Grail (20 page)

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.