Grail (19 page)

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.