have my professional assurances that it’s not in any way permanent. I’ve got a head so full of dead people I suspect whoever I started off as should probably be counted as one of them.

“Transformation, on the other hand, now, that’s the one you have to watch out for. How much of you has to die before you stop being you and become somebody else?”

Tristen thought of Cynric, of Gavin, of Nova and Rien. He thought of Sparrow and Dorcas, and himself and a dark hole full of wings and insects and the heat of decomposition. He came a step closer, itching to reach out to Mallory, forcing himself to observe. But he did not open his helm.

The necromancer framed the dead woman’s eyes with soft fingertips, and leaned so close that Tristen felt as if he had interrupted a seduction.

As he watched, the kiss was completed. Mallory pressed pink lips over the dead woman’s mouth, and Tristen could see the worming motions of the necromancer’s tongue working between the corpse’s teeth. Mallory’s eyes closed, fingers fanning through brown hair to hold the head steady.

There was not much rigor yet, or it was passing. By the lack of cadaverine and sulfur compounds in the air, Tristen presumed the former—but with luck (and skill) Mallory would have a better answer momentarily. When the necromancer straightened, dark eyes thoughtful, Tristen knew some ghost of an answer at least had been retrieved.

“The brain is dead but fresh,” Mallory said. “A virus is interfering with the symbionts, preventing regeneration; Nova and Jordan will likely be able to remove the inhibition and at least get the bodies back. And perhaps learn more about how Nova was kept out of this anchore—”

“And kept from being aware that she was being kept out of this anchore,” Nova added dryly.

Mallory snorted. “Any program—be it based in wetware or hardware—can be hacked.”

“And did you hack her memories?” Tristen asked, stroking the dead woman’s hair back with his armored hand.

“The machine memories were wiped,” Mallory said. “I think these people were used as a stalking horse by a greater enemy. I think that enemy was thorough in covering his or her tracks.”

The smile that curved lovely lips was smug enough to make Tristen shiver with memory. This is hardly the time.

But what were a few dozen more dead in his lifetime?

“I notice,” Tristen said—aware that, in terms of cool professionalism, he was overcompensating, “that you specifically mention the machine memories.”

“The meat is empty,” Mallory said. “No electrical impulses left at all. She’s dead.” The necromancer’s palms rasped softly, nervously, against one another. “The local monitoring records have been purged, but there are still neurochemical traces.”

Tristen felt his eyebrows rise.

“Oxytocin, serotonin. Whoever killed her was someone she trusted to do her no harm.”

“A friend?”

“A friend.”

* * *

By the time they’d returned to Rule, Tristen had made his decision. He left Mallory to report to Perceval—the broad details had been handled through Nova and the com, but the Captain would have questions, and both Mallory and Tristen had thought it best if their suspicion that revenant shards of Dust and Ariane might be involved was broken to Perceval in person—and brought the unconscious parrotlet to its creator for a detailed conversation.

Cynric might have been hard at work. She might have been napping on her feet. It was possible, Tristen admitted, pausing just inside the threshold of the door that had slipped open for him as automatically as if he were invited, that she had learned a way to manage both at once, sleeping with one side of her brain at a time like a cetacean. He did not think he’d ever seen her lie down to rest, or even claim a need for it.

But then, she was Cynric the Sorceress—or she was all that was left of what had been Cynric the Sorceress—and she was as much Engine as Engineer.

“Hello, Tristen,” she said without turning. Her head was tilted back on her long neck, the long almond-shaped eyes closed so her lashes smudged her cheeks, her hair—straight as Perceval’s, and browner—trailing across her loose robes to fall the length of her spine. “You have brought something of mine?”

“I think it’s ill or injured.” He came up beside her, extending the transparent clamshell in which he’d nested the parrotlet. It lay amid fleece like an icing decoration on meringue, green on white with its tiny head tucked close to the body, its papery eyelids closed over eyes round as beads.

“Hacked,” she said, accepting the package. It opened at her touch, and she gently insinuated her fingers under the bird’s still form. “How odd. This isn’t the first time anyone has brought me one of these.”

She lifted the tiny thing and put its head in her mouth, then removed it—damp—and frowned. “It’s been cut off from the rest, poor thing. Somebody who should be performing his own research is attempting to ride my labcoattails, Prince Tristen.”

The shake of her head made her eyes catch the light, and the stud through her nose glowed dimly—the same pale green as the parrotlet. Tristen watched as it shuddered, raised its head slowly, and shook itself as if awakening from a hard dream that had left it logy.

“Hmm,” she said, studying it, then shifted her attention to Tristen. “Thank you. I suppose it will be all right now. Where did you find this?”

“Among a few dozen murdered Deckers.” He handed her a crystal, the same recordings of what he and Mallory had seen that Mallory was delivering to the Captain. She accepted and pocketed it; he had no doubt she would download and integrate the information as soon as he departed. “What could you do with one of those birds? If you were unfriendly to the world, or to its Captain?”

Cynric opened the cage of her fingers and let the bird fly up, circling the irregular outline of her workshop. “They’re a prayer.”

Tristen folded his arms. “I realize,” he said, as jovially as he could manage, “that you have put a great deal of effort and practice into your gnomic utterances, Sister. But I for one would appreciate it if you spoke plainly, just this once.”

She straightened in surprise—not quite a recoil, but a definite reaction—and crunched the clamshell and swaddling between her palms. Her colony—or a colony, in any case; here in her workshop, there might be many—disassembled it promptly. She turned to watch the parrotlet spiraling overhead, her feet bearing her in a crooked circle. Tristen turned merely to watch her turn.

“I put something of the Leviathans’ ability to dream the future in them,” Cynric said. “The parrotlets want to live, you see. And so they help the world live with them. They are a prayer for safety. One that will be listened to.”

“If they were hacked—”

“That one was hacked,” she said. “Hacked and then abandoned.”

“So could someone use them to pray for something else?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I rather imagine they could.”